Data doesn’t support Obama’s claim
Guest essay by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
During the July 2013 U.S. Senate hearing at which Roger Pielke Jr. and Roy Spencer gave stellar testimony to the visible discomfiture of the climate-extremist witnesses, none of the “Democrat” Senators and none of the people they had chosen to testify before them was at all anxious to defend Mr. Obama’s assertion that over the past decade global warming has been accelerating at an unforeseen rate.
At a fund-raiser for the “Democratic” Congressional Campaign Committee in Chicago May 29, he had said, “We … know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or ten years ago.” He had added, “I don’t have much patience for people who deny climate change.”
Well, I deny that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or ten years ago. But I deny it not because I take an aprioristic position opposite to Mr Obama’s aprioristic position, but because science is done by measurement, not by parroting the Party Line. And the measurements do not support the Party Line.
Let me demonstrate. First, what warming does the IPCC anticipate in its upcoming and much-leaked Fifth Assessment Report?
![clip_image002[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0024.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image002[4]")
The graph above, adapted from Figs. 11.33ab in the draft report, for which I am an expert reviewer, shows that from 2005-2050 (most of the past ten years fall within that period) the models expect an approximately linear warming of about 0.4 to 1.0 Cº per 30 years (this range is also explicitly stated in paragraph 11.3.6.3). That is equivalent to 1.33 to 3.33 Cº/century, with a mid-range estimate of 2.33 Cº/century.
The IPCC’s models’ mid-range projection implies that around 0.12 Cº of warming should happen over five years, and o.23 Cº over ten years. An eighth to a quarter of a Celsius degree: those are the benchmarks. Previous IPCC reports made broadly similar near-term projections.
What, then, is the consensus among the monthly global mean surface or lower-troposphere datasets about whether the climate is warming “faster than anybody anticipated five or ten years ago”? Or whether it is warming at all?
There are three terrestrial datasets: HadCRUt4, GISS, and NCDC. There are two satellite datasets: RSS and UAH. To forestall the usual futile allegations of cherry-picking, we shall look at all five of them.
For each dataset, two graphs will be displayed: the most recent 60 months of global temperature anomalies, and the most recent 120 months.
The graph will display the spline-curve of the monthly anomalies in dark blue, with a thicker light-blue trend-line, which is simply the least-squares linear-regression trend on the data. Over short periods, no more complex trend need be determined.
Nor is there any need to allow for seasonality, not only because the graphs analyze data over multiples of 12 months but also because globally the seasons cancel each other out, so that natural variability tends to make any seasonal pattern near-impossible to detect.
Linear regression determines the underlying trend in a dataset over a given period as the slope of the unique straight line through the data that minimizes the sum of the squares of the absolute differences or “residuals” between the data-points corresponding to each time interval in the data and on the trend-line.
The graphs, therefore, give a fair indication of whether global mean temperatures at or near the surface have been rising or falling over the past five or ten years.
Note, however, that – particularly with highly volatile datasets such as the global temperature anomalies – a statistical trend is not a tool for prediction. It indicates only what has happened, not what may or will happen.
And what has happened is, as we shall see, grievously at odds with the Party Line.
We begin with the terrestrial datasets.
GISS, five years:
![clip_image004[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0044.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image004[4]")
GISS, ten years:
![clip_image006[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0064.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image006[4]")
HadCRUT4, five years:
![clip_image008[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0084.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image008[4]")
HadCRUt4, ten years:
![clip_image010[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0104.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image010[4]")
NCDC, five years:
![clip_image012[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0124.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image012[4]")
NCDC, ten years:
![clip_image014[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0144.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image014[4]")
The mean of the anomalies on all three terrestrial datasets, five years:
![clip_image016[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0164.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image016[4]")
The mean of the anomalies on all three terrestrial datasets, ten years:
![clip_image018[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0184.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image018[4]")
Now for the two satellite datasets. RSS, five years:
![clip_image020[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0204.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image020[4]")
RSS, ten years:
![clip_image022[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0224.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image022[4]")
UAH, five years:
![clip_image024[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0244.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image024[4]")
UAH, ten years:
![clip_image026[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0264.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image026[4]")
The mean of the anomalies on the two satellite datasets, five years:
![clip_image028[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0284.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image028[4]")
The mean of the anomalies on the two satellite datasets, ten years:
![clip_image030[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0304.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image030[4]")
The mean of the anomalies on all five datasets, five years:
![clip_image032[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0324.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image032[4]")
The mean of the anomalies on all five datasets, ten years:
![clip_image034[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0344.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image034[4]")
The only dataset that shows any warming at all is UAH over ten years. The warming is a not particularly dizzying one twenty-fifth of a Celsius degree over ten years, equivalent to two-fifths of a degree per century.
The RSS satellite dataset, on the other hand, now shows no global warming at all for an impressive 199 months, or 16 years 7 months:
![clip_image036[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0364.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image036[4]")
Not much “acceleration” there. Will it reach 200 months? I’ll report next month.
Finally, here is the monthly Global Warming Prediction Index, which compares the projections backcast by the modelers to 2005 and published in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report with the real-world outturn as measured by the two satellite datasets.
![clip_image038[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/clip_image0384.jpg?quality=83 "clip_image038[4]")
The lower bound of the orange zone is the IPCC’s low-end projection. Warming should be occurring at a minimum of 1.33 Cº/century. The thick bright red line is the IPCC’s mid-range projection: warming should be occurring at 2.33 Cº/century.
The real-world trend, represented by the thick bright blue trend line, shows global temperatures declining since January 2005 at a rate equivalent to almost a quarter of a Celsius degree (half a Fahrenheit degree) per century.
You may think that going to the trouble of producing so many graphs is overkill. Yet when I first spoke up at the U.N. climate conference in Doha and pointed out that there had been no global warming for 16 years the delegates were furious. So were the news media. One reason for their unreason: they simply did not know the facts.
One would have thought that among all the hours of hand-wringing on the air and pages of moaning in print about “global warming”, most of the news media would be faithfully reporting the monthly temperature anomalies. But no. The facts do not fit the Party Line, so they are not reported. They are consigned to the Memory Hole.
As for Mr. Obama’s statement about “acceleration”, he was plain wrong. Instead of the warming equivalent to 2.33 Cº/century global warming that had been “anticipated”, there has really been no change in global temperature at all over the past five or ten years.
Will somebody tell the “President”?
With all this about “Alice in Wonderland”, why didn’t somebody bring up “Chicken Little”?
This thread is amazing.
So now, I imagine they will begin measuring sub-3000m ocean temps around known volcanic vents.
Watch for it. I know, they wouldn’t do that. (sarc)
Jai Mitchell,
Did you go down there and measure it yourself? Having done so, now you could explain how ice below freezing melts? NO?
Oh, maybe you are citing “data” from the un-calibrated, un-corroborated, unique-to-“Science” GRACE satellites? Upon which results you propose to destroy the economies, standards of living, and life expectancies of the Western world?
You go girl…..
Would someone please explain to me how Trenberth imagines that a fraction of a degree C which “should” be in the air but isn’t instead gets into the deep oceans without heating surface layers, & how anyone could even measure such a minuscule amount of heat spread throughout oceanic masses? I’d be grateful. Thanks.
Jai Mitchell,
“satellite altimetry, interferometry, and gravimetry data sets”
What?
You read it on the Internet so it must be true? Once again, it is pretty cold down there, and the Antarctic Peninsula is a quite small percentage of the continent, and it is not elevated as is the main body of the Continent.
How does ice, at a temperature below freezing, melt? It does not, no matter what you read on the Internet. It just stays there, and when it snow some more, it accumulates.
There is a word that applies here, “Credulous,” I state this with all due respect…..
Jai Mitchell,
Let me state this more succinctly: In the industrial world, where I live, where unanswered questions about data result in failures, canceled contracts, and terminations, we must ask this question: “How, exactly, is this data traceable back to NIST standards?”
If that question is not answered unambiguously, a new vendor must immediately be found, or we must produce the component ourselves to our own satisfaction.
Do you deal with any sort of scientific/engineering data professionally, yourself? Or are you just another amateur, dabbling in a field in which you have no competence? We are busy here, run along…..
Gail Combs
I like your articles, but they don’t really say what you are implying, they are good don’t get me wrong, it is just that the Pacific Decadel Oscillation doesn’t follow along with the solar cycle and it is the PDO and the El Nino/La Nina cycles that are much more effective at dictating surface temperatures in the pacific. These and the Atlantic Meridonal Oscillation are both influenced heavily by the presence of (or lack of!) atmospheric sulfates either by pollution or by volcanic sources.
Michael Moon
since about 40X as much heat energy goes into the oceans every day it would not take very much changes in the oceans system to delay or even cause considerable cooling in the atmosphere.
There are tons of real studies done by real science folk in the normal peer reviewed channels to check. It is really just too bad that you people here are so ideologically pent up with your agendas that you can’t allow even the basic science to take root. This is not complicated stuff! It IS, however, life threatening to YOUR grandchildren. so I suggest you bone up.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50382/abstract
rogerknights
interesting, I am not sure exactly what you mean, the analysis of the data was peer reviewed and provided an accuracy margin of error that concluded the results past strict statistical tests. The amount of LAND based ice loss is correct and increasing. The sea ice is expanding, I have heard it is being caused by a slowdown of the Thermohaline but also may be caused by increased cloudcover at during the summer as regional seas are warming and more moisture is entering the atmosphere. I haven’t checked this one to be sure. It turns out that increased sea ice in the winter in antarctica actuall helps to keep heat in the oceans as the ice acts as an insulation barrier.
Michael Moon says:
“Do you deal with any sort of scientific/engineering data professionally, yourself? Or are you just another amateur, dabbling in a field in which you have no competence?”
From twenty centuries in the distant past, the great Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius speaks of the jai mitchells’ of our world:
“The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
jai mitchell is nuts. That’s just the way it is. So we work to help educate the undecided public. For the mitchells’ of this world, there is no hope. They are Believers, not scientists.
[I worked with NIST, successor to the National Bureau of Standards, for 30 years. And I note that NIST takes no position regarding runaway global warming.]
I am really struggling to understand this – I only have a PhD so I must not get it.
The surface temperature of the plant has not risen for (say) 11 years – I hate cherry picking the 1998 el nino.
So explain this to me please – if the temperature is not rising – why is there recently such a focus on extreme weather is it;
a) Because the system took a while to respond to previous warming?
b) The lack of warming means pro- AGW people need to look around for some other indicator? or
c) They’re just making it up as they go along.
d) The planet is actually warming and all of our thermometers are taking a vacation.
Next – what evidence is there for deep ocean warming and if it is occurring how does that communicate with the weather to make it extreme?
Next – If the surface temperature of planet isn’t warming – why is ice melt an issue – for options see the previous question.
And – finally
If the previous models are unskilled at predicting the current hiatus in surface warming and this is really because the warming has gone into the oceans then exactly how long will this take to come back and bite us in the bum?
Jai Mitchell,
“Since about 40X as much heat energy goes into the oceans every day it would not take very much changes in the oceans system to delay or even cause considerable cooling in the atmosphere.”
As much as what? What are you trying to say? What does this have to do with ice below freezing, deciding to melt anyway? What is the difference between the specific heat of water and air? What, “specific heat,” what the hell is that?
You are some sort of advocate, but with little-to-no understanding of the topic, why would you embarrass yourself this way? Peer-review-“ed” science articles reviewed by this “Climate Scientist” clown posse, you want to spend your grand-children’s money on this?
It is so simple, for the third or fourth time: Antarctica is really really cold, too cold for any ice to melt except on the West Antarctic Peninsula, a tiny fraction of the continent. How is this possibly contributing to SLR? Address this simple issue or be revealed as the idiotic poser wanna-be pseudo-scientific lightweight you clearly are….
henry@goldie
a) in a way yes, the warmer gulf stream is still melting some ice, but global cooling has started.
It just takes years for oceans to lose energy from the previous (natural) warming period.
b) yes
c) yes
d) no, it is cooling, for at least the equivalent of one solar cycle.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2013/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2002/trend
it won’t stop cooling until around 2040, and along the way, we will experience some serious climate change, i.e. droughts.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
henry@richie
sure, we all knew this: prof Carter showed that CO2 increase followed warming periods, it does cause warming. People were confused always seeing more CO2 when it was getting warmer, assuming a relationship. There is a relationship of course but it is causal: something like: cancer is caused by smoking, but smoking is not caused by cancer.
jai mitchell says: July 21, 2013 at 12:12 pm
“…This can most easily be demonstrated by analyzing the components of the sea level rise over the last 4 decades. ..”
Sea level rises – a complicated issue – inadequate satellites, atmospheiric pressure adjustments, GIA adjustments (o.3 mm per year right there!), and it all adds up nicely ….
…except then these guys come along and find an extra 0.7 mm/year from aquifer depletion, mining of underground water:
And sea level measurements are also affected by groundwater extraction, not accounted for in earlier IPCC reports:
“…. have found, groundwater depletion is adding about 0.6 millimeters per year …. to the Earth’s sea level….” a team of Dutch scientists led by hydrologist Yoshihide Wada, Utrecht University.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/05/120531-groundwater-depletion-may-accelerate-sea-level-rise/
And;
“..We find that, together, unsustainable groundwater use, artificial reservoir water impoundment, climate-driven changes in terrestrial water storage and the loss of water from closed basins have contributed a sea-level rise of about 0.77 mm yr−1 between 1961 and 2003, about 42% of the observed sea-level rise. ….. the unsustainable use of groundwater represents the largest contribution…”
Nature Geoscience | Letter Model estimates of sea-level change due to anthropogenic impacts on terrestrial water storageYadu N. Pokhrel http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n6/full/ngeo1476.html
@- Goldie
“Next – what evidence is there for deep ocean warming and if it is occurring how does that communicate with the weather to make it extreme?”
Apart from the ARGO data there is the GRACE and JASON data on sea level rise which can only be explained by some amount of thermal expansion. The warmer oceans are one factor in melting the Arctic summer ice. That has disrupted the jet stream causing the blocking patterns that caused the extreme droughts and floods seen recently. That may be just one of the changes in the pattern of weather caused by the rising energy added to the climate system by rising CO2
@- “Next – If the surface temperature of planet isn’t warming – why is ice melt an issue – for options see the previous question. ”
The poles are and have been warming even while the global average has been static, they show amplification of the greenhouse effect and are less influenced by the La Nina cycle that has suppressed global warming. The ice is a significant albedo factor, its loss is an additional positive feedback.
@- “If the previous models are unskilled at predicting the current hiatus in surface warming and this is really because the warming has gone into the oceans then exactly how long will this take to come back and bite us in the bum?”
The previous and present models do project the possibility of a hiatus in warming, most commonly because increased wind shear over tropical oceans can transfer more energy into the oceans especialy during the La Nina phase of the ENSO cycle.
Another five years will determine it either way, the process that has led to the present hiatus is unlikely to persist that long, and the weather extremes that the warmer oceans and shifts in floods and droughts will of course continue.
izen says
that has disrupted the jet stream causing the blocking patterns that caused the extreme droughts and floods seen recently.
henry says
no that is not the reason.
the melting ice is due to the warmer gulfstream, which collected warmth from the warming period which ended at ca. 2000
Climate on Earth is ruled, among others, by the Gleissberg solar/weather cycle
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
Those still pointing to melting ice and glaciers, as “proof” that it is (still) warming, and not cooling, should remember that there is a lag from energy-in and energy-out due to oceans acting as energy reservoirs.. Counting back 88 years i.e. 2013-88= we are in 1925.
Now look at some eye witness reports of the ice back then?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/16/you-ask-i-provide-november-2nd-1922-arctic-ocean-getting-warm-seals-vanish-and-icebergs-melt/
Sounds familiar? read the whole report. Back then, in 1922, they had seen that the arctic ice melt was due to the warmer Gulf Stream waters. However, by 1950 all that same ‘lost” ice had frozen back. I therefore predict that all lost arctic ice will also come back, from 2020-2035 as also happened from 1935-1950. Antarctic ice is already increasing.
as explained in my previous post.
This is here is a good summary of all my investigations
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
and what we must do, before the droughts start again. we have about 6 or 7 years left before (7?) the drought years start.
jai mitchell says:
July 21, 2013 at 12:12 pm
You greatly overestimate the amount of heat going into heating the ocean and the land. The amount of energy necessary to raise the ocean temperatures by the amount given by Levitus averages about a quarter of a watt per square metre over the last 50 years. Compare that with the stated increase in the radiative forcing, which is about twice that size over that period. So your numbers of 2.3% and 97.7% are unsupported by the measurements.
w.
@ur momisugly Henry P and Izen
Thanks for that – I think.
Some commenters have suggested that the additional heat supposed to be generated by manmade greenhouse-gas emissions is going into the deep oceans. Unfortunately we do not have sufficiently-resolved measurements for enough time to confirm that hypothesis. There are some 3500 ARGO bathythermograph buoys, but – as Willis Eschenbach has pointed out – they are doing no more the equivalent of taking a temperature and salinity profile of the whole of Lake Superior less than once a year.
There are tens of thousands of subsea volcanoes and volcanic vents. No global survey to determine variability in the direct output of heat to the deep ocean from these sources has been attempted. Ian Plimer and others have suggested that El Ninos – whose origin has not yet been explained – may be caused by increased subsea volcanic activity in the tropical eastern Pacific, on the ground that each El Nino is preceded by six months of enhanced seismic activity in the region.
For reasons such as these, the usual suspects do not impress when they say the heat they had so confidently predicted for the atmosphere has gone into hiding deep beneath the waves, and that one day it will come out again and say, “Boo!”
The atmosphere is bounded by space above and the ocean below. Any additional heat in the atmosphere, therefore, will tend to radiate out into space (an infinite heat-sink) or into the oceans (which, being 1000 times denser than the atmosphere and having an enormous volume, are a near-infinite heat-sink). This is why homeostasis is the key feature of global absolute surface temperatures, which have fluctuated by little more than 1% either side of the long-run mean in the past few tens of thousands of years. The problem with the IPCC’s model-based approach is that the models – like all models – are less interested in homeostasis than in change, so they inadequately represent the former.
It is possible that the main reason why the time-integral of solar variability is of more importance to global temperature change in the medium to long term than short-term solar-energy variability is that, over time, half of any net increase in heat will accumulate in the oceans (the rest will radiate out to space), and the oceans, being a little warmer, will maintain the atmosphere at a warmer temperature than it might otherwise have exhibited.
All of these considerations suggest that greenhouse gases are unlikely to have much influence on global temperatures in the short term, though they might do so in the long. But if the warming is spread over a long enough period we have plenty of time to adapt to it, which is one of many reasons why the correct climate policy at the moment is inaction.
@- “There are tens of thousands of subsea volcanoes and volcanic vents. No global survey to determine variability in the direct output of heat to the deep ocean from these sources has been attempted.”
Wrong, look up Gerlach et al. There is also the little matter of the seismic network. Set up during the 1950s cold war to detect bomb tests in the USSR it is quite capable of detecting the seismic activity associated with subsea volcanoes and vents. That puts a strong upper constraint on the amount of tectonic activity happening under the oceans. It is MUCH less than the energy entering from above by several orders of magnitude. Thermal energy from the inside of the Earth is insignificant because of the extreme insulating properties of rock.
Raising the possibility of a tectonic contribution to ocean heat content when it is well established from seismic studies it is irrelevant is either ignorant or deliberately misleading.
In support to:
Monckton of Brenchley says:
July 22, 2013 at 1:47 am
Some commenters have suggested that the additional heat supposed to be generated by manmade greenhouse-gas emissions is going into the deep oceans. Unfortunately we do not have sufficiently-resolved measurements for enough time to confirm that hypothesis. There are some 3500 ARGO bathythermograph buoys, but – as Willis Eschenbach has pointed out – they are doing no more the equivalent of taking a temperature and salinity profile of the whole of Lake Superior less than once a year.
William: The heat is hiding in the ocean hypothesis fails as the ocean level is not rising. The heat hiding in ocean will soon be passé, old news, a defunct hypothesis, as the planet has started to cool due the solar magnetic cycle change. It will be very difficult to promote the ‘heat is hiding in the ocean’ scam when the public are demanding an explanation for global cooling. Crop failures due to cold, wet summers and massive power failures due to winter storms, and road/airport closures due to winter storms will get the public and media’s attention.
(Succinct introduction. Best wishes William.)
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/sea_level_not_rising.pdf
Sea level is not rising by Professor Nils-Axel Mörner, Main points:
– At most, global average sea level is rising at a rate equivalent to 2-3 inches per century. It is probably not rising at all.
– Sea level is measured both by tide gauges and, since 1992, by satellite altimetry. One of the keepers of the satellite record told Professor Mörner that the record had been interfered with to show sea level rising, because the raw data from the satellites showed no increase in global sea level at all.
– The raw data from the TOPEX/POSEIDON sea-level satellites, which operated from 1993-2000, shows a slight uptrend in sea level. However, after exclusion of the distorting effects of the Great El Niño Southern Oscillation of 1997/1998, a naturally-occurring event, the sea-level trend is zero.
– The GRACE gravitational-anomaly satellites are able to measure ocean mass, from which sea-level
change can be directly calculated. The GRACE data show that sea level fell slightly from 2002-2007.
– These two distinct satellite systems, using very different measurement methods, produced raw data reaching identical conclusions: sea level is barely rising, if at all.
– Sea level is not rising at all in the Maldives, the Laccadives, Tuvalu, India, Bangladesh, French Guyana, Venice, Cuxhaven, Korsør, Saint Paul Island, Qatar, etc.
– In the Maldives, a group of Australian environmental scientists uprooted a 50-year-old tree by the shoreline, aiming to conceal the fact that its location indicated that sea level had not been rising. This is a further indication of political tampering with scientific evidence about sea level.
– Since sea level is not rising, the chief ground of concern at the potential effects of anthropogenic
“global warming” – that millions of shore-dwellers the world over may be displaced as the oceans expand – is baseless.
-We are facing a very grave, unethical “sea-level-gate”
It’s a sad day when the most powerful man on earth can so easily be caught out telling an absurd lie. Maybe he actually believes it and he has been taken in by his advisers such as John Holdren, who has been a serial doom monger since the seventies (needless to say, none of his predictions came to pass).
That video is superb. That uneasy silence following the question speaks volumes. And congratulations to Senator Vitter, who actually showed real empirical scientific data. As Anthony easily showed, the downpour data for the region Heidi Cullen mentioned showed no such increase.
And did you notice that, when confronted by real data, she quickly switched to future predictions rather than commenting on what has already happened?
Once again, congratulations to Christopher, Anthony and Senator Vitter.
Chris
@- “This is why homeostasis is the key feature of global absolute surface temperatures, which have fluctuated by little more than 1% either side of the long-run mean in the past few tens of thousands of years. The problem with the IPCC’s model-based approach is that the models – like all models – are less interested in homeostasis than in change, so they inadequately represent the former.”
Homeostasis is a neo-Victorian, Roussouian concept of the ‘Balance of Nature’ applied incorrectly to reality. The climate is a thermodynamic system, it reacts to energy changes, ascribing it abstract properties like ‘homeostasis’ is arbitary reification.
The IPCC models neither neglect homeostasis nor favour change, they try to accurately model the real physical relationships between the sources and sinks of energy in the system. They do not invoke abstract qualia like homeostasis that are not just useless, but misleading when applied to the climate. The stability of the last ten thousand years of theHolocene climate is NOT the result of some mystical inherent quality of ‘homeostasis’, it is the inevitable outcome of very few,and small forcing factors on the climate. The Milankovitch cycle is changing the solar input slowly and by very small amounts at present, there has been a low level of tectonic activity and the solar output is extremely stable over this period.
That is the reason for the stability of the climate during the Holocene that enabled human civilisation to develop.
Not some abstract conceptual nonsense about Nature’s balance or homeostasis.
izen says:
July 21, 2013 at 10:39 pm
“Another five years will determine it either way, the process that has led to the present hiatus is unlikely to persist that long, and the weather extremes that the warmer oceans and shifts in floods and droughts will of course continue.”
The weather extremes will “continue”? You mean, a year will in the future have a warmest and a coldest day? Yeah, I think so as well. Are you warmists now training to make ominous noises with zero information content?
Related to topic obliquely…
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/feeling-the-heat-on-climate-change-2013-07-22?pagenumber=1
By a witnesses at the Senate hearing….Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute.
Izen, Gerlach et al in 1991 used around 12 volcanic sources for their estimate. Since then it has been found that nearly 3 million volcanic sources exist. It would take a review of around 1800 to have any kind of statistical validity. Are you always this out of date with your information?