By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
A commenter on my post mentioning that according to the RSS satellite monthly global mean surface temperature dataset there has been no global warming at all for 200 months complains that I have cherry-picked my dataset. So let’s pick all the cherries. Here are graphs for all five global datasets since December 1996.
GISS:
HadCRUt4:
NCDC:
RSS:
UAH:
The mean of the three terrestrial datasets:
The mean of the two satellite datasets:
The mean of all five datasets:
Since a trend of less than 0.15 K is within the combined 2 σ data uncertainties arising from errors in measurement, bias, and coverage, global warming since December 1996 is only detectable on the UAH dataset, and then barely. On the RSS dataset, there has been no global warming at all. None of the datasets shows warming at a rate as high as 1 Cº/century. Their mean is just 0.5 Cº/century.
The bright blue lines are least-squares linear-regression trends. One might use other methods, such as order-n auto-regressive models, but in a vigorously stochastic dataset with no detectable seasonality the result will differ little from the least-squares trend, which even the IPCC uses for temperature trend analysis.
The central question is not how long there has been no warming, but how wide is the gap between what the models predict and what the real-world weather brings. The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, to be published in Stockholm on September 27, combines the outputs of 34 climate models to generate a computer consensus to the effect that from 2005-2050 the world should warm at a rate equivalent to 2.33 Cº per century. Yeah, right. So, forget the Pause, and welcome to the Gap:
GISS:
HadCRUt4:
NCDC:
RSS:
UAH:
Mean of all three terrestrial datasets:
Mean of the two satellite datasets (monthly Global Warming Prediction Index):
Mean of all five datasets:
So let us have no more wriggling and squirming, squeaking and shrieking from the paid trolls. The world is not warming anything like as fast as the models and the IPCC have predicted. The predictions have failed. They are wrong. Get over it.
Does this growing gap between prediction and reality mean global warming will never resume? Not necessarily. But it is rightly leading many of those who had previously demanded obeisance to the models to think again.
Does the Great Gap prove the basic greenhouse-gas theory wrong? No. That has been demonstrated by oft-repeated experiments. Also, the fundamental equation of radiative transfer, though it was discovered empirically by Stefan (the only Slovene after whom an equation has been named), was demonstrated theoretically by his Austrian pupil Ludwig Boltzmann. It is a proven result.
The Gap is large and the models are wrong because in their obsession with radiative change they undervalue natural influences on the climate (which might have caused a little cooling recently if it had not been for greenhouse gases); they fancifully imagine that the harmless direct warming from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration – just 1.16 Cº – ought to be tripled by imagined net-positive temperature feedbacks (not one of which can be measured, and which in combination may well be net-negative); they falsely triple the 1.16 Cº direct warming on the basis of a feedback-amplification equation that in its present form has no physical meaning in the real climate (though it nicely explains feedbacks in electronic circuits, for which it was originally devised); they do not model non-radiative transports such as evaporation and convection correctly (for instance, they underestimate the cooling effect of evaporation threefold); they do not take anything like enough account of the measured homeostasis of global temperatures over the past 420,000 years (variation of little more than ±3 Cº, or ±1%, in all that time); they daftly attempt to overcome the Lorentz unpredictability inherent in the mathematically-chaotic climate by using probability distributions (which, however, require more data than straightforward central estimates flanked by error-bars, and are thus even less predictable than simple estimates); they are aligned to one another by “inter-comparison” (which takes them further and further from reality); and they are run by people who fear, rightly, that politicians would lose interest and stop funding them unless they predict catastrophes (and fear that funding will dry up is scarcely a guarantee of high-minded, objective scientific inquiry).
That, in a single hefty paragraph, is why the models are doing such a spectacularly awful job of predicting global temperature – which is surely their key objective. They are not fit for their purpose. They are mere digital masturbation, and have made their operators blind to the truth. The modelers should be de-funded. Or perhaps paid in accordance with the accuracy of their predictions. Sum due to date: $0.00.
In the face of mounting evidence that global temperature is not responding at ordered, the paid trolls – one by one – are falling away from threads like this, and not before time. Their funding, too, is drying up. A few still quibble futilely about whether a zero trend is a negative trend or a statistically-insignificant trend, or even about whether I am a member of the House of Lords (I am – get over it). But their heart is not in it. Not any more.
Meanwhile, enjoy what warmth you can get. A math geek with a track-record of getting stuff right tells me we are in for 0.5 Cº of global cooling. It could happen in two years, but is very likely by 2020. His prediction is based on the behavior of the most obvious culprit in temperature change here on Earth – the Sun.
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*sigh*
You people really need to look on the bright side of life.
Syria is not falling to the Muslim Brotherhood allies and associates fast enough so Obama is starting bombing. The UK is joining in, Cameron has recalled Parliment. The WH swears it’ll be limited, only a few days of punishing Syria. But Iran has sworn if Syria is attacked then they’ll attack Israel, who could “retaliate” before Iran launches. Also there’s NATO member Turkey in the fallout zone.
In short order, perhaps hours away from ignition, the US and Europe will be embroiled in a wide-ranging Middle East conflagration. Which, for good measure, Russia will also get involved in per previous pledges if Syria (and other military customers) were attacked.
Add in the predicted bitterly cold winter, and soon no one will care about “stopping global warming for future generations”, as from companies to individuals, all will be too hard pressed to find affordable energy for survival to stomach paying more “just in case”.
As the coming warfare will be another grand failure of the over-politicized funding-demanding bloated beast known as the UN, even less people will be willing to believe the IPCC is the one piece of the UN which is truthful, unbiased, and trustworthy. The Fifth Assessment Report shall be catapulted into the aether, swiftly descending to a thud in the dirt.
So SMILE everyone! Things are getting better!
cd says:
August 27, 2013 at 1:52 pm
Gail Combs
Your response is little melodramatic. I agree that the metoffice should be held to account for their failings but the death of the old was down to the weather and expensive fuel partly due to government energy policy and the devalued pound.
But I don’t think you hold the programmers to account. The people that use the models to further the sort of policies that result in the old being exposed to the cold in their own homes, should be held to account.
cd – The government have an energy policy (the UK Climate Change Act 2008) that required closure of fossil fueled power plants because Milliband and Brown took the advice of the Met Office (who also advised the EU and through Hadley Centre Climatic Research Unit – the USA). The Met Office modelers were the very ones who helped persuade the politicians of the ‘reality’ of AGW – thus giving the politicians the excuse they needed to increase taxes and make a fortune in the renewables market and in ‘carbon trading’. It is no accident that the Carbon Trading markets were all set up by politicians like Gore, Obama, Blair etc.
The programmers in most cases are actually meteorologically trained analyst programmers and researchers often meteorology post docs and masters grads – apart perhaps from the systems programmers building the clusters; and even then in my experience these are often meteorologists. The ‘tuning’ and parameterizing of the models would also be done by meteorological analyst programmers and sometimes miss employed forecasters. University research department models will have been designed written and coded by meteorologist professors and meteorological students.
The days of being ‘just a lowly grunt programmer’ coding someone else’s algorithms have gone the way of the typing pool.
John Judge says:
August 27, 2013 at 3:49 am
However, I would submit that if the warmists wish to refute Lord Monckton’s arguments, they had better come up with something better than ad hominem attacks and rages against “Big Oil”.
Actually it is what they must do when they don’t have the facts, and it works. Which is why they do it.
Propaganda isn’t about facts, it’s about preying on people’s assumptions and emotions.
I’ve been reading through all of the comments on this thread because it is the first WUWT thread that I’ve commented on (the Feynman quote) and, so far, I don’t think I’ve seen a single comment that criticizes Monckton’s posting (or defends the models) based on legitimate scientific or statistical grounds. (Please correct me if I’m wrong about that. In fact, a critic would perform a genuine service if he or she would post a detailed point-by-point refutation of Monckton’s posting.) Rather, the “critics” tend to resort to argumentum ad hominem, which Wikipedia defines as “an argument made personally against an opponent instead of against their argument. Ad hominem reasoning is normally described as an informal fallacy, more precisely an irrelevance.” So, instead of talking about the weather, they talk about whether Monckton is a “real Lord” or not. I guess the inference that is supposed to be drawn that is that if Monckton is lying about that, then he must therefore be lying about this, i.e. warming. At best, that is a pretty weak argument; at worst, it smacks of McCarthyism.
Also a little disappointed no one inserted the “on the order of our own sun” gag here. 🙂
The only true model is the Earth itself. Historical evidence does not offer a correlation between CO2 and temperature. No further models needed, end of case
Richard Courtney:
I’m not quite as pessimistic as you are about the “meaningless” global average temperature. To be sure, it’s a scientifically inadequate measure of the planetary balance of power fluxes. Nevertheless, it provides a practically meaningful measure of the average state of surface conditions. Unfortunately, reliable measurements at non-urban stations seldom extend further back than the late 19th century even in the most advanced societies. There are huge regions where effectively no such measurements are available. Nevertheless the convergaence of various spatial sampings to a characteristic “climate signal” is quite rapid when only properly vetted station data is used.
Inasmuch as climate models don’t calim to emulate multidecadal variations, only the SECULAR trend should be at issue in any comparison with in situ observations. My point about the requirements to establish such a trend is entirely relevant to the issue of model falsification.
Ian W
I suppose it’s horses for courses, but must of the climate modelling jobs I have seen advertised generally ask for maths grads. Not that it really matters. But the point still remains, you can’t blame the people the design and write the models for what others do with it.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 27, 2013 at 3:55 pm
“……..Add in the predicted bitterly cold winter, and soon no one will care about “stopping global warming for future generations”, as from companies to individuals, all will be too hard pressed to find affordable energy for survival to stomach paying more “just in case”……”
——–
Not true I am afraid KD, the EPA will carry on regardless regulating the USA energy supplies out of existence. Similarly, the EC will continue imposing its ‘carbon taxes’ on as many areas as it can. The bureaucrats in both agencies have nothing else to do – that is their sole raison d’etre. So even as the US becomes embroiled in yet another war – the EPA will be cutting away at its industrial foundations. I am not sure they care about or even believe in CAGW but their jobs depend on it being true and on enforcing ever more stringent regulations – so that is what they will do as it is their source of power.
kadaka;
In short order, perhaps hours away from ignition, the US and Europe will be embroiled in a wide-ranging Middle East conflagration. Which, for good measure, Russia will also get involved in per previous pledges if Syria (and other military customers) were attacked.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
Heh. Time will tell, but my guess is that they’ll slap Assad hard enough to make him think seriously about using gas again, but no more. Russia will scream loudly, and do absolutely nothing except sell more ammunition and guns. But watch the pea and which cup it is under….
They’ll slap Assad hard enough that oil prices will “necessarily skyrocket”, they were up 3% today alone. That will be the cover that Obama needs to approve Keystone for “security” reasons over the objections of his green support base.
Or I could be completely wrong…. 😉
TimC says:
August 27, 2013 at 3:02 pm
As “The furtively pseudonymous TimC” (Anthony has my email address with my correct full name which I prefer to abbreviate here) I have indeed read the opinion obtained by Lord Monckton: I assume that given by Hugh O’Donoghue of Carmelite Chambers, Inner Temple.
I have (the now rather too familiar) issues over someone first called in 2004, who probably won’t get silk for another 10-15 years, being described as “a leading constitutional lawyer” – until he gets silk he is not entitled to lead anyone. I fear this is another example of embroidering expressions rather to the limit – and we have all on occasions shopped cases around the Temple until we get the opinion we want.
And I’m afraid I simply don’t agree with the opinion. The 1999 Act is absolutely clear and to the point: “no-one shall be a member of the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage”. The Queen gave royal assent to this in 1999, thereby altering letters patent given before that time (by her or any of her predecessors). The Queen, and any instrument previously issued by her, is subject to later Acts of Parliament exactly in the same way as any of her subjects.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/27/the-200-months-of-the-pause/
Steven Mosher says:
I find it odd that you would end a piece that stressing looking at data and predictions with an appeal to some wizard of OZ.
—
Thanks, Steven, you made me laugh.
He played the likes of you as fools and you were too dim to discover the intended sarcasm.
Do you not think Cook’s SKS surveys aren’t an appeal to a CO2 Wizard of Oz?
Amid the excitement, disarray and confusion, who will end up possessing (even parts of) the stockpile of chemical weapons?
PS. I ordered a Geiger counter off eBay a couple days ago; none too soon with a nuclear Iran in existence … maybe a gas mask (or Scott Air pack) should be next?
.
An assumption that “coincidence equaled causation”? You know, you have to let ppl make their own mistakes and learn; you can’t force them to conform to your way of thinking UNLESS you are paying them in which case it’s a whole ‘nother ball game …
.
” I ordered a Geiger counter off eBay a couple days ago….”
May be time to brush up on the Nuclear Winter scenario again…some cooling is in the air,,,
One would like to point out notes from Sankhya research little long .sorry if there is any inconvenience.
One day, perhaps, you will learn the difference between numerology and science, specifically physics. Until then, the error you are making isn’t even unique to the Indian subcontinent — Plato made it, many others have made it, it is a common error on this blog today. It is a capital mistake (as Sherlock Holmes might say) to theorize in front of the data, because we insensibly start to twist the data to match our theory. And there is not one single quantity that we know in physics with quite as many digits as you seem to wish to right down as “certain knowledge” in your essay above (where the “precise” ratios you cite are highly dubious at best anyway).
It’s a late day and age to be a neo-pythagorean, or to accord mysterious knowledge to the vedic masters of thousands of years ago that they almost certainly did not have (lacking, after all, the instrumentation that would have been required to make the measurements to ascertain and infer and deduce a correct theory). Indeed, lacking a telescope or theory of gravitation they almost certainly had no idea that galaxies existed, or that gravity was the force that bound them together. With the naked eye one can see, on a good clear night, a few thousand stars and if one has REALLY good eyes, one can make out a vague hint of glow that in fact turns out to be the Andromeda galaxy.
rgb
The article cited for Texas is for two years back, and, if you had read it you would have seen the extenuating circumstances cited for generation units being placed offline and then the possible need to impose rolling blackouts (WHICH by the way were not required!) … perhaps this excerpt from the story will clarify things:
.
Richard Courtney,
Ok, so you don’t want to address simple questions like whether adjustment for ENSO makes sense, or even if recent papers (like by Nick Lewis) estimating climate sensitivity based on heat balance are valid or not. Too bad, but at least I will know not to bother with you in the future. A deus.
So far there are those on both sides of extended interglacial vs headed into glaciation debate. Dr Brown @ur momisugly Duke, made a comment eons ago about the climate being bistable. The questions are what tips it from one state to the other, how rough is the ride down from interglacial to glacial and how fast. Growing glaciers are not the real problem, unstable climate is.
More properly, not necessarily bistable — it could even be multistable. But the current data from the last five million years strongly supports bistability — one has to go back to the Eocene fifty million years ago to find a distinct third phase (if it is really distinct) and as you pointed out in later posts, the continents were in a different position then and that apparently matters far more than “just” CO_2.
Personally, I don’t think we understand any of this yet. Not even close. Milankovitch is a glib hypothesis, but one with many open questions (such as why the period of glaciation changes over the Pliestocene.
If I had to try to muse on the probable nature/structure of the poincare cycles that describe the climate, it would be something like two major attractors but with NUMEROUS lesser attractors in the neighborhoods of the major attractors and with slow processes — e.g. Milankovitch — driving the actual motion and stability of the attractors themselves. As the interglacial draws to a close, the warm phase simply becomes less and less stable. Depending on pure chaotic chance, motion around the attractor will eventually carry the system into a state where transition to the cold phase attractor becomes likely — just enough positive feedback from e.g. glaciation albedo that glaciation becomes favored. Again depending on pure chaotic chance, the transition can be anything from very rapid and sudden to slow and with many bobbles.
Empirically, the bobbles are a lot more likely in cold phase, though. The warm to cold transition is more usually quite rapid in geological time.
I sometimes wonder why people do not try to match up a chaotic oscillator in N dimensions that has the right qualitative properties to describe this. Sure, it is blatant numerology, but if a good heuristic numerical model was found that had the right properties, it might give us insight into the underlying critical dimensionality, which in turn might give us insight into how many independent variables are important in the PRIMARY baseline evolution of the locally stable attractors themselves.
But hey, not really my thing and I don’t have time to do it myself, at least not at the moment.
rgb
Re: Ben D says August 27, 2013 at 5:25 pm
Actually, the ‘counter’ is for another project, but the timing of its purchase would seem most prescient and impeccably timed given ‘world circumstances’ … I notice that Russia even rattled her old sabers this time.
.
In practice, any trend of less than 0.15 Cº does not count as detectable warming because it falls within the zone of insignificance.
Not quite (it depends to some extent on the data and baseline), but yes, if one includes the error bars and computes chisq of the best linear fit to the chisq of a zero slope fit (the null hypothesis) to the specific data plotted above, then even the value of R^2 above is probably optimistic on the interval shown.
rgb
From Steven Mosher on August 27, 2013 at 8:57 am:
What you talkin’ about, Moshy? He made no mention of Nick Stokes. He certainly didn’t mention Lewandowsky, who “fled” Australia anyway. Either of those can pull any numbers they want out of I-don’t-want-to-know-where.
Clearly you’re not referring to John Cook. He’s no more than a wizard’s apprentice, whatever he does keeps blowing up in his face.
That’s a big country there, mate. Crikey, can’t you narrow it down a bit?
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says: August 27, 2013 at 6:25 pm
“That’s a big country there, mate. Crikey, can’t you narrow it down a bit?”
He might mean David Archibald, the Wiz of the West.
_Jim says: @ur momisugly August 27, 2013 at 5:34 pm
The article cited for Texas is for two years back….
So you want a more recent article?
How about this one: FORBES: 6/19/2013 Will Summer Blackouts Doom The Texas Boom?
The problem is Californians fleeing CA because of the insane politics and better job prospects in Texas, coupled with not enough capacity and the closing of six coal plants.
My state is closing four plants and my local electric coop was even considering buying a small modular nuclear reactor. The guy I talked to last year had just come back from a seminar on the subject.
So yes the problem is real even if it doesn’t make the news. Do you really think wind mills and solar can take the place of the hundred or more coal plants that are shutting down?
According to EIA data, since 2007, wind and solar production grew by 1.18 quadrillion BTUs. Over the same time period, natural gas and oil production in the lower 48 states grew by 8.68 quadrillion BTUs. No matter how you slice it we are replacing cheap paid for coal plants with new expensive power generation.
200 months of flatline? That means warming will be TWICE AS FAST for the next decade! The models must be right – the science is settled.
/sarc
rgbatduke says: @ur momisugly August 27, 2013 at 5:50 pm
….More properly, not necessarily bistable — it could even be multistable. But the current data from the last five million years strongly supports bistability….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Thanks.
Once you get away from all the CO2 is the control knob stuff there is some interesting research going on.
For example Drakes Passage/Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the prevailing winds that influence it seems to have a bit of an influence on both the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans. So what happens if the Antarctic freezes a bit more and change the Drakes Passage configuration? (Antarctic sea ice satellite image) Heck what happens when the prevailing winds are stronger or weaker?
Wiki has a map of the major ocean currents and you can see how many are connected to the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. So do changes in the winds effect the Antarctic Circumpolar Current which in turn effects ENSO? Response of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current to Atmospheric Variability Or does El Nino effect the Antarctic Circumpolar current? El Nino Link To Southern Ocean Currents
NASA on ozone and polar winds: link
From Penn State:
That is just one of the complicated bits of the Earth’s climate system that still need a lot of research.