The 200 months of 'the pause'

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.