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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Chris4692:
I am copying your entire post at August 27, 2013 at 11:11 am so others who are ‘late to the party’ are not misled by its implicit ad hom.
You say
My “reaction” “in the interlude” was a rebuttal of your concern trolling. That “reaction” provided a direct link to your original post, made a verbatim quote of your concluding paragraph, and answered your point completely.
My rebuttal of your concern trolling is at August 27, 2013 at 7:53 am and this link jumps to it.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/27/the-200-months-of-the-pause/#comment-1401103
My rebuttal also addresses why what you say you want is a ‘red herring’.
At issue is comparison between what the models projected and what has happened. Your introduction of “when a change in trend occurred” is merely an attempt to distract from the subject of the thread.
Richard
Chris4692: I would appreciate a reaction from someone who knows about statistics and cares more about science than a contest, to my comment at 6:57 am. Which is in brief: how should it be determined when a change in trend occurred, considering the wide fluctuations in the data at the time?
The topic is called “switching regressions” or “change point analysis”, and there are lots of methods too numerous to mention here. You can probably find a good discussion by googling: here’s one
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=mwzCuRMUVLIC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=change+point+analysis&ots=iKQrNmiJOr&sig=Y5PP0amEZXH_S4ZmnPLhyO0Xg9s#v=onepage&q=change%20point%20analysis&f=false
There are two basic cases: (a) when you have a really well-founded hypothesis about when the change occurred and (b) when you merely guess that some change may have occurred over some interval. For (a) for example, there could be a dramatic event such as the 1998 el Nino and a desire to test whether what came after is the same statistically as what came before.
I would think that the most appropriate to our discussion today would be “the latest 17 years” versus “the seventeen years before that”, since 17 has been supported by simulations as the shortest interval for yielding a high probability at the 5% level for finding a change if it has occurred.
Nimbus says:
August 27, 2013 at 11:35 am
In the Antarctic, near latitude 59 and 60 south where sunlight is 4 to 6 times higher than in the Arctic at today’s date, the sea ice is advancing each year, and is setting new records for all-time recorded high levels.
In the Arctic, near latitude 85 north (where there is very, very little sunlight in September), it is decreasing from its recorded high points in the 1970’s, but is much higher than last year’s record low point.
The total sea ice levels are near-normal, but remember, the Antarctic sea ice is increasing in places where significant solar energy is being reflected, but the Arctic ice is in a region where there is almost no solar energy at all.
In the mountain glaciers, there is mixed news. about 1/3 of the world’s glaciers are decreasing, about 1/4 are increasing, and the rest are steady. That ratio is recently changed, and many more glaciers are expanding in the past few years. Almost all of the retreating glaciers worldwide are revealing ground features and archeological findings that prove they have been this low before many times in the past years.
And that summery, you probably will not see anywhere else: It doesn’t have information the CAGW academic-industrial-government-funded/government-taxing agencies don’t want you to have.
Crispin in Waterloo says:
August 27, 2013 at 11:15 am
….We are not too many years from the general populace wondering why all that windmill money was not put into Thorium and CANDU research instead. At least then they would have been be able to complain about the cold with the lights on.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I think the UK and the EU has already reached that point. Since the US government is not exactly efficient, they have really really screwed up the switch from Coal Fired to renewables.
The Smart Metered Appliances and the Smart Metered Grid are not ready for prime time, the green tech companies are bankrupting (34 so far) and the closing of coal fired plants are Taking 34 GW of Electricity Generation Offline( and the Plant Closing Announcements Keep Coming) when according to EPA, these regulations would only shutter 9.5 GW of electricity generation capacity.
Heck the blackouts have already started. Rolling Blackouts Hit California Again and Texas Comes Close to Rolling Blackouts
Why in heck (aside from the fact a switch to natural gas was the plan in the first place) do you think Obama is throwing support towards fracking?
As Obama Promised: Energy Prices to Soon Skyrocket
So with wages decreasing, jobs scarce what do you think Main Street’s reaction to a electric bill going from $100 to $400 per month or higher is going to be?
The 2012 forecast for residential electricity prices. Source: US Department of Energy, you know the ones who messed up forecasting just how many coal plants would closing by over a factor of three….
Matthew R Marler says:
August 27, 2013 at 12:03 pm (replying to)
Chris4692:
Now, let me add a third case: We are in a long-term temperature increase since the Little Ice Age whose deepest cold point was (about) 1650. During that long-term increase – WHICH NO MAN’S ACTIVITY COULD HAVE CAUSED – there are shorter cycles of increasing, decreawsing, and relatively steady temperatures.
IF so, if the world’s temperature record can be approximated by a sum of different cyclic temperatures of varying amplitude and irregular periods, then the proposed 1997-1998 “change point” is meaningless: the world’s cycle will continue on its way with little regard to to the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
IF so, then the analytical question becomes what is the probability that the 1997-2012 hig is a short-cycle peak – like the 1935-1945 peak, or is it the “top” of the long term cycle that last peaked somewhen around 1100-1200 AD?
Nimbus says: @ur momisugly August 27, 2013 at 11:35 am Re Glaciers….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I answered that earlier HERE
Matthew R Marler says: @ur momisugly August 27, 2013 at 11:46 am
I think the free exchange of opinions that we have here is better.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, Crowd Sourcing at it’s best. :>)
RACookPE1978 says:
August 27, 2013 at 12:12 pm
The warming since the 17th century depth of the LIA is also just a cyclic variation in the longer-term, secular down trend in temperature since the Minoan Warm Period, c. 3000 years ago, if not from the Holocene Climatic Optimum, c. 8000 to 5000 years ago.
The current Interglacial, like most of them, began warm, then has undergone a slow cooling toward the next Glacial, with shorter-term warming cycles on the way back down, each colder than the prior peak & with lower troughs in global T.
O rare Nick Stokes!
Past history shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the sun is the driver of the earth climatic system, and this time is going to be no different.
If one goes back in past history it will show prolonged active solar periods have been associated with a rise in temperatures while prolonged solar minimum periods have been associated with a drop in temperature.
However neutral solar activity or solar activity that has been established over a long period of time remaining more or less the same will show very weak or no correlations to the climate at all ,or even run counter to the climate and that is where so many of you are getting tripped up.
So many are so short sided, and so many of you fail to grasp the secondary effects that come when the sun changes from a prolonged active state to a prolonged minimum state.
So many of you have no concept of climatic thresholds, so many of you don’t understand the beginning state of the climate has much to do on how the climate will wind up even if the same forcings are applied.
So many of you don’t understand that the climate is non linear, and cycles only work when the climate is in the same climatic regime and even then they are a guide at best.
They say bond events occur in a cycle every 1470 years, that is a qusi cycle at best with a plus or minus 500 year difference from the mean which in effect does not make it very cyclic.
So many of you ignore completly the real issue of why the climate has changed abruptly from time to time in a period of a few decades. Cycles do not explain and cannot to be made to fit in with past abrupt climate changes that have taken place on earth .
My conclusion is that present day mainstream climatolgist are an embarrassment to this very interesting field ,and have set it back by decades, while their AGW theory will meet it’s end before this decade ends.
The temperature trend is going to be down once the maximum of solar cycle 24 passes by which is not very far off. I have mentioned the solar parameters needed to set all of this in motion many times in the past.
1.solar flux sub 90 sustained
2. ap index sub 5.0 or less sustained
3. solar wind 350 km/sec or lower sustained
4. UV light off upwards of 50% extrme uv light wavelengths sustainded.
5. solar irradiance off upwards of.015% sustained
The above, following several years of sub solar activity in general which we have had post year 2005, in contrast to very active solar conditions previously.
Clueless fools.
RACookPE1978:
I agree with you when you say in your post at August 27, 2013 at 12:12 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/27/the-200-months-of-the-pause/#comment-1401303
Indeed, I mentioned that “third case” and its implications for climate modelling in my above post at August 27, 2013 at 4:15 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/27/the-200-months-of-the-pause/#comment-1400962
However, I fear that we are now swallowing a ‘red herring’ deliberately introduced to deflect this thread from its subject. Considerations of different statistical analyses and their underlying assumptions are NOT what this thread is about.
Please note that if I had a prejudice about this then I would be pressing your “third case” because I was the first to mention it. Your “third case” is – as you rightly say – a point which needed to be made when you made it, but I respectfully suggest to all that further discussion of it would be a ‘side-track’.
Richard
milodonharlani says:
August 27, 2013 at 12:22 pm (replying to)
RACookPE1978 says:
August 27, 2013 at 12:12 pm
True, that is the general observation of the temperature trends at a long-term basis.
It leaves open the analysis that might answer the question I brought up: When is the “peak” of today’s long-term rise form the Little Ice Age to “mirror” or complete the Medieval Warm Period?
Is it the 1997-2012 peak of the today’s short-term cycle? Will it be 40-60 years from now at the next short-term peak? (That is: If you add the short-term peaks of the late 1870-1880, the 1935-1945 short-term peak/flattening as Mosher-Hansen-Meier-NASA-GISS-BEST plot it, and the 1997-2012 peak, when will the next short-term peak/flattening occur?
Hidden on the table, but more fundamental, WHY are there apparently short-term and long-term cycles, and is your statement about their periodic lengths getting shorter a pre-cursor of the world beginning its drop into the over-due next Big Ice Age?
richardscourtney says:
August 27, 2013 at 12:32 pm
True.
But now Obama wants us to blow up his allies’ enemies in Syria. Which is also off-topic. 8<)
This thread contained so many classic false arguments and tricks that it would make a good case study for graduate work. I loved it for that alone. My thanks to LordM for his entertaining and competent work. That ‘digital masturbation’ sentence is priceless.
Several themes seem silly to me. Whether the IPCC predicts or merely cites predictions. Or does the IPCC cite only projections rather than cite any predictions? Whether a model predicts of projects is not the point; the model’s output is the point. Does hindcasting predict or project? I think it does neither but is still useful.
Cherry picking can and always will be charged. An essay must have a finite length, so data sources must be chosen and sometimes the data set itself must be pruned. Someone will always say data from another source should have been used or another statistic should have be calculated.
And someone will always assert the author should have done something else. That LordM should or must create his own models and/or predictions.
Matthew R Marler says:
August 27, 2013 at 12:03 pm
RACookPE1978 says:
August 27, 2013 at 12:12 pm
Thank you for your serious responses. It’s difficult to Google when you don’t know the current formal names of the topic. When I first did harmonic analysis some mumble mumble years ago it was with punch cards and Fortran. Fortunately for my family I also learned some marketable skills to generate an income. The statistical skills have not been exercised since then. I am trying to catch up.
Spotted in the personal ads at ‘Nature’:
Masochistic, pedantic, warmista seeks robust petard for auto-hoisting activities. No photo nec.
Contact NS, post haste
Once last note with the sun versus the climate is as follows: The CATCH is the degree of magnitude change of solar activity and duration of time of solar activity has to reach a certain critical level in order to overcome random earthly climatic changes and or influence these random earthly climatic items(such as enso,volcanic actiivty ,cosmic rays/clouds,to name a few) which will allow them to phase in line with the solar activity rather then show no corrrelation at all when solar activity is neutral or not changing over the course of many decades.
In addition I maintain the GHG effect is a result of the climate ,not the cause of the climate. It comes as a result of the amounts of co2 /water vapor that are in the atmosphere which are tied to oceanic temperatures which is tied to the total energy in the earth climatic system to begin with.
Evidence of this is co2 follows the temp., does not lead it.
RACookPE1978 says:
August 27, 2013 at 12:34 pm
As you may know, there has been a lot of discussion on this blog about predicting the onset of the next glaciation.
The range of educated guessing is enormous. Some models predict onset within one or two more Bond cycles, while others forecast that the current interglacial could be a super-phase that will skip an equinoxial precession & last 50,000 years (10 to 20 ky is normal).
IMO the present 150-odd years since the end of the LIA is too short a time for the current warm cycle, although its heat might already have peaked in the 1930s. It’s still possible however that after the coming cooling, there might be another warmer peak late in this century that would top out the cycle before descent into the next colder phase like the Dark Ages & Little Ice Age Cool Periods.
If the next cool period is colder than the LIA, as trends would lead one to suspect, then maybe the next glaciation will start sooner rather than later, as expected by so many back in the 1970s.
@JimB
All true and realistic, except I would add that in 2014 U.S. midterm elections hold the potential for complete one party rule during the final two years of Obama. Thus, it is highly lucrative to hold out for this and hold actual data and model errors in abeyance to see if the big money payoff of another run at carbon taxes as law of the land is possible. Once locked in as law of the land, it might as well be 50 years of cooling because the artesian well of money will be flowing at that point and no amount of watch and wait will matter. The risk of message is not worth it now with the potential payoff in the near term. There must be a game theory model of this somewhere.
The only explanation for abrupt climatic change, and therefore climate change in the long run are prolonged solar changes and all of the secondary effects which come about as a result, which phase to bring the climate to a threshold which moves it either a positive or negative temperature direction.
Absent that explanation there are not any because abrupt climatic change has happened to often in far to short a period of time in a jig saw pattern that eliminates all other alternative explanations.
NOTE : a weakening geomagnetic field will serve to compound solar effects.
@milodonharlani
We are entering the bottom 20,500 years of the obliquity cycle. From what I see, from the Milankovitch cyles for the last million years, no interglaciation period maintained itself during the bottom of this cycle when the earth’s tilt is the least pronounced. Currently, the precession and the eccentricity are working against maintaining an interglacial period as well.
I did come across an interesting paper analyzing these matter, and it predicted another round of glaciation starting in 1500 years or less. It concentrated on the Milankovitch cycles, but it also nattered on about CO2 which kind of spoiled it for me. But unfortunately, I suppose the authors had to throw CO2 into the mix to get published.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n2/full/ngeo1358.html?WT.ec_id=NGEO-201202
Any GOOD alternative explanations ??? I doubt it.
Lord Monckton: as your original posting in this thread itself made reference to your claim to be “a member of the House of Lords” and you also responded to what I thought was a fair posting from steveta_uk by describing him as a “furtively pseudonymous troll” and going on about “some malicious and politicized lackwit’s effusions” I am afraid I have decided to add my own ha’pennys worth – accepting that this was not of course the principal topic of your otherwise interesting article.
I am sure you know that in the UK the Monarch does not by herself (or by Royal Command or Warrant) make laws: it is “the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in …. Parliament assembled” (to use the enacting words on all general legislation of the Westminster Parliament), that constitutionally makes laws. The monarchy is itself subject to those laws (as under the Succession to the Crown Act 2013), so are peers (life and hereditary) and commoners. Unlike in some other jurisdictions there is no constitutional court or right of judicial review from legislation enacted by Parliament (Monarch, Lords and Commons together) nor any concept that an Act passed by Parliament can ever be flawed or unenforceable – every Act passed by Parliament is valid legislation until the Parliamentary process is used once again to alter or repeal it.
By Section 1 of the House of Lords Act 1999 (enacted by the Queen, Lords and Commons in Parliament) “No-one shall be a member of the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage”. By Section 2 “Section 1 shall not apply in relation to anyone excepted from it by or in accordance with Standing Orders of the House”; “At any one time 90 people shall be excepted from section 1”; “Once excepted from section 1, a person shall continue to be so throughout his life …” – creating 90 hereditary peers (in addition to appointed life peers) as members of the House for life. This legislation is absolutely clear; it was passed with the direct authority of the (then) House of Lords.
Since I believe you succeeded to your title in 2006 when the 1999 Act was already in force (as it still is today), under Section 1 of that Act you cannot be a member of the House of Lords by virtue of your hereditary peerage unless you show that you have been excepted from Section 1. This is the law however unreasonable, unfair or improper you might consider it to be; it was approved by the Monarch, the (then) House of Lords and the Commons in 1999.
For clarity: may I ask if you have a Section 2 exception in accordance with the Standing Orders of the House? If not, how can you be a member of the House of Lords so long as Section 1 of the 1999 Act remains the law?
MILANKOVITCH CYCLES do not explain the many abrupt climatic changes , they are far to long to account for abrupt climate changes taking place over decades.
Example 1, Younger dryas cold period duration 1300 years, rapid warm up prior and after this period.
In addition many earlier warm ups /cold snaps post last glacial maximum some 18,000 years and prior to the very cold Younger Dryas Period.
Example 2, 8200 year ago cold period, sudden rapid temp. plunge.
The furtively pseudonymous “TimC” may like to read the legal Opinion I obtained. It is available at lordmoncktonfoundation.com, and answers all his points.