Guest essay by Christopher Monckton
As soon as the BBC/Maslowski forecast of no sea ice in the Arctic summer by 2013 has been disproven (see countdown on right sidebar), WUWT will need another countdown. May I propose the Santer countdown?
On November 17, 2011, Ben Santer and numerous colleagues, including researchers from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), published a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres) that, as his press release said,
“shows that climate models can and do simulate short, 10- to 12-year “hiatus periods” with minimal warming, even when the models are run with historical increases in greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosol particles. … tropospheric temperature records must be at least 17 years long to discriminate between internal climate noise and the signal of human-caused changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere.”
In an earlier posting I demonstrated that for more than 17 years (now 17 years 7 months) the HadCRUt4 monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly dataset had shown no global warming distinguishable from the combined 2 σ measurement, coverage, and bias uncertainties published together with the data themselves.
However, there were those who said that, nevertheless, the HadCRUt4 data appeared to show some warming (albeit less than 1 Cº/century). Well, the first of the five principal datasets to show no warming at all for 17 years is likely to be the RSS dataset of Santer’s own colleagues. Today the data for August 2013 were made available:
The least-squares linear-regression trend on the data from the RSS satellites since November 1996 shows there has been no global warming at all for 202 months (16 years 10 months). In a few more months, unless an el Niño comes along in January, its favorite month, RSS may be the first dataset to show 17 full years with a zero global warming trend.
The NOAA’s 2008 State of the Climate report said 15 or more years without global warming would indicate what was delicately described as a “discrepancy” between prediction and observation.
Fifteen years without warming duly came and went: indeed, Professor Jones of the University of East Anglia was the first to admit this, in response to a question I had suggested to Roger Harrabin of the BBC (who had thought I was daft to suggest that there had been no statistically-significant warming for as much as a decade and a half).
So Santer moved the goalposts.
Taking the mean of all five principal global-temperature datasets (GISS, HadCRUt4, NCDC, RSS, and UAH), since the new millennium began on 1 January 2001 there has been no global warming at all for 152 months (12 years 8 months):
Therefore, those who are anxious to believe that the long pause in global warming is what the models expected, or at least allowed for, can take a crumb of comfort from that.
Two important caveats. First, linear trends are not predictions. They are only one way of representing the trend (if any) that has already occurred over a chosen period in a stochastic dataset such as the global mean surface or lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.
Secondly, a strong el Niño, or a resumption of stronger solar activity, or simply some hitherto-unexplained factor in natural climate variability, could cause a resumption of global warming at any time. The central consideration, then, is not whether there have been x years without global warming, vexing though this embarrassing statistic is to the true-believers and their models. It is the extent and the persistence of the discrepancy between predicted and observed global warming.
The monthly Global Warming Prediction Index keeps track of this discrepancy. The index number for September 2013, published today, is 0.22 Cº. That is how much the IPCC’s central projection of global warming over the 8 years 8 months from January 2005 to August 2013 has overshot the observed temperature trend.
Today’s index graph shows 34 models’ projections of global warming since January 2005 in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report as an orange region. The IPCC’s central projection, the thick red line, is that the world should have warmed by 0.20 Cº (equivalent to 2.33 Cº/century) since that starting date.
The mean of the RSS and UAH satellite measurements, in dark blue over the bright blue trend-line, shows global cooling of 0.02 Cº (–0.22 Cº/century). The models have thus over-predicted warming since January 2005 by 0.22 Cº (2.55 Cº/century).
The 18 ppmv (202 ppmv/century) rise in the trend on the gray dogtooth CO2 concentration curve, plus other ghg increases, should have caused 0.1 Cº warming, with the remaining 0.1 ºC from previous CO2 increases. No warming has occurred.
On its own, the CO2 increase since 2005 should have caused a radiative forcing of 0.24 Watts per square meter, or 0.34 W m–2 after including the influence of all other greenhouse gases. Even without temperature feedbacks, according to the IPCC’s methods this forcing should have caused 0.1 Cº warming. Adding in the IPCC’s temperature estimates of temperature feedbacks and of previously-committed global warming should have caused up to 0.3 Cº warming since January 2005. None has occurred.
Note how the temperature has failed to rise since 2005, notwithstanding that the CO2 concentration has risen quite rapidly. The usual suspects like to display what they call an “escalator graph” with many of Santer’s “hiatus periods” of 10-12 years without any global warming, but an overall rising trend nonetheless.
However, previous periods free of global warming did not occur while Man was putting more CO2 in the air anything like as rapidly as he is today. Now that CO2 concentration is rising, so should temperature be rising, if the IPCC were correct about how much warming we should expect as CO2 concentration increases.
The “escalator graph”, then, is meaningless, except to the extent that the frequency with which the “hiatus periods” occurs suggests that the probability of seeing anything like the 2.8 Cº warming this century that is the IPCC’s central projection is not very great.
Though the IPCC projects that the world should have warmed by 0.20 Cº (2.33 Cº/century) since 2005, the mean of the RSS and UAH satellite datasets shows cooling of 0.02 Cº (0.22 Cº/century). The predicted and actual trends are visibly diverging. Solar physicists expect significant cooling in the coming decades. If they are right, the divergence will become more than merely embarrassing.
Even as things stand, if the IPCC overshoot over the past 104 months were to continue for 100 years the IPCC’s prediction would exceed the measured trend by more than 2.5 Cº.
If Jeffrey Patterson’s harmonic decomposition of the past 113 years’ temperature records is correct, the world may actually be cooler in 2100 than in 2000.
A shame we shall not be there to see the baffled faces of the profiteers of doom.
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And if the next 2 months come in at, say 0.18 and 0.2, then the period of negative slope goes back to October 1996, and the above argument becomes irrelevant. On the other hand, a September anomaly of 0.26, and we lose a month off the far end. Exciting stuff!
Robert of Ottawa said:
September 11, 2013 at 4:08 pm
> I expect the IPCC will switch track to the dangerous extreme weather
> events line. This “argument” seems to be in vogue amongst the Warmistas.
The response to that is to point to Dr. Baliunas’ Youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcAy4sOcS5M She pointed out some extreme reactions to extreme weather during the Little Ice Age. This includes 50,000 “witches” being executed for “weather cooking”. The executioners were confident of their case. After all, the weather was totally un-natural, what we would refer to today as “outside the range of natural variation”.
I think that in this situation, “the best defense is a good offense”. Point out to people that the last time sunspots dropped off the map, Europe recorded the Little Ice Age and lots of extreme weather. Now that sunspots are declining again, *WE* have to be the ones predicting doom and gloom. But in our case, pointing the finger at the sun.
The odds that a model is incorrect grows nonlinearly with the length of time that the data deviates from that model. To put it another way, if the model is correct, the odds of a 15 year flattening are MUCH smaller than a 10 year flattening.
Thus if I had tied my reputation to validity of the IPCC climate models, I would be sweating bullets right now.
@ur momisugly A. D. Everard.
I hope you are not suggesting that we are not doomed?
Lord Monckton, Bravo! The Santer Countdown, love it.
However, the logic of start point needs to be crystal clear: either it is a rolling 17 years from present, or it is the start of RSS measurement or some other logical point. The claim of cherry picking aside, a longer interval would illuminate and perhaps emphasise the CO2 climb.
Indeed, as the 17 years are exceeded, the countdown becomes a counter.
Richard Barraclough says:
September 11, 2013 at 5:26 pm
You do realise that it’s only 201 months since November 1996? You can’t count both the beginning and end months in your number, so I’d hate to see everyone celebrating a month too early.
It is November 1st 1996 through August 31st 2013. So yes, both months count and the number is 202.
We could have a 2 degree C decline in global temperatures in just a 5-year period, but after having debated with several diehard CAGWers, they will never relent. Even a definite return to the equivalent of the Maunder Minimum, would be blamed on CO2 by the CAGWers. It is a matter of faith, and not of fact with them.
Werner Brozek says:
September 11, 2013 at 4:00 pm
I asked Walter Dnes the question below. Here is the question and his answer:
What is the maximum that September has to be and still allow 204 months to be reached? Thanks!
Note that 204 months will be October 1996 to September 2013.
I’ve played around with the series, and it looks like it would have to be 0.154, assuming no other months of the series are modified. The spreadsheet slope() function uses all the points in the range to calculate slope, which is why the caveat. This August was 0.167, and in May, we had 0.139. So 0.154 is definitely possible.
Walter Dnes
I checked the AMSU daily results and right now the trend is definitely downward. If this continues and RSS follows the same trend, then we might get the .154 for September. Until then we have the Arctic sea ice minimum to keep us on the edge of our seats. 😉
Jeeeze, it’s almost like the “Greenhouse Gas Effect” has nothing to do with the average temperature at the surface of the Earth. How could that be ? There are so many well crafted models, numerous elegant thought experiments (thanks Willis, et. al.), lavish explanations, detailed hypotheses and claims that anyone who does not “believe in it” is a “lunatic”, or “deluded”.
So, after decades of modeling and studies and meetings and treaties and subsidies and “travesties” we have the results; the Earth and its gaseous atmosphere does not act as a man (excuse me, human person) made greenhouse which only concentrates heat temporarily by restricting convection. Who would have thought that?
Maybe the folks advising farmers about the waste of dollars involved in fabricating a real plastic greenhouse with useless “IR trapping” coatings on the plastic films?
Or maybe the engineers that have never in a whole century figured out how to accomplish anything useful with the Arrhenius “greenhouse effect”. Funny that the engineers found something useful to do with Peltiers’s effect and Einstein’s Photoelectric effect and the list goes on and on but no one could ever do anything useful with Arrhenius’s “effect”. Must be the engineers that are too dumb to figure it out ?
The same engineers that flew us to the moon, created the Hubble space telescope, gave us 99.999% dependable electricity (in many places), the microprocessor… the list goes on. They are the ones that just could not figure out anything useful to do with the “effect”.
Arrhenius was indeed a very smart guy, but everybody (including Babe Ruth) strikes out once in a while.
OK, now the sarc tag goes ON.
Cheers, Kevin
Could you PLEASE publish the URL for your first graph, in text that is large enough to be readable, and in subsequent posts, always do same for all graphs used ?
and, if your using a web tool to plot this data, or if there is an RSS tool to gen a plot from the .txt files please explain how the graph is generated ?
richardscourtney:
Contrary to your claim, the global temperature in 1997 is not an example of an “event.” Perhaps you meant to claim that the global temperature in 1997 is an example of an outcome of an event but this is not true either.
How the IPCC said global temperature would rise after 1997 is not an example of a “prediction” in the logical context of that word. To characterize me as a sophist does not further your argument but rather exposes the illogic of it as my character is unrelated to the topic under discussion. By the way, to inaccurately smear the reputation of a professional, including me, is illegal under the defamation laws of both the US and the UK.
Throughout our recent debate, you have steadfastly refused to face up to the issue that is raised by my peer-reviewed article at http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=7923 . Rather than face up to it, you continue to draw conclusions from arguments that are equivocations from polysemic terms that include “prediction.” Under a principle of logic, these conclusions are improper.
Of course, Santer and his elves will simply move the goal posts once again under cover of media darkness. Changing the rules is how Climatastropy works.
But there’s another issue: Although future El Nino warming will doubtless bring the Lysenkoists out into the streets to sing Kumbaya and dance the Kazatsky, as richard verney says, above, “[El Ninos] are not CO2 driven events, and if one or more of them were to occur and if they were to drive temperatures upwards then this would not be the result of CO2 forcing. Rather, it would be…natural variation.”
Good post. I am not sure what the escalator graph is, but it does appear every 11 years or so that there is an increase or decrease in temperatures which roughly follow the solar cycles – not CO2.
Do we have to wait another 17 years before they give up (and remain silent versus admit they were wrong of course).
I don’t know.
But starting today, we should set a deadline for warming to start showing up and publicize that deadline because there has to be a best before date / a stall theory date for this movement. There has to be a cut-off. We can’t keep going on imagining there will 2.5C of warming in the next 87 years, 77 years, 67 years, next five years.
And the media needs to start being more objective and reporting on the failure of the theory to date and quit reporting on how global warming will cause any number of universe-wide disasters.
Its time to set the stage for the “it sounded like a good theory to some but it was just wrong” call.
Non-linear transgression.
About that 17 year figure – it is as much BS as all the swags and modeled disinformation anyone has produce on the consensus site. It can just as easily be 15 years or 20 years – when the claim was made nobody had any idea what the climate was actually going to do, but the 17 year swag seemed unachievable at the time, I’m sure. So who cares if it is off a month or a year – the record is what it is and I don’t expect there will be a BBC/Maslowski apology or correction, or even a rational explanation. There will certainly be no fully qualified declaration the claim was in error or that fudge factor allows an indefinite window to show the truth/lie of it. It was a dumb guess and they guessed wrong. The greater error was to have made the claim in the first place based only on CAGW faith based beliefs of the workings of the climates of the world. Yes, climates. There is no single global climate and never has been.
>However, previous periods free of global warming did not occur while Man was putting more CO2 in the air anything like as rapidly as he is today.
Has this been confirmed in terms of CO2’s logarithmic effect on temperature?
The Santer Clause? Or maybe Bad Santer….
I support the name Santer’s Clause or Santer Clause because it is hard to forget and with long term predictions /projections /prophecies we need to have a memorable title for the chapter in the upcoming publication, “How to get rich without really lying – Global warming for the small investor”.
@richard SC
Thanks for taking on the professional. I note his threat to sue. I am in Canada so it may be safer for me to pick up the brickbat but in any case I have a very good UK lawyer.
He says before you can sue for damage to a reputation it must be proven there is one in the relevant audience (“public”) which is us (bloggers). Past responses may be helpful (for you).
Maybe we should try the World Bank climate science concept and ask what the world would look like if we had acted on prediction of 4 C degree warming that did not happen?
…a wise man once said “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
God, I’d LOVE to read some Hockey Team emails about now!! Imagine the panic from the rent-seeking academic crowd! Speaking fees plunging, book sales falling, etc. Good times!
Crispin in Waterloo:
Do you have an argument regarding the issue of whether the global temperature in 1997 is an example of an “event”? If so, what is this argument?
Terry Oldberg;
By the way, to inaccurately smear the reputation of a professional, including me, is illegal under the defamation laws of both the US and the UK.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Oh gimmme a break. Unable to win the argument with facts and reason so you resort to veiled threats? You can call what the IPCC has published anything you want, for ALL practical purposes they are predictions, and observations are outside of the range of the predictions. If you want to call them projections, then observations are outside the range of the projections. If you want to call them forecasts, then observations are outside the range of the forecasts. If you want to call the WAGs, then observations are outside the range of the WAGs.
If you have something to contribute, then please do. But harping on this one illogical point over and over, thread after thread, is a waste of your time as well as everyone else’s.