17 years, 3 months with no global warming
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The Long Pause just got three months longer. Last month, the RSS monthly global mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies showed no global warming for exactly 204 months – the first dataset to show the full 17 years without warming specified by Santer as demonstrating that the models are in fundamental error.
The sharp drop in global temperature in the past month has made itself felt, and not just in the deep snow across much of North America and the Middle East. The RSS data to November 2013, just available after a delay caused by trouble with the on-board ephemeris on one of the satellites, show no global warming at all for 17 years 3 months.
It is intriguing, and disturbing, that WattsUpWithThat is just about the only place where you will be allowed to see this or any graph showing the spectacularly zero trend line through 207 continuous months of data.
CO2 concentration continues to climb. Global temperature doesn’t. Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation. Game over, logically speaking.
On any objective test of newsworthiness, the fact of 17 years 3 months with no global warming is surely of more than passing interest to audiences who have been terrified, over and over again, by the over-confident proclamations of the true-believers that catastrophic global warming was the surest of sure things.
Yet the mainstream news media, having backed the wrong horse, cannot bear to tear up their betting slips and move along. They thought they had a hot tip on global warming. They were naïve enough to believe Scientists Say was a dead cert. Yet the spavined nag on which they had bet the ranch fell at the first fence.
The inventiveness with which They wriggle is impressive. Maybe all that air pollution from China is like a parasol. Maybe the warming somehow snuck sneakily past the upper 2000 feet of the ocean so that it didn’t notice, and perhaps it’s lurking in the benthic strata where we can’t measure it. Maybe it’s just waiting to come out when we least expect it and say, “Boo!”.
Anyway, so the wrigglers say, The World Is Still Warming. It must be, because The Models Say So. They say our adding CO2 to the atmosphere is the same as Blowing up Four Whole Atom Bombs Somewhere On Earth Every Second!!!! Just imagine all that HEAT!
Well, it isn’t real. “Imagine” is the right word. If the world were warming, the most sensitive indicator of that warming would be the atmosphere itself. Since the atmosphere has not been warming for 17 years 3 months, an awful possibility is beginning to dawn on even the dimmest of the climate extremists – or, at least, those of them who have somehow found out about the Long Pause.
Maybe natural influences are still strong enough to pull in the other direction and cancel the predicted warming. Maybe the models got the forcing wrong, or the feedbacks wrong, or the climate-sensitivity parameter wrong, or the amplification equation wrong, or the non-radiative transports wrong.
Maybe – heresy of heresies – CO2 is just not that big of a deal any more.
Yet it ought to be having some effect. All other things being equal, even without temperature feedbacks we should be seeing 1 Celsius degree of global warming for every doubling of CO2 concentration.
It is more likely than not that global warming will return eventually. Not at the predicted rate, but it will return. It would be wisest, then, to look not only at the now embarrassingly lengthening Long Pause but also at the now embarrassingly widening Gaping Gap between the +0.23 Celsius/decade predicted by the models for the first half of this century and the –0.02 Celsius/decade that is actually happening.
Meanwhile, Scotland has been enjoying one of the mildest Decembers of recent times. But February is when it usually turns really cold up here. John Betjeman recalled our winters in one of his verses, and raised what has become for climate extremists everywhere the Great Unanswerable Question. Whither went the warmer weather?
Highland Winter
As we huddle close together,
Wrapt about in fur and feather,
Shod in sopping, sodden leather,
Sloshing through the hidden heather
Smothered under feet of snow;
As we curse and blast and blether,
Whither in the regions nether –
Whither went the warmer weather?
Whimpering we wonder whether
Anyone will ever know.
Is NBC being accurate in stating that November was the warmest worldwide temps since 1880, and how if the temps were so high, the average amonthly temps is still flat? Who is lying?
Mike Haseler, our Noble Lord is really correct.
First, causality is a relationship between events whereas correlation is a relationship between variables. For example, ‘eating peanuts causes cancer’, is the expression of causality. For a correlation we need at least a 2*2 cross table with counts of subjects eating peanuts, subjects not eating peanuts, subjects with cancer, and subjects without cancer.
Second, causality is about a time order, e.g. you get cancer after eating peanuts. In the cross table this aspect is lost.
Third, causation implies non-zero correlation. If eating peanuts causes cancer, subjects eating peanuts will show more often cancer than subjects who do not eat peanuts. This suffices because a 2*2 cross table has one degree of freedom, guaranteeing the non-zero correlation. All evidence for causation, except for its temporal aspect, is summarized in the table. If it is not there it is nowhere. Try it with the classic example that hitting a ball causes its motion. In all trials you hit the ball you will see more often the ball moving than in trials you miss the ball.
Fourth, since causation implies non-zero correlation, zero correlation implies no causation.
John T says:
December 17, 2013 at 1:53 pm
Each global data adjustment after so many years makes previous exactly the same years warmer. The surface station data are comparing apples with bananas and oranges. No surprise every adjustment leads to further warming, In another number of years time when they cant get any more warming from that data set another adjustment will take place to try a scrape a bit more warming. Eventually with numerous generations behaving the same way, we will be in an ice age with deep snow during spring and autumn, but global temperatures will still be above average. Joking aside the satellite data in future should keep them reasonably honest.
Monckton of Brenchley : “Mr. Born correctly states that (p IMP q) EQV (NOT q IMP NOT p). Now, let p be causation and q correlation. Causation necessarily implies correlation. That proposition is logically equivalent to its contrapositive, that absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation. Again, Q.E.D.”
That virtuoso demonstration of Lord Monckton’s symbolic-logic mastery would have been more compelling if it had related to the true demonstrandum, namely, “the proposition that, since correlation does not necessarily imply causation, absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation.”
Now, that proposition is a little abstract, so let’s substitute the following, more-concrete one, with which we would have dealt more comfortably in the corn and soybean fields of Indiana, where I was raised:
If it’s dog, it’s black: p -> q
The fact that the foregoing proposition is not necessarily true seems a singularly unreliable basis for concluding the truth of the following:
It it’s not a dog, it’s not black: ~p -> ~q
Similarly, the fact that the proposition:
Correlation implies causation: p -> q
is not necessarily true does not establish the truth of the following:
Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation: ~p -> ~q
Monckton of Brenchley: “Mr. Born disagrees with the truth-table for implication: I refer him to any elementary textbook of logic. Even “Teach Yourself Logic” gets that one right.
Touché. In retrospect I see that in disagreeing with Lord Monckton’s statement about the truth table I had jumped ahead to what he had apparently understood from it.
Specifically, his statements seemed based on the belief that the “T” or “1” in the p -> q truth table means the proposition p -> q is true. It’s been a half century since the Jesuits taught me this stuff, and the recent economics statements by that society’s best-known member may suggest the wisdom of treating those lessons with skepticism. But as I remember it those symbols mean only that the evidence from the p and q values is not inconsistent with that proposition’s being true, not that its truth is established.
A subtle point, I’ll grant you, but one that Lord Monckton might have done better to bear in mind.
Still, as written my disagreement was with the table, not, as it should have been, with the interpretation.
Thanks Christopher, Lord Monckton. Good article.
I went to look for it at the Hadley Centre Central England Temperature (HadCET) dataset, did not find it (the warmer weather).
The Hadley Centre Central England Temperature (HadCET) dataset is at
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
John T says:
December 17, 2013 at 1:53 pm
Is NBC being accurate in stating that November was the warmest worldwide temps since 1880, and how if the temps were so high, the average amonthly temps is still flat? Who is lying?
According to GISS, the November anomaly was 0.77. This was the highest ever anomaly for November on GISS. (The RSS November anomaly, in contrast, was only the 13th warmest according to RSS.) For the year 2013 so far, the GISS average is 0.60 which puts 2013 in a 3 way tie for 6th place. The November anomaly of 0.77 was not the highest of all time when other months are also considered. The highest all time anomaly for GISS is 0.93 in January 2007.
I am sorry I did not make myself clear. I was not challenging correlaiton or lack thereof, I was showing examples of being WRONG on his side of the fence. Don’t you think the examples I gave are a bit embarrassing? Yet they continue to trot out their BS for your consumption. Eeeewwww!
Monckton goes feral. What a hoot!
I’ve got to thank you TBear. If it weren’t for you, I’d likely be the commenter who contributed the least to this thread. I appreciate the save buddy.
/sarc
Harr, Harr . Where do they get off, reporting stuff like this?
November hottest since 1880. !
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/november-hottest-earth-since-1880-183315270.html
Warmest november since 1880?
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/earth-has-its-warmest-november-in-recorded-history
NASA says November 2013 was the warmest November global temperature on record and this confirms the warming trend. According to the satellite data of UAH that is not true. I think NASA has reached an all time scientific low by faking the temperature data. This is not bad science this is fraud.
Hmmm: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/
You have been given various ideas above but here is something to consider. Sea level has been rising since the end of the Little Ice Age. Ask your friends was man to blame between 1850 to 1925?
Also consider water extraction for irrigation. Groundwater abstraction is about “one fourth of the current rate of sea level rise of 3.3 mm per year.”
Here is the paper’s abstract
and this
Jeff Masters should repeat: 30 days hath September, April, June and November. Thirty days is the weather, 30 years is the climate.
@TBear
“Many factors could be overriding the warming.”
I suppose there are factors (lets call them “factors X+”) that could. But do we have any evidence to show that factors X+ actually are overriding the warming?
If not, on the evidence we do have, we are justified in believing (at least tentatively) that there is no warming.
25% of the rise is due to the addition of human-drilled fossil water to the ecosystem.
x% is due to river-borne silt.
x% is due to the unjustified “correction” for the oceans’ sinking basins.
Mr. Born should perhaps not have attempted to stray into symbolic logic. Though this is not really the place to give him an education in the subject, a few general principles will emerge that may be useful.
First, the end and object of all logic is to establish whether one or more declarative statements or propositions, known in this context as “premises”, properly entail the conclusion. The premise or premises, taken together with a single conclusion, constitute what is called an “argument”. If the premises entail the conclusion, the argument is “valid”. If the premises are true and the argument is valid, the conclusion is true and the argument is “sound”.
Therefore, to ensure that one does not lose the thread of what can be quite a complex analysis of an argument (for instance, using not only Boolean operators such as IMP or EQV but also propositional calculus or quantifiers), one should remember Francis Bacon’s principle: Respice finem, or “look where you’re going”.
Let us apply that principle that one should constantly keep the end and object in view to Mr. Born’s statement that what he calls my “virtuoso demonstration … of symbolic-logic mastery” had related to a second route to the conclusion that absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation – a route distinct from the first route.
My point was that a premise that Mr. Born had himself stated as being true necessarily entailed the conclusion that absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation. Mr. Born, instead of accepting that the end and object had been attained and the conclusion demonstrated, quibbles that I had demonstrated it in a manner distinct from that which I had originally used. Yet the end and object was precisely to establish the truth of the conclusion.
In demonstrating the conclusion using Mr. Born’s own premise I was illustrating the principle of Socratic elenchus, which is to use the interlocutor’s own premises, leaving him as little wriggle-room as possible.
I had already demonstrated my earlier method by a formal process and had even sketched out an algorithm that any programmer could run for himself to verify the validity of the argument and the truth of the conclusion in all circumstances.
Next, Mr. Born goes altogether off the rails by taking the statement (p IMP q) and calling p a dog and q black, so that the statement reads “It’s a dog implies it’s black”. So far so good. Then he also states, correctly, that NOT [(p IMP q) EQV (NOT p IMP NOT q)], or, in plain English, that the statement “It’s a dog implies it’s black” is not equivalent to the statement “It’s not a dog implies it’s not black”. No, of course there is no such implication: and nor did I make it or anything analogous to it.
Mr. Born has fatally misunderstood what the contrapositive of (p IMP q) is. It is not, as he suggests, (NOT p IMP NOT q). It is (NOT q IMP NOT p). And, whether Mr. Born likes it or not, it is true that (p IMP q) EQV (NOT q IMP NOT p). Again, in plain English, the statement that “It’s a dog implies it’s black” is equivalent to the contrapositive “It’s not black implies it’s not a dog”.
Mr. Born, having made this catastrophic error, then compounds it by repetition, asserting erroneously that I have attempted to maintain that “Correlation implies causation” is equivalent to “Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation”.
No: for it is well established that correlation does not necessarily imply causation. He had himself asserted earlier, and correctly, that causation necessarily implies correlation, from which I had drawn the correct conclusion that the correctly-stated contrapositive is true: absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation.
Mr. Born does at least now concede that I had correctly described the truth-table for logical implication, but he then commits yet a further error by stating that truth-tables do not really indicate truth or falsity. Here, he has failed to understand how rigorous logic is. If each of two statements p, q joined by a logical operator (i.e. AND, or OR, or XOR, or IMP, or EQV) has a defined truth-value, then the truth-value of the conjoined statements is also defined: it is not up for debate. That is what truth-tables are for. If the truth-values assigned to p and q are correct in the real world, then the truth-value of the conjoined statements p [OP] q as listed in the truth-table for the relevant Boolean operator will also be correct in the real world.
Magna est veritas, et praevalet.
Mark Bofill says:
December 17, 2013 at 3:23 pm
I’ve got to thank you TBear. If it weren’t for you, I’d likely be the commenter who contributed the least to this thread. I appreciate the save buddy.
/sarc
___________
Always happy to oblige, Bofill.
BTW: the Bear is a Monckton fan, but does sense a few gins and tonic may be driving his rhetoric in this particular posting!
It is rather cute, the Bear considers!
rogerknights, Jimbo, TimC, DavidA, garymount,
Thank you. I don’t want to clutter the thread, but I’ve read your responses and
appreciate the suggestions for things to look into regarding my question.
TBear,
Is that just common sense?
Lord Monckton’s last comment contains a lot of verbiage, much of which is directed to how well I understand symbolic logic. I’m confident that I know it well enough for present purposes, but the issue isn’t my knowledge or lack thereof.
Let’s recall what the issue really is, in Lord Monckton’s own words: “So let me provide a formal demonstration of the proposition that, since correlation does not necessarily imply causation, absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation.”
I responded that such a logic chain’s validity can be tested by comparing it with a chain of inference that is exactly parallel but whose propositions are less abstract. Specifically, we know that the following is not necessarily true: if it’s a dog it’s black. Can we conclude as a consequence that not being a dog implies not being black? Of course not. Nor can we conclude from the fact that correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation that absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation.
So even if absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation (and I don’t think it does), Lord Monckton’s “formal demonstration” does not prove it.
lemiere jacques says:
December 17, 2013 at 8:00 am
Thank you for your response. I left all options open in the hopes someone used conditions unknown to me that would result in an equilibrium temperature above 223K.
WTF? Accuweather clkaims that “November 2013 was the hottest November on Earth since at least 1880.” Where did they get their numbers?
http://www.accuweather.com/en/home-garden-articles/earth-you/november-was-the-hottest-on-ea/21089021