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.
henry says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/16/whither-went-the-warmer-weather/#comment-1510725
henry says
the last sentence should be
if, as I stated before, air pressures remain the same AND CONCENTRATION OF BICARBONATE IONS IN THE OCEANS REMAIN THE SAME.
(change in my statement made in capitals)
WHAT IS THAT?
Phil. does not know how to make a standard caustic soda solution…?
Neither does he realize how it is related to how the oceans behave in the face of (more) heat or (more) coldness
Must I tell you how we do it?
Does anyone here know?
HenryP says:
December 23, 2013 at 9:35 am
Phil. says
Not in the ocean, the ones I showed are correct (with the exception of the typo).
Henry says
1) seeing that you are a chemist, you probably know how to make carbonate free water for your standard solutions.
Please tell us how you do it, why, and what chemical reactions you would write down to explain your actions?
2) it is generally known that when CO2 dissolves in water, a small percentage (I think about 0.1% of the dissolved CO2) will go into H2CO3.
Since we’re talking about seawater as I pointed out before the majority of the CO2 is in the form of bicarbonate ion, look at the Bjerrum plot I linked. You can use the following calculator to calculate the composition:
http://www.microcosmofscience.com/CO2%20and%20TIC%20calculator.html
For seawater at pH 8.05, T=15ºC, salinity 35ppK, and alkalinity 2.4 mmole/L you have 0.66 mg/L dissolved CO2 (0.015 mmole/L), bicarbonate 1.954 mmole/L, carbonate 0.181 mmole/L
Obviously the other reactions that you mention (minus the typo) play a role
They all do, it’s a series of chemical equilibria.
but the net effect of more heat (COMING INTO THE ATMOSPHERE) is more CO2 in the atmosphere
and the net effect of more cold (COMING INTO THE ATMOSPHERE) is more bicarbonates in the oceans,
if, as I stated before, air pressures remain the same.
I hope you understand why!
The effect of increasing water temperature is to decrease the bicarbonate concentration and to increase the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. That assumes no input of CO2, however increasing CO2 by fossil fuel combustion will cause a commensurate increase in bicarbonate, the relationship between all the components is governed by the set of equilibria that I listed.
HenryP says:
December 23, 2013 at 9:47 am
Phil. says
Totally disagree, there’s absolutely no justification for your assumption of a sine wave!
Henry says
well, I am sorry if you donot see that.\
I am afraid that’s exactly why climate science is where it is now, people like you who don’t understand statistics.
Your assumption of a sine wave has nothing to do with statistics, nor any science actually.
Phil. says
The effect of increasing water temperature is to decrease the bicarbonate concentration and to increase the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
Henry says
So now you agree with me that this chemical reaction:
HCO3 – + (more) heat => C02 (g) + OH-
is a fair representation of what you are saying in your own words….
It seems to me that this reaction is also a fair representation for removing carbonates to make water for standard solutions, is it not?
HenryP says:
December 24, 2013 at 4:24 am
Phil. says
The effect of increasing water temperature is to decrease the bicarbonate concentration and to increase the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
Henry says
So now you agree with me that this chemical reaction:
HCO3 – + (more) heat => C02 (g) + OH-
is a fair representation of what you are saying in your own words….
Clearly you don’t understand standard chemical nomenclature, I wrote explicitly the mechanism in the form of the equilibria, the relevant reverse reactions due to the temperature shift in the equilibria are:
CO3^2- + H^+ → HCO3^-
HCO3^- + H^+ → H2CO3
H2CO3 → CO2(aq) + H2O
CO2(aq) → CO2(g) Henry’s Law
So a shift in the Bjerrum plot to the left.
If you want to add Kw there is of course: H2O ⇋ H^+ + OH^- where Kw ~10^14
Phil. says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/16/whither-went-the-warmer-weather/#comment-1511800
Henry says
which is only making it complicated for the un-informed.
Truth is that my reactions to show what happens when it gets warmer and what happens when it gets cooler are correct if you want to summarize the point.
@Phil.
btw
do you understand now why it became 2.4 degrees K cooler in Anchorage?
Only explanation is that it gets cooler, globally,
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
live with it
HenryP says:
December 24, 2013 at 7:37 am
Phil. says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/16/whither-went-the-warmer-weather/#comment-1511800
Henry says
which is only making it complicated for the un-informed.
No you have 5 variables: CO3^2-, HCO3^-, H2CO3, CO2(aq) and CO2(g) which are in equilibrium with each other, when you change temperature the relationships between them all change. You need more than one reaction to describe that, much less a fabricated reaction which doesn’t actually take place! Using that single reaction misleads the un-informed such as yourself.
Truth is that my reactions to show what happens when it gets warmer and what happens when it gets cooler are correct if you want to summarize the point.
The best way to do that would be a Bjerrum plot like the one I linked to.
role
But it doesn’t. Heat does, and heat varies with water, mostly. Humidity, oceans, etc. “dampen” temperature swings = modulate heat transfer. The temperature is ‘intensive’, a consequence, not a cause.