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.
Has Steven Mosher changed his mind about global warming and started to worry about CO2? This is not a rhetorical question. I would simply like to know what caused him to change his mind if he has changed it.
Excellent article! I especially enjoyed Betjeman’s “Highland Winter,” in which the warmer weather may–if we wish–be likened to Poe’s “lost Lenore.” This poem has much in common with “The Raven”, including meter and rhyme scheme (“Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore!'”)
Absence of correlation may also be due to lack of sample size.
If climate doesn’t change in years but rather in centuries an observation period of 17 years may be without significance, in particular with high data volatility.
However the flattening observed over the past 17 years invalidates all models that are not able to reproduce it (or were not able to predict it).
And by using invalid models there is a probability bordering certainty that any prediction will be invalid.
This article lays bare the evidence revealing the truth about the catastrophic man-made global warming scare created by the IPCC, and promoted by key players of the warming establishment.
When Hal Lewis resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) on 6 October 2010, he referred to the global warming scam that had corrupted so many scientists and that had carried the APS like a rogue wave. He stated, “It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.” Referring to the climategate emails, he added, “I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.”
Well, I think Hal Lewis described the precise state of affairs in which the world now finds itself in relation to dangerous man-made global warming. Only, that it’s not just scientists but it also extends to various politicians, economists, academics, the media, governments, environmental activist organisations, and the business community that is always too happy to feed off “green subsidies”.
It is as though the “IPCC mantra” released a vicious virus that has now caused a corruption so severe, it seems almost impossible to eradicate.
Gareth Phillips says:
So have global temperatures fallen? No? Then they have still risen, what has happened is the rate of rise has flattened, but the long term trend is still up.
Wrong, the rate of rise has not flattened. There has been no rise at all for 17 yrs.
Thank you Christopher Monckton for this. The logic is clear. If the climate is not warming as predicted, there is no point to blame the mankind for the warming.
I wondered why Monckton of Brenchly chose the RSS dataset, rather than the UAH one, so I plotted them using woodfortrees, and I think I can see the answer:
http://woodfortrees.org/graph/rss/from:1996/plot/uah/from:1996/plot/rss/from:1996/trend/plot/uah/from:1996/trend
Felix says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/16/whither-went-the-warmer-weather/#comment-1504380
you are looking at the wrong sine wave!
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
@ur momisugly Mindert Eiting
try looking at the trend in maximum temps. !
otherwise you might get confused
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
Steven Mosher says:
December 16, 2013 at 3:40 pm
‘Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation. ”
wrong.
===============
That’s the best you’ve got regarding this post? Must be having an off day.
@Dikranmarsiuapal
UAH is in fact an outlier, most datsets show cooling from the new milennium:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2014/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2002/trend
My last query on UAH was that they admitted that they did have calibration problems establishing a zero point which was changing due to ? reasons.
Obviously if something is changing in the solar system the absolute zero may change……
Better than to stick with your own data sets. Here is mine.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/
Where is yours?
Anthony, the comment:
” davidmhoffer says:
December 16, 2013 at 7:17 pm
And I went unto the Warmists and said Fear Not! For the CO2 is logarithmic and the T varies with the 4th root of P and that is the Physics….”
is very well done, its hilarious – I think you should consider raising it to a post (Friday funny style) of its own!
“…Many factors could be overriding the warming.”
Such as?
Let’s assume it’s natural factors. If natural factors are overriding the warming, perhaps the warming that preceded the hiatus was also natural.
Especially since we have recorded similar periods of warming in prior history.
That leaves the warming that so alarmed CAGW alarmists and trolls is not only natural, but that the CO2 AGW effect is still undetectable and well within natural climate rhythms.
No overkill in Lord Monckton’s statement.
@HenryP UAH is not an outlier if you look at terns starting in 1996, which is what Monckton of Brenchley presented, it is in good agreement with GISS LOTI.
http://woodfortrees.org/graph/rss/from:1996/plot/uah/from:1996/plot/rss/from:1996/trend/plot/uah/from:1996/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1996/plot/gistemp/from:1996/trend
Incidentally, the new millenium did not start in 2002, that is just another cherry pick. Now if you want to argue that there has been a change in the underlying rate of warming, then the thing that will convince me (as a statistician) is statistically significant evidence for the existence of a change point. There is a good reason why no skeptic has done so, which is that the statistical evdence for the existence of a hiatus is not significant (i.e. it is adequately explained by the noise in the data, principally ENSO).
Eric Worrall says:
December 16, 2013 at 5:28 pm
Its amazing how the most ridiculous arguments about remote possibilities the models could still be right are invoked by alarmists, but they dismiss out of hand any possibility they are wrong.
Almost as if they have a very unscientific emotional attachment to their current theories.
=====================
It’s called ‘Group Think’. The Book “The Best and The Brightest”, David Halberstam is an example of ‘group think’. It details how the Kennedy Administration brought together some of the most brilliant minds in the country and yet, these minds brought us the Bay of Pigs and the Vietnam War.
When a ‘group’, in this case ‘Climate Scientists’ adopts an idea, no matter how misguided or wrong it may be, the group will actively attack anyone who questions the idea, regardless of the amount of factual evidence that shows that the idea is most likely wrong.
In the case of CAGW the ‘group’ has far too much invested in the way of professional reputations, funding, and influence on political policy to ever say, “Observational evidence has disproved our theory.”
Well, that is an absurd example. x is causal because x is used as part of the solution (paraphrased).
Absurd! The only way to make a lack of correlation a factor of causation is to assume correlation and force a causation factor. (Ring any climate cagw bells?)
No correlation.
No causation.
Correlation does not mean causation.
Causation requires correlation.
@dikranmarsiupal
To chose a 12 year interval is fair because it represents at least half of a full solar cycle, meaning each 11.6 years we are back to start.
You can stand on your head but you are not going to stop the global cooling that is coming, as apparent from the observation of decreasing maximum temperatures, discussed here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/16/whither-went-the-warmer-weather/#comment-1504613
BTW
Am I still banned from your SS site?
My final report on this is here:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
Why don’t you offer to put the results of my investigation up for scrutiny by your “experts”?
HenryP, I note that you have not admitted that UAH is not actually an outlier (as you suggestsed) and that in terms of trends since 1996 it is in good agreement with GISS LOTI. Your most recent post is just evasion to avoid admitting that the use of RSS is essentially a cherry pick.
SAMURAI, you have chosen Monty Python’s Holy Grail scene well. It holds ridicule, which according to Al Gore, stings. The hilarious causality analysis of the witch scene may already be too subtle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp_l5ntikaU. But never mind, imagine the inspiration CAGW is donating to entertainment professionals of the future generations.
“davidmhoffer says:
December 16, 2013 at 7:17 pm
And I went unto the Warmists and said Fear Not! For the CO2 is logarithmic and the T varies with the 4th root of P and that is the Physics…”
Thank you, David. That was one of the funniest and most pointed things I have read on Alarmism in a long while.
dikranmarsupial says:
I wondered why Monckton of Brenchly chose the RSS dataset, rather than the UAH one
You then proceeded with a plot that started in January of 1996, instead of September of 1996, which is where Monckton started his plot.
Now if one proceeds to the Skeptical Science (SS) website and uses the SS trend calculator, the UAH plot for September 1996 to present gives the following:
Trend: 0.100 ±0.204 °C/decade (2σ),
which means there is a 95% chance that the true trend lies between -0.104 °C/decade and 0.304 °C/decade. Any questions?
@dikranmarsiupal
UAH is an outlier, as shown here:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2014/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/uah/from:2002/to:2014/trend
UAH is the brown line on the bottom right half and it shows a flat line from 2002 whereas all the other data sets show a declining trend, from 2002.
Monckton of Brenchley: “Recall the truth-table for any “p IMP q”. If p is true and q false then p IMP q is false, otherwise p IMP q is true.”
Loath as I am to abet any of Mr. Mosher’s drive-bys, I’m disinclined to agree with the above passage.
Maybe there’s confusion with De Morgan’s law that ~(A * B) = ~A + ~B. (Where * is the logical AND, and “+” is the inclusive OR).
Or with the valid proposition that p -> q is equivalent to ~q -> ~p.
“Many factors could be overriding the warming.”
This statement contains the unspoken assumption that there is ‘warming’ from CO2, we just can’t see it. Kind of like the ‘heat hiding in the deep oceans’ argument. I don’t see how you can make that assumption. it’s an equally valid statement to say that there are many factors overriding ‘the cooling’ that we know is there, we just can’t see it.
HenryP are those plots of trends starting in 1996? No, so it doesn’t address the fact that the trends from 1996 in UAH and GISS LOTI are similar and so UAH is not an outlier.
SkepticGoneWild, the difference between the trends starting in January 1996 and September 1996 is fairly minimal, and so the use of RSS is still a cherry pick. If Monckton’s argument was a good one, it would have been good whichever dataset he used to make his point. That he chose the dataset that maximised the evidence for his arguement is an indication that it was a bit shaky.
“which means there is a 95% chance that the true trend lies between -0.104 °C/decade and 0.304 °C/decade. Any questions?”
No, that is not what it means, you are confusing a frequentist confidence interval with a Bayesian credible interval, they are not the same thing.