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.
Stunning . . . . not the article, but the first comment.
Way to go Steve. Science a bit of a problem for you is it?
I believe Einstein is often misquoted as saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, trying to get different results. Apparently that is your normal universe.
Steve, please enlighten me; if the lack of correlation does not disprove causation then what does?
If the correlation between events A and B is zero, then they can be thought of as completely independent. Unrelated. Provably so.
I think I am beginning to understand the intellect of the true believer.
Bob Kutz wrote “If the correlation between events A and B is zero, then they can be thought of as completely independent. Unrelated. Provably so.”
This is easily demonstrated to be incorrect, go to the wikipedia page on correlation, it gives examples of signals where there is an obvious relationship, but where the correllation is zero.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Correlation_examples2.svg
they even give code allowing you to verify for yourself that it is true.
dikranmarsupial says:
You don’t like RSS. We get that. It doesn’t fit with your CAGW ideology. We get that too. See, with RSS, you don’t get the extra oomph from UHI and poor siting. Too bad. Live with it.
@dikkranmarsiupal
It is you who is confusing the issue.
Clearly the trend from 1987 until 2002 of all data sets was in a similar direction (warming). From 2002 UAH is the only one that goes flat (green now), whereas all of the others are going down (cooling):
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:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/uah/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/none
Only UAH is the odd one out. Don’t come to me with RSS only, which is your favorite?
have a happy cooling holidays
Lord Monckton,
Thank you sir. I wasn’t aware of those. Also thanks in general to several other commenters who pointed this and related items out. I didn’t realize sea level rise was plausibly disputed. If sea level isn’t rising, that certainly addresses the argument.
Davidmhoffer,
Spencer says this is possible, though he doesn’t buy it.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/04/more-on-trenberths-missing-heat/
That doesn’t seem like a conclusive line of argument to me.
Reg,
Thanks Reg. I investigate claims to the degree that seems reasonable to me. If my standards don’t measure up to what you think they ought to be, I don’t care. If you think I’m a wolf in sheeps clothing, I still don’t care. I could be Michael Mann in bad drag or Richard Feynman speaking from beyond the grave for all the relevance it has on the actual arguments and their validity. So, thanks. But no thanks.
As Steven Mosher suggests, ‘Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation’, is incorrect. Say A is a cause of B, but C is also a cause of B, it would certainly be possible for the effects of C on B to temporarily mask the effects of A on B such that there was little or no correlation between A and B, even though they were causally related. For example, if increasing CO2 levels (A) were a cause of surface temperature changes (B), but ENSO (C), which affects the exchange of heat between the oceans and atmosphere, were also a cause of temperature changes (C), then the effects of ENSO could mask the effects of CO2 on surface temperatures, especially if you only looked at a short period of time over which the quasi-cyclic effects of ENSO could not be reasonably expected to average out to zero. There is a good reason why climatologists tend not to draw strong conclusions from trends over periods less than about 30 years.
Now a statistician would try controlling for the effects of ENSO in assessing the correllation between CO2 and temperature, and oddly enough, that is just what Foster and Rahmstorf (http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022) did and found that once you eliminate the effects of ENSO, the correllation is pretty good.
@ur momisuglyferdberple says: December 16, 2013 at 5:46 pm
@ur momisugly@MACK1 says: December 16, 2013 at 5:38 pm
please direct me to the scientific research listing and quantifying all the factors which caused the earth to move in and out of ice ages in the pre-industrial era.
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How about a single climate model that can reliably recreate the Medieval, Roman, Minoan, and previous Holocene warnings, without the need to selectively employ volcanoes as the universal explanation.
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Volcanoes. Or dogma. Take your pick
Bruce Cobb There is nothing wrong with the RSS dataset, the point I am making is that you shouldn’t cherry pick the dataset that most strongly supports your argument (as Monckton has done), you should either show the range of datasets or if you are really confident that you are right, the dataset that shows the *least* support for your position. If your argument is really solid, you don’t need to cherry pick evidence to support it.
TBear says:
December 16, 2013 at 7:15 pm
‘Absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation.’
Sloppy overkill. Many factors could be overriding the warming.
Disappointing, Mr Monckton.
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“overriding the warming”. So – if it’s cooling, it is now “overridden warming”, is that it? Climate as a cyclical phenomenon is no more?
Beardy bloke in sandals on a bicycle. The world has gone completely mad.
Bruce Cobb wrote “We get that too. See, with RSS, you don’t get the extra oomph from UHI and poor siting. Too bad. Live with it.”
BTW. the UAH dataset I suggested doesn’t have problems with UHI or poor siting either.
Hmmmm .. The Long Pause vs. The Long Parliament. So the Global Warming Cabal will not be dissolved until they agree that they were wrong. We shan’t hold our breath.
Well, you wonder why the MSM won’t recant.
A lot of very simple reasons associated with big egos losing their jobs.
Here’s my starter for 10, solely focussing on the UK, a list of those whose reputations are dead and should pay the price in employment terms:
1. Steve Connor – ‘science’ editor at the Independent.
2. Geoffrey Lean – ‘environment’ correspondent at the Daily Telegraph.
3. George Monbiot – self-styled ‘Professor’ who scribbles at the Guardian.
4. Ed Davey, the Minister who publicly lied about this on BBC’s Question Time in late 2013.
5. The lead researchers at the CRU, University of East Anglia.
6. A long list of ‘academic’ researchers who have been troughing on Govt research grants.
7. Roger Harrabin, who breaks every part of the BBC’s charter concerning neutrality.
8. David Shukman, ditto.
9. Several senior managers and Executives at the BBC due to long-term, mainstream brainwashing using false science.
10. David Attenborough OM, supposedly a ‘leading light’ scientist.
11. Professor David King, erstwhile Chief Scientific Advisor to HMG.
12. Sir John Houghton, ditto.
13. Tim Yeo, Chairman of the House of Commons Select Committee on matters concerning renewable energy (it is noteworthy that his constituency association want him chucked out over numerous ethical conflicts of interests/violations in this regard).
14. Mr David Cameron, whose daddy-in-law receives rather a lot of subsidies for allowing wind turbines on his land. Lest you are not aware, Mr Cameron is the latest in a distinguished line of First Lords of Her Majesty’s Treasury, more commonly known amongst oiks as the Prime Minister of Her Britannic Majesty’s United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
15. Mr Edward Miliband, the genius who guided the Climate Change Act onto the statute book of Her Britannic Majesty’s United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, who is now the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition in the House of Commons and is, worryingly in the eyes of many, seen as a likely prospective successor to the roles which Mr Cameron currently holds.
Not to put too fine a point on it, those who have powers to control the levers are doing very well, thank you very much, from the omnishambles which is called ‘global warming policy’ in the UK.
My advice to any insurgent who becomes PM in 2015: on day 1, reveal the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to the UK public using saturation coverage on the BBC and in the right wing Press and abolish the Climate Change Act as your first act of responsible Government.
Mr. Mosher:
If there is causation, there must be correlation. It is a mathematical rule.
Therefore, the absence of correlation must mean there is no causation. Because if there were causation, there would absolutely be correlation.
But, keep the faith.
Dikranmarsiopal quotes:
(http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022)
where it says
We analyze five prominent time series of global temperature (over land and ocean) for their common time interval since 1979: three surface temperature records (from NASA/GISS, NOAA/NCDC and HadCRU) and two lower-troposphere (LT) temperature records based on satellite microwave sensors (from RSS and UAH). All five series show consistent global warming trends ranging from 0.014 to 0.018 K yr−1.
Henry says
So, just tell me for pete’s sake, how is this different from my own results
2nd table (on means, bottom)
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/
?
The problem I found is when I looked at the drop in maximum temperatures which is controlling everything else…..and NOBODY is watching that….
Temps. are going go to down and I wish so much much for you just to see it. It could change your attitude and realize the danger of global cooling. Prove to me that you can make your own Christmas miracle come true (hint: Truth)
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/12/10/my-own-true-christmas-story/
Re; dikranmarsupial December 17, 2013 at 5:55 am
I stand corrected sir . . .
Of course if higher atmospheric concentrations of anthropogenic CO2 is correlated to either global warming OR global cooling the larger argument is over, the models need rebuilt from scratch, and the High Priests of the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming still have a lot of explaining to do.
But yes; something can be (at least statistically) uncorrelated and directly related, given an intervening superseding factor that causes the effect to be the negative of what it otherwise would have been. Kind of like a Rube Goldberg device for math.
Outside of quantum mechanics and the social “sciences” I am not sure we run into this very often.
Bob wrote “High Priests of the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming” sorry, I have learned over the years that as soon as somebody starts using this kind of blogsphere rhetoric, the chance of rational discussion is pretty much nill. I am always happy to have a rational discussion about science, but I have no interest in rhetoric, life is too short.
@dikranmarsupial,
If something is flawed, it isn’t “cherry-picking” to disregard it, n’est-ce pas? It is, however, cherry-picking on your part to want to include data that is flawed. All in a days’ work for a True Believer though, right?
Bruce, O.K., so tell me, why is the UAH dataset flawed but not the RSS dataset?
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davidmhoffer says:
December 16, 2013 at 7:17 pm
***
Thanks, an entertaining read. Sometimes I regret not having the skills to wax-on poetically. But I can always wax-off….
Bob Kutz says:
December 17, 2013 at 6:50 am
Im not so sure we rarely run into it…think about what happens as a cold front moves through during the day…we know that sunlight is positively correlated with increases in temperature, but sometimes it gets colder during the day as a font moves through.
just sayin that when you have multiple independent variables acting on one dependent variable you can get some confounding results.
thats all.
dikranmarsiopal says
Bruce, O.K., so tell me, why is the UAH dataset flawed but not the RSS dataset?
henry says
clearly, I have shown you that there must be something wrong with UAH as it is the only one out of 5 data sets ( 6, if you include my own) that shows the wrong directional trend from 2002?
henry says
clearly, I have shown you that there must be something wrong with UAH as it is the only one out of 5 data sets ( 6, if you include my own) that shows the wrong directional trend from 2002?
No, over such a short timespan the trend estimates are very uncertain, and there is no statistically significant difference between the estimates from any of the datasets.
@dikranmarsupial
we are now in a circle with our arguments with each other
go back to
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/16/whither-went-the-warmer-weather/#comment-1504637
HenryP, no there is no circle, there is no statistically significant difference in the trends in any of the surface or lower trophosphere datasets since 2002. It may be your opinion that there is something wrong with the UAH dataset, but it is just that, your opinion that is not supported by the statistical evidence.
dikranmarsupial says:
December 17, 2013 at 7:17 am
“Bruce, O.K., so tell me, why is the UAH dataset flawed but not the RSS dataset?”
You might better observe that they differ. One is warmer at the start, one at the end. Over the whole record they show the same (at present anyway)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/offset:-0.045/to:1997/trend/plot/uah/offset:0.045/to:1997/trend/plot/rss/offset:-0.045/from:1997/trend/plot/uah/offset:0.045/from:1997/trend/plot/rss/trend/offset:-0.045/plot/uah/trend/offset:0.045