(CNSNews.com) – Dr. Don Easterbrook – a climate scientist and glacier expert from Washington State who correctly predicted back in 2000 that the Earth was entering a cooling phase – says to expect colder temperatures for at least the next two decades.
Easterbrook’s predictions were “right on the money” seven years before Al Gore and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for warning that the Earth was facing catastrophic warming caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide, which Gore called a “planetary emergency.”
“When we check their projections against what actually happened in that time interval, they’re not even close. They’re off by a full degree in one decade, which is huge. That’s more than the entire amount of warming we’ve had in the past century. So their models have failed just miserably, nowhere near close. And maybe it’s luck, who knows, but mine have been right on the button,” Easterbrook told CNSNews.com.
“For the next 20 years, I predict global cooling of about 3/10ths of a degree Fahrenheit, as opposed to the one-degree warming predicted by the IPCC,” said Easterbrook, professor emeritus of geology at Western Washington University and author of 150 scientific journal articles and 10 books, including “Evidence Based Climate Science,” which was published in 2011. (See EasterbrookL coming-century-predictions.pdf)
In contrast, Gore and the IPCC’s computer models predicted “a big increase” in global warming by as much as one degree per decade. But the climate models used by the IPCC have proved to be wrong, with many places in Europe and North America now experiencing record-breaking cold.
Easterbrook noted that his 20-year prediction was the “mildest” one of four possible scenarios, all of which involve lower temperatures, and added that only time will tell whether the Earth continues to cool slightly or plunges into another Little Ice Age as it did between 1650 and 1790.
…
On the PDO:
“What I did was I projected this same pattern forward to see what it would look like. And so in 1999, which was the year after the second warmest year on record, the PDO said we’re due for a climate change, and so I said okay. It looks as though we’re going to be entering a period of about three decades or so of global cooling.
“And so in 2000, I published a paper with the Geological Society of America in which I predicted that we were going to stop warming and begin cooling for about 25 or 30 years, on the basis of taking the temperature records that go back a century or more and simply repeating the pattern of warming and cooling, warming and cooling, and so on.
(Top) PDO fluctuations and projections to 2040 based on past PDO history.
– See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/climate-scientist-who-got-it-right-predicts-20-more-years-global#sthash.jTgQD6lj.dpuf
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WUWT offers congratulations to Don for getting press. Be sure to share the link to this article with friends on social media.
For more on his prediction see: Cause of ‘the pause’ in global warming
“Since Don is here can he provide the dataset underlying the graphs in the 2000 paper.
or do we have to digitize the graphs”
How is this not asking nicely?
The demand that one ask nicely reminds me of this:
The same demand has been made of Mcintyre. In other words warmista complain that steve doesnt ask nicely. So, now when he asks he says “pretty please with sugar on it”
http://climateaudit.org/2012/05/31/myles-allen-calls-for-name-and-shame/
so,
We ( Willis and I) asked The crew at tallblokes ( which includes easterbrook) for their data.
Simple request. Few objected. Nobody asked Willis or me to be nice when asking. Thats a tactic used by warmista against Mcintyre.
I’ll do what Steve does.
Pretty please.
Aphan, Lance, thanks, though again that 2000 ref is really an abstract of a conference talk, not a paper.
Werner Brozek says:
February 5, 2014 at 9:07 am
“By the way, RSS for January just came out and it shows no warming at all for 17 years and 5 months since September 1996.”
A graph is worth a thousand words, but as I am unable to make an attachment to this comment, I have to go the wordy route.
Speaking generally, it appears that a smoothed temperature graph of the last 20 years shows the top arc of a steeply rising, then gently falling curve. As we continue downward, we are able to project a flat average further and further into the past. This causes the total period of the “hiatus” to lengthen faster than time progresses as we move the starting point back in time. I have 2 objections to projecting a flat trend further back in time:
1. This process allows advocates of CAGW to say we are merely in a pause in the warming, that we are not cooling.
2. As the flat trend line is projected back in time, a period that was previously considered to have a rising temp. trend is now considered to be part of a flat period. This resembles after-the-fact playing with the data.
Making a break point in the temp. trend at the 1998 peak in temps produces a falling trend since then. This invalidates any argument that we are merely in a “pause” in the warming. IMHO, 15 years with a falling trend is a stronger argument than 17 years of a flat trend.
SR
“I predicted that we were going to stop warming and begin cooling for about 25 or 30 years…”
—
Is the unadjusted (raw) global temperature data available since 2000? If so, how does it compare to adjusted temperatures? (Or did the CRU run out of disk space again and lose the more recent data, too?)
wayne says:
February 5, 2014 at 9:23 am
If the literal statement — “If the cycles continue as in the past, the current warm cycle should end in the next few years, and global warming should abate, rather than increase, in the coming decades.” — was what Dr. Easterbrook said in his 2000 paper, that is much closer than what this post seems to imply. The temperatures appear to have topped in 2005 ± 1 year and the drop in temperatures should (again, it appears) last for about three more decades if there is in fact a ≈62 year cycle present.
It needs to be remembered, the PDO did not switch in 1997, or even 2002… Nope, the PDO switched to a negative phase in 2008 during the middle of the 2007/2008 La Nina
At the time Easterbrook said it, we knew a PDO switch was on the horizon. We just didn’t know exactly when. His “next few years” ended up being about 7-8 years later
His predictions should probably realistically be counted from 2008, not from when he said it. And yes, that means much of the “stall” in Global Warming was during a warm phase. (I’m even assuming this is why Wiki has not updated their page to reflect the switch; instead leaving the 1997/1998 anomaly, and assumption it creates, up as the final update)
It should also be remembered that the PDO switch doesn’t mean Temperatures instantly start to fall. All one needs to do is check the first 10 years of the last Negative-to-Positive the 1945 switch to see that
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1945/to:1954/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1945/to:1954/trend
The Negative PDO should be expected to last until roughly 2040, and we are only starting our 6th full year of that Negative PDO. The 1945 switch indicates we could see stalled temperatures up to 10 years into the phase.
But also remember what happened by the time that Negative PDO phase was winding down – “Global Cooling is going to kill us all”
So essentially we’re seeing what we saw around 1945 then? Ok, so cooling until the mid-1970s then potentially warming again from around 2030-2060 before cooling again. It’s almost like there’s a cycle, if you don’t go looking just for low points to skew your data. And no one would ever do that, would they?
Am I the ONLY SANE person alive? Who the HE-double toothpics gives a RODENT’s rear end about TEMPERATURE of the atmosphere. I care about the ENTHALPY, the total energy.
Without working that out per cubic WHATEVER YOUR FAVORITE UNITS HERE is, all the other assesments are NOISE, visa vie weather there is significant change in net atmospheric energy levels. (PS..my speling errers are intentional..)
Why does everybody use discrete functions like linear trends when continuous functions provide a much better overview?
HadCrut
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/richardlinsleyhood/HadCrut4Monthly11575Lowpass1575SGExtensions_zps48569a45.gif
GISS
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/richardlinsleyhood/GISS11575LowpassSG15_zps3d9a93bb.gif
Both show we are entering a cooling phase.
…yes but as Sheldon Cooper tells us this can all be dismissed because Geology is not a real science….
Max I agree that enthalpy is important – that is why I use the SST data in my forecasts at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com (see 10:15 post above)
The SST data trends vary closely with enthalpy -whereas the land data enthalpies vary significantly from the temperatures depending on the humidity.
…unlike putting a load of fiddled data into a pre determined programme to get a desired result…now THATS science…
As Sir Francis Bacon once wrote, “Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.”
Regarding the CAGW debate, no truer words can say it better.
It’s been almost 17.5 years without a global warming trend and falling trends since 2001, so we’re getting very close to finding the truth very shortly.
If global temperatures continue to show falling temperature trends after the next El Nino cycle occurs, then by 2016~17 or so, the truth will be known and CAGW can be thrown on the trash heap of history…
Time, folks, just a little more time…
– – – – – – – – – –
Cooling potentialities, as important balancing discussion points, are needed.
Thank you Don Easterbrook for a significant contribution toward upgrading climate science from a biased (IPCC constrained) monologue into a vigorous dialog.
Cooling potential merits more focus ($ for research).
John
PS – we can glimpse there is developing reasoning for a descending escalator shape versus the Mannian hockey trickystick. I look forward to all increasingly open and objective discourses . . .
Paul Matthews says:
“Aphan, Lance, thanks, though again that 2000 ref is really an abstract of a conference talk, not a
paper.”
I’m not sure what you are trying to imply. While GSA Abstracts are not journal articles, but they are published on paper. Would you have been happier if Easterbrook specified “I published an abstract” (which the reporter probably would not have understood)? As published, does it correctly predict what Easterbrook says it does?
Max Hugoson says at February 5, 2014 at 10:43 am
Whenever anyone asks that the answer is near certainly – No.
But why the answer is No is usually obscure to the questioner.
mikef2 says:
“…yes but as Sheldon Cooper tells us this can all be dismissed because Geology is not a real science….”
Sheer jealousy on the part of a physicist.
I had a friend who started out studying straight physics in college. Every Friday evening he would trudge into school to spend a weekend cooped (or Coopered?) up in the physics lab and he would see the happy male and female geology students load up vans with camping gear and beer to go off on a field trip to study the real world. My friend switched to geophysics and learned to enjoy life.
So what’s here? A report by an organization called CNSNews. Is it “press”? It says of itself:
“Study after study by the Media Research Center, the parent organization of CNSNews.com, clearly demonstrate a liberal bias in many news outlets – bias by commission and bias by omission – that results in a frequent double-standard in editorial decisions on what constitutes “news.””
It speaks of a paper in 2000 which made predictions. But no-one can locate it.
I suspect it’s talking about this 2001 talk to the GSA (in session 106). But the abstract doesn’t make a prediction, just a question. And there is no record of what he said.
Why has the IPCC been afraid to make predictions. It used to.
Paul Matthews says:
“Aphan, Lance, thanks, though again that 2000 ref is really an abstract of a conference talk, not a
paper.”
The purpose behind the publication of abstracts in conference proceedings is to allow all the other members of the society to preview ongoing research and findings so they can conduct a pre-peer review by attending the talk, asking questions, meeting the researcher and having discussions and providing their feedback. The Abstracts are solicited by the moderator of the session and reviewed prior to selection.
I have had abstracts accepted and rejected for specific theme sessions at GSA. And I can tell you that the exposure and feedback you get at the GSA conferences is far better than the formal peer review process of a final paper.
The other reason you publish an abstract is to establish primacy for your research and findings.
The one thing which you have to know, however, is that you do not show up a GSA and read your abstract to the audience – on in the case of a poster session, stand at your poster for four hours – without having real data and science to present.
“””””…..M Courtney says:
February 5, 2014 at 7:32 am
Well, he’s less wrong that the IPCC.
But I thought it wasn’t cooling yet. Just in a hiatus.
It may cool over the next two decades but right now the temperature is staying flat (within measurement error).
Isn’t it?…..”””””
Well I’ve looked at a lot of “climate cycle” Temperature; excuse me, anomaly graphs, that wander up and down generally in a kind of saw-toothy wave-form. which of course can be roughly synthesized from sinusoidal components, starting with a fundamental at the same frequency as the saw tooth., and when smoothed as is fashionable, the sharp corners of a real sawtooth get quite rounded, as indeed a sine wave itself is.
One of the things I have notices about sine waves, is that they can be approximated by four major zones, connected by “transition” regions. Those four zones, are the maximum slope rising edge passing through zero, the maximum slope falling edge, through zero, and the peak, and valley turning points.
The maximum slope edges look quite long, without any significant change (in slope), and the near flat peaks, look quite a lot shorter, than the edges.
This of course is an illusion, since we know that the derivative of a sine wave, is a cosine wave, and verse vicea.
So the peak slope regions, and the peak amplitude regions are all exactly the same length.
Now you add the “noisiness” or more correctly “natural variability” to those sine waves, and you now find that within the uncertainties due to the natural variability, those peak and valley regions are as flat (straight) at are the sloping sides.
So the pundits (not pundints) say that the present “pause” is a peak preparing to start a long down trend.
The warmists say it is not a maximum (or minimum) but is a point of inflection, between a past rising edge, and a future rising edge to be.
Now if that were true, and we have had seventeen years out of maybe a 60 ish year cycle, in this present pause, it is reasonable to presume, that there would already be signs of a curvature change in sign , from downward curving, to upward curving.
Well I’m not privy to the sorts of data that Don Easterbrook is; nor his knowledge of the subject, but I view him as one of the voices of sanity, in a wilderness of hysteria.
Also based on the current (known) antics of the sun, and my assumption that reductions in energy storage on earth take some time to manifest themselves as Temperature reduction (or vice versa); my money would go with an expectation of near future colder, rather than near future warmer.
I’ll go with “We’re at a peak” rather than “we are at a point of inflection”.
Funny thing about peaks; you tend to get a cluster of high values around a peak, and a cluster of low values at a trough.
Some of the lowest altitudes on earth can be found in the ocean trenches; and some of the highest elevations, can be found up in the mountains.
Funny how that is !
Decades long cooling is perhaps the only thing that will be the final nail in the coffin of CAGW. It may become a zombie but people are already moving on. The climateers will go to their graves clinging onto dangerous warming in the face of dangerous cooling, it’s really that sad.
Steve Reddish says:
February 5, 2014 at 10:36 am
A graph is worth a thousand words, but as I am unable to make an attachment to this comment, I have to go the wordy route.
Here is the graph worth a thousand words. Mind you, some people would consider the purple line to be cherry picking.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.65/plot/rss/from:1996.65/to:2005/trend/plot/rss/from:2005/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/plot/rss/from:1996.65/trend
This resembles after-the-fact playing with the data.
Perhaps, but what is the problem with that? Suppose that temperatures went up smoothly from 1970 to 2000 and then went down just as smoothly. In 2010, I could say it has not been this cold in 20 years. Then only 1 year later, I could say it has not been this cold in 22 years, etc. In exactly the same way, I may now say the graph is flat for 17 years. And if we then have a La Nina, in only one year, I may be able to say the graph is flat for NOT 18, but 19 years.
Congratulations.
Nice to see someone who is not an Al Gore or Mikey Mann got a snippet in the news.
Easterbrook’s 2000 predictions do a pretty impressive job of making the CMIP5 models look good.
Per Bob Tisdale: http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/easterbrook-figure-4.gif
In reality, temperatures are a tad low, though still within the range of model variability: http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/pics/0214_Fig3_ZH.jpg
Decadal trends are closer to the 95% bounds, as Lucia has pointed out.
DS, the difference between what you see and what I see is bound to be that I am relying on non-homogenization and TOBS adjusted data and you are just using the manipulated HadCRUT as your base, maybe even that to get the PDO first derivative crossover. Wouldn’t that account for the three years difference? Also, my view is just a box smoothed set so it’s just a rough estimate of what seems to be what is actually happening in the temps. Both you and I seem to see the same inflection.
I still think it is closer to reality to just remove the adjustments than to rely on the heavily adjusted (past cooled) climate science adjusted products. Here is my view minus such adjustments which are very close to linear since 1940, so that is what I used to remove them (roughly):
http://i39.tinypic.com/1118rnl.png