New Lovejoy paper says the ‘pause’ is ‘not so unusual’ & ‘no more than natural variability’
Shaun Lovejoy has published a new paper which cites his prior claim of 99.9% confidence that one of the two temperature graphs below is your fault, and the other due to natural variability.
Paul Homewood puts the claim to the test below.
Both graphs are half-century plots of HADCRUT4 global temperatures. Both use exactly the same time and temperature scales. Can you tell with 99.9% confidence which one is 1895-1945 (Nature’s fault), and which is 1963-2013 (Your fault)?
FYI according to Lovejoy’s claims, the top graph (1963-2013) is man-made, the bottom graph is due to natural variability.
In Lovejoy’s new paper, he acknowledges a ‘pause’ in global warming since 1998, says it’s “not so unusual” and concludes “the pause is no more than natural variability.” Indeed, the pause is due to natural variability that has not been accounted for by climate models, and thus invalidates attribution claims that the past 50 years of temperature variations are necessarily due to man-made CO2. Furthermore, prior work by NOAA and others has found ‘pauses’ of 15 or more years are indeed unusual and would suggest the climate models are overly sensitive to CO2. According to RSS satellite data, the ‘pause’ has lasted almost 18 years.
The Paper:
Return periods of global climate fluctuations and the pause
S. Lovejoy
Abstract:
An approach complementary to General Circulation Models (GCM’s), using the anthropogenic CO2 radiative forcing as a linear surrogate for all anthropogenic forcings [Lovejoy, 2014], was recently developed for quantifying human impacts. Using pre-industrial multiproxy series and scaling arguments, the probabilities of natural fluctuations at time lags up to 125 years were determined.
The hypothesis that the industrial epoch warming was a giant natural fluctuation was rejected with 99.9% confidence. In this paper, this method is extended to the determination of event return times. Over the period 1880-2013, the largest 32 year event is expected to be 0.47 K, effectively explaining the postwar cooling (amplitude 0.42 – 0.47 K). Similarly, the “pause” since 1998 (0.28 – 0.37 K) has a return period of 20-50 years (not so unusual). It is nearly cancelled by the pre-pause warming event (1992-1998, return period 30-40 years); the pause is no more than natural variability.
So the computer models fail to simulate the ‘usual’ climate then, if it is not unusual…
Arno Arrak,
It is a pity that Physicist Miskolczi is not a very good transmitter of his ideas. His science makes sense and is first class, but he has trouble imparting it to enough people. It takes real skull sweat to understand him, as he assumes all have his foundation in radiation physics of the atmosphere. And of course this is not so. You did a first class job of imparting his essentially simple ideas and concepts, even though they contain lots of scientific insight.
The real atmosphere of Earth is a mixture of gases, and the response is as a mixture would be expected to perform. However not are all absorbers in the IR spectrum and one gas dominates, the di-hydrogen oxide, as it is most common on Earth, and rare elsewhere, by a large amount fed by an essentially infinite supply, the oceans of Earth.
SunSword says:
June 25, 2014 at 7:27 am
“Actually suppose the current “pause” is also attributed to human activity? ”
The article says:
“In Lovejoy’s new paper, he acknowledges a ‘pause’ in global warming since 1998, says it’s “not so unusual” and concludes “the pause is no more than natural variability.””
So you may, SunSword, suppose what you like, but that is not germane to the proposition made by Lovejoy. It is simply a red herring.
Malc says:
June 25, 2014 at 5:56 am
“Pretty much everything else in climate change dogma is “unprecedented”. But The Pause is nothing special”
I read recently that the 0.02 deg C rise in ARGO sea temps in 10 years was “unprecedented” and that deep ocean heat was building “faster than expected”
Suppose that’s true since they have only had the data for 10 years. Never mind that the average buoy error is 0.10 deg C
philjourdan says:
June 25, 2014 at 6:46 am
“As for the 2 graphs, it is easy to tell which one is the “man-made” one. It is the one with a pause at the end (the 1900-45 does not have one).”
Correct. Funny and correct. The 1895-1945 did get a pause. After WWII, we started using “unprecedented” CO2 and the earth got ….colder…until about 1978. Must be all than carbon soot until the EPA cleaned it all up. Oooops. That soot doesn’t get across the pesky equator and that uncooperative S. Hemis cooled, too. Nevermind. Must be increased small scale volcanic activity. Meaning, deep in the ocean, the heat is building.
@Mary Brown – actually some have hypothesized that the post WWII cooling was due to above ground atomic tests. The timing is about right. But given that the alarmists are talking about “hiroshimas per second” these days. I do not think the 1000 odd above ground tests are equal to more than a few seconds of the new alarmists metric.
BTW, I’m pretty sure that more CO2 has been released in the last 15 years than all the years before WWII combined. So, if CO2 caused any warming before 1945, why none now?
Note that almost all “global warming” graphs include the pre-1945 warming as if it was caused by the Wright Brothers and Chinese rice farmers.
“How do these silly papers make it past peer review?”
Suppose that depends on who your peers are.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall; Humpty Dumpty had a great fall…………Now the very high wall is crumbling.
Admiting that the pause is attributed to a change in ocean cycle phase (PDO), would require admission that some or all of the warming in the last two decades was also attributed to ocean cycle phase changes. Slowly but surely the alarmist community will have to face that reality.
In a master stroke of rationalization and chutzpah, President Obama is now pointing to the fact that so many predictions of climate disaster have not materialized as ‘evidence’ of the ‘progress’ being made against ‘global warming.’ http://www.whitehouse.gov/climate-change
Global Warming IS man-made. As is every other theory. Nature doesn’t have theories.
The problem I see that warmers have is that all of the hand-wringing about the rate of warming being unnatural is what happens during “non-pause” periods. When you add in pauses, and if you expect pauses, then the warming rate isn’t out of the ordinary at all.
The models that I’ve seen seem to think that whatever rate we have today will continue on until we boil. If pauses are expected, and the models don’t account for them, then the models are wrong.
It’s pretty clear that Big Oil has learned to mimic natural variability in order to camouflage its ongoing, deliberate and nefarious warming of the planet. Don’t people see through this? It’s so obvious!
Moriarty was not half so clever.
How do “above ground atomic tests” cool the atmosphere?
And back in the real world the world’s just had the hottest May ever on record.
Curious given the Earth is meant to be in a cooling cycle.
Siberian_husky says:
June 27, 2014 at 5:08 pm
And back in the real world the world’s just had the hottest May ever on record.
This is the warmest May ever recorded by GISS. However on RSS it is sixth; on UAH, version 5.5 it is fourth; and on Hadsst3 it is second.
Hi,
I have been looking high and low for an online calculator that will allow me to calculate how many degrees of global temperature reduction a certain amount of renewable energy will deliver according to IPCCs “exaggerated” estimates. Alternatively, how many minutes it postpones the global warming “disaster”. Could anyone be so kind as to post a link if such exist?
It wasn’t the hottest May on record in the Pacific Northwest, so I sincerely doubt it was the hottest everywhere. Utterly meaningless pap.
Siberian_husky says:
June 27, 2014 at 5:08 pm
And back in the real world the world’s just had the hottest May ever on record.
Curious given the Earth is meant to be in a cooling cycle.
===
well it sorta works that way…..lots of jagged up and downs..when the over trend is down
http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/histo3.png
The whole farrago rests on saying that we have ruled out all other causes, thus it must be CO2.
That worked for Sherlock Holmes. But for it to work you have to be Sherlock Holmes (with the scriptwriters on your side).
And Sherlock Holmes, these guys ain’t.
Aleksander says:
June 27, 2014 at 6:44 pm
Hi,
I have been looking high and low for an online calculator that will allow me to calculate how many degrees of global temperature reduction a certain amount of
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This is a CO2 calculator that can do the basics….Hope that helps.
http://www.cato.org/blog/current-wisdom-we-calculate-you-decide-handy-dandy-carbon-tax-temperature-savings-calculator
Siberian_husky says:
June 27, 2014 at 5:08 pm
And back in the real world the world’s just had the hottest May ever on record.
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Wood For Trees Index (the most robust, IMO) shows temp trend for 5 years…negative. Temp trend for 10 years, negative. The neg trend goes back 14 years before it turns positive.
I predict boldly that in the next five years we will have some of the “hottest years on record” even if the cooling trend continues.
Wow- stunning ignorance.
Thanks to Mary Brown for the calculator. It is helpful as it gives some ratios that can be extrapolated, but I was hoping there would be an easier way to get at the numbers. To explain what I am looking for: I work to enlighten the Public in my country about the real environmental consequences of windfarms. A Developer will normally brag that his windfarm will aid in saving the climate and thereby making them in some peoples eyes heroes. I would like to show how many millionths of a degree a windfarm will really impact the climate assuming even the IPCCs prognosis. (I do of course know thet the numer is zero). To achieve that I am looking for a calculator that allows me to input TWh electricity, or an exact amount of CO2, and from that calculate the degrees reduced. I believe this may be a very illuminating number. I believe such a device would be very useful to many in a similar position.