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Sept. 4, 2014 7:20 p.m. ET THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
On Sept. 23 the United Nations will host a party for world leaders in New York to pledge urgent action against climate change. Yet leaders from China, India and Germany have already announced that they won’t attend the summit and others are likely to follow, leaving President Obama looking a bit lonely. Could it be that they no longer regard it as an urgent threat that some time later in this century the air may get a bit warmer?
In effect, this is all that’s left of the global-warming emergency the U.N. declared in its first report on the subject in 1990. The U.N. no longer claims that there will be dangerous or rapid climate change in the next two decades. Last September, between the second and final draft of its fifth assessment report, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change quietly downgraded the warming it expected in the 30 years following 1995, to about 0.5 degrees Celsius from 0.7 (or, in Fahrenheit, to about 0.9 degrees, from 1.3).
Even that is likely to be too high. The climate-research establishment has finally admitted openly what skeptic scientists have been saying for nearly a decade: Global warming has stopped since shortly before this century began.
First the climate-research establishment denied that a pause existed, noting that if there was a pause, it would invalidate their theories. Now they say there is a pause (or “hiatus”), but that it doesn’t after all invalidate their theories.
Alas, their explanations have made their predicament worse by implying that man-made climate change is so slow and tentative that it can be easily overwhelmed by natural variation in temperature—a possibility that they had previously all but ruled out.
We know now that it was Mr. Lynas who was wrong. Two years before Mr. Whitehouse’s article, climate scientists were already admitting in emails among themselves that there had been no warming since the late 1990s. “The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998,” wrote Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia in Britain in 2005. He went on: “Okay it has but it is only seven years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.”
If the pause lasted 15 years, they conceded, then it would be so significant that it would invalidate the climate-change models upon which policy was being built. A report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) written in 2008 made this clear: “The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more.”
Well, the pause has now lasted for 16, 19 or 26 years—depending on whether you choose the surface temperature record or one of two satellite records of the lower atmosphere. That’s according to a new statisticalcalculation by Ross McKitrick, a professor of economics at the University of Guelph in Canada.
It has been roughly two decades since there was a trend in temperature significantly different from zero. The burst of warming that preceded the millennium lasted about 20 years and was preceded by 30 years of slight cooling after 1940.
This has taken me by surprise. I was among those who thought the pause was a blip. As a “lukewarmer,” I’ve long thought that man-made carbon-dioxide emissions will raise global temperatures, but that this effect will not be amplified much by feedbacks from extra water vapor and clouds, so the world will probably be only a bit more than one degree Celsius warmer in 2100 than today. By contrast, the assumption built into the average climate model is that water-vapor feedback will treble the effect of carbon dioxide.
But now I worry that I am exaggerating, rather than underplaying, the likely warming.
Full story here.
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The WSJ published an article about a fact. Global warming has stopped. What is recorded in the oceans is less then 1/2 of predicted and somehow bypassed the first 700 meters, and below that the data error margins make any conclusion meaningless.
So Peter, are you in denial of this? Why should a journal suppress the truth?
Peter,
Regardless of what you think of Murdoch Snr. and his propaganda network, you should try to address every argument on its merits, otherwise you are probably committing one kind of fallacy or another. Attacking the source of an argument, the publisher for example, is an ad hominem fallacy.
Whatever happened to global warming? What’s your favorite excuse for the failure of the models?
Reblogged this on I Didn't Ask To Be a Blog and commented:
“It has been roughly two decades since there was a trend in temperature significantly different from zero. “
Most understand the science, as explained by alarmists is not robust. Most scientists understand it is wrong. No amount of obfuscation will force nature out of its self regulating ways. If climate was so easily and drastically controlled by one of its parameters, we would have long ago had a planet that would not support life. The question is, why did we not have runaway warming when CO2 was at much higher levels? The answer seems to be that like today, CO2 followed temperature with a substantial time lag, and the self regulating ability of natural variations easily overwhelm any climate effect caused by humans.
No one has proven that warmer and more CO2 is not a beneficial thing today when it has always been that way in the past. Were it not for hubris we would not be having this debate.
The reason the leaders of China, India, and Germany will not attend the meeting is that they, like the Democrats who now do not want to seen with the incompetent, incoherent, “lead from behind” Leader of the Flee World. ( That is not a spelling mistake. Mr Obama flees from responsibility, knowledge and transparency.) They understand that everything he touches turns into chaos and he will evade repercussions from the inevitable disastrous results of his actions or lack of actions.
China and India want US money. Germany now sees that they need coal powered electricity. Who ever would have thought of that/? Their governments are in enough trouble. They don’t want to take a giant step down to Mr Obama’s level.
end of rant.
“We call it riding the gravy train” I should rewrite “Have a cigar” with witty global warming lyrics for a laugh.
The U.N. will I’m sure create another cudgel since this one is off the rails. And all the ignorant Euros will swallow the next thing hook line and sinker too. Meanwhile Obama and the democratic party are still beating this dead horse.
richardscourtney
September 5, 2014 at 6:29 am
Ian W
You are spouting rubbish.
Both CO2 and H2O are radiative greenhouse gases. It is a function of their molecular shapes.
Richard
So you are saying that water molecules in a water droplet or ice crystals behave just like a Co2 molecules when they are hit by infrared photons? Do they immediately re-emit that IR in the same way as CO2?
What part of greenhouse “gas” do you not understand?
Water vapor, in the gas phase, is a powerful IR absorber. In fact, it is a much stronger absorber across the IR spectrum than CO2 is. In the liquid phase, the spectrum is considerably distorted and there is a large broad absorption band due to hydrogen bonding. Experimentally, water is quite a nuisance when doing IR work. Samples must be throughly dried lest residual water swamps out the spectrum of your sample of interest. Also, humidity can cause problems with the spectrometers themselves, if left unchecked.
You correctly note that water, with its high heat capacity and large phase change energies, moves large amounts of heat through the atmosphere via convection. But we note that these are quite separate processes.
Not exactly separate, for they deal with the same energy, and that energy cannot multiply on its own. By this I mean that the ratio of how much the same energy is conducted vs radiated, vs. convected etc., varies depending on composition of atmospheric gases, W/L or Light spectrum, and the materials encountered including of course water or oceans.
The Pause
Is Because
of Flaws
In the Cause
Good one………………
They won’t run out of catastrophes. The myth of overpopulation is still hangin’ in there. Probably there are many regular WUWT readers who buy into this idea of us White Westerners going over to all of the Dark Continents, with Paul Ehrlich and Bill Gates, so we can put birth control in the water, promote rampant abortion, and conduct secret and coercive sterilizations on women.
The CAGW scam is practically the same, with all of the funded research, NGOs, the UN, and the Jesus-Complex All-Knowing Planet-Saving Good-For-Thee-But-Not-For-Me Marxists saving us from ourselves.
Thanks, Matt Ridley. Sanity and common sense should return.
The commentary is technically correct if you are focused on the temperature of air, which is just one part of the earth’s biosphere that is warming. Increased temperature can manifest itself in the air, in the surface waters of the ocean, or in deep ocean waters. Please look a bit more carefully into the literature before reaching this conclusion. Ocean currents, which undergo cycles that can last decades, determine to a large extent where increased heat builds up. The earth has been in a multi-decade period where ocean currents have resulted in heating of deep ocean water (below 300 m). The amount of heating corresponds well with what is predicted from climate models based on atmospheric CO2 increases. At some time in the future (known form experience with many past events), the circulation pattern will change and that water will be brought to the surface, at which time surface ocean and air temperatures likely will increase rapidly. Don’t take my comments as valid, and likewise, don’t take the comments of the others who have replied here as valid either. Instead, please take a look at a journal article published in Nature Climate Change (“Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus”) Volume 4, March 2014, pages 222-227. This article clearly explains the phenomenon that I have described. Then you will have a broader context of information on which to base your conclusions.
Karl says, “The earth has been in a multi-decade period where ocean currents have resulted in heating of deep ocean water (below 300 m). The amount of heating corresponds well with what is predicted from climate models based on atmospheric CO2 increases.”
Please but no. From 0 to 700 m virtually no warming within the error bars and less then one third of the CAGW models. From 700m plus, about 1/2 the warming predicted by the models. ( I guess for climate science this is damm good). Now pray tell me, assuming, and scientifically we are inside the error bars so should not assume, how is this fraction of a degree of warming in the deep oceans, with a turnover of about 1000 years, going to manifest as CAGW in the future?
It is always helpful to step back and take a look at the big picture occasionally.
Back radiation, reflected radiation, atmospheric radiation is real and it warms, it doesn’t warm equally though. It warms the land but it doesn’t warm the ocean.
The reason why is that IR radiation (atmospheric radiation) is absorbed and radiated by the top couple of microns of the surface. On land that is the end of the story, the land warms, but on the ocean it merely increases the rate of evaporation, which carries the energy away as latent heat and doesn’t result in any surface warming or warming at depth either.
Incidentally this also helps explain the UHI effect (cities are like deserts in that they inhibit evaporation and convection). This also explains how the real greenhouse effect is because of sunlight penetrating the ocean’s surface.
There is not one shred of evidence that the earth’s climate system works the way the models have it working. Not one shred of evidence the models are correct. Not one shred of evidence the modelers have a clue.
Here’s what they have: CO2 is a greenhouse gas (true), atmospheric CO2 is increasing (also true), human emissions are causing the rise in atmospheric CO2 (mostly true), therefore the warming in the late 20th century was caused by CO2 (unproven, but likely somewhat true) and if human CO2 emissions continue, it will cause a climate cataclysm (pure speculation).
This is what sprung out at me when they tried to offer any explanation for the pause. I have been relatedly told by fantasists at the Guardian (quoting SkS) that co2 was now the main driver of climate. I knew this was rubbish as the standstill was around a decade back then.
Here is the main driver and control knob in action.
“Global Temperature Update – No global warming for 17 years 11 months”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/04/global-temperature-update-no-global-warming-for-17-years-11-months/
I assume there are at this moment climatetistas out scouring the myths and fables, rumors and hints of other remotely possible disasters upon which to build an edifice of profitable hysteria and profit. The media naturally will do what it can and Mother Government will yet again energize it’s merry band of memoranda reading overpaid government louts, every last one counting his days to retirement.
This is our opportunity to beat them to the punch. May I nominate global cooling as the bogeyman — once the world runs out of fossil fuel, CO2 will drop off a cliff, and there will be no way left open to us for preventing the sudden onset of the ice age. Therefore, to prevent this, we must cut down on fossil fuel use now, in order to save it for our grand children! We must store CO2 underground, so that we may release it to avert future disaster!
WSJ has been publishing op-eds by Fred Singer for at least 20 years, so your history is incorrect and the implication of some sort of Murdoch coup is incorrect.
So how do we the taxpayers that have been swindled of our dollars get out money back from the AGW crowd? Who do we sue or what recompense do we have??
Global warming is in recession right now….
The important comment from Ridley’s article:
“leaders from China, India and Germany have already announced that they won’t attend the summit ”
Things will begin to change as the financing spigot slowly shuts down.
Nothing happened, but nothing was happening.
Thanks. That’s a nice overview and update, especially for casual observers of the topic most susceptible to the policy scam underway.
As we can all see from the above, the Science doesn’t appear to be entirely settled.
Please explain what that has to do with the predictions versus observations made climate scientists regarding temperatures. Some of us will listen if you actually have something to say. Posts like the one you’ve just made, however, make you look like a crazy person.
[To whom are you addressing your question? Those who claim CAGW will be catastrophic despite 18 years of data showing they are wrong? Or the writer/administrator of this blog? .mod]
Moderator: The threading says he is replying to Peter… don’t worry, you’ll get used to it 😉
Why is the US the sole party in charge? We have regulations in place. Put the pressure on Aisa to clean up their acts before we do anything more, sign any more Kyoto protocols.
Yeah put some pressure on Asia; right after you’ve “isolated” Russia, good luck!