Think Progress: We've found some global warming!

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Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Think Progress is crowing that “even deniers” confirm an average satellite measured temperature rise of 0.12c / decade. My response is – so what?

Sorry Deniers, Even Satellites Confirm Record Global Warming

The planet just had its hottest 12 months on record.

The people who deny the facts of climate science for a living have had a really tough time recently.

For years they had been dining off the “there’s been no warming since 1998” talking point. But that one was mortally wounded when 2014 became the hottest year on record — and then it died entirely when 2015 blew away the 2014 record. And now a stake is being driven through the heart of this vampire again and again as every month of 2016 has been totally crushing both the record for hottest month and the record for hottest 12 months on record.

You will no doubt be shocked, shocked to learn that the satellite data has, in fact, confirmed global warming for a long time. Indeed Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) reported earlier this year that the satellite data shows a “Global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978 [of] +0.12 C [0.22F] per decade.” And Spencer and Christy are both leading deniers themselves!

And now that dataset has once again confirmed what multiple data streams have been reporting for a long time: there is a long-term warming trend, and it has been getting worse.

In truth, none of this is funny. The lies of the professional deniers get repeated by the politicians and right-wing media who oppose action — and all that helps slow our response to the greatest preventable threat to our health and well-being. That is a tragedy we must all fight against.

Read more: https://thinkprogress.org/satellites-confirm-global-warming-ce6d636c469f

What kind of catastrophe awaits this century, if the calamitous 0.12c / decade (0.21F / decade) rise continues? The answer is none whatsoever. 0.12c / decade is well within the range of natural variation.

During the Holocene Optimum, 9000 to 5000 years ago, global temperature was warmer than today. The Eemian, the previous interglacial, was warmer still – up to 8C (14F) warmer in arctic regions.

What is absent from historical records of the warmer past is evidence of “tipping points” or abrupt harmful changes driven by mild global warming. Even when Earth’s CO2 levels were four times higher than today, the climate was stable, and only 7F higher than today’s temperature.

Even if CO2 is contributing measurably to global warming, it is not driving change at a rate which will cause harm to the biosphere.

It is a measure of the desperation of climate advocates that they feel such a compulsion to leap on every slight temperature wobble, in the vain hope that ordinary people will listen to their doom laden rants.

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evcricket
September 7, 2016 9:30 pm

This is another bad post. You go from talking about rates of change to whether it was warm in the past. Clear bait and switch.
Amateurs.

biffster
Reply to  evcricket
September 7, 2016 9:42 pm

The fact that it was warmer in the past proves the claimed rate of change may be due entirely to natural phenomena.

Reply to  biffster
September 8, 2016 4:11 pm

Absolutely correct. Climate change is a natural phenomena and IF human activity has a component it is no where near enough to drive climate change. The fundamental problem is there is no way to separate the effects of human activity from the Sun’s forcing function. The climate changes with or without the presence of humans.

biffster
Reply to  evcricket
September 7, 2016 9:44 pm

The fact that it was (many degrees) warmer in the past proves that the claimed rate of change may be due entirely to natural causes, and have nothing to do with human activity. “Bait and switch” my azz.

Griff
Reply to  biffster
September 8, 2016 4:28 am

that doesn’t exclude the possibility that climate change now may be the result of human produced CO2 – i.e. a new factor.

schitzree
Reply to  biffster
September 8, 2016 5:06 am

True, it doesn’t prove the slight warming since the end of the Little Ice Age was natural and not anthropogenic. But it certainly shows it could be.
And that’s a huge problem for the Climate Faithful. Their whole belief requires that the recent warming is ‘unprecedented’, that it COULDN’T be natural and must therefore be caused by human produced CO2.
Personally, the fact that they need to claim the ‘unprecedented’ warming of the last El Nino that shows up in the Satellite record as their indisputable proof of Global Warming tells me all I need to know about their crazy beliefs.
Do you think when the next La Nina is over and the Satellite record has returned to where it was back in 2013, that the Climate Faithful will admit they were wrong? Will they even admit it if we see significant cooling? I’m not holding my breath.

Latitude
Reply to  biffster
September 8, 2016 6:13 am

yep…and it also doesn’t exclude the possibility that we could be freezing our a$$es off if we hadn’t intervened
Climate science is so well understood….that no one knows

Jim Berkise
Reply to  biffster
September 8, 2016 6:16 am

How’s this? At .12 degree C/decade it would be be ALMOST 1 degree C warmer in 2100; I seem to recall programs costing trillions that were targeted to holding warming below 2 degrees C by 2100.

MarkW
Reply to  biffster
September 8, 2016 6:20 am

Griff, the mere fact that CO2 hasn’t been excluded is not sufficient to prove that we need to do something about CO2 now.

MarkW
Reply to  biffster
September 8, 2016 6:22 am

Jim, and they are relying on the warm pulse caused by the recent El Nino to get even that 0.12C/decade.
A warm pulse that is already fading.

D. J. Hawkins
Reply to  biffster
September 8, 2016 7:11 am

@Griff;
It is the obligation of the affirmative team (catastrophists) to provide evidence to support their claim. We can already show that it’s been warmer and colder in the past when CO2 was not the driver. We can also show in the last century a warming period from c. 1910 – 1940 that’s almost identical to c. 1975 – 2000. The IPCC itself says the “warming signal” can’t be detected before 1950. Therefore it’s the catastrophists’ responsibility to show how the rate of warming is different now from then and how CO2 is making that happen. So far, no dice.

Eugene WR Gallun
Reply to  biffster
September 8, 2016 7:46 am

Griff —
“Human produced CO2” is no different from “non-human produced CO2”. It is all CO2. We know that CO2 has been much higher in the past and the earth suffered no climate calamities. What’s this bug you have up your rectum about “human produced CO2”?
Do you believe “human produced CO2” causes ten times the green house effect that “non-human produced CO2 causes? Or something else crazy like that? Get help, man.
Eugene WR Gallun

Charles Higley
Reply to  biffster
September 8, 2016 7:55 am

The idea that a trace gas that easily moves in and out of the oceans can drive the climate is ludicrous. The IPCC models say that a tiny bit of warming caused by a tiny increase in atmospheric CO2 is magnified by water vapor that enters the atmosphere because that tiny CO2 warming.
However, what is entirely ignored is the water cycle, a powerful, global heat engine that ramps up with warming and brings the temperature back down. Rising convective, warm, moist air carries heat energy as well as the latent heat of evaporation (insensible “heat”) and returns cold water, as rain, sleet, or snow, to the surface. This cycle is responsible for the movement of as much as 85% of the surface insolation budget. If you ignore this massive het engine, then you have Trenberth’s problem where he cannot find the “missing” heat and tries to claim that the missing heat has somehow burrowed into the deep ocean and is lurking there, waiting to emerge later—a boogey man in the closet approach to science—constituting a willful ignorance of the water cycle and what it does.
The warmist models focus ONLY on CO2 and then consider water vapor as enslaved by a little warming to serve as a positive-feedback that can cause runaway warming. They completely ignore over 50 other major climate factors s they HAVE to have CO2 drive the climate. The fact that it has been much warmer than now in the past, when CO2 has been much higher than now, indicates clearly that runaway conditions or “tipping points” do not exist in our climate.
Warming by CO2 in any detectable way is a joke. a joke supported by junk science, totally biased to support the political agenda of blaming “climate change” on man’s activities. This gives politicians the backing to make policy decisions that are aimed at control, power, and money and have nothing to do with global warming by man that is not happening. Some fighting-climate change leaders have openly admitted that the agenda is to force wealth redistribution, destroy capitalism (the only system that actually creates wealth), and create a one-world government (which would HAVE to be socialist and totalitarian).
Do not forget that, as climate variation in the last hundred has been entirely within the normal historical variation range, it is irrational or blatant lying to blame recent warming on man just because you want it to be true.

george e. smith
Reply to  biffster
September 8, 2016 12:02 pm

“””””…..The planet just had its hottest 12 months on record. …..”””””
NO ! that simply is not correct.
For example, back East they had at least one month with record massive snow falls that shut everything down.
How could such a thing possibly happen during one of the hottest 12 months on record.
Even in California, we had at least one month that was nowhere near being one of the 12 hottest months on record.
All over the world people experienced at least one month that was nowhere near being one of the hottest 12 months ever recorded.
Total BS.
And for the record, the satellite record only goes back to about 1979.
And I personally don’t believe ANY Temperature records that pre-date that; nor those previous to circa 1980 when oceanic buoys started reporting that oceanic air Temperatures are NOT the same as oceanic water Temperatures, which were used for most of the previous hundred and fifty years. And since those two Temperatures were also found to NOT be correlated, it is inherently impossible; no matter what to correct those erroneous temperatures obtained from buckets of water, to find the true lower tropospheric atmosphere temperatures.
So we have barely begun the second climate 30 year period of credible temperature records, so it’s a bit early to be crowing about records.
G

JohnKnight
Reply to  biffster
September 8, 2016 7:08 pm

Eric,
“It is a measure of the desperation of climate advocates that they feel such a compulsion to leap on every slight temperature wobble, in the vain hope that ordinary people will listen to their doom laden rants.”
To me, it is a measure of climate alarm skeptic’s unwise laziness when they use language like; “climate advocates”, rather than something like *climate alarm advocates* or *climate crisis advocates* . . I really believe it behooves us to make it clear that we don’t deny climate, are not skeptical of climate, or global warming, or advocate against climate, etc, etc.
“We” are being gamed, I believe, into adopting non-nonsensical lingo about ourselves, and thereby I believe, have missed many an opportunity to make clear that what the subject piece here is presenting, is simply wrong. Please consider avoiding the catch phrases which don’t speak to the aspect climate alarm/crisis skeptics are skeptical about.

JohnKnight
Reply to  biffster
September 8, 2016 7:13 pm

PS ~ Also please consider adding a pale blue or gray line in the left-hand border of the middle column comment boxes, as I’ve suggested before, so I don’t keep sticking my comments in the wrong places ; )

Olaf Koenders
Reply to  evcricket
September 7, 2016 10:27 pm

Seems like all you’ve got cricket. That was an awfully lazy drive-by shooting. You missed and still ran like the wussie you are.
Amateur.
If 0.12 C/decade seems bad to you, how does it sound when every 6 months the globe has a dramatic shift of some +/- 25.00 C? That’s a rate of change 0.12 C/decade pales into insignificance by many orders of magnitude and, there’s STILL nothing bad to show for it except your fingers and toes either get chilly or you sweat a bit more and the trees either lose or grow their leaves.
Regardless, over the last 500m years (even late 20thC, according to GISS data fudgers), there have been higher rates of change (not just counting El Nino or La Nina), higher temperatures and higher amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere that only appear some 800 years after the warming, according to ice cores. This also applies to cooling. How you’ve managed to survive this long is incomprehensible according to your “scientists”, that have also miraculously survived alongside you.
Just because some data pointed to some month being 0.01 C/F higher than last month/year, doesn’t mean it’s anything meaningful, let alone measurable or honest. Data fabrication is statistically higher this month than the last. Go see Steve Goddard.
While you’re contemplating this on the Tree of Woe, many more REAL scientists, archaeologists, geologists and anthropologists will continue to find ancient tree stumps and manmade tools under glaciers that are retreating, which they have accomplished before. Proving that the climate will continue to change and icicles somewhere in the Arctic will continue to dribble in summer no matter what you espouse and poo yourself over.

Reply to  Olaf Koenders
September 7, 2016 11:06 pm

Olaf,
he is so ignorant on what the IPCC, for years has been projecting their per decade warming rate, as part of their CO2 is bad for you campaign. If he bothered to read and learn,he would know that the Satellite .12C per decade warming rate is BELOW the minimum per decade warming rate as published in EVERY single IPCC report publication.
Thinkless Stagnation doesn’t bother to point out the inconvenient information.

Olaf Koenders
Reply to  Olaf Koenders
September 8, 2016 12:47 am

I know Sunsettommy, that’s pretty much why I didn’t base my answer on $billion IPCC stuff in the first place and instead used facts that cost FAR less and has been known for a long time. Alluding to stuff Warmists use anyway, which is probably all cricket could comprehend:

“You don’t need to be a climate scientist to see climate change, just look out the window.”

That’s been a common theme among those that have no evidence or know nothing anyway, such as celebrities. They appeal to authority and claim us realists aren’t climate scientists, then quote the above as if they didn’t need any or facts either. Laughable, but also sad considering there are still people in the world too lazy to think critically and self-educate.

Reply to  evcricket
September 7, 2016 10:39 pm

Evcricket,
you ignorance is clear,you failed to realize that the IPCC projected from 1990 on wards of at least .15C per decade warming (1990) to the current .30C per decade warming projection.
You offer nothing cogent here.

Reply to  evcricket
September 7, 2016 11:01 pm

Cricket,
Thinkless Stagnation think they wrote a clever article attacking a group of people who for years have accepted the Satellite data all along,showing a warming trend since 1979. Why did YOU fall for their obvious lies,evcricket?
Dr. Spencer, has a personal climate blog where he post a monthly global temperature report, showing that it has warmed since 1979.
Skeptics have long known there is warming going on even further back to the 1800’s and even further back to the late 1600’s when the LIA bottomed out at the coldest point.
You are being easily mislead and lied to by their breathless crap.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Sunsettommy
September 8, 2016 7:47 am

“Dr. Spencer, has a personal climate blog where he post a monthly global temperature report, showing that it has warmed since 1979.”
You’re being misled into thinking that there is such a thing as a global temperature. It’s junk when either side of the issue uses it.

Duster
Reply to  Sunsettommy
September 9, 2016 6:26 pm

The article on “Thoughtless Stasis” is by good old Joe Romm, who gave up science for politics. I believe that both Drs. Spencer and Christie have been pointing out a mild warming in satellite data for several years. The warming was not in line with predicted changes (not big enough) and was generally ignored, trivialized, or criticized. Now it has become “warming” – italicized and bolded.
Recently we have also seen “warmist” thinkers “discover” that the planet has in fact warmed since at least 180 years ago, and that sea levels are not rising significantly or possibly at all based on longer term tidal-gauge data. What we see is a clique who have established themselves as being “very alarmed.” Now that everyone knows this they can be “very alarmed” about relatively trivial natural patterns, which they are now in the process of re-attributing to the “alarming” preconditions (of anthropic environmental changes). Hmmm, I may be suffering from apophenia.

AndyG55
Reply to  evcricket
September 7, 2016 11:58 pm

Gees cricket, you poor little insect…
…. the ONLY warming has come from El Ninos and ocean oscillations.
neither of which are caused by CO2.
The only way you get a trend is by using those El Nino “events”
1979 was the very bottom of the AMO. That AMO is just starting to ease of its peak, and we have a somewhat sullen sun. The next few year could be very interesting for the farce that is called “global warming”/ climate change” / climate disruption”… or whatever the troughers want to call it next.

Brett Keane
Reply to  AndyG55
September 9, 2016 3:00 am

@ AndyG55
September 7, 2016 at 11:58 pm: Andy, I was about to write the same, that 1979 was at the chil end of the last cooling cycle, c.32yrs. Been mostly the next warming curve since. But we are cooling again now, merely exiting a Nino/Japan Current heat release to space as cooling resumes. The AMO/AO is showing cold currents northwards which have the warmists wetting themselves and proposing their usual pseudo-scientific waffle. They are staring doom in the face in the waters near Scotland so there will be a lot of squawking…..

Santa Baby
Reply to  evcricket
September 8, 2016 12:16 am

I would simply ask what are the alternatives and costs. If there is only one alternative and no idea about the costs it’s a good indication that Marxism is behind it all in order to attack today’s western culture and society. Marxism has been tried out in several countries, but it does not work. It’s a corrupt ideology and I will not be a serf under Marxism. No thanks.

Reply to  Santa Baby
September 8, 2016 5:40 pm

Santa:
After decades of being a “leader” in our weird society, once bent on the idea of making freedom a genuine option, I’ve personally decided the vast majority are ignorant tax cattle, doomed to serve the rent seekers willing to spend time herding them.
As far as I’m concerned, good riddance. I’ll die soon enough anyway and I’ll likely spend the rest of my life on a ship in international waters. To hell with the rest of you.

Tim Hammond
Reply to  evcricket
September 8, 2016 1:26 am

Because as the rate of change stays constant, the temperature increases? You seem to be confused as to how rate of change and the effects of that change relate.

charles nelson
Reply to  evcricket
September 8, 2016 3:05 am

Live bait anyone?

PiperPaul
Reply to  evcricket
September 8, 2016 3:49 am
TRM
Reply to  PiperPaul
September 8, 2016 2:35 pm

Now that is funny. Made me laugh. Thanks

John Leggett
Reply to  evcricket
September 8, 2016 4:10 am

Of course it is getting warmer what do expect to happen at the end of “The Little Ice Age” and the beginning of the “Modern Warm Period”. The real question is if it is abnormal and the is no evidence that it is.

Reply to  John Leggett
September 8, 2016 6:08 pm

John, it’s been my experience logic has no place in this conversation. As soon as hell freezes over the opposition will be both happy and dead. Game over.

Kenneth Espenschied
Reply to  evcricket
September 8, 2016 4:40 am

Didn’t they say this is within normal variation, then compare current conditions with past events to show that there has been even more natural variation before the industrial era? How is that a bait and switch? Regardless – the point is well taken – there has been much more natural variation in the past, and the result wasn’t catastrophic.

Ron
Reply to  evcricket
September 8, 2016 5:32 am

if you look at the CET for the last 350 years it appears the globe has been warming at a fairly constant and moderate rate. The rate appears to be constant before, after and during the broad use of fossil fuels. Even in the last 50 years or so, with increased use of fossil fuels, the rate seems to be exactly the same. It would appear that natural variation could be a plausible explanation for this.

Reply to  evcricket
September 8, 2016 5:49 am

I find it hard to believe commenters like evcricket are not willfully dishonest .
The simplest , 8th grade projection :
http://cosy.com/Science/CO2vTkelvin.jpg

benofhouston
Reply to  Bob Armstrong
September 8, 2016 11:23 am

Except it’s well known that energy absorption follows beers law of Eabs=E(1-e^Ac), where A is a negative constant. Linear extrapolation is just plain wrong and will greatly overestimate the effects of the further you extrapolate.

Reply to  Bob Armstrong
September 8, 2016 7:02 pm

You left ff the /sarc tag Ben. That may cause trouble around here…
Beer’s Law indeed.

Reply to  Bob Armstrong
September 9, 2016 4:56 pm

Thank you Bartleby !
The importance of 0 based scales for any computations is something that should be basic knowledge at the 8th grade level .

MarkW
Reply to  evcricket
September 8, 2016 6:16 am

Both points are relevant.
What’s amateurish is you pathetic attempt to change the subject.

JohnWho
Reply to  evcricket
September 8, 2016 6:44 am

Funny that you don’t point out that the “Sorry Deniers, Even Satellites Confirm Record Global Warming” is based on a lie since skeptics (not the “D” word) have not denied that the planet has been warming, although we have pointed out that for almost 20 years there had been a pause in that warming which is something that does not fit in the Alarmist’s predictions/projections.

Duster
Reply to  JohnWho
September 9, 2016 6:31 pm

It was Joe Romm who wrote that. He has a former life as a physicist, but has now converted to politics. The “d-word” is a political key. It is meaningless, oxymoronic and only appeals to about 1/2 the population who never were taught critical thinking or how to read for meaning.

Caligula Jones
Reply to  evcricket
September 8, 2016 6:51 am

If you honestly think there is a proxy from thousands of years ago that is as accurate as .12c a decade you aren’t even an amateur. You are on the sidelines never getting picked.

Reply to  Caligula Jones
September 8, 2016 7:08 pm

Caligula, it’s obvious you lack a solid grounding in statistical methodology.
What you do is take a few measurements by “proxy” a couple thousand years (estimated +/- 10,000 years) accurate to +/- 100C, put them over the estimated time, and divide. Then you report the results with one tenth degree C precision. Simple as cake. Easy as pi.

Reply to  Caligula Jones
September 8, 2016 7:12 pm

Sorry, didn’t see the 2. One one hundredth degree precision. A pi walk.

Tom O
Reply to  evcricket
September 8, 2016 10:22 am

So what’s the problem? You folks went from denying the satellite record – 19 years of no warming – to embracing it because it came up with a year of warming. Do you always think that everything has to be according to your rules?

Reply to  Tom O
September 8, 2016 7:14 pm

Tom, rules are meant to be interpreted. A person can’t be constrained by rules. How could we ever sell sneakers if we took all those rules so seriously? Be realistic.

Phil's Dad
Reply to  evcricket
September 8, 2016 5:52 pm

“What kind of catastrophe awaits this century, if the calamitous 0.12c / decade (0.21F / decade) rise continues? The answer is none whatsoever. 0.12c / decade is well within the range of natural variation.”
It also means we can meet the Paris targets on “business as usual” emission levels. Game over.

Tom Halla
September 7, 2016 9:36 pm

As if .12C is any big deal 🙂

Reply to  Tom Halla
September 7, 2016 11:21 pm

Tom Halla.: ” As if .12 C is any big deal” ,
if I read the article the right way, that was per decade? That in it self would be even more minuscule.

prjindigo
Reply to  Toby Smit
September 8, 2016 3:27 am

It would be quite literally below the margin of error of instrument decay on the sensors used, thus a false number to begin with and unscientific to use it at best.

Santa Baby
Reply to  Tom Halla
September 8, 2016 12:30 am

“As if .12C is any big deal :-)”
And it’s mostly toward the poles and in winter during night. We would not notice.

4TimesAYear
Reply to  Tom Halla
September 8, 2016 12:30 am

Probably well within the +/- margin of error again.

September 7, 2016 9:45 pm

Statistical significance for that rate would be hard to establish particularly in view of the known dependence and memory driven chaotic behavior of the temperature time series.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2763358
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2776867

John
Reply to  chaamjamal
September 7, 2016 10:21 pm

Well, you only get to .12 by including the monster El Nino we are in now and prior to this El Nino, satellite measurements had shown no increase since 1998. For sure they showed from 79 (the start) and 1998. Cherry picking El Ninos of 1998 and 2016 is just desperate. It reminds me of the charts floating around that ended in 1998. Probably because they know monster ones aren’t too common and they know it is going to level off. No claim yet that co2 makes El Nino? Ha..

Dave
Reply to  John
September 7, 2016 10:35 pm

Don’t you mean “Well, you only get to .12 by including all the temperatures from the start of the UAH satellite record to the present”? The number quoted is for the whole satellite record, no cherry picking. Incidentally, the RSS number is .13 for the TLT set (still using the flawed v3.3 methodology) and .177 for the TTT product (using the new V4.0 method that takes better account of diurnal drift).

John
Reply to  John
September 7, 2016 11:07 pm

Knowing we are in an El Nino, the biggest since the 1997-1998 one and ONLY THEN can you get to 0.12 per decade is akin to purposely ending your dataset on a high point, as you know a year prior will show something entirely opposite to your agenda. Then using those peaks, which are ENTIRELY understood to be not caused by CO2 to justify your stance on AGW is not that far away from fraud. In 5 years that 0.12 will have dropped off again and the next El Nino will be eagerly awaited to again start picking the peak and saying “Look! 0.12 warming a decade again”.
Incidentally, 0.12 a decade would be lower than even the most conservative IPCC forecast.

Dave
Reply to  John
September 7, 2016 11:26 pm

No, I don’t think anybody is “purposely” ending the trend from the start of the satellite record to the present day: its just reality that we are where we are today. There have been several strong El Nino and La Nina events within that period. All the data shows is that the net warming irons out to a trend. As for your claim that rolling the clock back a year “will show something entirely opposite to your agenda”, that is simply incorrect. If you do so, the UAH6.0b5 dataset would then give a trend of 0.110 (+- 0.013 degrees). i.e. within the error margin of the current trend. The data are publicly available – go do the math properly.

John
Reply to  John
September 7, 2016 11:44 pm

Ah, you are right, I did miscalculate.
.11 or .12 (not sure if even statistically relevant). I don’t think this trend is concerning, even if it were to continue for another 3 or so decades.

urederra
Reply to  John
September 8, 2016 3:53 am

Los niños, not El ninos, please. 😛 (same as in Los Ángeles).

MarkW
Reply to  John
September 8, 2016 6:26 am

Dave, so you are defending the use of bad data, because it’s the only data you got?

MarkW
Reply to  John
September 8, 2016 6:39 am

Dave, in a year or so, when we are in the middle of a La Nina, will you still be defending using all readings or will you be arguing that since the La Nina is a temporary phenomena, it should be factored out?

Richard M
Reply to  John
September 8, 2016 7:56 am

Always starting at the beginning point in a data series is not always the best. If you want to know how much a 40 year old person is growing which is better? Starting at birth or at age 20?
The same holds true for climate. Since we know there are natural cycles, starting at the beginning of the satellite data series is actually quite misleading. That is near the low points for both the PDO and AMO effects on the climate. At present the best starting point is probably the mid-points of the cycle which would be around 1994-95. If you then stop before the current El Nino contaminates the data you end up around .2 C / decade with UAH and .3 C / decade with RSS.
Quite a big difference considering this is still slightly influenced by the ocean cycles and occurs over a period where nearly 40% of CO2 emissions took place.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1995/to:2015/plot/rss/from:1995/to:2015/trend/plot/uah6/from:1995/to:2015/plot/uah6/from:1995/to:2015/trend

Dave
Reply to  John
September 8, 2016 11:48 am

MarkW, are you suggesting that the UAH satellite data is “bad”? I didn’t get any data at all – all I did was run analysis on the readily downloaded UAH V6.0 (beta 5) that you can get via links on Roy Spencer’s blog. The numbers I have quoted have not “factored out” any data at all, I just computed the trend to today and from 12 months ago and gave you the trend for both, because John was claiming that it was just the recent El Nino that gave that trend. The last 38 years of satellite records include several large El Ninos, La Ninas and volcanic eruptions that have all influenced global temperatures. But over all 38 years, despite that, there is still a trend.

MarkW
Reply to  John
September 8, 2016 1:40 pm

Sigh. Dave, do we really have to go over this yet again.
You claimed that we have to all the data, regardless of where it started because it’s all we’ve got.
Actual scientist know that starting a recording at the lowest point in nearly 100 years is not a good way to measure actual trends. But then we all know that you aren’t interested in being accurate, just proving your point.

Bartemis
Reply to  John
September 8, 2016 1:46 pm

Dave – You are comparing apples and tennis balls. Yes, there was an increase in temperatures in the satellite records up to the monster El Nino in 1998. After that, temperatures stopped rising by any statistically significant measure. Until the recent monster El Nino, it was possible to extend a zero slope trend line all the way back to about 1997.
That is the “pause”. It was entirely counter to the warmist meme that CO2 had now set us on a course of relentlessly rising temperatures, and that meme was thereby falsified.
The claim now is that the “pause” is no longer, as the recent El Nino tips the trend slightly upward. But, El Nino is a temporary natural phenomenon, independent of any human attribution. Within the next few months, it will dissipate entirely. Moreover, there will likely be a significant La Nina cooling event to follow. The “pause” will continue, and likely even dip into negative trend territory.
Hanging the warmist hats on a temporary natural phenomenon is begging for humiliation in the months ahead. Global temperatures are simply not rising, and AGW is a bust.

Gabro
Reply to  John
September 9, 2016 11:14 am

All government and scientific papers in English say “the El Niños” because “El Niño” is a single concept, as in “The El Niños of 2004–2005 and 2006–2007 were weak, moderate in 2002–2003, but moderate La Niña occurred in 2010–2011.” It’s not treated as if “El” and “Niño” were two separate Spanish words being used in an English sentence.

Gabro
Reply to  John
September 9, 2016 11:24 am

Dave
September 8, 2016 at 11:48 am
The trend will at the very least fall over the next year and quite possibly disappear in coming years. In any case, it’s tiny and an artifact of another super El Nino, natural phenomena which occur around every 15 years or so.
The most important point, though, is that the insignificant warming currently visible in the satellite record is far below that predicted by models. And if you look back before the dedicated satellite record began in 1979, it’s even more obvious that there is no correlation between rising CO2 and temperature.
Earth’s response to rising CO2 for 32 years after the end of WWII was to cool dramatically. Then, in 1977, the PDO flipped and the planet started to warm. This natural cycle happened to coincide accidentally with the continued rise in CO2, and indeed contributed to the increase, since warmer water gives up more of the beneficial, essential trace gas.

Duster
Reply to  chaamjamal
September 9, 2016 6:41 pm

Your persistance at Sonoma has steadily raised my opinion of the school. Thanks for posting those links. The Greenland paper is particularly interesting. No trend in over a century – very interesting to say the least.

ren
September 7, 2016 9:56 pm
David Ball
Reply to  ren
September 8, 2016 5:52 pm

So what causes this cold burst? Where does it come from? Is space not cold?

Reply to  David Ball
September 8, 2016 7:30 pm

“Is space not cold?”
Space is cold. The equator is warm. Hot air rises.
We call this process convection.

ren
Reply to  David Ball
September 9, 2016 2:55 am
Duster
Reply to  David Ball
September 9, 2016 6:44 pm

No, space is not cold. Nor is it hot. Substances in it, radiation passing through it might be thought to have temperature but if vacuum had temperature your thermos would fail.

David Ball
Reply to  David Ball
September 9, 2016 8:52 pm

No one has answered the question. Sigh.

arthur4563
September 7, 2016 10:16 pm

“there’s been no warming since 1998” talking point. But that one was mortally wounded when 2014 became the hottest year on record — and then it died entirely when 2015 blew away the 2014 record. And now a stake is being driven through the heart of this vampire again and again as every month of 2016 has been totally crushing both the record for hottest month and the record for hottest 12 months on record.”
As always, not as smidgen of data. Preposterously exaggerated warming , cannot make any claims about whether statistically any warming trend is present. Also “hottest on record” (by a tiny amount) is not even hottest of this eposh – both the Roman and Medieval Warm periods were considerably warmer. The “record” they refer to is meaningless. And I never heard either Christy or Spencer ever deny that there is a warming trend going on . The history of the planet for the past multi millenea has been one of warming. If you find cooling, that would be a big deal. Warming no big deal, people. The stupidity of the global warmists is that they cannot seem to understand that the issue is not whether (irrelevant) but how much warming can be ascribed to human activity. Correlations between CO2 and warming have been low enough to lead anyone to doubt the capacity of CO2 to cause massive warming. And thank God the warmists don’t have the ability to control carbon emissions – those morons would render our planet incapable of feeding itself. All can see warmists as emotional, irrational “Earth saviors” whose religion is more primitive and stupid than any Fundamentalist variety of the past.

Reply to  arthur4563
September 8, 2016 6:52 am

The “hottest year on record” is still 1998…
http://woodfortrees.org/graph/uah6/mean:12

Notes on data released Sept. 1, 2016:
Through the first eight months of the year, 2016 seems to be racing toward what might be its place in history — as the second warmest year in the satellite temperature record. But just by a little bit, according to Dr. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. “While global average temperatures peaked higher this year than they did in 1998, temperatures fell faster this spring and summer to levels that are cooler than they were at this same time of year in 1998. We had three months this year that were warmer than their 1998 counterparts, and five that were cooler. There is really no reliable way of predicting what the next four months will do, compared to those same months in 1998.”
Global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978: +0.12 C per decade
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/01/global-temperature-report-august-2016/

The recent monster El Niño has disrupted the hiatus.comment image
The trend since 1998 now stands at +0.035 °C per decade, with a robust (/SARC) correlation coefficient of R² = 0.0098.
0.035 and 0.0098 are not exactly synonymous with zero-point-zero; but they do round down to zero-point-zero.

higley7
Reply to  David Middleton
September 8, 2016 9:51 am

You have to be very careful when looking at temperature data; you must consider if the data has been dishonestly adjusted.For example, NOAA has been regularly and progessively adjusting older data downward and recent data upward, such that they finally erased the 1950 to 1978 cooling we all lived through. It is just a continuation of the attitude that, if you do not like what the datA SAYS, you can change the data, a la the fraudulent hockeystick graph that removed the Medieval Warm period and The Litle Ice Age.
!938 remains the hottest of the last century and the claims about 2015 and 2015 derive from altered data.
You cannot trust a man whose livelihood and welfare of his family depends upon him agreeing with his boss. The same, unfortunately, is true for some scientists and their government funding, the sources of which are politicians who have an agenda that requires control of other people and resources.

Brett Keane
Reply to  David Middleton
September 9, 2016 3:29 am

@ David Middleton
September 8, 2016 at 6:52 am: But luckily we have kept the untainted records, for the reckoning and ultimate return to ground Truth. E.g. 1936-38.

pkatt
September 7, 2016 10:22 pm

So at the current rate we are on track for the aprox 1 degree every century warming that has been happening since the last ice age. Ya got me shaking in my boots. Holy cow folks adapt or die. You believe in evolution right? Prove it.

Dave
Reply to  pkatt
September 7, 2016 11:04 pm

You are kidding I hope? The last ice age ended around 8000 years ago. Are you suggesting it has warmed 80 degrees since then?

Ian H
Reply to  Dave
September 8, 2016 12:16 am

Charitably I suspect he meant the little ice age.

Tim Hammond
Reply to  Dave
September 8, 2016 1:29 am

80 degrees in London today, give or take, and it was probably 0 or lower in the Ice Age…Fahrenheit mind you!

higley7
Reply to  Dave
September 8, 2016 9:54 am

As the peak temperatures of the Minoan Warm Period (WP), Roman WP, Medieval WP, and Modern WP have each been successively cooler, there is every reason to predict that we are on a downward trend. eventually to the next glacial period. To assume a 1 deg C warming into future decades or centuries is unfounded and not defensible.

Reply to  Dave
September 8, 2016 7:45 pm

In some parts of the world it may have warmed 80 degrees C. Toronto and London were under thick sheets of ice based on the very little we suspect. 12,000 years ago according to the feeble records we’ve guessed at? An 80C climb isn’t off the menu.

Geronimo
September 7, 2016 10:22 pm

The question is not whether global warming will cause damage to the biosphere but whether or not it will damage human society. Changing monsoon patterns could result in 100 million people in south east asia and africa not being able to grow enough food. Similarly several meters of sea level rise would also result in the mass migration of nearly 100 million people. Both events are possible (I have no idea how likely) and so that the issue is the lack of resilience of our current society to small changes to the environment.

Olaf Koenders
Reply to  Geronimo
September 7, 2016 10:42 pm

The issue is “when”. This planet and the surrounding cosmos has been throwing everything at life on the surface since day dot. Stability is something a region may see for a decade or so, however there’s always change at some point and no way to predict it. Ergo, be ready.. 🙂

Griff
Reply to  Olaf Koenders
September 8, 2016 4:29 am

And another issue is ‘how quickly’. Adjustment to rapid change is more difficult.

MarkW
Reply to  Olaf Koenders
September 8, 2016 6:30 am

0.12C/decade is rapid change?
Are you really that desperate?

Taphonomic
Reply to  Olaf Koenders
September 8, 2016 3:05 pm

Yeah Griff, look how poorly the human race adapted to climage change at the end of the ice age. Somewhere a Clovis man is missing his continental glaciers.

Science or Fiction
Reply to  Geronimo
September 7, 2016 10:43 pm

Everything doesn´t look that grim:
Inconvenient Study: CO2 fertilization greening the earth

prjindigo
Reply to  Science or Fiction
September 8, 2016 3:32 am

Looks like Russia has a 11% over-production of wheat this year (or it could be state propaganda). Those fields look very heavily packed.

Bartemis
Reply to  Science or Fiction
September 8, 2016 1:56 pm

Yah. Food production is really suffering./sarccomment image

Science or Fiction
Reply to  Bartemis
September 10, 2016 2:30 pm

That is an enormously telling set of graphs. Thanks for providing that figure. 🙂

Science or Fiction
Reply to  Geronimo
September 7, 2016 10:45 pm

Sorry, the link was messed up by wordpress, It was to an article on this site – searchable.

Steve (Paris)
Reply to  Geronimo
September 7, 2016 11:05 pm

And if the moon doesn’t rise tonight we are all dead!

Mike the Morlock
Reply to  Steve (Paris)
September 8, 2016 10:08 am

depends…..
michael ;-D

MarkW
Reply to  Steve (Paris)
September 8, 2016 1:47 pm

If the moon doesn’t rise tonight, I might need Depends.

Reply to  Geronimo
September 7, 2016 11:39 pm

@ Geronimo: The climate has little to do with losing the lives of millions of people. If we could and frankly SHOULD provide these regions with cheap ( yes coal and oil) energy to stop these cultures from denuding forests ( which actually leads to more ecological disasters like floods) to “heat” their homes and provide “fuel” to cook meals,
Cheap energy would provide them with hospital care and education, both made way easier with cheap energy and there would not be hundreds of millions of lives in danger.
I just cannot grasp the inhuman, mean, and frankly despicable way these so called “humanitarians” are influencing policies everywhere. It is sickening.
Education, basic health because of cheap energy will lead to salvation for actually many hundreds of millions of people.
It would lead to a stable societies as that has been proven for centuries.
But I guess on this site I am preaching to the converted ( unlike you)

Geronimo
Reply to  Toby Smit
September 8, 2016 1:01 am

Toby I would agree with you that we should be doing more to improve
the lives of everyone. But that is not the point I was trying to make — my
point is that currently there is very little resilience built into human society
which means that it does not take much to cause a huge disaster. Consider
the Irish potato famine as an example, one crop failure (combined with disastrous polices from the British) meant the death of millions.

MarkW
Reply to  Toby Smit
September 8, 2016 6:31 am

If you aren’t able to see that our society is lot more resilient today compared to 200 years ago, then you are deliberately not looking.
Wealth is what makes societies resilient, and wealth comes from cheap energy.

Reply to  Toby Smit
September 8, 2016 8:53 am

repeated annual (serial) crop problems … not just one year.

nevket240
Reply to  Geronimo
September 8, 2016 3:26 am

You idiot.
100,000,000 people?? really?? what suburb do they live in?? warmer temps are REQUIRED for rice growing. in fact you provide no FACTS what soever, just the usual Emotional terrorism of the Crimate Crew
“several meteres of sea level rise” ??? really ?? that would induce a small change to the environment. ??
go back to bed.
regards

urederra
Reply to  Geronimo
September 8, 2016 4:03 am

The point here, I believe, is that we still do not know how much of the warming is natural and how much is anthropogenic. Demonstrating that the planet is warmer does not imply that said warming is 100 % anthropogenic, or only 50 % anthropogenic.

Ron
Reply to  Geronimo
September 8, 2016 5:38 am

Similarly several meters of sea level rise would also result in the mass migration of nearly 100 million people.
Makes that “wall” across your southern border all the more useful! Go Trump!

John Harmsworth
Reply to  Ron
September 8, 2016 1:34 pm

The Chinese have over 300 million people living in coastal cities and they know just as much as the West does about climate change. So why are they still building coal fired plants while we are demolishing our own competitive ability and adaptability? Because the Eco-Left is so stupid is why! Wake up! Chinese science is focused on what is good for China while Western science is held captive by the Eco-Left who couldn’t care less what happens to human beings, even if it’s just a bad dream!

MarkW
Reply to  Geronimo
September 8, 2016 6:29 am

The monsoon cycle is driven by the fact that temperatures over land rise faster than they do over oceans.
Even if the world warms up a smidge, that will still be true.

Bartemis
Reply to  MarkW
September 8, 2016 2:00 pm

It’s always been nutty. Pure panic mongering. Weather fronts are driven by temperature differentials. But the GHE more evenly distributes temperatures, and increased warmth via that avenue would result in lesser, not greater, storminess.

Reply to  Geronimo
September 8, 2016 7:29 am

The Moon crashing into the Earth would cause a lot of problems too… And it’s more likely than “several meters of sea level rise” over the next few hundred years.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/SL4_zps22bee1aa.png

Reply to  David Middleton
September 8, 2016 11:37 am
Richard M
Reply to  Geronimo
September 8, 2016 8:00 am

OMG, Geronimo actually believe humans can control the climate. Face-palm.

Reply to  Richard M
September 8, 2016 8:31 am

comment image

brians356
Reply to  Richard M
September 8, 2016 11:26 am

To be fair, I didn’t glean that from Geronimo’s remarks. He didn’t attribute warming to human emissions, and he said nothing about humans controlling the climate. He discussed some possible and not entirely unlikely effects from future warming (from whatever cause) even if they could be described as “worst case”. He did discuss human resilience, and implied we would need to adapt to any such changes, something I think pretty much everyone here would agree with wholeheartedly. Where’s the beef, Richard M?

Reply to  Richard M
September 8, 2016 11:38 am

@ brians356 ,
Short of Dr. Evil melting Antarctica with his orbital “laser,” “several meters of sea level rise” is physically impossible over any human-relevant time-line. It’s not a worst case scenario. It isn’t even realistic enough to qualify as bad science fiction.

Eugene WR Gallun
Reply to  Geronimo
September 8, 2016 8:20 am

Geronimo —
i see you attend the Ehrlich school of “big lie predictions”. Ehrlich and Goebbels are surprisingly similar in their technique. The bigger the lie the better.
Eugene WR Gallun

brians356
Reply to  Eugene WR Gallun
September 8, 2016 11:33 am

Eugene,
See my comments to Richard M. Are you chaps reading comments from Geronimo I’m not seeing? (What’s wrong with my browser …?)

Duster
Reply to  Eugene WR Gallun
September 9, 2016 7:04 pm

I have to agree. I don’t see anything in what Geronimo wrote that indicates any of the ideas being criticized. except that bit about “several meters” of sea level rise. That would need either Greenland or Antarctica to lose its cap. That has been addressed already above by Chaamjamal:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2776867
No warming on in at least a century in one location. Not gonna happen.

John Harmsworth
Reply to  Geronimo
September 8, 2016 11:49 am

Technological sophistication equals adaptability and resilience. That depends on cheap or at least cost effective power. The enforced impoverishment of the world via “green” power options puts the developing world in particular in the cross hairs of virtually any disruption. Disaster there turns into disaster everywhere through refugees, war and famine. Cheap power lets them get on with development.

Bartemis
Reply to  Geronimo
September 8, 2016 1:54 pm

The notion that CO2 and/or rising global temperature is making it more difficult to grow food is completely unhinged from reality.comment image

Reply to  Geronimo
September 8, 2016 10:32 pm

Only 6,000 years ago there were lakes and rivers on what is now the Sahara. 18,000 years ago sea level was 400 feet lower. 1,200 years ago spruce grew and then were overtaken by glacier expansion in Alaska, only to just now being exposed by glacier retreat. Large changes in environment are, have been, and will continue to be condition of life on Earth. The idea that the most adaptable organism on the planet, humans, cannot successfully survive moderate warming of 1.2 C per century is ignorant and misinformed. Worry should be directed at the inevitable 100,000 year glacial period due within the next several thousand years. We have been in an Ice Age for the past 35 million years, and are now on a cooling trend.

Science or Fiction
Reply to  Geronimo
September 10, 2016 2:45 pm

Have a close look at the set of figures provided by Artemis. Add to it that:
25 New Papers Confirm A Remarkably Stable Modern Climate: Fewer Intense Storms, Hurricanes, Droughts, Floods, Fires…
We are halfway to the 2-degree global warming limit – If we believe in homogenisation of temperature records. I know it won´t suit the agenda of those benefiting by the scaremongering – but it seems more like we are halfway to heaven than halfway to hell.
Are you sure your haven´t been scared by a political movement? I used to be quite scared, but the data tells another story – I ain´t scared no more.

Jack
September 7, 2016 10:35 pm

What does he think he is achieving with his vile insults. This is about as weak as commentary can be. Where does he talk about natural variation. 1.2C+-??.
He is just a marketing person with no understanding of what he has said.

Reply to  Jack
September 7, 2016 10:48 pm

Jack,
Natural variation from 1850’s onward is about .16C per decade warming in ALL three trends,according to warmist Dr. Jones himself.Here is his answer to Roger Harrabin’s question:
“Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?”
Dr. Jones replies,
“Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).
I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998.
So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8511670.stm
There is a chart in the link showing that .16C is the common warming trend line
Yes it is reasonable to say that .12C falls within a natural variable range since there is some past evidence of it.Thinkless stagnation is an embarrassment to rational thought..

CheshireRed
Reply to  Sunsettommy
September 8, 2016 3:36 am

Sunsettommy September 7, 2016 at 10:48 pm
Good post, that.

September 7, 2016 10:40 pm

1.2 C Degrees per Century is well beneeth the 2 Degrees of the Paris accord last year, so lets have a congratulatory party and declare the war on Climate Change over and won since the rate is below the predictions and we obviously don’t now need to make any significant new taxes or radical policies or even need an IPCC to continue to monitor the situation as its clearly well below all the declared reasons for worry.

Ron
Reply to  christopherpetersmith
September 8, 2016 5:44 am

Since the onset of Global Warming what has been the downside?
Is there any evidence to suggest that slight warming is bad! Seriously, ANY?
Fewer hurricanes, more Polar Bears, less climate related deaths, increased crop yields, greener earth…
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Eugene WR Gallun
Reply to  Ron
September 8, 2016 8:24 am

Ron —
But – but – you only have to stick your head out your window to see climate disasters happening!
Eugene WR Gallun

John Harmsworth
Reply to  Ron
September 8, 2016 12:03 pm

Eugene
I would stick my head out the window but it is unusually cold and wet! Record high temp for my neck of the woods is 47C in 1937!

September 7, 2016 10:58 pm

The problem is that warmists and the poorly informed – often the same people – see .12C per decade and believe that it’s 100% human induced. They have a rather childish belief – reinforced by MSM, politicians, etc – that climate is constant or that our planet has passed its optimum temperature.
They see a tiny insignificant warming trend and say “aha! Proof!”, while ignoring what has happened in the past. It simply doesn’t matter to them that we cannot distinguish the natural signal from the human contribution, whatever that is, and they never look for any of the positives: Humans are a cancer. End of.
But for all the protests and climate tears from drama greens, the world’s major emitters are planning to build enough new coal-fired power stations to ensure that their CO2 emissions will rocket. India is planning more than 400 coal-fired plants, meaning its emissions will triple by 2030. China has absolutely no intention of halting the rise either. They burn more coal than the rest of the world combined and by 2030 80% of China’s total energy will be from fossil fuels, down from 90%.
I watched the Paris Agreement debate in the House of Commons yesterday and was stunned at how poorly informed our politicians really are – apart from David David, MP for Monmouth, who made an excellent contribution and was then called a “denier” by the Shadow Energy & Climate Change Secretary, Barry Gardiner (Socialist).
Sadly, until we see a period of cooling greater than the period of warming, it will be very difficult to turn the climate supertanker round. China and India will carry on regardless, of course, but politicians and climate lemmings in western countries will continue the assault on their own people in the belief that their actions are saving us from ourselves.
Resist.

Griff
Reply to  DVan
September 8, 2016 4:35 am

I see evidence that it is human produced, based on scientific observation and research… I cross check the evidence presented before accepting it as fact.
In particular I have looked at the known causes of past warming – e.g. Milankovitch cycles, solar output – and looked at whether they are in effect now. I have looked at the temp records and if they are reliable.
I also keep a close eye on the fossil fuel sources which contribute CO2 and see that India and China are scaling back their coal power plant proposals and making great efforts in installing renewable energy. India is aiming at 100GW of solar by 2022 and has made a good start on that… This has been a recent and rapid change.
There’s no chance of cooling, alas…

Reply to  Griff
September 8, 2016 5:22 am

Wish I could be here in 30 years to watch you eat crow.

Reply to  Griff
September 8, 2016 5:36 am

The only reason China is slowing down the coal plants is because they have too many and they were building them to employ people. But they are trying to shift to nuclear and hydro.

MarkW
Reply to  Griff
September 8, 2016 6:36 am

I don’t know if you are lying, or really just this stupid.
The Milankovich cycle caused the Midieval, Roman, and Minoan warm periods?
India and China are scaling back on coal because they have an over abundance at present.
Sheesh, this moron actually believes the fact that politicians are rushing to make their buddies rich as proof that man caused global warming must be true.
Pathetic.

Reply to  Griff
September 8, 2016 6:43 am

China’s annual coal consumption is projected to increase by 16.3% by 2020. Coming on the heels of a tripling of coal use since 2000, There is no scaling back. On the contrary, while saying it will cut emissions per unit of GDP, it projects that its economic growth will result in a CO2 rise of 50 per cent by 2030.
Don’t worry, though. They’ll use that cheap, dense, reliable energy to manufacture solar panels for the lemmings.

Harry Passfield
Reply to  Griff
September 8, 2016 6:58 am

You see ‘evidence that [warming] is human produced’, Griff? Through what power of microscope? And it’s all based on ‘observation and research’? Who’s? Where are your citations? Is all the ‘warming’ down to ‘humans’, or just a bit of it? If it’s a ‘bit’ of it, how much?
And even if what you say is true, why is 1,2C in a century such a catastrophe? I assure you, there are greater things to worry about in this world.

Reply to  Griff
September 8, 2016 7:35 am

Really Griff, a warming rate from 1979, that is BELOW the minimum IPCC per decade rate, is evidence that it is human caused?
Please don’t be this dumb again in pushing your unsupported assertions.

noaaprogrammer
Reply to  Griff
September 8, 2016 7:36 am

… a whole lot of cooling when the next large asteroid impact increases the earth’s albedo1

Joel Snider
Reply to  Griff
September 8, 2016 8:44 am

‘I don’t know if you are lying, or really just this stupid.’
Ever see ‘My cousin Vinny’? – when Joe Pesci is describing how to make a card look like a brick? He’s like some biased, partisan reporter microscoping a political speech for something that he can spin to his advantage.
It’s that sort of bought-and-paid-for, manufactured-earnest advocacy that you get when you hire a lawyer – or a salesman. But people create shadow puppets of their true motivations – both by what they say, and what they don’t say. My guess is that he’s a solar rep or something – hence the pseudo-capitalist language he uses to push his product.
So the short answer: yes, Griff the Grifter is deliberately lying (or more properly, misleading, after being deliberately obtuse), while giving the nominal appearance of staying within the lines. But definitely working backwards for the salesman’s talking-point – which is the job. Standard promotional/sales-methodology.

Joel Snider
Reply to  Griff
September 8, 2016 11:37 am

“this moron actually believes the fact that politicians are rushing to make their buddies rich as proof that man caused global warming must be true.”
More likely, he’s participating in the process of making said-buddies rich. This is a promotion he’s working on.

John Harmsworth
Reply to  Griff
September 8, 2016 3:12 pm

Griff
You really should open your eyes to how twisted this pseudo-science is. The Environmentalists have cross pollinated with the Socialists to declare de facto war on Capitalist industry without any idea what the consequences of that may be or what to put in it’s place. It’s Bernie Sanders 1930’s solutions married to the flowers and trees crowd with about 1 million people on the planet living in the jungle and wearing grass skirts. A sober, analytical and realistic look at this says that the temperature has been much warmer than this in the past, has been going up at about the same rate for at least 200 years, ocean acidification is a flat out lie. SLR is not even measurable against the variety of issues such as subsidence, gravitational anomalies, prevailing winds, reef growth, etc. Lastly, if you’re worried about people starving, concern yourself with population growth in sub-Saharan Africa where poverty and lack of education has them headed for +1 billion souls without a sniff of adequate development to carry that burden. You’re just way, way, way off the mark! Which is a shame because I’m sure you’re a reasonably intelligent person who could figure this out if you tried. That’s what the world needs now, Griff. Questioners! Not toadies to a twisted political orthodoxy.

MarkW
Reply to  DVan
September 8, 2016 6:34 am

The eco-loons take it as a given that life on earth is precariously balanced on a knifes edge, and any pertubation, no matter how tiny is capable of crashing the entire eco-system resulting in the death of everything.
Even if it were only 0.01C/century, they would still panic over it.

Bartemis
Reply to  MarkW
September 8, 2016 2:03 pm

It’s an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Like constantly washing one’s hands.

Joel Snider
Reply to  MarkW
September 8, 2016 3:34 pm

Which fits nicely into the doctrine that any influence by human beings (who are apparently not part of nature, – perhaps planted by aliens) is, by definition, destructive and evil.
Eco-progressives would preserve nature like a mummy moldering in a tomb – all the while forcing humanity into cramped cities – and then bemoan the horrid conditions and overpopulation that plague these cities that they won’t let anyone move out of.

Khwarizmi
September 7, 2016 11:04 pm

The mathematical abstraction called “global average temperature” is a meaningless construct built from a mishmash of instrument readings taken from below the waves and above the dirt, then subjected to constant politically-motivated Orwellian revisions designed to foster the illusion of incessant heat retention.
Of course, temperature measurements of a system containing dynamic quantities of water vapor and ice are a very poor measure of heat, especially when that system hasn’t achieved the state of thermal equilibrium required to establish a meaningful temperature in the first place.
Where in the real world is the alleged heat retention occuring, and what problems is it causing?

urederra
Reply to  Khwarizmi
September 8, 2016 4:07 am

The article is about satellite records, not weather stations.

Mort
Reply to  urederra
September 8, 2016 6:33 am

His question still stands, however – where is the harm? (the actual harm, not modelled projections) If this warming has been ongoing for quite some time, and this is the “hottest year ever”, then there should be demonstrable harm by now. Without that, there is no case, especially to warrant a complete realignment of world economies and the suppression of tech/energy growth in the 3rd world, which they desperately need. In fact, the case is easily made the world is better for the extra warmth and CO2.

Khwarizmi
Reply to  urederra
September 8, 2016 7:41 am

urederra
The ThinkProgress quote says:
=========
“And now that [satellite] dataset has once again confirmed what multiple data streams have been reporting for a long time.”
=========
The article wasn’t just about the satellite record.
Nevertheless, in my category system I include satellite records as instrument readings taken “above the dirt,” and my points (concerning the validity of a “global average temperature” as a measure of heat retention in a system with variable ice and water vapor content kept far from thermal equilibrium) remain true when applied to those records. That is to say, the socially constructed “global average temperature,” even the satellite version of it, provides no useful information about conditions at any particular place in reality world.
Thus can an incessantly rising “global average temperature” be blamed for heat waves or blizzards, floods or drought, depending purely on today’s weather.
e.g.:
Scientists: Don’t make “extreme cold” centerpiece of global warming argument – WP, Feb 2014
Cold winters have been caused by global warming: new research – Telegraph, Oct 2014
Fall snow cover in Northern Hemisphere was most extensive on record, even with temperatures at high mark – WP, Dec 2014
Let me know when Earth reaches thermal equilibrium so I can take a meaningful temperature reading.

F. Ross
September 7, 2016 11:27 pm

Perhaps my memory is faulty but it seems that for many years the CAGW crowd disavowed the satellite record because is showed no warming and frankly stated that it must be instrument error. Now, suddenly, when the satellite record indicates some warming, CAGWers swear by the satellite records.
Oh dear! What to do, what to do?

Olaf Koenders
Reply to  F. Ross
September 8, 2016 1:02 am

I know.. Fudge the data upwards as with everything else.
Look.. It’s warming! The Earth isn’t biased, it’s on our side..

September 7, 2016 11:30 pm

“What kind of catastrophe awaits this century, if the calamitous 0.12c / decade (0.21F / decade) rise continues?”
Warming of the lower troposphere by 0.12°C/decade probably won’t trouble us much. It’s what happens at the surface that affects us.

Reply to  Nick Stokes
September 7, 2016 11:37 pm

Well, the last two years provide a lot of perspective on how warming ‘affects’ us, because there’s been three decades’ worth of warming with essentially no time for adaptation or technological change.
Take agriculture: a lot of studies claimed that temperatures of the 2000s were already ‘slowing gains’ in crop yields. Well, temperatures ‘surged’ an additional 0.5ºC or so from to 2014 to the first half of 2016 and still most major crops are at or near all-time records. Surely the warming-is-already-affecting-yields hypothesis is busted?
Or take weather disasters. They vary too much to draw any strong conclusion from an additional two or three years, but the last three-year period has the lowest losses (as a percentage of GDP) on record and the trend is clearly down.comment image

Alan Robertson
Reply to  Alberto Zaragoza Comendador
September 8, 2016 7:56 am

Oh, but think of the children.

1saveenergy
Reply to  Alberto Zaragoza Comendador
September 9, 2016 12:38 am

Careful Alan, you can be arrested for that (:-))

MarkW
Reply to  Alberto Zaragoza Comendador
September 9, 2016 10:00 am

Only if you put it on your computer.

Reply to  Nick Stokes
September 7, 2016 11:46 pm

Nick@11:30pm
What do you think will happen at the surface and why is this bad for the human race?

Reply to  Alastair Brickell
September 7, 2016 11:58 pm

I think it will warm, by at least 2°C/cen. How that will work out overall I don’t speculate, but I’m sure it will cause big effects that we need to figure out.

Reply to  Alastair Brickell
September 8, 2016 12:29 am

Nick @ 11:58
2degrees per century is almost twice the 1.2 degrees we are talking about…but why should we worry about even 2 degrees…maybe it could be beneficial, eg. for food production. Maybe we should encourage a slightly warming world…I don’t like Ice Ages having grown up in Montreal (after the 2km of ice on top of it melted).

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Alastair Brickell
September 8, 2016 3:16 am

“Nick Stokes September 7, 2016 at 11:58 pm
I think it will warm, by at least 2°C/cen. How that will work out overall I don’t speculate, but I’m sure it will cause big effects…”
How are you so sure Nick? I mean the earth handles temperature variation every day very well as well as temperature variation annually as well as solar and El Nino and La Nina changes. So, Nick, where is your proof that convinces you that you are sure 2c/century will have “big effects”? Nick, you are talking rubbish again.

MarkW
Reply to  Alastair Brickell
September 8, 2016 6:40 am

Patrick, it’s easy to be sure when your side controls the measurements.
Just keep adjusting until the data shows what you predicted.

JohnWho
Reply to  Alastair Brickell
September 8, 2016 6:52 am

Arguably, one “big effect” so far could be the lower intensity and frequency of hurricanes in the Atlantic.

Reply to  Alastair Brickell
September 8, 2016 11:55 am

Nick
“I think it will warm, by at least 2°C/cen. How that will work out overall I don’t speculate, but I’m sure it will cause big effects that we need to figure out.”
Being SURE it will cause “big effects” is speculation. Leaving out details doesn’t change the meaning speculation.
How much of your resources are you willing to contribute to figure it out? (Sit back, be honest, think about it and decide what percentage of your net worth you are willing to contribute figure it out). AND do you want to spend even more of your resources to mitigate the “big effects” before or after you/we figure it out?

robinedwards36
Reply to  Nick Stokes
September 8, 2016 3:05 am

Of course you are right to point this out so succinctly, Nick. Surface temperatures, land and air (obviously related but with a lag between any changes) are very influential in governing the rate of plant growth, on which life on Earth depends. They are not the only factors involved of course – CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, availability of ample water, and the necessary minerals in the soil – and no doubt others, but growth chemistry is temperature controlled to a large extent.
The temperatures experienced by plant life are the climate aspect of most immediate importance to us. Here in the UK I can grow many vegetables and types of fruit, but not oranges, bananas, some beans, rice, coffee and so on almost indefinitely. They require growing season average temperatures perhaps four to ten degrees C higher than what we experience. In Scotland, only 300 miles north of here the average temperatures are fine for oats but much less suitable for wheat. I have no data to hand, but am guessing that the temperature difference is perhaps 2 degrees C.
With these sorts of temperature differences occurring throughout the planet and over small distances and elevation changes surely a 0.12C general change per decade is well within our capability of managing.

MarkW
Reply to  Nick Stokes
September 8, 2016 6:39 am

Good thing that isn’t warming either.

Brett Keane
Reply to  Nick Stokes
September 9, 2016 3:53 am

@ Nick Stokes
September 7, 2016 at 11:30 pm: My feet can take it.

September 7, 2016 11:35 pm

I think they made a blunder telling their ignorant warmist friends,to accept Satellite temperature data,which shows a much smaller warming rate than their favored ever changing GISS data set,which is much warmer.

Dave
Reply to  Sunsettommy
September 7, 2016 11:48 pm

Actually the Berkeley Earth data set shows an even larger trend, and it’s not “much warmer” than the Satellite data. GISS gives 0.170, Berkeley is presently 0.178 per decade (both evaluated over the same period as the satellite record), versus 0.122 for UAH 6.0 and 0.177 for the RSS TTT satellite data. The satellite data is also “ever changing”: UAH is now in v6.0 beta5, which gives a different trend to v5.6 from a couple of years ago (a reduction), while the recent version revision to RSS (v4.0) gives a different trend to the previous v3.3 (this time an increase). These changes happen even in the satellite record as the scientists who interpret it discover flaws in their own methodology or come up with new ways to better account for known issues. I’m sure the current versions won’t be the last.

Griff
Reply to  Dave
September 8, 2016 4:36 am

Yes… the satellite figures have been adjusted multiple times.

Alan the Brit
Reply to  Dave
September 8, 2016 5:42 am

I think these silly numbers of rates of warming measured to1/1000th of a degree Celcius are meaningless in reality!

MarkW
Reply to  Dave
September 8, 2016 6:42 am

Griff, you really are a sucker for punishment.
Regarding the satellite adjustments. Everyone of them has been explained as to why they were needed and the adjustment methods were publicly displayed.
To bad the same can’t be said of your favorite warlocks methods.

Dave
Reply to  Sunsettommy
September 8, 2016 11:59 am

“Everyone of them has been explained as to why they were needed and the adjustment methods were publicly displayed”
Actually MarkW thats not strictly true: Although Roy Spencer has published some of his revised methodology on his own blog for UAH6.0 beta5, there is, as yet, no peer-reviewed paper describing this. I’m sure you and others will flame peer review as a concept that validates data. I’m a scientist (not a climate scientist to be sure, but not that far from the field) and I’m the first to admit that the system isn’t perfect. But I still have to ask, why, when Roy Spencer’s latest monthly update states “NOTE: This is the seventeenth monthly update with our new Version 6.0 dataset” do we STILL not have a proper publication describing the methodology?

MarkW
Reply to  Dave
September 8, 2016 1:52 pm

That’s why it’s still called beta. Sheesh Dave.
As to your claim to be a scientist, that isn’t evidenced by any of your posts.

Brett Keane
Reply to  Dave
September 9, 2016 4:00 am

@ Dave
September 8, 2016 at 11:59 am: We have seen your pack of trolls claim various intellectual attainments over the years. But the evidence has only pointed to misused Arts studies at best. Not a sniff of Scientific Method, and nothing else counts.

SAMURAI
September 7, 2016 11:43 pm

As with ANY good scam, there always has to be an element of truth to the scam to make it work….
Yes, Think Regress, UAH and RSS Satellite datasets do show a global warming trend of around 0.12C/decade since 1979….. So what?
No one “denies” there has been about 0.81C of global warming RECOVERY since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850, of which, CO2 forcing has perhaps contributed about 0.2C to the total. Again, so WHAT??
The disconfirmed CAGW hypothesis projected we’d experience a global warming trend of around 0.2C/decade over the past 20 years from CO2 forcing, but there hasn’t been ANY discernible warming trend since the middle of 1996, despite 30% of all manmade CO2 emissions since 1750 being made over just the last 20 years (excluding the 2015/16 El Nino spike):
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.6/to:2015.7/plot/rss/from:1996.6/to:2015.7/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996.6/to:2015.7/normalise/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996.6/to:2015.7/normalise
The 0.16C/decade global warming trend from 1979~1999 can easily be explained by: the 1980 30-year PDO warm cycle, the 1994 30-year AMO warm cycle, the 2nd & 3rd strongest back-to-back solar cycles in 1,000’s of years occurred from 1976~1996, the 97/98 Super El Nino event occurred (the strongest ever recorded) and 5 other El Nino Events between 1982~1995.
Now, all of these warming factors have REVERSED: both the AMO and PDO will be in their respective 30-yr cool cycles from 2019, and the weakest solar cycle since 1790 starts in 2022.
Regardless, the disparity between CAGW’s dire global warming projections vs. reality already exceed the criteria necessary for hypothetical disconfirmation:comment image
Additional disparity and duration will simply increase the confidence interval of disconfirmation, which already exceeds 90%+.
For the CAGW hypothesis to be even considered viable, global warming trends would need to suddenly jump from near 0.0C/decade to 0.3C/decade starting from tomorrow and continue unabated for the next 10 years…
That ain’t gonna happen for the aforementioned reasons. It’s much more probable global temp trends will be flat to falling over the next 10 years and perhaps for the next 80 because of collapsing solar cycles and a possible Grand Solar Minimum event starting from 2033 and lasting 50~100 years.
CAGW is dead.

Reply to  SAMURAI
September 8, 2016 3:54 am

Good post. Thanks.

Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Reply to  SAMURAI
September 8, 2016 4:03 am

From the figure,it is clear that the rise in global average temperature anomaly is not even 0.04 oC/decade. Then where from 0.12 oC/decade rise has come from? Even the 0.04 oC/decade is not due to global warming but it may be less than 50% of it [IPCC] or 25% of it [In one of the posts somebody cited a reference of Dr. David Evans of Perth-based].
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy

Latitude
Reply to  SAMURAI
September 8, 2016 6:36 am

RECOVERY since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850…
You do realize that’s made up too, right?

AndyG55
September 7, 2016 11:51 pm

1. No warming in the UAH satellite record from 1980 to 1998 El Nino
2. No warming between the end of that El Nino in 2001 and the start of the current El Nino at the beginning of 2015.
3. No warming in the southern polar region for the whole 38 years of the satellite record.
4. No warming in the southern ex-tropicals for 20 years.
5. No warming in Australia for 20 years, cooling since 2002
6. No warming in Japan surface data for the last 20 years, No warming from 1950-1990.. zero trend for 40 years
7. No warming in the USA since 2005 when a non-corrupted system was installed, until the beginning of the current El Nino.
8. UAH Global Land shows no warming from 1979 1997, the no warming from 2001 – 2015
9. Iceland essentially the same temperature as in the late 1930s as now, maybe slightly lower
10. British Columbia (Canada) temperatures have been stable, with no warming trend, throughout 1900-2010
11. Chile has been cooling since the 1940s.
12. Southern Sea temperatures not warming from 1982 2005, then cooling
13. Even UAH NoPol shows no warming this century until the large spike in January 2016.
That is DESPITE a large climb in CO2 levels over those periods.
THERE IS NO CO2 WARMING SIGNATURE..
The ONLY real warming has come from regional ElNino and ocean circulation effects.

Griff
Reply to  AndyG55
September 8, 2016 4:39 am

The things you list above are mostly revisionist and disputed ‘facts’, which can only be supported by taking certain starting points for the changes or rejecting temp observations.
Just one example – here’s the research on Icelandic temperatures, at odds with your statement.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.1051/pdf

Doug
Reply to  Griff
September 8, 2016 6:23 am

From the first paragraph of your link, Griff:

The 1930s was the warmest decade of the 20th century in Iceland

How does that possibly square with increased CO2-caused warming?

Doug
Reply to  Griff
September 8, 2016 6:28 am

Also:

The warming was non-uniform in time, occurring in three distinct phases, approximately from 1880 to 1900, from 1925 to 1940, and from 1983 to 2001. Warming was most rapid in 1919–33, reaching the maximum temperatures over the entire record in 1939 and 1941.

You really should think about a reading comprehension course, Griff.

MarkW
Reply to  Griff
September 8, 2016 6:47 am

This from the team that wants to start the clock in the coldest decade of the last 100 years.

MarkW
Reply to  Griff
September 8, 2016 6:47 am

Doug, you don’t expect Griff to actually understand the propaganda he’s pushing?

richard verney
Reply to  AndyG55
September 8, 2016 8:33 am

A good list of important points.
As regards 7, the USA data suggests that the 1930s/40s was the warmest decade and that the USA has cooled since then.
The take home of the satellite data set is as you suggest ENSO modulated by Volcano eruptions (at any rate short term). There is no first order correlation with the steady and unabated rise in CO2 levels, and there is nothing global about so called global warming.
If there is no long lasting step change in temperature coincident with the 2015/16 strong El Nino (there was a long lasting step change of about 0.3 deg C coincident with the 1997/98 Super El Nino) then when the current ENSO cycle completes it is probable that by 2017 the ‘pause’ will reappear and be over 20 years in duration.
If that is how matters pan out it will soon be the case that somewhere between 35 to 40% of all manmade CO2 emissions will have taken place without there being any statistically significant warming during the output of those emissions.

Chris Hanley
September 8, 2016 12:11 am

“… there is a long-term warming trend, and it has been getting worse …”.
==================================================
Since 1900 there has been no correlation between the annual rate of temperature increase and the atmospheric CO2 concentration trend — certainly so from ~1958 since when the CO2 trend has been almost monotonic:
http://www.climate4you.com/images/HadCRUT4%2050yr%20AnnualTrendSinceDecember1899.gif
Running 50 year linear annual temperature trend calculated from monthly global average surface air temperature anomaly

4TimesAYear
September 8, 2016 12:24 am

Just how long have scientists been measuring temperatures in hundredths of degrees? My guess is that before they started doing that, the temp would have been eye-balled it and they wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. So just what are they measuring against?

Alan the Brit
Reply to  4TimesAYear
September 8, 2016 5:47 am

Fully agree!

MarkW
Reply to  4TimesAYear
September 8, 2016 6:49 am

For ground based measurements, they still aren’t measuring in hundredths of a degree.
Prior to the digital instruments, the thermometers were marked in 1 degree increments, and the observers eye-balled it to the nearest degree.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  MarkW
September 8, 2016 11:00 am

MarkW,
To calculate a so-called temperature ‘anomaly,’ one subtracts a historical average from a current temperature. If that historical average was from a time when all or even some measurements were read only to the nearest degree, then the rules for subtraction and significant figures dictate that all significant figures to the right of the decimal point be dropped for the current temperature:
https://www.khanacademy.org/math/arithmetic-home/arith-review-decimals/arithmetic-significant-figures-tutorial/v/addition-and-subtraction-with-significant-figures.
Thus, any claim of anomalies with a precision of hundredths of a degree are invalid if derived from an average of base years that were not read to the same precision. The claims “Hottest on record,” are meaningless!

MarkW
Reply to  MarkW
September 8, 2016 1:54 pm

The claim is that if you average the readings from hundreds of thermometers, you can increase the accuracy of the result.
If so, then climate science would be the only branch of science in which that was true.

Tom Dayton
Reply to  MarkW
September 8, 2016 4:21 pm

Learn about the Law of Large Numbers. The larger your sample, the more the mean converges on the population’s true value, because the errors cancel each other out. This is simply a basic mathematical fact that you can prove for yourself easily. A great many branches of science and engineering take advantage of that fact. https://www.khanacademy.org/math/statistics-probability/random-variables-stats-library/expected-value-lib/v/law-of-large-numbers

MarkW
Reply to  MarkW
September 9, 2016 10:03 am

Tom: Are you paid to make a fool of yourself?
The law of large numbers only applies if the error distribution is Gaussian. In this case, it isn’t.

Tom Dayton
Reply to  MarkW
September 9, 2016 4:40 pm

MarkW: Insulting me does not compensate for your being incorrect. The Law of Large Numbers does not require Gaussian distribution. Look in a textbook. Ask a professor. Ask a student. Research on the internet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers

Caligula Jones
Reply to  4TimesAYear
September 8, 2016 6:59 am

Those who measure tree rings to try to pry out historical temperatures, if they are honest (and if you are a regular here, you know that many strain the definition of that word), will tell you that they are accurate to 2 degrees F.
As usual, we get a Frankenstein grafting of “measurement” accurate to full degrees, to measurement accurate to decimal points.
For some reason, the political activists with degrees in sociology, political science and women’s studies, and who once took a semester of statistics, think this is how science works.
Many of us who were taught math in the 1980s, and who aren’t blessed with such high ideals of education, think otherwise.

Reply to  Caligula Jones
September 8, 2016 11:13 am

When I was taking math at school if I were to use measurements with accuracy of +/- 1 degree C and ended up with results showing an accuracy of even +/- 0.1 degree C I would have failed.

MarkW
Reply to  Caligula Jones
September 8, 2016 1:55 pm

I was taught that each calculation would actually increase your uncertainty. If you start your calculations with data with +/-1C error bars, you would end up with error bars even greater after all was said and done.

Tom Dayton
Reply to  Caligula Jones
September 9, 2016 5:53 pm

Learn about the Law of Large Numbers. The larger your sample, the more the mean converges on the population’s true value, because the errors cancel each other out. This is simply a basic mathematical fact that you can prove for yourself easily. A great many branches of science and engineering take advantage of that fact. https://www.khanacademy.org/math/statistics-probability/random-variables-stats-library/expected-value-lib/v/law-of-large-numbers

September 8, 2016 12:30 am

I am a ‘climate sceptic’ according to the forums I frequent. Let me just state that. However, the ‘bounce back up’ in the tropo of June, July, and August is surprising, to say the least. Why isn’t this being noted on here, and in other sceptic places? If it continues, we are in big trouble. With a La Nina, and yet tropo temps going up, that’s going to be hard to explain. If this happens…
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH-v6-LT-with-2016-projection-3.jpg
…then fine, but it’s an ‘if’. The climb of 0.05 for each of the past two months is a little disconcerting. We should be honest and acknowledge this. Just because the other side isn’t honest, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be also. We await September’s…

ClimateOtter
Reply to  bazzer1959
September 8, 2016 2:11 am

Bazz~ don’t forget to take into account that temperature and weather changes lag an el-nino or la-nina by upwards of 6 months.

Alan Robertson
Reply to  bazzer1959
September 8, 2016 8:24 am

Bazzer- 4 months of adlibbing might be of concern, if it amounted to more than a missed apostrophe in the critic’s review copy of the script.

ren
Reply to  bazzer1959
September 8, 2016 12:33 pm
Bartemis
Reply to  bazzer1959
September 8, 2016 2:10 pm

No big deal. Just a classic head and shoulders pattern.

TA
Reply to  bazzer1959
September 8, 2016 2:19 pm

“However, the ‘bounce back up’ in the tropo of June, July, and August is surprising, to say the least. Why isn’t this being noted on here, and in other sceptic places?”
bazzer1959, look at the chart of the 1998 El Nino. It has several “up” blips on its way down, just like the 2016 up blip. It’s too early to say which way the temps are going, but my guess is down.

Richard M
Reply to  bazzer1959
September 8, 2016 5:36 pm

bazz ….. ENSO is always a NH late fall/winter phenomena. It appears the trade winds don’t really get going during the summer and therefore nothing much happens. If we are going to see a real La Nina it will probably get started in October and build from there.

Richard M
Reply to  Richard M
September 8, 2016 5:40 pm

Also you should look at a direct comparison of those months. 2016 was cooler than 1998 for all 3 months.
Global Temperature Anomaly (°C)
UAH June 1998 0.57 2016 0.34
UAH July 1998 0.51 2016 0.39
UAH Aug 1998 0.52 2016 0.44
RSS June 1998 0.567 2016 0.467
RSS July 1998 0.605 2016 0.469
RSS Aug 1998 0.572 2016 0.458

Brett Keane
Reply to  bazzer1959
September 9, 2016 4:11 am

@ bazzer1959
September 8, 2016 at 12:30 am: As the graph shows, notches are common ie normal. Just warmer or colder patches in a current.

ironicman
Reply to  bazzer1959
September 8, 2016 3:54 am

Bazza think of the great climate shift of 1878, now that’s what I call a hot year.

Dave
Reply to  ironicman
September 8, 2016 12:04 pm

ironicman, Ironically, I can’t seem to find that in the satellite record. What evidence do you have that it ever happened if surface temperature records are as flawed as folk on this site seem to think?

MarkW
Reply to  bazzer1959
September 8, 2016 6:51 am

Bazz, look at the 1998 El Nino, the temperature drop from that one wasn’t smooth either.

Mike the Morlock
Reply to  MarkW
September 8, 2016 10:34 am

MarkW September 8, 2016 at 6:51 am
Also the 2009-10 El Nino.
This will be interesting to watch. As I gaze into my crystal ball I for-see a second small up tick for the end of this present El Nino.
Then again my crystal ball is one of those glass floats that artisans on the Oregon coast toss into the Pacific which my son found.
michael

Chris
September 8, 2016 12:37 am

“Even when Earth’s CO2 levels were four times higher than today, the climate was stable, and only 7F higher than today’s temperature.”
From the wikipedia link you included: “The high eustatic sea level and warm climate of the Cretaceous meant a large area of the continents was covered by warm, shallow seas.” If having a large part of the earth’s continents covered in shallow seas is not catastrophic, we have very different definitions of that word.

MarkW
Reply to  Chris
September 8, 2016 6:52 am

During the Cretaceous, there was no Antarctic. So no Antarctic ice sheets. All that water had to go somewhere.
If you think that 7C will be enough to melt the Antarctic ice sheets, you really need to do more research.

Chris
Reply to  MarkW
September 8, 2016 9:40 am

“If you think that 7C will be enough to melt the Antarctic ice sheets, you really need to do more research.”
What is the research that shows that a temperature rise of 7C is insufficient to melt the Antarctic ice sheets?

MarkW
Reply to  MarkW
September 8, 2016 1:57 pm

The fact that the Antarctic continent is way, way below -7C.
A 7C increase would just mean that it isn’t as far below freezing as it is right now.

Chris
Reply to  MarkW
September 9, 2016 11:34 am

MarkW, the ocean temperature in Antarctica is most certainly not -7C. Most of the melting of that ice is due to warming ocean waters, the melting is coming from below, not from the air around it.

jvcstone
Reply to  Chris
September 8, 2016 9:06 am

don’t believe it was very catastrophic for the abundance of life on the planet at that time. That catastrophe arrived from outer space about 66 million years ago.

Chris
Reply to  jvcstone
September 8, 2016 9:42 am

“don’t believe it was very catastrophic for the abundance of life on the planet at that time.”
How is that relevant to our life today? There are 100s of millions of people living on coastlines around the world.

Reply to  jvcstone
September 8, 2016 12:08 pm

Chris,
What’s your argument? Are you saying that those ‘hundreds of millions’ of people will be flooded out?
If so… got any evidence that global SL rise is accelerating?

Chris
Reply to  jvcstone
September 9, 2016 11:32 am

dbstealey, look at my initial comment.

Reply to  jvcstone
September 9, 2016 12:58 pm

Chris,
You mean the non sequitur in your comment of September 8, 2016 at 12:37 am?
You know, where you posted a past CO2 level, and then commented about sea levels?
What does one have to do with the other?
(No speculating, please. Just post solid evidence showing cause and effect.)

September 8, 2016 1:06 am

Quite frankly, this post leaves a lot to be desired. And it is plain wrong on some things. There are very evident tipping points in paleoclimate records. The last one about 18,000 years ago, when small progressive orbital changes triggered a very fast (geologically speaking) glacial termination and the world went from glacial to interglacial in a few thousand years. That is a warming tipping point. There are others like the abrupt warming associated to Dansgaard-Oeschger events. Several degrees in the Atlantic region in less than 80 years.
If Think Progress makes some very bad posts, WUWT should not try to win that competition.

RAH
Reply to  Javier
September 8, 2016 12:55 pm

Javier
“Tipping point” in the form the alarmists use it refers not only to a point at which change is accelerated but also a point from which there is no return or recovery. That is why we see repeated claims that we must act now despite the lack of evidence of human caused catastrophic change.

Robert Austin
Reply to  Javier
September 8, 2016 6:45 pm

Javier,
There is only paleological evidence of a two state regime, ice age and interglacial. There is no paleological evidence for tipping points to a warmer regime from the interglacial regime. The Stefan-Boltzman relation is likely to preclude such tipping points. So don’t be a concern troll.

Reply to  Robert Austin
September 9, 2016 3:54 pm

“There is only paleological evidence of a two state regime, ice age and interglacial.”
Not true. There is paleological evidence of very different regimes in the past 540 million years. Earth climate has been quite varied.

Nylo
September 8, 2016 1:52 am

The only “mistake” (nothing deliberate is really a mistake) from ThinkProgress is that it is attacking a position nobody holds. No skeptic that I know has ever claimed that the satellites didn’t show warming since 1978. For some reason they want to make their followers believe that we did and we are proven wrong. I think the key is the later part. To make them think that they can prove anyone wrong. It is funny that they keep calling Roy Spencer “denier” when he has published a number of articles already proving the greenhouse effect.

Robert Austin
Reply to  Nylo
September 8, 2016 6:47 pm

The straw man is the the warmists favorite target.

MarkW
Reply to  Robert Austin
September 9, 2016 10:04 am

They’ve learned not to attack anything they can’t defeat.

Sylvia Marten
September 8, 2016 1:52 am

I read through the Joe Romm site the other day.
Only the most stupid, or mindless politico, would believe any of it.
If you do believe then look at other sites and join us in the real, non panic world.

AllanJ
September 8, 2016 2:12 am

There have been many questions raised here in the past that are overlooked in these comments. Whether or not there is some warming is not the only question. Some other questions are:
How much temperature change is natural versus man driven?
What is the optimum temperature of earth?
How much of the man driven temperature change is caused by fossil fuel use?
Is fossil fuel caused warming, if any, worse than the proposed cures?
There are more but it is early morning where I live and I need some more sleep.
Goodnight all.

MarkW
Reply to  AllanJ
September 8, 2016 6:58 am

Since we are discussing the press release, only issues related to that press release are relevant and likely to be brought up.
We don’t need to discuss the entire gamut of issues for every single article.

mothcatcher
September 8, 2016 2:19 am

yep, sorry. This just won’t do. The appeal to CoE constraints as somehow invalidating greenhouse theory is 100% wrong. Only if you accept the wrong premise is it worth going beyond the first para. Nick S has a handle on why.
And this is a skeptic talking.
Yes, in my opinion wrong assumptions about feedbacks are where it all falls down ( and the basic 1deg +/-0,2 deg due to CO2 greenhouse alone won’t frighten anybody at all, despite the pointless verbiage from evcricket and others at the top of the thread ) but this piece adds nothing to our understanding.

mothcatcher
Reply to  mothcatcher
September 8, 2016 2:34 am

Sorry – somehow posted on the wrong thread. How did I do that?

Doug
Reply to  mothcatcher
September 8, 2016 6:36 am

Well, at least you got the “pointless verbiage from evcricket” part right. 🙂

MarkW
Reply to  mothcatcher
September 8, 2016 7:00 am

More than once I’ve thought of a comment that I would like to make, after leaving an article. I then quickly click back in and post. Only to discover that in my haste I clicked into the wrong article.

TA
Reply to  mothcatcher
September 8, 2016 2:32 pm

“Sorry – somehow posted on the wrong thread. How did I do that?”
Well, if you are like me, you probably had more than one browser window open and picked the wrong window to use. 🙂

AllanJ
September 8, 2016 2:20 am

Addendum to last:
The “pause” was not used as evidence that warming had stopped forever. It was evidence that the models which showed continuous warming were inaccurate. If the pause ended after more than ten years it does not make the models accurate again.

son of mulder
September 8, 2016 2:36 am

Global average temperature peaks are caused by El Ninos. Where the El Nino rise and fall fits into a calendar year affects how warm that year will be compared relative to other El Ninos. So to find that the recent El Nino caused a higher global average temperature than say 1998 is not clear from the anomoly graphs. Who has the actual temperature graphs and data to show how El Ninos were phased within the calendar years? Until i see that it’s not clear to me.

TA
Reply to  son of mulder
September 8, 2016 2:35 pm

February 2016 was one-tenth of a degree hotter than the hottest month in 1998. One-tenth. That’s what the alarmists are hanging their hat on.

son of mulder
Reply to  TA
September 9, 2016 7:05 am

Do you mean hottest or biggest anomoly? Two different measures in general.

Robert of Ottawa
September 8, 2016 2:38 am

Here in Ottawa, we’ve just passed through a period of 10C/month warming!
Now we will have 10C/month cooling.
Natural variation.

CheshireRed
September 8, 2016 2:48 am

Given 0.12C per decade warming is below every IPCC alarm-fest report then this ‘news’ actually represents a significant reversal of the ‘scare’. Are the IPCC going to re-write their reports and projections? Is Romm going to be credited with undermining the entire alarm-fest? Does anyone care?
Romm was also silent on 18 years of the pause but magically finds his voice again after a year or so of el Nino. Imagine that – a natural event propping up mann-made theory. The whole AGW circus really does stink to high heaven.

September 8, 2016 3:23 am

If climate stayed the same I’d be shocked, shocked. Hardly fair on the Egyptian Old Kingdom, the Hittites, the Mesopotamians, the Ming etc if they copped civilisation/dynasty-fatal climate change and we got to cruise forever on a flat line.
Mind you, a lot of that “civilisation/dynasty-fatal climate change” consisted of cooling + drought. But that would really spoil the narrative, wouldn’t it? Some people would really be shocked, shocked if forced to confront natural and human history as they were widely accepted not too many years ago. Or were Hubert Lamb and all the rest just making it up?

James Bull
September 8, 2016 4:05 am

The words straws and clutching at spring to mind with their reaction to a slight, mild and beneficial warming that is way below what we were promised because of our sins of emission.
James Bull

Editor
September 8, 2016 4:07 am

Think Progress is just regurgitating the same nonsense as Seth Borenstein.
The Warmunists are like roaches, for every one you stomp, two more seem to pop up.

Gamecock
September 8, 2016 4:12 am

Which has killed more people, the melting of Arctic ice, the Antarctic ozone hole, or an average satellite measured temperature rise of 0.12c / decade.

JustAnOldGuy
September 8, 2016 4:14 am

That works out to 0.012 C per year. That’s the wind chill on my upper lip when I snort derisively at any fool who expects to achieve stasis in any complex and incompletely understood natural system by.

Griff
Reply to  JustAnOldGuy
September 8, 2016 4:41 am

There’s a difference between global average and temperatures just outside your front door…

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Griff
September 8, 2016 4:43 am

Global average is a made up number.

Reply to  Griff
September 8, 2016 5:48 am

The difference is that the one outside your front door is more accurate.

Harry Passfield
Reply to  Griff
September 8, 2016 7:03 am

Bet you wouldn’t bet your house, Griff, on the global average of lottery numbers. It’s just as meaningful as GAT. Unfortunately, GAT will cost us all dearly; you losing your house to the lottery would be acceptable.

MarkW
Reply to  Griff
September 8, 2016 7:03 am

Who said anything about the temperature outside his front door?
BTW, if there is a difference global average and the temperature at any particular spot, why does your team keep hyping every heat wave?

Walt D.
September 8, 2016 4:30 am

The methodology uses January – December to define a year. However it would seem that this definition is arbitrary. Why not go March – February or July- June?
What is interesting is that if we examine the series Monthly “average of previous 12 months” we see a slightly different picture. If we sort this series by highest to lowest anomaly, we find in the top 24 months all of the 1998-1999 El Nino months, whereas we only find 5 months from 2016. (the rest of the months are from 2010.

Bryan
September 8, 2016 4:55 am

Breaking news……..
Maldives seems to be sinking under billions of ‘ criminal laundered cash’

Ryan
September 8, 2016 4:57 am

I’m all for shorter winters.

September 8, 2016 5:14 am

Of course if you count 1945-2015 you have to cut the 0.12C to 0.06C. You see co2 didn’t start appearing in 1978. From 1945-1978 as everyone knows the temp of the earth DECLINED. so the change may be less than 0.06C/decade depending on if you believe adjustments. The adjustments wipe out the decline and produce a nice smooth upward Trend since 1900 or so contrary to the reported facts of the day. In fact even with adjustments the Arctic was warmer in the 40s than today. We had dust bowls in the american west.
The point is looking at a rise since 1978 and saying wow isn’t that amazing temps have gone up for 30 years and not realizing that during massive co2 production post WWII there was a drop in temperatures for 30+ years.
We didn’t have satellites in 1945 to confirm the temperature record and see if temps then we’re actually as warm or warmer than today. All we have are adjusted records of NASA to tell us yeah today is way hotter than the dust bowl Arctic ice free 1940s. Oh wait even they can’t deny that the Arctic was warmer then than today.
The fact temperatures go down for 30 years or stay stable for 20 years here and then means any assumption that 0.12C is the rate we will see for the next 85 years is stupid.
Obama said Americans are lazy because we do little about global warming. The reason we are so callous about global warming is that we don’t see the reason to spend trillions on a nonexistent problem. Tell us what exactly is the bad thing that will happen even if we get another degree. Not vague the world will collapse. Exactly what is going to happen that we need to worry about? You got nothing. So what the temps are a little bigger. That’s a good thing. I think many of us warmists would be happy to do something if there was a reason. They just make vague accusations of horrible things. Nobody has time for their unsubstantiated fear mongering. We’ve got too many real problems to worry about .3C warmer temperatures worldwide in 2100.

TA
Reply to  logiclogiclogic
September 8, 2016 2:41 pm

“Of course if you count 1945-2015 you have to cut the 0.12C to 0.06C. You see co2 didn’t start appearing in 1978. From 1945-1978 as everyone knows the temp of the earth DECLINED. so the change may be less than 0.06C/decade depending on if you believe adjustments.”
Very good point.

richard verney
Reply to  logiclogiclogic
September 9, 2016 1:44 am

Of course if you count 1945-2015 you have to cut the 0.12C to 0.06C. You see co2 didn’t start appearing in 1978. From 1945-1978 as everyone knows the temp of the earth DECLINED. so the change may be less than 0.06C/decade depending on if you believe adjustments.

I for one am unconvinced that there has been any warming since the 1940s when one takes account the error in measurement, and the impact of UHI and station drop outs.
May be there has been a little warming since the 1940s but if so, it has probably been modest perhaps in the region of about 0.2 degC.
One should bear in mind the following:
1. The US data suggests cooling since the 1930s/40s.
2. We have hard contemporaneous historical evidence of the dust bowl conditions which whilst not quantitative describe and show conditions which we are not experiencing today.
3. Greenland temperatures suggest that it is cooler today in Greenland than it was in the 1940s. Again there is historical evidence backing this up.
4. The tree ring data that Mann had to disregard and not use in his famous nature trick does not suggest significant warming post 1940s.
All in all, if one considers how much warming (if any at all) that there has been post 1940, some or all of which is no doubt of natural origin, it does not suggest that there is any significant CO2 led warming.
Indeed, Phil Jones of CRU stated that there was no statistically significant difference in the rate of warming of the late 20th century warming (1975 to 1998) and that of the two earlier warming episodes of 1860 to 1880, and 1910 to 1940.
See generally: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm

Bindidon
Reply to  logiclogiclogic
September 9, 2016 1:02 pm

I lack the time to answer here, but what exactly do you mean with this strange claim?
Of course if you count 1945-2015 you have to cut the 0.12C to 0.06C.
According to a scientific trend computer
http://www.ysbl.york.ac.uk/~cowtan/applets/trend/trend.html
the linear OLS GISS trend for that period was: 0.129 ±0.017 °C/decade (2σ)
and that of HadCRUT4 was: 0.104 ±0.018 °C/decade (2σ).
Even WFT tells about 0.85 °C / decade:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/gistemp/from:1945/to:2015/mean:60/plot/gistemp/from:1945/to:2015/trend
Between 1945 and 1978, the trend was flat:
0.018 ±0.046 °C/decade (2σ)
Some meaningful and credible explanations? I stay tuned!

ChrisDinBristol
Reply to  Bindidon
September 10, 2016 3:40 am

Were you around in the mid-late 70s? If so, surely you remember the global cooling/coming ice age scare. Why the scare? Well, apart from glacier advance and growing arctic ice, ‘global temps’ – we were told – were on a 30-year decline. By as much as 0.5C.. . . Now where did that go?

ChadB
September 8, 2016 5:16 am

I described it this way once:
I am not predisposed to reject global warming or climate change out of hand. I really only have three problems with it, and if those three problems are resolved I will happily jump on board the CO2 train
1) I don’t believe the underlying data. It sure does seem like the records are being systematically manipulated because the past keeps getting colder
2) I don’t believe the models. I have worked on some models and I know the difficulty of getting even a simple system with known components that behave in a measured fashion properly modeled. I find the claim that the entire earth can be modeled to be incredulous.
3) I don’t believe that the outcome of a few C warming is that big a deal. The warming we are talking about is roughly the equivalent of moving from Boston to Philadelphia. In the scheme of things… shrug.
Clear up those three issues (data, model, and conclusion) and I am fully in. Until that point you are going to have a really hard time getting me to believe you or to care even if I did believe you.

Reply to  ChadB
September 8, 2016 5:47 am

Exactly. I started out being interested in finding out why the planet was warming so much according to these scientists. The way I look at it is that it’s either going to warm or cool. Which is better for mankind? The rate of warming is nothing alarming, and since the models don’t match reality that show that we probably can’t do a damn thing about it by controlling CO2 anyway. I’m sure they have more accurate models but they don’t show the desired output.

Bill Illis
September 8, 2016 5:27 am

Let’s remember there were two large volcanoes in the beginning of the UAH record that makes the trend appear larger. Start low with two volcanoes and end high with the biggest super El Nino in 100 years and yeah, you have an upward trend.
If you adjust those out (and then the ENSO impact, and the AMO impact and the small Solar impact) and then see what warming you have left …).
It is only 0.038C per decade.
I’ve been running this natural variation model for almost 8 years now having first posted the idea on WUWT in 2008.
http://web.archive.org/web/20090626174702/http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/25/adjusting-temperatures-for-the-enso-and-the-amo/
Well, it is still working well and here is a model of the monthly average of UAH, RSS and HadAT back to 1958 (and this monthly, none of that phony smoothing over 5 years or something).comment image
The warming residual is only 0.038C per decade and one can see there is no pesky ENSO bumps and volcano dips and just a small steady rise (with a white noise error of about 0.2C which the climate seems to exhibit on a monthly basis),comment image
Now when we extend those trends back to 1850 and go out to 2100, we see there is maybe another 0.4C of warming to come by 2100 (the error margin on your thermometer). In 85 years, you wouldn’t even be able to see this much change on your thermometer, electronic or the old mercury ones.)comment image

Hugs
Reply to  Bill Illis
September 8, 2016 5:57 am

Oh you can make it look much worse!
– First scale the vertical axis (1 K should be from bottom left to top right corner
– Smooth / dampen variation in measurements so that it appears there is a stable global temperature in the first place
– Use surface temps over land instead of some satellite, they are adjusted more efficiently.
– Fudge the projection to cover measurements
– Use Schmidt’s baseline technology: https://climateaudit.org/2016/05/05/schmidts-histogram-diagram-doesnt-refute-christy/
– Graft and cherry-pick.

Reply to  Bill Illis
September 8, 2016 6:06 am

Bill,
It looks like your lnCO2 function would yield a climate sensitivity of less than 1 C… Right in line with just about every observation-based estimate.

Reply to  David Middleton
September 8, 2016 7:17 am

Right in line with exactly 1 observation-based estimate: Lindzen & Choi. Pretty much every other paper gives a median estiamte about 1ºC. In any case Bill’s ‘model’ is estimating TCR, not ECS.

Reply to  David Middleton
September 8, 2016 7:33 am

Transient Climate Response is the sensitivity that matters to people.

Reply to  Bill Illis
September 8, 2016 6:07 am

How does the solar component work in your model Bill? It was not in the original article. Are you taking sunspots? What is the trend of the solar component and its effect on temperatures according to your model? Thank you.

Bill Illis
Reply to  Javier
September 8, 2016 6:42 am

Solar is the TSI from Kopp and Lean and then updated data from the SORCE TSI satellite. Technically, it is not statistically significant and is just a +/- 0.05C in the regression. I leave it in just to say it is in but there is no solar cycle imprint in any of the residuals I have tried. Its just not there.
I think the solar impact needs to be an accumulation over many decades. Slightly warmer Sun for 50 years, energy accumulates on Earth at 0.1 X 10^22 joules per year and it is 0.3C warmer. The physics and the math actually works at this level but not in the 1979 to 2016 period of stable solar.

Reply to  Javier
September 8, 2016 7:25 am

‘Slightly warmer Sun’ is at most a difference of 0.1w/m2. That’s indeed about 0.15 x 10^22 joules (zettajoules).
If transient sensitivity (for every 3.7w/m2) is about 1ºC or less, then that that should raise temperatures by 1 / 37 = 0.027ºC. This heat does not ‘accumulate’ because as the Earth becomes warmer it also radiates more; what can happen is that heat initially stored in the ocean is released over decades, making ECS larger than TCR. But for TSI to have caused a warming of 0.3ºC over any recent period is impossible. (Of course there might be over solar effects but these are largely speculative).

Reply to  Javier
September 8, 2016 7:26 am

The parenthesis should have said 1.5 zettajoules.

Bill Illis
Reply to  Javier
September 8, 2016 8:22 am

Alberto, I’m thinking of a “slightly warmer Sun” as in 3 or 4 W/m2 TSI. (then divide by 4 and multiply by 0.7 for Albedo and we have 0.7 W/m2/year of additional energy that Earth is/was/will be getting versus what it was getting when it reached its previous equilibrium temperature. That would be in the range of 0.4 X 10^22 joules per year additional after the solar ramp-up. That is roughly what the ocean and Earth is accumulating right now so it is certainly within the realm of what can actually happen. 40 or 50 years of that and the Earth is 0.3C warmer. The question is does the Sun actually vary by that much in long cycles. We used to think the Maunder Minimum TSI was 4 W/m2 lower but now most solar scientists would put that at only about 1 W/m2.

MarkW
Reply to  Javier
September 8, 2016 2:00 pm

You are assuming that direct TSI is the only way that the sun impacts the climate.
There’s also changes in UV which affect the thickness of the ozone layer, with ozone being another greenhouse gas. Not to mention the Svensmark affect.

Brett Keane
Reply to  Bill Illis
September 9, 2016 4:50 am

Illis
September 8, 2016 at 5:27 am: Thanks, Bill. Working as I do on a 62-3 yr cycle, I looked at 1957-8 as similar in the last cooling slope. My memoru of then, not far from here on the same coast of NZ, is of similar weather patterns. Boisterous as the cooling started to bite then too, perhaps. Those graphs may tell a story…

September 8, 2016 5:27 am

“Even Satellites”
Unreliable according to some prominent Warmers.
Next post.
Andrew

Rich Lambert
September 8, 2016 5:49 am

The value of 0.12 degrees C implies that global temperature measurements are accurate to within +/- 0.005 of a degree. I find this unbelievable.

Hugs
Reply to  Rich Lambert
September 8, 2016 6:06 am

We are talking about a trend, that can be defined highly accurately. The problem is rather measuring and verifying the *defined global temperature* at any similar accuracy. You can have a robust trend of numbers that are not so much meaningful. As someone expressed long time ago, the most common mistake is to believe a number has truth in it when it can be calculated at a high precision.
This is not to say there has been no warming; it is just that its meaning is smaller than some (very intelligent) people suggest.

rogerknights
Reply to  Hugs
September 8, 2016 11:21 am

That someone was A.N. Whitehead.

Hugs
Reply to  Hugs
September 9, 2016 6:20 am

thx Roger!

tadchem
September 8, 2016 5:54 am

This is the same warming that has been going on since the Little Ice Age ended – about 1870.

Reply to  tadchem
September 8, 2016 6:03 am

Actually, the warming started during the middle of the Little Ice Age…comment imagecomment image

Reply to  David Middleton
September 8, 2016 7:49 am

Yes, the Modern warming started in the late 1600’s.It is now around 320 years old,it is nearly done when compared to previous warming cycles of the last 4-5 thousand years ago. Warm periods lasts around 3-400 years.
The magic molecule will not stop the upcoming cooling,since the 1,500 year cycle can’t be intimidated by a trace gas,with a limited IR absorption range and near saturation condition.
Modern cooling is coming,there is nothing you can do to stop it.

Reply to  David Middleton
September 8, 2016 8:34 am

If we’re lucky, the magic molecule will mitigate the next Little Ice Age.

September 8, 2016 6:01 am

.12C/decade
that’s .012/YEAR
just pointing that out that warmists are freaking out over a .012C degree rise per year. Are you freaking kidding me? You get more change in temp between going from sunlight to shade or a cloud passing on a sunny day.
So much ado about nothing…..AGAIN.

Hugs
Reply to  Jenn Runion
September 8, 2016 6:11 am

I think our problem in this modern time is our ability to measure things like picograms of poisons and single Becquerels. 1C in 100 years is not exactly a huge difference, but of course our more alarmed friends will say it is much more, say 1.5-3.0K / doubling which comes before the end of the century according to them.

Reply to  Hugs
September 9, 2016 5:26 am

That’s because the Apocalypse always happens at the end of a century….excluding the Mayan calendar….and the BIG Apocalypse is at the millennia mark.

Resourceguy
September 8, 2016 6:13 am

Okay, and what percent of an AMO cycle is represented in the satellite record? Now recall that the answer is a percent of a grand total of one AMO cycle out of a set of irregular cycle episodes.

Janice Moore
September 8, 2016 6:31 am

@ Griff and all the insects, er, trolls here:
Correlation is not causation.
The burden of proof is still on the AGWers. It has never shifted to the science realists.
Moreover, there is anti-correlation, now:
CO2 UP. WARMING STOPPED (to any statistically significant degree).
Your windmills and solar projects are DOOMED.
Bwah, ha, ha, ha, haaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Andrew
September 8, 2016 6:36 am

I’m happy to stipulate that
– it has warmed 0.12C / da in the satellite era
– this can be extrapolated back to 1950
– most of it is due to ACO2 with a little from the post-LIA trend
– the implied ECS can be extrapolated logarithmically
– the modelled adverse consequences attributable to that warming, past and present PROVIDED there is a reasonable estimate of the effect of CO2 accelerating crop growth to offset it
– any policies that achieve GLOBAL abatement that passes a cost-benefit test on the basis above have my support provided there are NONE allowed that merely shift emitting activity from signatory to exempt countries
I see nothing controversial about any of these positions, which I have consistently held for years. But I suspect this would but be in danger of persecution or even prosecution if stated publicly.

Dobes
September 8, 2016 6:43 am

Has anyone looked into the possibility that global warming is caused by elections? It used to be that the election season really didnt kick off until labor day weekend. But now with all the primaries and conventions and so many candidates running for office, I think the amount of hot air being blown into the atmosphere is greater given a longer election season that is growing to the point of nearly overlapping with the previous season.
Maybe a surfacestations.org type project can be organized that tracks candidates and their locations in the vicinity of monitoring stations and see if there is a correlation.
I know is sounds silly but there have been so many ideas thrown around about what global warming can do that I thought maybe we needed more alternatives to what causes it as well.

Dobes
Reply to  Dobes
September 8, 2016 12:58 pm

Unfortunately my theory would imply out of control catastrophic climate warming no matter what we do. I see no end in sight and no cure.

Kevin in NH
September 8, 2016 6:50 am

What’s the margin of error with this 0.12C/decade trend? +/- 1C?
Did they take out for adjusting the past temperatures downward as they did this? Because the adjusting continues downward for post-1979 reported temperatures at the NWS sites – the 1981-2010 data used to calculate 30 year normal at most ASOS weather stations in the US is adjusted downward by 0.6-1.5F…because apparently max/min thermometers work differently now than they used to? Are we incorporating an adjustment for UHI?
Even if you take the 0.12C/decade as truth
1. The sky isn’t falling – this would come well below the most conservative of IPCC’s alarmist projections upon which billions of dollars are wasted.
2. How much of this is a continued NATURAL recovery from the Little Ice Age? Or stronger sunspot cycles in the late 20th century? Or multi-decadal ocean currents in a warm phase?
3. It is well within reason that it could be easily erased by a Pinatubo-level eruption, and a series of small to moderate eruptions every 3 to 5 years would be more than enough to create a much steeper downslope.
4. Is it even possible that we could slice the sliver of warming even further and attribute whatever portion to man? Not within the realm of reasonability, we can’t.
Since the temperatures do not rise in lockstep with CO2’s steady increase then sorry, I can’t attribute the reason to being CO2.

Caligula Jones
September 8, 2016 7:04 am

As a history buff, I’ve always loved what they said about the Holy Roman Empire: neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
Branding isn’t a new thing.

tim maguire
September 8, 2016 7:36 am

Who else read this with an image int heir head of someone spiking the football? They would argue in the end zone, I might argue on the 20 yard line, but the real issue is, what are they so seemingly happy about? If they believed what they claim to believe, they would be devastated at being proved right, they would have hoped beyond hope that they were wrong and the detested deniers were right.
If they really believed it.

MarkW
Reply to  tim maguire
September 8, 2016 2:03 pm

This press release is so bad that the image of someone spiking the ball on the 20 yard line comes to mind.

Reply to  tim maguire
September 8, 2016 10:02 pm

Tim, I wholeheartedly agree. The extremists in the warming crowd are all about destruction. They are anti-human. They long for the collapse of civilization and want to do it themselves, all the while crying “CO2” (AKA “Wolf!”) and blaming anyone who contributed anything to lifting humanity from the short, savage existence nature would keep us in. They hate us all and want to punish us all for the grand sin of being human and for using our brains and intelligence. If any element of any animal can be seen to be a cancer upon the Earth, it is They – the human-haters.

September 8, 2016 8:33 am

“and all that helps slow our response to the greatest preventable threat to our health and well-being. That is a tragedy we must all fight against”
Maybe they mean that a continuation of the last 4 decades of the best weather and climate for life on this planet in at least 1,000 years(since the Medieval Warm Period-that got that name for a reason) along with CO2 fed, record crop yields and world food production……………will make us all fat and lazy (-:
Naw, I think what they meant was that the slight beneficial warming and huge benefits of increasing CO2 in the real world need to be twisted into a reality that only exists in an alternate universe.
Wait, we are living in that universe as twisted realities have become mainstream (hijacked) climate science, driven by a political objective, sold as a cry to save our planet(which is greening up) and save it for our children(that we shouldn’t have because they increase CO2) .
There is plenty of real pollution(strange, that we don’t hear about that anymore) but CO2 is a beneficial gas and life, so far is screaming out loud and clear(for those listening)
“Thank You!” “Can you please feed me more?”
Authentic environmentalists(including me) should be outraged that hundreds of billions of dollars are being flushed down the toilet, that could have been very productive in cleaning up some of the real pollution.

Resourceguy
September 8, 2016 8:39 am

The Smart Car is the pinnacle of that synthetic reality. It’s not smart to drive a tin can on a major highway with large trucks, other traffic, shredded tire parts, and even some potholes in this case.

MarkW
Reply to  Resourceguy
September 8, 2016 2:02 pm

It’s not a good idea to have tires that are smaller than the average pot hole.

Gamecock
Reply to  Resourceguy
September 8, 2016 3:39 pm

And my son’s very useful Honda Civic, a real car, gets better gas mileage.

Reply to  Resourceguy
September 9, 2016 9:09 am

I’m looking forward to OTHERS riding in cars that drive themselves. I’ll be able to change lanes anytime I want … just nudge over a little and the other car hits the brakes.

MarkW
Reply to  Resourceguy
September 9, 2016 10:07 am

Until he hits a pothole and has to replace most of his Honda Civic.

September 8, 2016 8:40 am

He calls Dr Spencer a denier, the guy is a loony

Reply to  Mark - Helsinki
September 8, 2016 8:42 am

Worse than that, he’s PAID to be that way.

tabnumlock
September 8, 2016 9:16 am

Well I certainly hope we get SOME beneficial warming and concomitant milder storms from all this added CO2 and don’t have to settle for just more abundant crop and forest yields. +2C and 1,500ppm would be great. The interglacial is due to end and temps drop an average of -6C.

RWturner
September 8, 2016 10:44 am

I wouldn’t click on a thinkprogress link if it were the last link on Earth. Even if they were to acknowledge that they were hoodwinked this whole time, I’d still not give that thought-devoid website a view.

Bruce Cobb
September 8, 2016 10:47 am

They “found” some warming? They should give themselves a cookie and a gold star. All that cherry-picking is hard work.

n.n
September 8, 2016 11:26 am

And human beings have a growth spurt with puberty. Catastrophic.
Followed by a terminal decline. Truly catastrophic.
Progress.
Then we have those irregular, unpredictable moments of ups, and downs, and all around.
Chaos. Possibly catastrophic.

Resourceguy
September 8, 2016 11:32 am

Out of an abundance of caution and major oversight or exclusion of cycles, we must fork over $5 trillion dollars in direct and foregone wealth because they said so.

CBO
September 8, 2016 12:00 pm

The religion of global warming adherents will never admit they are wrong. This is not a scientific problem; it is a political problem. Money drives this whole thing and politicians like Obama and a number of other of the religious order of climate change want to control. Unfortunately, a good number of people are very trusting of their leader.

September 8, 2016 12:05 pm

They just noticed? Heh. Guys, it’s been .12 for a long, long time.
It’s not surprising; when you start calling anyone who questions policies based on speculative projections “deniers” you’re engaging in cult behavior, not science.

dp
September 8, 2016 12:07 pm

If energy that left the ocean and then predictably and temporarily heated the atmosphere as it leaves the Earth system via the only path it has is seen as anything but a cooling event I’d like to see the math.

MarkY
Reply to  dp
September 8, 2016 1:13 pm

See my math?
Heck no! You’d only be trying to find something wrong with it.

September 8, 2016 12:24 pm

Global warming over the past century, versus daily temp changes:
http://www.coyoteblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/us-temperature-trend.gif

Reply to  dbstealey
September 8, 2016 12:25 pm

Oops. Century change vs annual changes…

September 8, 2016 12:44 pm

OK I admit I haven’t read all of the comments above but I did get something very useful out of this post. Other than the obvious facts that the author at Think Progress has committed the usual sins of misrepresenting the argument and the qualities of his opponents, I had never ventured over to Think Progress before, probably due to my desire not to waste time on propaganda. What surprised me when I viewed the post “in its natural habitat” was the stream of comments that followed which were almost universally critical of the author. Even in his own territory it seems the author could not find a friendly audience for his misbehavior. Breathtaking how he manipulates a graph of surface temperature to lengthen the Y axis and shorten the X axis compared to the satellite series so as to illustrate visually the threat we all face.

Rex of Wellington
September 8, 2016 2:27 pm

‘Hottest’ ? Hot for who? Eskimos?

TA
September 8, 2016 3:04 pm

From the article: “Sorry Deniers, Even Satellites Confirm Record Global Warming
The planet just had its hottest 12 months on record.
The people who deny the facts of climate science for a living have had a really tough time recently.
For years they had been dining off the “there’s been no warming since 1998” talking point. But that one was mortally wounded when 2014 became the hottest year on record — and then it died entirely when 2015 blew away the 2014 record. And now a stake is being driven through the heart of this vampire again and again as every month of 2016 has been totally crushing both the record for hottest month and the record for hottest 12 months on record.”
Well, let’s go to the source of their happiness, and claims, the UAH satellite temperature chart
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_August_2016_v6.jpg
As you can see the years 2014, and 2015 are not even close to being record hot years. You can also see that Feb. 2016 is the only month hotter than the hottest month of 1998, and that by only one-tenth of a degree. All the ups and downs of temperature profile for the 21st century are basically within the margin of error of the measuring instrument.
The article writers can’t read a temperature chart properly, it seems.

September 8, 2016 4:12 pm

The average amount of time that passes between when a molecule of CO2 absorbs a photon until it emits one (the relaxation time) is about 10 microseconds. Heat is conducted in the atmosphere by collisions between molecules. The average time between collisions of molecules in the atmosphere at sea level conditions is less than 0.0002 microseconds.
Thus it is about 50,000 times more likely that a collision will occur (thermal conduction) than a photon will be emitted. The process of a molecule absorbing the energy in a photon and conducting the energy to other molecules is thermalization. Thermalized energy carries no identity of the molecule that absorbed it. Thermalization explains why CO2 has no significant effect on climate.
Water vapor has been increasing since it has been measured world wide (1988). If human activity is contributing to global warming (or countering global cooling) it is because of contribution to increase in water vapor (mostly from irrigation and burning hydrogen rich fossil fuels).
Changing from coal to natural gas increases water vapor.
http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com

Robert Austin
Reply to  Dan Pangburn
September 8, 2016 7:37 pm

Dan,
The thermalization of IR radiation is what happens in the lower troposphere. In the upper troposphere, at lower pressures about 1/10 bar, greenhouse gases are able to radiate an appreciable portion of excitation energy before collisions might thermalize it. Hence, the location of the characteristic emission altitude at the top of the lapse rate structure of the troposphere. This altitude is primarily a function of total pressure, not the partial pressure of the greenhouse gas. Thus, the minuscule increase in total pressure from an increase in CO2 concentration has a corresponding minuscule increase in the characteristic emission altitude and the temperature connection via the lapse rate structure to the surface temperature. I am not disagreeing that increasing CO2 concentration contribute little to warming, I just think your reasoning needs fleshing out.

Reply to  Robert Austin
September 9, 2016 12:35 pm

Rob – IMO we are saying pretty much the same thing regarding high altitude radiation. My perception is expressed in Figure 1 and the fourth paragraph after Fig 2. My perception is energy must get passed from non-ghg to ghg by reverse-thermalization. Last time I checked, pressure has to be really low for this to become dominant.

MarkW
Reply to  Dan Pangburn
September 9, 2016 10:11 am

With the exception of irrigation in really dry places. All of that extra water leaves the atmosphere very quickly.

Reply to  MarkW
September 9, 2016 1:17 pm

The argument that short residence time makes the influence of water vapor insignificant has misled lots of folks. Residence time cancels out of the assessment. What matters to warming effect at a time is the amount of water vapor in the air at that time (at low altitude) and it is increasing. The increase, graphed in my blog, is as reported by NASA/RSS (numerical anomaly) at ftp://ftp.remss.com/vapor/monthly_1deg/tpw_v07r01_198801_201607.time_series.txt
Increased water vapor should be contemporaneous with increased clouds, especially low altitude clouds, which would have a countering (cooling) effect. There is too much scatter in the reported average global temperature data to be certain yet of the net effect.
There are additional sources for increased water vapor as discussed in my blog.

Richard Keen
September 8, 2016 10:22 pm

“Global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978 [of] +0.12 C [0.22F] per decade.”
Whoopee-dooo…. especially since half of that minuscule warming can be attributed to (lack of) volcanoes the past two decades.
I did a report on this, presented at NOAA last year, and concluded that over 36 years of UAH MSU data, the warming amounted to 0.25C from all causes. Of this, 0.12C is thanks to volcanoes, 0.08C to CO2, and 0.03C to other greenhouse gases (CH4, fluorines, etc.). After removing the effects of volcanoes and greenhouse gases, 57% of the “random” year-to-year variations were due to El Nino.
Note that I never resorted to trend lines, which are infamously skewed by big warm/cold events near the start and end of the time series (e.g., volcano in 1982, Nino in 2015), and are selectively used by some to make a point. I avoided this issue by the KISS method – break the 1979-2014 period (36 years) into two 18-year periods, and compare the two. The second half is warmer.
Extrapolating the CO2 contribution to 2100 AD, I get a further warming of all of 0.33C. Hardly measurable, detectable, or catastrophic.
Oh, and solar had no effect at all – possibly because it changed very little over the course of the “grand maximum”.
The the gory details:
2015 NOAA ESRL GLOBAL MONITORING ANNUAL CONFERENCE
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/publications/annual_meetings/2015/
Poster Session Tuesday, May 19, 2015
P-48 Volcanic Aerosol Forcing of the Global Climate Derived from Lunar Eclipse Observations, 1979-2014
Richard A. Keen (University of Colorado, Emeritus, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Boulder, CO)
Abstract: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/publications/annual_meetings/2015/abstracts/100-150401-A.pdf
Poster: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/publications/annual_meetings/2015/posters/P-48.pdf

September 9, 2016 8:28 am

The math here is simple: to go from a glacial period to an interglacial period, the Earth naturally must warm.
Earth transitioned from its most recent glacial conditions to its current warming phase leading into interglacial conditions starting some 12,000-14,000 years ago. Based on the most recent series of glacial-interglacial cycles, having a 100,000-year cycle period, the duration of interglacial conditions can be expected to last about 50,000 years. Therefore, statistically, we can expect a long-term continuation of global warming for at least the next 10,000 years.
And, obviously, the tens of glacial-interglacial cycles that have occurred previously during the current Ice Age (per accepted scientific definition) have all occurred without any influence from mankind-related greenhouse gases . . . and the Earth and it flora and fauna (with few exceptions) survived every such cycle just fine, thank you.

JimB
September 9, 2016 10:33 am

I have a basic question: What, exactly, is normal behavior of global temperature during an interglacial period? Does it (as I think) continue to warm up until it doesn’t, and then back into an ice age? If so, all this blather about the hottest month in history is simply consistent with the rebound from the ice age. Am I right?

stevekeohane
Reply to  JimB
September 9, 2016 11:04 am

Here are the last few. While ours is longest, it is coolest. They do seem to be warmer at first and then trend down with warm blips as seen in the second chart of just our inter-glacial.
http://i40.tinypic.com/2pquhee.jpg
http://i40.tinypic.com/2zgzuqv.jpg

Felix
September 9, 2016 8:43 pm

“During the Holocene Optimum, 9000 to 5000 years ago, global temperature was warmer than today.”
Incorrect: http://www.realclimate.org/images//Marcott.png
“What is absent from historical records of the warmer past is evidence of “tipping points” or abrupt harmful changes driven by mild global warming.”
I am sure the mammoths, saber-toothed tigers and giant sloths will be glad to hear they did not go extinct when the Holocene hit.
“The Eemian, the previous interglacial, was warmer still – up to 8C (14F) warmer in arctic regions.”
Sea levels were 20 to 30 feet higher than today. No biggie. We’ll just wear floaties.comment image

Reply to  Felix
September 10, 2016 8:23 am

Felix,
I’m uncertain if your comment, “I am sure the mammoths, saber-toothed tigers and giant sloths will be glad to hear they did not go extinct when the Holocene hit”, is an indirect response to my Sept. 9 comment “. . . and the Earth and its flora and fauna (with few exceptions) survived every such cycle just fine . . .” In case it is, I just want to point out that it is scientifically estimated that there are about 6.5 million life species on land and about 2.2 million life species in the oceans (ref: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110823180459.htm ). The average life span of any given species is 1-10 million years (ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction , Ref. #17), which would amount to surviving at least ten 100,000-year glacial-interglacial cycles (the most-recently observed average period of such).
So, I stand by my original statement, although perhaps the word “relatively” should have preceded “few exceptions”.

Felix
Reply to  Gordon Dressler
September 10, 2016 4:09 pm

I did not see your post. The real Holocene tipping point was the emergence of human civilization.

Bob Grise
Reply to  Felix
September 10, 2016 11:34 pm

Felix, do you really think that mankind can’t find higher dry ground when seas are rising at whatever rate you wish to plug in your equation? Seas are up 400 feet from 15,000 years ago with no drownings correlated.

Bob Grise
September 10, 2016 11:30 pm

Americans spend a hefty percentage of their paychecks just to heat or cool a teeny tiny teeny weeny little shelter. To think that we could heat or cool the whole world is soooo absurd. If we were all billionaires…maybe…..but probably not then either.

davidbennettlaing
September 12, 2016 8:19 pm

It seems that we are dealing not with impartial scientists, whose job it is to ferret out impartially the real truths of the Earth system, but with fanatics, who will take any evidence whatsoever and blow it out of all proportion just to prove their point. This is not science. This is seeking data to confirm foregone conclusions, a practice that is much older, and one that is known to every religion that has ever sprung from the mind of man.