This is a continuation of a remarkable thread that has now received 10,000 comments running to well over a million words. Unfortunately its size has become a problem and this is the reason for the move.
The history of the New Statesman thread goes back to December 2007 when Dr David Whitehouse wrote a very influential article for that publication posing the question Has Global Warming Stopped? Later, Mark Lynas, the magazine’s environment correspondent, wrote a furious reply, Has Global Warming Really Stopped?
By the time the New Statesman closed the blogs associated with these articles they had received just over 3000 comments, many from people who had become regular contributors to a wide-ranging discussion of the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, its implications for public policy and the economy. At that stage I provided a new home for the discussion at Harmless Sky.
Comments are now closed on the old thread. If you want to refer to comments there then it is easy to do so by left-clicking on the comment number, selecting ‘Copy Link Location’ and then setting up a link in the normal way.
Here’s to the next 10,000 comments.
Useful links:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
The original Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs thread is here with 10,000 comments.
PeterM
No. I did not “misunderstand” Trenberth’s “travesty” remark:
The remark concedes that there has been a “lack of warming” (this is the period of slight cooling, which has continued after his remark to cover the most recent decade).
It also concedes that the climate scientists like himself, who believe that CO2 should be a major driver of global temperature, “can’t account for” this observed lack of warming.
This is also borne out by the fact that the models cited by IPCC had projected early 21st century warming of 0.2C per decade (with normal CO2 emissions) and 0.1C per decade even if atmospheric CO2 levels had been frozen at the 2000 level.
IOW Trenberth plus IPCC predicted one thing (backed by model simulations based on theoretical deliberations), but the observed facts came out differently, representing a “travesty” for Trenberth.
The falling upper ocean temperatures reported by the new ARGO measurements since they were installed in 2003 point in the same direction: our planet has been cooling most recently.
In a later interview (which I have cited earlier), Trenberth speculated that the “missing energy” may be going to “space” (i.e. leaving our climate system) with “clouds” acting as a “natural thermostat”.
This is interesting, because it agrees with published findings of Spencer and Braswell based on satellite observations of cloud feedbacks.
Then there are the ISCCP observations (Pallé et al.), which show that the global monthly mean cloud cover decreased by around 5% between 1985 and 2000. As a result the Earth’s global albedo decreased by the equivalent of around –5 W/m^2, i.e. decrease of reflected SW radiation (= heating of our planet). Over the period 2000 to 2004 the cloud cover recovered by around 2%, with an increase in reflected SW radiation of around +2 W/m^2 (= cooling).
http://bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthShine/literature/Palle_etal_2006_EOS.pdf
In other words, something caused clouds to decrease over the period 1985-2000, resulting in a decrease of the global albedo (and warming), which then reversed itself around 2000, resulting in an increase in global albedo (and cooling).
It appears that Spencer’s hypothesis regarding clouds as a natural climate forcing may have some merit. And for Trenberth, this would be a “travesty”, indeed.
Max
PeterM
You opine (3396) about the recent “lack of warming” (without any apparent reason for doing so):
Hmmm.. Seems like the Met Office does not agree with you on that, Peter.
Nor does Judith Curry (referring to Spencer’s hypothesis in the thread you cited):
The impact of “natural variability” (i.e. natural climate forcing factors) is still one of the major uncertainties, as Judith Curry has stated repeatedly.
Max
Max,
If you look at the graph in 3388 I’m not sure that there is any lack of warming to account for. 2010 was, according to Hadcrut, the second warmest year on record. NASA and NCDC have it as the warmest.
Judith Curry says in connection Trenberth’s “travesty” remark “Measuring the Earth’s radiation balance (and changes thereof) is very difficult.”
Why do you think she says that? She’s obviously a bit brighter than you and she knows that Trenberth is trying to account for why some years are warmer than others by direct measurement, rather than just accepting that its just “natural variability”.
And why does Judith Curry say that its a very difficult thing to do? That’s because the measurement involves measuring the difference between the total incoming energy and the total outgoing energy. Both of these are huge numbers. If the two amounts are the same the Earth will be in balance, if one is bigger than another even by a tiny amount there will be either warming or cooling.
So even a tiny error in the overall measurement will give completely the wrong result.
Presumably Trenberth must have used the phrase “missing heat” in a relatively cool year. Whereas if he’d made the comment in a warm year, like 1998, he could have used he phrase “excess heat”.
ALL,
There is an interesting article over at WUWT about the BBC Horizon “documentary”….. Delingpole, Nurse, Climategate, and the shenanigans of the producers.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/03/has-the-bbc-has-broken-faith-with-the-general-public/#more-32921
PeterM
All your waffling and changing of the subject (3404) will not change the fact that Trenberth wrote what he did in the leaked email.
It will also not change the observed fact that our atmosphere has cooled slightly, both at the surface and in the troposphere over the most recent decade.
At the same time ARGO measurement show us that the upper ocean has also cooled since they were installed in 2003.
IOW our planet as a whole has not warmed recently, despite record increase in CO2, which should have resulted in warming of 0.2C per decade according to IPCC models.
This “unexplained” “lack of warming” was Trenberth’s “travesty”.
Met Office also acknowledged this lack of warming and attributed it to “natural variability” (i.e. natural forcing factors).
Your statement starting with “presumably” is not only totally ridiculous, but it also has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Give up on this one, Peter. You are only making yourself look silly.
Max
Peter
Max referred to natural variability-this is the Met office reference made on 12/9/2009.
BBC radio 4 at 1.30pm, Vicky Pope of the Met office reluctantly admits the climate has been cooling against their expectations and models
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/more_or_less/8248922.stm#email
This is the BBC’s Tim Harford item (the link is found at the bottom of the box to the right of the item “Blowing cold, then hot”).
transcript
“Tim: If the cooling that the Leibniz Institute predicts actually takes place, are you worried that ’s going to take the wind out of some of the sails of scientists who are warning about the threat of global warming?
Vicky: It’s very important to realise that there will be ten-year periods where the temperatures don’t increase or they even decrease as the Leibniz study is suggesting –
Tim: We’ve just had one.
Vicky: Yes, in fact we have, but that doesn’t mean that global warming has stopped, it’s simply a question of natural variability, giving a temporary decrease in temperature overlaid on top of a long-term warming trend, and in fact I believe that’s what the results of that study suggest –
Tim: Sorry to interrupt but you say that were going to have ten-year periods of cooling. How can we be sure that the rapid warming we saw in the 1980s and 1990s wasn’t the exceptional period?
Vicky: This is the point really, is that 1998 was exceptionally warm because there was an El Nino, because there was a natural variation overlaid on top of climate change. So what you can see very clearly is a long-term trend and then these periods of rapid warming and less rapid warming or even cooling overlaid on top of that because of natural variations.”
tonyb
Brute
Referring to your 3399, it is beginning to look like you are correct in saying
And that, as a result, I am wasting my time.
The second part could well be true, as far as getting Peter to reconsider even any tiny part of his dogmatic pseudo-religious belief in disastrous AGW.
But I believe it is always worthwhile to try to bring the notion of rational skepticism in the scientific sense to someone through non-emotional and factual debate of the specifics.
Where it becomes less worthwhile, in my opinion, is when it becomes too repetitive and, thus, boring, as this latest exchange with him has become.
But I guess I’ll “soldier on” (all in the interest of “enlightenment”, of course).
Max
PS Hope you aren’t suffering too much from the record heat in your region (caused by AGW).
Hi All,
I’m afraid I’ve got a confession to make. Brute isn’t real at all – he’s just a sock puppet of my own creation.
I was hoping someone like a real Brute would turn up on this thread to back up my theory of AGW denial being largely driven by crazy McCarthyite right wing Americans, but clearly that was just wishful thinking. How could someone like Brute really exist?
PeterM
Your “confession” (3409) forces me to make one of my own
“Tempterrain” really doesn’t exist.
I just invented him to make the “dangerous AGW” believers (with their “McCarthy-like” attempts to stifle any kind of rational skepticism of their dogma) look silly.
Is it working?
Or am I maybe the “sock-puppet” of Bob_FJ in disguise?
Who knows?
(I do.)
Max
TonyB
Thanks for posting the Vicky Pope quote regarding “natural variability” as the cause for the most recently observed “lack of warming”.
I love the way she “spins” this all, skillfully avoiding any mention of earlier (pre-CO2) cycles of warming and cooling, all underlaid by a slightly warming trend since the modern record started in 1850.
Back in 1998 we heard from all the “believers” (including the Met Office spokesman of the time) that the record warmth was a result of AGW (of course); now that it hasn’t really warmed since then, “1998 was exceptionally warm because there was an El Nino, because there was a natural variation overlaid on top of climate change”.
Groan!
This lady sure knows how to spin. Amazing!
Max
Max,
I’m puzzled about anyone’s insistence that we are in a cooling phase. OK so 2010 was cooler than 1998, according to Hadcrut, but 1998 was influenced by a freak El Nino event so really the data point for that year is just an outlier.
Just look at the graph again. If you saw exactly the same shape of graph representing the price of shares you’d bought, would you be keen to sell them on the expectation they were going to fall?
I don’t think so. Yes there will be periods where the price will flatten off or even fall temporarily but overall the indicators are they’ll just keep on rising.
As a matter of fact, Mrs. Brute and I have spent the last week in West Palm Beach Florida.
Here, it has been a balmy 78 – 85 degrees all week……..blue skies, green grass, palm trees, tee shirts and short pants.
We return to the sad and lonely north tomorrow…….back to the salt mines on Monday morning………
After that, another few weeks of enduring the harsh sub-zero “global warming” in Washington and then we’re off again………this time to the Caribbean via cruise ship visiting some private island near Jamaica.
I sold off my interests in the carbon credit market just before the crash and made a bundle.
I’m just kidding about the carbon credits……..I come by my money honestly.
Understanding the Global Warming Delusion
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/bast-understanding-the-global-warming-delusion-pjm-exclusive/2/
By the way guys……Mrs. Brute and I took in a movie this afternoon titled “The King’s Speech”………it was about Queen Elizabeth’s father (King something the VIIIIIIIIII) and how he overcame his speech impediment with the aid of (an Australian) speech coach………Very good.
[TonyN: I always suspected you of being a royalist at heart. Or did Mrs Brute have buy the tickets?]
I also read Hayek’s “The Road To Serfdom” this week which I highly recommend (especially to Peter Martin). It was originally released in 1944 but has seen a resurgence here in the US rising to # 1 on the New York Times bestseller list…………primarily due to renewed interest by Tea Party affiliated Americans……a good sign in this day and age.
Hopefully Hayek’s ideas will catch on.
Brute,
It may seem odd to some, that those of similar persuasions to Hayek can espouse the principles of liberty but be lukewarm in their attitude to democracy. But not really. Liberty for them is the the liberty of the oppressor to carry on oppressing!
We’ve seen that sort of attitude before in the USA , where for many years the black population were threatened with lynching if they dared to register to vote. And I dare say we’ll see it again if the demography of the USA changes, in the way it’s predicted to change, and we see democratic power, but not economic power, shift away from the old white elite.
At present, groups like the Tea Party don’t quite see the problem they face. They seem convinced that they can defeat Obama at the next election. Possibly they can, and possibly they will, but any victory will only be temporary. In maybe 20 to 50 years time the Tea party supporters in the USA will be in a similar position to the whites in pre-apartheid South Africa. The election, if allowed, of figures like President Obama, who advocate such evil Marxist doctrines as public health and social justice, will become the norm. They then will have to choose to have either Hayek style economic “liberty” or a more genuine democratic style of liberty that most people would associate with the term.
I guess I must be a dyed-in-the-wool Marxist! I favour the latter!
Peter,
You chastised me in your 3409 comment referring to me as being a “crazy McCarthyite right wing American”. Then, you advocate the tenets of “social justice” and refer to yourself as a “Marxist” in 3416.
Social Justice:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice
I strongly suggest that you print the Wiki page below, pin it to your chest and get yourself to government subsidized mental institution immediately.
Schizophrenia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia
Peter,
I had asked you several pages back which “race” of humans were least evolved based on your advocacy of Darwin and his theories chronicled in his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
It’s obvious from your comment 3416 that you believe that people of darker skin pigmentation are inferior………which is confirmed in your belief that darker pigmented people cannot compete in society without the benefit of government sanctioned theft and property/wealth redistribution.
Thank you for finally answering my question.
As is the case with “green” energy, it is patently obvious that these “green technologies” are inferior as they cannot compete without the aid of government sanctioned theft/wealth redistribution.
Funny how these lingering questions seem to clear themselves up just through the natural progression of your comments……………
PeterM
You apparently get “puzzled” easily.
Tell it to the Met Office and Trenberth. They refer to it as a statistical “lack of warming” (as did Phil Jones). I’m OK with that description. Are you?
Max
PeterM
You seem fixated on year 2010 temperature anomalies, which are interesting, I am sure, but tell us very little about decadal trends, as discussed earlier.
For a good summary of month-by-month year 2010 global temperatures in comparison with other years plus El Nino effects see:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/06/warmest-year-ever-2010-an-unexceptional-el-nino-year/
Looks a lot like 1998 (except not quite as warm, of course).
The comparison was written in December 2010. Since then the December HadCRUT numbers have been published.
They show that December 2010, at 0.251°C, shows the second coldest anomaly in the past ten years, with only 2007 slightly cooler at 0.215°C.
According to data from NOAA/NESDIS, the first few months of 2010 saw an El Niño pushing global temperature anomalies upward in a similar pattern to the very strong 1997/1998 El Niño. In late spring/early summer this was inactive. Toward the end of the year this was replaced by a La Niña, which apparently is expected to last until this summer.
http://www.stormsurf.com/page2/enso/current.shtml
Guess that’s what Vicky Pope was talking about when she attributed the most recent decadal “lack of warming” to “natural variability”.
Max
PeterM
It seems rather curious that you, as an avowed Marxist-leaning Australian living in Brisbane, are pontificating about the US Tea Party and how we are likely to see a resurgence of “Jim Crow” laws of 80 years ago if the “demography of the USA changes, in the way it’s predicted to change”.
As a Swiss, I realize that I am not knowledgeable enough about the details of US politics, demographics or history to make such sweeping predictions.
I would also not attempt to chastise you for the way that aborigines were discriminated in your country (or may still be).
I’d suggest that Brute, as a US citizen and inhabitant, probably has a much better view on what is going on politically in his country and how it relates to past history, than either you or I do.
So let him express it and listen.
You may not agree with all his conclusions or predictions, but they are probably closer to reality than either yours or mine.
And besides, we are again slipping dangerously off topic.
Max
Max, Reur 3420
Over at WUWT:
NOAA ENSO expert: “odds for a two-year (La Niña) event remain well above 50%”
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/ts.gif
TonyB
Back to your 3407.
You recall that Vicky Pope, spokesperson for the Met Office “party line”, attributed the most recent “lack of warming” (which Peter is apparently still having difficulties accepting) to “natural variability”.
She also alluded to the fact that 1998 was unusually warm because of a major El Niño event.
We have seen than the “natural variability” from the strong El Niño years of the 1990s have played a major role in the observed warming of that decade. This was most notable in the case of the strong 1997/98 El Niño, to which Pope refers.
Pope did not make mention of the impact of this major El Niño event on the overall 1990s warming rate, but this is easy to calculate, based on data supplied by NOAA:
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/1998/enso/10elnino.html
Roughly one-third of the entire decadal warming rate recorded from 1991 to 2000 (0.08°C per decade out of 0.26°C) was caused by this one event.
Other major El Niño events occurred in 1983, 1987 and 1992 (with smaller events occurring in other years). Together these major events account for around 0.05°C of the recorded decadal rate of warming of 0.15°C over the entire late 20th century warming period from 1976 to 2000 (or about one-third).
So “natural variability” does appear to play a major part in our planet’s recorded “global average temperature”, as Pope has stated.
Max
TonyB
The ENSO chart just posted by Bob_FJ shows the events, which I mentioned, graphically.
I’ve only calculated in the effect of the major ones listed in the NOAA attachment I cited, but it is quite easy to see how these have been a cause for a significant portion of the observed late 20th century warming (which has apparently started to reverse – but we’ll have to wait and see on that).
Max
Max
I can only imagine that Vicky pope looked at this graph produced by her own organisation and realised she needed to find something to explain it.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/
As I keep trying to point out to Peter, if he examines real world individual stations-as opposed to the nonsensical global one-he will find many stations cooling. None more evident than in Vicky popes own backyard. Sooner or later the public who fund the Met office by tens of millions of pounds every year will wake up and start to ask questions.
tonyb