The notion of a pause in Global Warming has been HOTLY debated on this board. At least one member of this board has said over and over that this claim is ridiculous and I am either dishonest or stupid (with a seeming implied preference for the latter). Well, Judith Curry, American climatologist and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology had this to say about the subject:
man, this thread sure has been quiet! i would have NEVER expected this. i thought that the usual suspects would want to get on here to say this is all rubbish and that the warming has continued unabated and that there is no pause in warming in the past 16 years. where have you guys gone? Come on, tell me how Judith Curry is an idiot who can't read a graph. tell me how the Met is complicit in some "denialist" plot to deny AGW.
Al Gore is not around to fire up the mindless masses and besides, everybody is crapping their pants that Obama, who was a sure "winner", has a close race on his hands.
I think there was a thread similar to this a couple of weeks ago. Don't know if I qualify as "mindless mass" because I am not an expert in climate science, but I think smart-*** exchanges between pseudo-subject matter experts on a subject vastly more complex than they acknowledge can get a little tiresome. And frankly, though it is dated at this point, Al Gore's book on this has superior intellectual cogency than most arguements advanced by its detractors. Newdoc or Mop do you think I'm crazy to worry about the contracting arctic ice cap?
I think you won the debate Mop. They were very loud during, but not that you've won, they're like Obama, licking their wounds.
"Go back and do your research - read the transcripts" - er, wait.. mop - the lefties have zero response because there's nothing they can say. Same as barry last night - or, any night, for that matter
"Something" made the planet warm about a degree in the last 100 years. Do we know what that something, or combination is? Are we causing it? Is is likely to continue? If it is a direct and immediate response to manmade CO2 (within a decade or two, even), which is what is proposed, then what shape of warming graph should we expect? Not this. If it is a 60 or 80 year lead up to such an effect, then don't we push all this back before most of manmade CO2 was in play? Now, am I concerned about lost ice in the Arctic? Yes, somewhat. If the average world temperature is flat for 16 years, and if the Arctic and Iowa or some other place is hotter, then presumably comparable sizes of areas are cooler. Even so, I can buy the idea that the Arctic is especially important because of reflection, etc. Not saying it necessarily applies, but I can see the concept that you see even from basic chemistry, that an ice/water mixture will stay the same TEMPERATURE, even when gaining or losing heat content, such that temperature is not the only thing to know about the heat content of a system. Still, the question is whether the long-term trend is significantly caused by AGW. The proponents use that word, "significant," but are not able to really measure or quantify what % that means. What MOP has said many times, and I agree with, is that pumping great amounts of CO2 into our atmosphere to change the basic makeup of our atmosphere is better minimized than maximized, just on conservative principles alone. The question is, do we need to go on a diet, see a doctor, or check in to the ICU? The magnitude of the heating, and the degree to which anything we do or don't do can affect that, are the main factors. A 16 year period of flat temperatures not only lessens the evidence of runaway heating, it should cause one to doubt seriously the direct correlation between what people are doing on earth and its temperature. That is, even if the next 10 years show more significant warming, would that really prove that it is because of CO2 we are about to put into the atmosphere, or what was done in the 1980s or none of the above. Has the level of CO2 varied greatly up and down over the past decades? The AGW proponents report that it is increasing more and more rapidly every decade. An obvious response would be that we have just had a 16 year natural cooling period that masked the underlying AGW for that period. But that proves too much, because if you just as easily assume a natural warming period for some of the prior decades, the whole rationale falls apart that it is CO2 at the base of this trend. Surely if we just had a natural cooling cycle, it must be contrasted with a natural warming cycle that went before.
The stupid is strong. You keep repeating the same lie and it becomes true? The earth did not stop warming and I destroyed this lie the last time. Yet here comes the energizer bunny of lies back again. The Link
Paso, you are funny. You can't admit when you are wrong can you? So the chair of the climatology department at the Georgia Institute of Technology agrees with me. But not just her, the Met in the UK, by NO means friendly to skepticism, has agreed as well and I have quoted them verbatim. But you still pull up some cute little graphs and try to insist that I am "stupid?" so the question is, what color is the sun in your world?
Paso, you really should get out more with this issue. Visit some other sites aside from Skeptical Science and Real Climate. Read some new papers that call into question AGW, or at least the overstated nature of AGW theory as it was presented in the past. Here is a quote that deserves repeating as it applies so richly to you:
i do find it funny that you, who loves to accuse people of data mining, use a graph that starts in 1970 after 30 years of cooling and then still only warms .5 degrees Celsius in 40 years. If you were to back up to 1940 it would basically show .4 degrees of warming over the past 70 years. that is .06 degrees of warming per decade. that means that in 100 years time, it will warm about .6 degrees. Now, unless we happened to be born during a very bizarre time in geological history, i imagine most centuries that have happened over the past 4,000,000,000 of earth's history (which is 40,000,000 centuries) would have either warmed or cooled. i am still trying to figure out why .4 degrees of warming over 70 years or .7 degrees over 150 years is something that we should be so horrified about.
the past century let's not forget that graph. it shows that the periods of warming at the beginning of the century are about identical to that which came at the end when we had released TONS of CO2. where is the powerful catalytic force of CO2?
Can any of you address the actual data and science? Why do I think this will be a long, long ************* wait? Try reading this link and then talk to me about whether the warming stopped in (fill in the blank). The Link
BTW the Met did not confirm this claim and, in fact, disputed it. Here is another link for you and your merry band of minions to ignore: The Link
tell you what Paso, why don't you address some of my points first? Seems fair right? Why do you think it is that you claim I am stupid and can't read a graph but that Dr. Judith Curry agrees with my reading of said graph? Why does the Met say: "We agree with Mr Rose that there has been only a very small amount of warming in the 21st Century. As stated in our response, this is 0.05 degrees Celsius since 1997 equivalent to 0.03 degrees Celsius per decade." Once again, pointing me to the longer trend no doubt makes you feel warm and fuzzy, but it doesn't make your point. I agree that over 16 years, the trend is positive. what is interesting is the fact that for 16 years we have been more or less flat. You mantric denial of this fact, is as bizarre as it is juvenile. this is not a controversial fact. The point is just that when you start with 1997 and go through 2012 (which is well over half way complete now) you get almost 16 years of virtually flat temperatures. we know it warmed (rather rapidly actually) from 1980-1998, but not many people predicted that it would then stop and not warm noticeably for the following decade and a half. So how about it. Can you explain what Judith Curry and David Briton of the Met are talking about? here are some nice HONEST quotes by Climate Scientists. Since you love to slap down the Ocean Heat Content trump card, here is what John Barnes says about that:
Paso, this is the 2nd comment written by Dave Britton (apparently the author of the press release you linked to), he wrote it on October 15, 2012 and he wrote it at 10:48:21 :
You cannot read English. You also quote mined in addition to cherry picking. I have navel lint with more intelligence and integrity. This is inane and an utter waste of my time. The trend is all that matters and you either have no idea what trend is or are an utter cretin.
As for what the Met actually stated about the time frame, this is the real quote (in response to a question):In reply to:
So, this is a consistent trend over 140 years? Don't you see that that destroys the concept of recent CO2 being the cause? It's funny who thinks who is dense in this debate.
Paso, VY is right. You mention a quote that talks about the 140 year trend, something that no one is disputing. It is also just a red herring as we are talking about the last 15 years and whether or not there has been a pause. The Met agrees with this. Judith Curry agrees with this and multiple other scientists agree as well. To pretend that there hasn't been a pause is ridiculous. It makes you appear to have no intellectual integrity at all. Come on man, admit that while it warmed dramatically for about 30 years, it has paused for the past 14-16 years. In fact, the trend for the past 16 years is from slight cooling to slight warming depending upon which global indices you look at. To pretend otherwise is ridiculous.
The Met does not agree that there has been a pause. You keep parroting this lie like it makes it true. If you cherry pick the start point (at a high), it makes it look like there is no rise for a while. This is why trend is all that matters. The trend remains the same particularly when you adjust for known short term distortions (like solar cycles and ENSO). This is so simple and simplistic that even you should understand it. How about you tell me what decade the last ten highest yearly global temperatures were in? You guys are like information clowns.
