This is going to leave a mark:
NASA satellite instruments precisely measuring global temperatures show absolutely no warming during the past the past 10 years. This is the case for the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes, including the United States. This is the case for the Arctic, where the signs of human-caused global warming are supposed to be first and most powerfully felt. This is the case for global sea surface temperatures, which alarmists claim should be sucking up much of the predicted human-induced warming. This is the case for the planet as a whole.
If atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions are the sole or primary driver of global temperatures, then where is all the global warming? We’re talking 10 years of higher-than-expected increases in greenhouse gases, yet 10 years of absolutely no warming. That’s 10 years of nada, nunca, nein, zero, and zilch.
Despite all the doom and gloom predicted by warmists if we didn’t do something about a trace gas essential to life on Earth, the planet is just fine. Good job we didn’t retool the global economy based on those predictions, right?
It’s not that there was a little less warming than predicted, or that warmist predictions were out by a small amount. There simply was NO warming. At all. Any way you want to slice it, that’s awkward for all the folks who claim that increased CO2 must lead to warmer temperatures.
Someone pass weepy Bill McKibben a valium, because suddenly he and his 350.org neo-pagan followers look exactly as credible as Harold camping did on May 22nd. Yeah, this news is that bad for hippies.
Oh, wait, did I mention Weepy Bill? Here you go then, Google juice for McKibben:
@Chris
If you were not such a pompous ass I might feel sorry for you. From your elevated perch of knowledge you cherry pick scientific data without having a clue whether that data is right or wrong. You dismiss the scientists that have a contrary opinion and although you might concede that there are two sides to every story…both sides are yours. Have you actually read what other prominent scientists on the “not” side have said ? People like Timothy Ball.
Or
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/home/9023-did-you-know-a-handy-list-of-facts-that-show-why-the-claim-co2-is-causing-warmingclimate-change-is-untenable
Or many others who have not been brainwashed to the extent you have ?
Anyone who sees that fat carpetbagger Al Gore or the fruit fly expert Suzuki as a leader to save the planet is in desperate need of reality drugs.
Climate will always change and has all through history. Scientists also know full well that funding and job security is dependant on the level of panic generated.
Mother nature rules, and sometimes she has a sick sense of humor but climate scientists have a worse track record than your local TV weathermen for 2 week forcasts or the Farmers Almanac for the annual ones. You can put all the garbage you want into computers and it will give you all the garbage you requested. Like Al Gores Hockey stick graph.
I suppose it’s time for me to mosey along. During the week I’ve been here, I’ve been like a broken record demanding “evidence, evidence, evidence” and, while there has been a little evidence presented, it’s dwarfed by other content. It seems that people here are more interested in attacking people than considering evidence. It’s apparent that you (plural) have given up hope that you’ll ever be able to disprove my claims with evidence, so now you’re turning to personal attacks on me. I ignore that pap, because I’m insignificant. What IS significant is the evidence — and there’s precious little of that coming from you (plural).
Another behavior that you (plural) should all consider is the strutting self-congratulation. People spend a lot of space declaring that they have “won” — as if this is all just a big game. I beg of you, please don’t treat this issue as a source of entertainment and camaraderie. Whether it’s real or not, ACC is a big issue. One way or the other, it’s going to cost everybody here an enormous amount of money, time and trouble. It deserves careful consideration, not cheap shots at Hollywood celebrities. I’m not saying that cheap shots at Hollywood celebrities are bad things. If you enjoy that, there are plenty of great targets. But mixing serious political issues with Hollywood celebrities with is like adding vitamin powder to candy. I like candy, but I don’t eat candy at dinner.
I’ll not be returning to read any responses to this post, because I already know that they’ll consist of nothing more than the vituperation that I’ve already seen too much of. I truly hold no antipathy towards you; I visit blogs like this about once a year to try to understand the weird mindset of denialists. I also visit creationist websites, truther websites, birther websites, and anti-nuclear websites, just to get a grasp on the wild irrationality that occupies some ill-ventilated nooks of our society. But I must admit, I still don’t understand how some people can be so determined to be so wrong.
Vaya con dios.
Chris
Sorry Chris, you’re a weasel. You cannot complain about “opinion sites” and then cite wikipedia. Prehaps you’d better start explaining when and how you got “climate science training”, because literally zero of your citations is from anyone with a degree in Climate Science.
Greg,
Scratch a warmist, find a zealot. Works every time.
DailyBayonet, I think you’re very much in error in using the phrase “moving the goalposts”. That phrase refers to changing the goals or altering the desiderata. My expectations for climate models have grown higher with time: I expect them to be better and better. And they have gotten better — MUCH better.
You dismiss the 1990 models: “as useless as the 1990 ones have been today” As I have already explained — and nobody has challenged my explanation — your statement is based on the statement of a nonscientist who misinterpreted the graph produced by another person. The 1990 models have in fact been confirmed by experience: the actual results fall within the error bounds of those models. Would it help you understand this point if I explained the concept of error bounds?
You write: “the credibility of climate models disappeared when Climategate allowed the world a look under the hood:”
This is your perception, and the perception of denialists everywhere, but it is certainly not shared by the vast bulk of humanity. Here’s an article appearing in The Economist recently presenting an even broader view of humanity’s effects on the planet. You have to admit, The Economist is most certainly NOT a left-wing rag; its editorial policies are well to the right of center. It is also the most highly regarded news magazine in the world; its reporters get access to world leaders that no other news organization can get. It is read by business and political leaders everywhere. So you can’t simply dismiss these people as hippies.
Moreover, I remind you that there were at least three independent investigations of the hacked emails, and every one of them vindicated the climate scientists — something denialists like to deny.
So why is it that denialists have a perception so completely at odds with the rest of the world? I think you (plural) can answer that question by asking yourselves some simple questions. When was the last time that you read something at a website that supports the ACC hypothesis? When was the last time (if ever) that you read something at RealClimate. org? Have you read IPCC AR4 WG1? How about Skeptical Science> Have you read the Statement by many national academies on climate change? Or one of the many statements on climate change made by the National Academy of Sciences?
My guess is that it is unlikely that you (plural) have ready any of these sources, or perhaps had a quick view of one or two. My question then is this: if you expose yourself to only one side of the story, shouldn’t you expect to have a one-sided view of the truth?
While I’m asking rhetorical questions, I’ll ask another for your consideration: What is the REAL reason for rejecting the ACC hypothesis? Have you objectively analyzed all the scientific evidence and come to a logical conclusion based on the evidence? Or did you instead begin with the political view that anything environmentalists approve of must be wrong? Are you treating this important policy issue as a football game, and you just want to root for your team, regardless of the facts?
You aren’t alone in this kind of behavior. Left-wingers oppose nuclear power for the same reasons that you oppose ACC. Like you, they have looked at only one side of the issue. Like you, they started with a political opinion (big corporations are evil) and worked backwards from there to reach opposition to nuclear power. Like you, they know little of the actual science behind the issue. Like you, often hold that there’s some sort of conspiracy at work.
Back to you (singular), you write: ” you may be persuaded that we need to wreck the global economy to ‘fix’ it.”
Not at all, nor have I ever said anything remotely approaching that. Why are you suggesting something completely at odds with my earlier statements. My concern is to PROTECT the global economy. Surely you will agree that, if the ACC hypothesis is indeed correct, its economic costs could well be devastating to our economy. Wouldn’t you want to protect the economy if this were in fact the case?
You say that you reject the findings of the National Academy of Sciences. Can you explain why you consider your scientific judgement to be superior to the combined judgement of the elite of American science?
I conclude with two last rhetorical questions: Are not denialists, birthers, truthers, anti-nukes, and creationists all essentially the same in denying well-established truths with a snowstorm of cockamamie arguments? Do you feel comfortable sharing company with these other groups?
Sorry, but the “denialist” remarks did in Chris’ credibility, as far as I’m concerned.
Chris is melting the ice caps and killing polar bears with every keystroke! Or at least that is what “experts” tell us.
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Could%20killing%20planet%20search%20time/4891461/story.html
Chris,
Your comment illustrates the problem with climate science exactly . When it’s inconvenient and proven wrong, you move the goalposts. You can’t claim that 1990 models are old & busted, look at the new hotness models instead. All that does is telegraph that you’ll say the same thing about current models in 5, 10 or 20 years, or whenever they are shown to be as useless as the 1990 ones have been today.
The problem for you isn’t that there are newer, perhaps even better, models, it’s that the credibility of climate models disappeared when Climategate allowed the world a look under the hood: HARRYREADME.txt. The unwillingness to provide capable people a look at data just hardens suspicion that scientists like Mann, Hansen, Jones et al have shaky data or shaky models.
You may have been persuaded that global warming is driven by man, and you may be persuaded that we need to wreck the global economy to ‘fix’ it. That’s your right. I’m far from convinced. The underlying theme from your many comments appears to be to elevate the NAS as insurance against all the junk spouted by Mann, Hansen et al. I don’t agree, but it’s cute, like credibility offsets, or something. You’re welcome to keep trying that angle, but you should know that from over here it looks like you’re trying to polish a turd.
Good luck with that.
peterj, are you just making all this up? The article you cite is from the year 2000; it talks about warming winters in Britain.
If you have some evidence, let’s see it! If you just want to present uninformed opinions, well, that’s fine, too, but it doesn’t mean much…
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
According to the “experts”.
Last year was the coldest in a century with the highest snowfall on record.
Another fail for the “experts”.
Soylent Green, yes, that’s pretty simple stuff, but there might be some people here who wouldn’t notice that the graph uses the 1990 IPCC model, which was quite primitive. Nowadays, there are lots of different models, and the science of climate modeling has progressed by leaps and bounds. Somebody who wasn’t familiar with climate modeling might well take that graph as somehow representative of current work, when that old model is as primitive, when compared to modern models, as an Apple II is when compared to the latest iMac.
It’s little things like that trip some people up.
@ Chris
Is this too technical?
http://cbullitt.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/plotcomp1.png
Stark, my choice of Wikipedia is for the convenience of the readers, not my own consumption. My own sources on ACC are considerably more technical, and well beyond the ken of the readership here, which lacks specialist training.
Wikipedia, Chris? Let me keep my answer short, so you can get back to “climate science training”: #fail
This claim that there has been no warming is incorrect; it is based on two errors. But first, let me remind all that the source here is an opinion column — not a scientific source — written by a fellow who has no training in climate science. And HE is quoting an article from Roy Spencer’s blog — a major denialist site. This, of course, doesn’t make it wrong, but let’s all realize that this is NOT coming from NASA or from any scientific organization. This is just Roy Spencer’s opinion.
So let’s turn to the actual evidence. I suggest that you consult the actual data, a summary of which can be found here. Click on the graph in the upper right corner to see it in larger scale. If you examine it, you will see three best-fit lines drawn through it. They all closely coincide and show a definite warming trend of about 0.2º per decade during the period 1982 - 2011.
The first mistake is made by Mr. Taylor, the Forbes columnist. He misinterprets Mr. Spencer’s graph by cherry-picking the data. That is, he arbitrarily chooses the data from 2001 and then arbitrarily compares it with the data from May 2011. Why those two particular dates? Because they support his hypothesis! If he had wanted to, he could have picked mid-2010 and compared it with early 2011 to show that temperatures were plunging! Or he could have picked mid-2008 and compared it with mid-2010 to show that temperatures were soaring! In other words, any charlatan can cherry-pick the data to produce any result he wants. How do we get past these charlatans? Simple: don’t cherry-pick. Use ALL the data, not just some carefully selected subset.
This brings us to one of the simplest concepts of climatology that is often lost on denialists: weather ain’t climate. What happens today in Baltimore proves nothing about climate. The weather over a day, or a week, or a year, or even a decade is meaningless to climate issues. Why? Here the physics gets complicated, but the overall conclusion is that you need at least 30 years to see a real change in climate (It’s because of the heat content of the oceans. If our oceans were smaller, climatic changes would show up sooner.)
Some years back the big denialist issue was that temperatures now are lower than in 1998. That’s true — but only because 1998 was a record-setting hot year. If the stock market has been going up from 7,000 to 8,000 to 9,000 and then suddenly leaps up to 12,000 before falling back to 10,000, then 11,000, we don’t say that the stock market is collapsing. We say that the 12,000 figure was a record-setting fluctuation, but the general trend is still upwards. It’s the same way with temperatures.
So anyway, this entire story is more about ignorance than temperature.
Amusingly, our very own Phil Jones has apparently just pronounced that with 2010 data included there is definitely warming since 1995 (see Bishop Hill blog).
I don’t know if he said this before or after NASA, but it would be fun to think it was just before.
I was wondering why I was getting Weepy Bill traffic.
DB, Anthony has the plot of the two satellites vs IPCC projections. I used it too, you can steal it from either one of us.
Nice colors. Bwuhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Have a great weekend.
Had to link to this in comments at other blogs I visit - Jo Nova and Andrew Bolt.
Can you imagine ‘Death Trains’ Hansen trying to massage this data? His head would be near purple!