Dueling Datasets: Satellite Temperatures Reveal the ‘Global Warming Pause’ Lengthens to 18 years 2 months – (218 Months)

[Also see: It’s Official – There are now 66 excuses for Temp ‘pause’ – Updated list of 66 excuses for the 18-26 year ‘pause’ in global warming –  & Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer: ‘Why 2014 Won’t Be the Warmest Year on Record’ (based on surface data)– ‘We are arguing over the significance of hundredths of a degree’

For more explanation of how the ‘pause’ in global warming conflicts with the claims of 2014 being the ‘hottest year ever’ based on surface data, see related links below.  ]

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Onward marches the Great Pause

Global temperature update: the Pause is now 18 years 2 months

Guest Post By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

Since October 1996 there has been no global warming at all (Fig. 1). This month’s RSS temperature plot pushes up the period without any global warming from 18 years 1 month to 18 years 2 months (indeed, very nearly 18 years 3 months). Will this devastating chart be displayed anywhere at the Lima conference? Don’t bet on it.

Figure 1. The least-squares linear-regression trend on the RSS satellite monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly dataset shows no global warming for 18 years 2 months since October 1996.

The hiatus period of 18 years 2 months, or 218 months, is the farthest back one can go in the RSS satellite temperature record and still show a sub-zero trend.

What will the chart look like this time next year, at the beginning of the Paris world-government conference, at which the Treaty of Copenhagen will be dusted off and nodded through by the scientifically illiterate national negotiating delegates of almost 200 nations, ending the freedom and democracy of the West and putting absolute economic and political power in the hands of the grim secretariat of the UN climate convention?

When the November 2015 RSS data are available, how many years and months of zero global warming will have occurred? Enter our friendly competition by putting your best estimate in comments. For guidance, at the December 2012 Doha conference I was banned from UN climate yadayadathons for life for the grave sin of telling the truth that there had been no global warming for 16 years. And an el Nino of unknown magnitude is expected during the boreal winter, followed by a compensating la Nina.

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Figure 2. Near-term projections of warming at a rate equivalent to 2.8 [1.9, 4.2] K/century, made with “substantial confidence” in IPCC (1990), January 1990 to November 2014 (orange region and red trend line), vs. observed anomalies (dark blue) and trend (bright blue) at less than 1.4 K/century equivalent, taken as the mean of the RSS and UAH satellite monthly mean lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.

A quarter-century after 1990, the global-warming outturn to date – expressed as the least-squares linear-regression trend on the mean of the RSS and UAH monthly global mean surface temperature anomalies – is 0.34 Cº, equivalent to just 1.4 Cº/century, or a little below half of the central estimate in IPCC (1990) and well below even the least estimate (Fig. 2).

The Great Pause is a growing embarrassment to those who had told us with “substantial confidence” that the science was settled and the debate over. Nature had other ideas. Though approaching 70 mutually incompatible and more or less implausible excuses for the Pause are appearing in nervous reviewed journals and among proselytizing scientists, the possibility that the Pause is occurring because the computer models are simply wrong about the sensitivity of temperature to manmade greenhouse gases can no longer be dismissed, and will be demonstrated in a major paper to be published shortly in the Orient’s leading science journal.

Remarkably, even the IPCC’s latest and much reduced near-term global-warming projections are also excessive (Fig. 3).

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Figure 3. Predicted temperature change, January 2005 to October 2014, at a rate equivalent to 1.7 [1.0, 2.3] Cº/century (orange zone with thick red best-estimate trend line), compared with the observed anomalies (dark blue) and zero real-world trend (bright blue), taken as the average of the RSS and UAH satellite lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.

In 1990, the IPCC’s central estimate of near-term warming was higher by two-thirds than it is today. Then it was 2.8 C/century equivalent. Now it is just 1.7 Cº equivalent – and, as Fig. 3 shows, even that is proving to be a substantial exaggeration.

On the RSS satellite data, there has been no global warming statistically distinguishable from zero for more than 26 years. None of the models predicted that, in effect, there would be no global warming for a quarter of a century.

Key facts about global temperature

  • The RSS satellite dataset shows no global warming at all for 218 months from October 1996 to November 2014 – more than half the 430-month satellite record.
  • The global warming trend since 1900 is equivalent to 0.8 Cº per century. This is well within natural variability and may not have much to do with us.
  • Since 1950, when a human influence on global temperature first became theoretically possible, the global warming trend has been equivalent to below 1.2 Cº per century.
  • The fastest warming rate lasting ten years or more since 1950 occurred over the 33 years from 1974 to 2006. It was equivalent to 2.0 Cº per century.
  • In 1990, the IPCC’s mid-range prediction of near-term warming was equivalent to 2.8 Cº per century, higher by two-thirds than its current prediction of 1.7 Cº/century.
  • The global warming trend since 1990, when the IPCC wrote its first report, is equivalent to below 1.4 Cº per century – half of what the IPCC had then predicted.
  • Though the IPCC has cut its near-term warming prediction, it has not cut its high-end business as usual centennial warming prediction of 4.8 Cº warming to 2100.
  • The IPCC’s predicted 4.8 Cº warming by 2100 is well over twice the greatest rate of warming lasting more than ten years that has been measured since 1950.
  • The IPCC’s 4.8 Cº-by-2100 prediction is almost four times the observed real-world warming trend since we might in theory have begun influencing it in 1950.
  • From September 2001 to September 2014, the warming trend on the mean of the 5 global-temperature datasets is nil. No warming for 13 years 1 month.
  • Recent extreme weather cannot be blamed on global warming, because there has not been any global warming. It is as simple as that. 

Technical note

Our latest topical graph shows the least-squares linear-regression trend on the RSS satellite monthly global mean lower-troposphere dataset for as far back as it is possible to go and still find a zero trend. The start-date is not “cherry-picked” so as to coincide with the temperature spike caused by the 1998 el Niño. Instead, it is calculated so as to find the longest period with a zero trend.

But is the RSS satellite dataset “cherry-picked”? No. There are good reasons to consider it the best of the five principal global-temperature datasets. The indefatigable Steven Goddard demonstrated in the autumn of 2014 that the RSS dataset – at least as far as the Historical Climate Network is concerned – shows less warm bias than the GISS or UAH records. The UAH record is shortly to be revised to reduce its warm bias and bring it closer to conformity with RSS.

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Figure 4. Warm biases in temperature. RSS shows less bias than the UAH or GISS records. UAH, in its forthcoming Version 6.0, will be taking steps to reduce the warm bias in its global-temperature reporting.

Steven Goddard writes: “The graph compares UAH, RSS and GISS US temperatures with the actual measured US HCN stations. UAH and GISS both have a huge warming bias, while RSS is close to the measured daily temperature data. The small difference between RSS and HCN is probably because my HCN calculations are not gridded. My conclusion is that RSS is the only credible data set, and all the others have a spurious warming bias.”

Also, the RSS data show the 1998 Great El Nino more clearly than all other datasets. That el Nino, and that alone, caused widespread global coral bleaching, providing an independent verification that RSS is better able to capture such fluctuations without artificially filtering them out than other datasets.

Terrestrial temperatures are measured by thermometers. Thermometers correctly sited in rural areas away from manmade heat sources show warming rates appreciably below those that are published. The satellite datasets are based on measurements made by the most accurate thermometers available – platinum resistance thermometers, which provide an independent verification of the temperature measurements by checking via spaceward mirrors the known temperature of the cosmic background radiation, which is 1% of the freezing point of water, or just 2.73 degrees above absolute zero. It was by measuring minuscule variations in the cosmic background radiation that the NASA anisotropy probe determined the age of the Universe: 13.82 billion years.

The RSS graph (Fig. 1) is accurate. The data are lifted monthly straight from the RSS website. A computer algorithm reads them down from the text file, takes their mean and plots them automatically using an advanced routine that automatically adjusts the aspect ratio of the data window at both axes so as to show the data at maximum scale, for clarity.

The latest monthly data point is visually inspected to ensure that it has been correctly positioned. The light blue trend line plotted across the dark blue spline-curve that shows the actual data is determined by the method of least-squares linear regression, which calculates the y-intercept and slope of the line via two well-established and functionally identical equations that are compared with one another to ensure no discrepancy between them. The IPCC and most other agencies use linear regression to determine global temperature trends. Professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia recommends it in one of the Climategate emails. The method is appropriate because global temperature records exhibit little auto-regression.

Dr Stephen Farish, Professor of Epidemiological Statistics at the University of Melbourne, kindly verified the reliability of the algorithm that determines the trend on the graph and the correlation coefficient, which is very low because, though the data are highly variable, the trend is flat.

RSS itself is now taking a serious interest in the length of the Great Pause. Dr Carl Mears, the senior research scientist at RSS, discusses it at remss.com/blog/recent-slowing-rise-global-temperatures.

Dr Mears’ results are summarized in Fig. T1:

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Figure T1. Output of 33 IPCC models (turquoise) compared with measured RSS global temperature change (black), 1979-2014. The transient coolings caused by the volcanic eruptions of Chichón (1983) and Pinatubo (1991) are shown, as is the spike in warming caused by the great el Niño of 1998.

Dr Mears writes:

“The denialists like to assume that the cause for the model/observation discrepancy is some kind of problem with the fundamental model physics, and they pooh-pooh any other sort of explanation.  This leads them to conclude, very likely erroneously, that the long-term sensitivity of the climate is much less than is currently thought.”

Dr Mears concedes the growing discrepancy between the RSS data and the models, but he alleges “cherry-picking” of the start-date for the global-temperature graph:

“Recently, a number of articles in the mainstream press have pointed out that there appears to have been little or no change in globally averaged temperature over the last two decades.  Because of this, we are getting a lot of questions along the lines of ‘I saw this plot on a denialist web site.  Is this really your data?’  While some of these reports have ‘cherry-picked’ their end points to make their evidence seem even stronger, there is not much doubt that the rate of warming since the late 1990s is less than that predicted by most of the IPCC AR5 simulations of historical climate.  … The denialists really like to fit trends starting in 1997, so that the huge 1997-98 ENSO event is at the start of their time series, resulting in a linear fit with the smallest possible slope.”

In fact, the spike in temperatures caused by the Great el Niño of 1998 is largely offset in the linear-trend calculation by two factors: the not dissimilar spike of the 2010 el Niño, and the sheer length of the Great Pause itself.

Replacing all the monthly RSS anomalies for 1998 with the mean anomaly value of 0.55 K that obtained during the 2010 el Niño and recalculating the trend from September 1996 [not Dr Mears’ “1997”] to September 2014 showed that the trend values “–0.00 C° (–0.00 C°/century)” in the unaltered data (Fig. 1) became “+0.00 C° (+0.00 C°/century)” in the recalculated graph. No cherry-picking, then.

The length of the Great Pause in global warming, significant though it now is, is of less importance than the ever-growing discrepancy between the temperature trends predicted by models and the far less exciting real-world temperature change that has been observed.

IPCC’s First Assessment Report predicted that global temperature would rise by 1.0 [0.7, 1.5] Cº to 2025, equivalent to 2.8 [1.9, 4.2] Cº per century. The executive summary asked, “How much confidence do we have in our predictions?” IPCC pointed out some uncertainties (clouds, oceans, etc.), but concluded:

“Nevertheless, … weave substantial confidence that models can predict at least the broad-scale features of climate change. … There are similarities between results from the coupled models using simple representations of the ocean and those using more sophisticated descriptions, and our understanding of such differences as do occur gives us some confidence in the results.”

That “substantial confidence” was substantial over-confidence. For the rate of global warming since 1990 is about half what the IPCC had then predicted.

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Related Links: 

Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer: ‘Why 2014 Won’t Be the Warmest Year on Record’ – ‘We are arguing over the significance of hundredths of a degree’

Climatologist Dr. Pat Michaels debunks 2014 ‘hottest year’ claim: ‘Is 58.46° then distinguishable from 58.45°? In a word, ‘NO.’

Eco-Activists Warn 2014 Could Be Hottest Year On Record – Satellites Disagree

‘Hottest Year’ Update: NASA & NOAA ignore satellite data which reveal 2014 ‘well below’ hottest claims

Even ignoring satellite data Year-to-date ‘record’ temps are 0.21C *below* climate model projections

New paper finds excuse #66 for the ‘pause’: There’s no pause if you look at only at the warmest & coldest day of the year – Published in Environmental Research Letters

2014 might be 0.01C warmer than 2010!

No Record Temperatures According To Satellites – BBC put up a deliberately apocalyptic picture while telling us the world is on course for the warmest year on record. What they failed to tell us was that the more accurate satellites, which monitor atmospheric temperatures over nearly all of the globe, say no such thing.  Figures from UAH are out for November, and these show a drop from the  October anomaly of 0.27C to 0.33C. This means that at the end of November, this year is only in a tie for 3rd with 2005, and well below the record year of 1998, and 2010.

Flashback: 1990 NASA Report: ‘Satellite analysis of upper atmosphere is more accurate, & should be adopted as the standard way to monitor temp change.’

Study using dozens of models Claims: ‘Warming Climate Can Be Slowed in a Decade’ by cutting CO2

Climate Depot Note: If future temps continue to flatline or even cool, warmists can claim climate policy is responsible. They are already doing it! See: It’s Official — Temperature ‘Pause’ Caused By Climate Policies?! Medieval witchcraft lives! UK Energy Minister: Government policies ‘may have slowed down global warming’ 

AP’s Seth Borenstein publishes pure propaganda: Climate change has made Earth ‘hotter, weirder…downright wilder’

Climate Depot’s Morano comment: ‘AP’s Borenstein can be trusted to shill for UN’s climate summit in Lima Peru, which I will be attending and speaking at. Borenstein relies on Michael Oppenheimer (who is the UN scientists on the payroll of Hollywood stars) and Climategate’s Michael Mann. Borenstein ignores tide gauges on sea level  showing deceleration of sea level rise and ignores satellite temperatures which show the Earth in an 18 year ‘pause’ or ‘standstill’ of global warming. Borenstein tortures data in order to claim more weather extremes. We are currently at or near historic lows in tornadoes and hurricanes. Even droughts are on long term declines and floods show no trend. We know not to expect more from Borenstein.’ See: ‘Long sad history of AP reporter Seth Borenstein’s woeful global warming reporting’

Sea level claims debunked here:

Extreme weather claims debunked here:

Greenland ice claims debunked here:

Antarctica ice claims debunked here:

Overpopulation claims debunked here:

Analysis: Why ’90% of the missing heat’ cannot be hiding in the oceans

 

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437 Responses

  1. Marc, Warm-mongers are trumpetting that the pause has ended because 2014 was the hottest year EVER! Meanwhile, where I live and in much of the Midwest, meteorologists (the ones who passed their meteorolgy classes and never became climate scientists) tell us, even on accuweather of all places, that we had month after month of below normal temperatures. November was -4F for Pete’s sake and this wasn’t even unusual for this year.
    The rest of the world would have to be burning up in order to compensate for this not to mention turn it into “The HOTTEST YEAR EVER – 2014!! PAUSE OVER!!! Hip Hip Hurray!” and all that. (rooting for doom and gloom, but that’s their mind set) To me, this is more scary than just warrants a big “yawn”. These people are extremely dangerous. They don’t care about the satellite record apparently. We have proof that they lie. They seem to only use the “science” that either suits them, or is manipulated to suit them and their agenda. It just looks very suspicious that 2014 really was anything other than just normal as far as temperatures go, globally or not. I honestly wish it would warm up a bit from – THE WARMEST YEAR EVER ON RECORD SINCE HUMANS EVOLVED FROM APES!!!!!!!!!!!

    1. “>>>They seem to only use the “science” that either suits them, or is manipulated to suit them and their agenda.<<<"

      This is exactly as the Nazis and Communists manipulated science for propaganda purposes in their day. Why the similarity? Well, they are exactly the same kind of people, who learnt their political lessons from the old masters.

      1. “This is exactly as the Nazis and Communists manipulated science for propaganda purposes”

        I realise reality might feel tyrannical to you, but I’d suggest that’s because you’re pretending it doesn’t exist.

        NOAA says that so far 2014 is the hottest year on record:

        “The first ten months of 2014 were the warmest such period on record.”

        http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global

        …so why is Marc Morano claiming it isn’t?

        Which is more reliable, the scientists at NOAA? …or someone well-known for lying about climate science?

        1. I honestly doubt integrity of some NOAA scientists and some NOAA products. For starters, data produced by on-ground measurements is always polluted and–its greatest sin–it is incomplete, because it covers only a tiny portion of the globe, namely, where the weather stations are present. The weather stations themselves are poorly calibrated and inherit systematic errors related to their positioning, usually within the influence of urban heat islands.

          Satellite data, on the other hand, does not show 2014 as being “the warmest year on record.” Satellite data is uniformly calibrated and covers the whole globe, also uniformly, it is therefore of much higher quality. When you have a look at the Aqua satellite data, 2014 clearly lags behind 2010 and 1998 and differs but little from 2007, 2005 and 2002. As to the comparison with, say, 1930s, we can’t say much at all. Such data as is available, e.g., for the US and Russia, show 1930s to have been warmer than at present for these countries. As no truly global measurements exist for before 1979, this is all that we can say about it.

          As to the thermal blips observed since 1979 and including 2014, they match closely with solar activity peaks, as the more extended warming period of the 20th century matches with the solar Grand Maximum and known ocean oscillations. Since the natural explanation exists for the observed climate drift, which is, frankly, tiny anyway, a mere 0.7C since the end of the Little Ice Age, the attribution of it to human activities becomes more dubious with every year passing.

          To build any pretense on the basis of such shoddy evidence and demand sacrifices and economic stranglehold on whole societies is sheer political and economic vandalism, akin to what Khmer Rouge and others of their ilk had done in their day.

          This is the true face of what is going on and I stand firmly by my comparison.

            1. “>>> but you trust a man with a B.A. in political science who is well-known for lying about climate science… <<<"

              Point to a single lie about climate research and climate itself uttered by Marc Morano.

              The reason why he is so very effective in dismantling eco-fascist propaganda is because his ammunition is based on good science and scientific observations. There are well researched scientific papers, reviews, and statistics behind every statement he has made on the subject.

              In the left column of "Climate Depot" WWW page you will find useful pointers to most recent scientific papers on climate and related topics. Read them.

              There are tens of thousands of professional scientists, well read in scientific literature on climate issues, who have no argument with Marc Morano at all.

                1. This statement, which incidentally is by Monckton, is quite correct, while the statement by NOAA you refer to is not. See doi:10.4236/ojs.2014.47050, where the
                  Vogelsang-Franses HAC-robust trend variance estimator is applied to HadCRUT4 surface temperature series to show a trendless interval of 19 years duration at the end of the data series, and of 16 to 26 years in the lower troposphere.

                  1. “This statement… is quite correct”

                    Uh huh, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says it’s not. In fact, they say 2014 is so far the hottest year on record:

                    “The first ten months of 2014 were the warmest such period on record.”

                    http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global

                    …so where are you getting your information?

                    If you know your sources of information are misleading you, why would you continue to rely on them?

                2. CB is a lunatic. She spreads her “>400ppm = we all drown” blather where ever she can. You’ve done an excellent job of obliterating her. But she’ll won’t stop. She’ll never stop. Hence, a lunatic.

                    1. Because according the RSS database of satellite temperatures, there’s been no statistically significant global warming for 18 years. Geez. And you know this (because I’ve posted this on threads where we’ve interacted on countless occasions.
                      You are a loon; Anyone who disagrees with you is either a liar or suicidal.
                      No need for me to really get involved much here. Gus is doing quite an excellent job of wiping the floor with you without my help.

                    2. “according the RSS database of satellite temperatures, there’s been no statistically significant global warming”

                      Uh huh, and why are you looking at the smallest part of the Earth’s climate system and ignoring the clear warming that’s occurred in the vast majority of it?

                      http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT

                    3. You really need a mental enema to clear out your febrile brain. AGW is and always has been about global mean surface air temperature. And that has been flat for 18 years. What’s happening with the ice, or the earth’s core, or the thermosphere, and anything in the oceans below 3 microns……it’s got nothing to do with AGW.

                    4. “AGW is and always has been about global mean surface air temperature”

                      Oh! There’s your problem!

                      Anthropogenic global warming has always been about the warming of the air and the sea.

                      Did you think that heat energy wouldn’t pass from one to the other?

                      Did you think hot coffee never cools and cold beer never warms?

                    5. “ACC is a rather more accurate term”

                      I’m actually fine with either one!

                      The effect of greenhouse gasses is to warm planets, and the effect of a warming planet is to change the climate.

                      I don’t see a conflict there.

                    6. AGW fis more to the meme of the ‘skeptics’ because they can ‘disprove’ it by citing how cold it is in the winter.

                      CC ha been a term of choice since the 70’s because it encompasses the broad range of effects we’re seeing in the Anthropocene.

                      BTW, have you read D. Ackerman’s The Human Age? Good companion to Kolbert’s Sixth Extinction .

                    7. I’ve heard about it, but haven’t yet read it.

                      I’ve got a lot of reading I need to catch up on…

                    8. What a silly child. You think you are the arbiter of what global warming is about?!! Bwahahahaha.
                      And of course the big absurdity is that AGW cannot warm the seas. Bwahahaa. CO2 back-radiation doesn’t warm the oceans because water is impervious to IR from CO2. The sun is responsible for ocean warming from above, as all other thermal processes at the surface serve to COOL the oceans.
                      Heat energy does pass between the oceans and the air, but in the TOTAL OPPOSITE DIRECTION than you suppose. The oceans are warmer than the atmosphere, and thus cannot warm the atmosphere (2nd Law of Thermodynamics).
                      What a dunderhead.

                    9. “You think you are the arbiter of what global warming is about?!!”

                      lol! No, scientists are. If you insist on inventing an imaginary discipline, you’re going to be able to engage in a coherent discussion about it, are you?

                      Can heat energy pass from the ocean to the atmosphere and vice versa, David Russell?

                    10. The oceans are typically and on average 1-2C warmer than the atmosphere, and thus cannot warm them. Real scientists know this. CB does not.
                      The relevant CO2 IR back-radiation (15micron wavelength) penetrates only 3 microns of the approximately 500 micron ocean skin. The ocean skin is cooler that the waters beneath and therefore cannot warm them. Real scientists know this too. CB does not.
                      What warms the oceans is the sun mainly. There is some slight warming from tidal forces and underwater volcanic/techtonic forces. CO2 is out of the picture and therefore AGW has NOTHING to do with ocean temperatures.
                      If anything, the oceans are responsible for [atmospheric] GW.

                    11. BZZZZT!!!

                      That’s not an answer, David Russell. Let’s try again:

                      Can heat energy pass from the ocean to the atmosphere and vice versa?

                    12. Heat can pass from ocean to the atmosphere and vice versa. That’s not at issue. Child that you are, you think that your questions are important when they are merely, well: puerile.
                      I’m feeling a bit like a child-abuser slapping you around as I always do. But since you keep coming back for more, I figure you like it. It’s a little creepy, but hey, it takes all types, right?
                      Well now you have your answer. Perhaps you’ll roll it into little balls and eat them.
                      Meanwhile AGW (i.e., human CO2 emissions) cannot warm the oceans for reasons given. Most would fell chastened at being shown consistently a fool. You, apparently not.

                    13. “Heat can pass from ocean to the atmosphere and vice versa”

                      Right!

                      …so why would you think anthropogenic global warming is about the warming of the air and not the warming of both the air and the water?

                    14. You are “FOLLOWING” me. Read my long responses to LenStanley today (Friday). Learn something. I know. That’s asking a lot. But you seem to like pain.

                    15. “It would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics”

                      If it would violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics for heat to pass between the atmosphere and the ocean, why did you say it was possible?

                    16. What does the 2nd Law state, Pumpkin?
                      “Net heat can pass from a hot object to a cold one, but not vice versa.”
                      Since the oceans are typically and on average 1-2C warmer than the atmosphere, the oceans can warm the air, but the air can’t warm the oceans.
                      Get it?
                      The only thermal process at the surface of the oceans that warms the oceans is: insolation (sunlight). All other thermal processes at the surface serve to COOL the oceans: evaporation, conduction, net IR.
                      Got it?

                    17. Have you entertained the possibility that laws of physics are actually merely suggestions? See how much more creative we can be if not hamstrung by limitations of reality?

                    18. There’s more to reality that is dreamed of in your philosophy, Mr. Pickens.
                      The laws of physics are not in contention.

                    19. “Since the oceans are typically and on average 1-2C warmer than the atmosphere, the oceans can warm the air, but the air can’t warm the oceans.”

                      When the air above the oceans warms, do those oceans cool faster or slower?

                    20. Wrong question. For both of the major warming events of the 20th century, the oceans warmed FIRST then the air.

                    21. “Wrong question”

                      Oh, it’s the right question for you to dodge alright.

                      Let’s try again:

                      When the air above the oceans warms, do those oceans cool faster or slower?

                    22. You really need to learn more. This might help: Here’s an except from my paper written about 2 years ago:”The sun (not CO2) warms the oceans”:

                      ………..
                      In order to evaluate if that is the case, we’ll look at the overall ocean heat transfer processes using a Columbia Univ. Earth & Environ.
                      Science lecture on ‘Ocean-Atmosphere Coupling’. ( bit.ly/10Sr1a4 )

                      It explains that the only heat exchange process that adds heat to the ocean is solar radiation:

                      “Fluxes across the sea-atmosphere interface: Heat exchange between ocean and atmosphere is a product of a number of processes: solar radiation heats the ocean; net long wave back radiation cools the ocean; heat transfer by conduction and convection between the air and water generally cools the ocean as does evaporation of water from the ocean surface”.

                      Every ocean-atmosphere process cools the ocean except for solar radiation. And here’s the quantification of those heat exchange processes from the lecture that we will use in our later calculations:

                      “Solar heating of the ocean on a global average is 168 watts per square meter. … Net back radiation cools the ocean, on a global average by 66 watts per square meter. … On average the ocean is about 1 or 2 degrees warmer than the atmosphere so on average ocean heat is transferred from ocean to atmosphere by conduction.
                      … On global average the oceanic heat loss by conduction is only 24 watts per square meter. … On global average the heat loss by evaporation is 78 watts per square meter.”

                      Now we’ll begin our calculations to quantify the effect of “reduced ocean cooling” due to increased GHG concentration in the atmosphere.

                      According to the IPCC’s formulas, changes in CO2 forcing over the last ~16 years is only ≈0.4W/m² ( 5.35*ln(396/367)=0.4W/m2 ). Per the IPCC, base GHG back-radiation is 324W/m² ( bit.ly/1a0jcCV ). Thus over the GGWH (Great Global Warming Hiatus), the GHG
                      ‘back-radiation’ to “reduce ocean cooling” only changed to 324.4W/m². This increase is a factor of 1.0012 (324.4/324) or less than a 10th of a percent. Now according to the both the IPCC diagram (390-324=66) & the previously cited Columbia ocean-atmosphere lecture, “net back
                      radiation cools the ocean, on a global average by 66 watts per square meter”, the net back-radiation from the ocean to the atmosphere was
                      66W/m². Applying the 1.0012 factor to determine the change in net back radiation available to “slow” ocean ‘back-radiation’ cooling & allow
                      additional heat to build up, shows that the net change in GHG CO2 forcing to the ocean is 0.08W/m². (66/1.0012=65.92; 66-65.92=0.08).
                      That is insignificant.

                    23. No, David Russell! I did not ask for a pile of irrelevant keyboard diarrhea. I asked you to answer a question that was incredibly simple. Let’s try again:

                      When the atmosphere above the oceans warms, do those oceans cool faster or slower?

                    24. Climate Bot, you’re pathetic. Do you know nothing about water’s warming and cooling characteristics?

                    25. “Heat flux rates?… Math and physics are challenging for the amateur and layperson.”

                      lol! I don’t think it’s even that difficult of a question, even for a layperson!

                      Why don’t you try your hand at it:

                      If the temperature of the air above the ocean increases, does the ocean cool faster or slower?

                      What do you think, just intuitively?

                    26. Having read a bit of Daniel Kahnman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow” I’m not a big fan or confident of my intuition. On the other hand, not wanting to appear cowardly, my intuition compels me to say that to attempt to maintain thermal equilibrium the oceans would cool more slowly and maintain more heat from insolation. The physical evidence shows that the oceans are warming. Unfortunately the data isn’t multi-decadal yet… or am I mistaken as I answer from intuition instead of slow-thinking research 😉

                    27. “my intuition compels me to say that to attempt to maintain thermal equilibrium the oceans would cool more slowly and maintain more heat from insolation”

                      DINGDINGDINGDINGDING!!!

                      We have a winner!

                      The speed of the energy transfer from hot to cold is dictated by the delta. When you reduce that delta, you decrease the rate of the energy flow.

                      … or to put it in layman’s terms, if you’re heating one part of a system, the whole thing is going to increase in temperature to some extent, even if some parts are still colder than others…

                      … and David Russell already knows this!

                      I’ve seen him hint at it in other threads… which is why I keep hammering him on this point.

                      Thanks for demonstrating how a normal, honest person answers a question. 😀

                    28. You have outdone yourself with that inane question.
                      Do oceans warm in the day and cool at night? If so, how much? Get it, CB?

                    29. Who said it was, Climate Bot? You’re looking a little desperate here. Better check back in with your programmer for a security update. You may have been hacked by the Koreans.

                    30. “Meanwhile AGW (i.e., human CO2 emissions) cannot warm the oceans for reasons given. ”

                      It seems that you need to change basic laws of physics in order for anthropogenic co2 to have a different effect than what happens with non-anthropogenic co2…

                    31. Your point is gibberish. What do you mean? Spell it out. I’ve written a paper and posted it on various sites (actually most of the ideas came from someone else). It explains in detail why AGW can not warm the oceans and it is supported by copious peer reviewed citations.
                      Try to form your point in a clear and specific way and we can discuss. If the oceans are warming it is totally an artifact of surface insolation. All other thermal processes at the ocean surface serve to cool the oceans — evaporation, net IR, and conduction.

                    32. I’m quoting you.

                      If the quoted statement is unclear, then you should endeavor to communicate your ideas more clearly.

                      If there is supporting information, then quote the relevent bit and cite it.

                      But to attempt to claim I’m not clear when I’m asking you to prove your own statement seems, at best, disingenuous.

                    33. You certainly are obtuse. It’s not your quote of me that is gibberish. It’s you comment following it that’s gibberish. Geez.
                      It seems what you meant to say is what you are saying now, which is “What are the reasons given?” If so, confirm and I will post my paper hereon for your perusal.

                    34. You specified anthropogenic co2 –
                      “Meanwhile AGW (i.e., human CO2 emissions) cannot warm the oceans for reasons given. ” – so either your statement is poorly worded or non-anthropogenic co2 acts differently.

                    35. CO2 back radiation cannot penetrate the ocean skin, which is cooler than the waters below and cannot warm them. CO2’s 15 micron IR absorption bandwidth only penetrates 3 microns and the ocean skin is typically 500-1000 microns. Thus CO2 cannot warm the oceans. Thus AGW cannot warm the oceans. Q.E.D.
                      Is that clear enough?

                    36. Q. E. D. your writing was unclear.

                      Now cite where your information came from.

                      Or are we to simply accept your statement?

                    37. Guess it’s time for you “paper”.

                      Doi please.

                      And still waiting for your explanation on why we should accept your statements over a myriad of legitimate science sites.

                    38. No science site. No scientific organization disputes anything I’ve posted to you in the last 30 minutes. Face it. I’ve proved my point. You may not like it. Fact is CO2 back radiation (i.e., AGW) cannot warm the oceans.
                      I’ve given you enough. Until you can utter a reason to challenge what I’ve given you, you must agree with my conclusion or admit that you just don’t know enough to challenge me.

                    39. Or that you are only talking about part of the issue…

                      At this point, I’ll just note that you are espousing a talking point that show up only on ‘anything but my tailpipe’ blogs.

                      Maybe when you give us the doi of your paper, you can point to the section where you discuss how your findings fit into the body of knowledge.

                    40. No effort at all. You could have done this all on your own if you weren’t lazy or incompetent.

                      It took me about 2 minutes to find this all.

                    41. yet it seems too difficult for you to bring a full explanation of why you are right ….

                      At this point I’d suggest you take a basic Cli Sci textbook and argue why their explanation is wrong.

                      Explain why you aren’t writing the textbooks.

                    42. Here’s the text book, with scientific citations. It’s 2 years old so make allowances:
                      CO2 back-radiation does NOT warm the oceans

                      CO2 ‘back-radiation’s’ contribution to ocean heat content
                      [OHC] increase during the last ~16 years since global warming stopped is almost
                      nothing, while solar radiation has contributed almost all the warming.

                      First we’ll look at the portion of ocean that each can
                      affect. We’ll see that any radiation energy from CO2 ‘back-radiation’ just
                      doesn’t impact enough of the ocean to matter, as it is miniscule when compared
                      to the portion of the ocean that solar radiation impacts.

                      The wavelength of CO2 long-wave ‘back-radiation’ is 15μm
                      ( bit.ly/1fsjaI8 ). This wavelength is essentially blocked from
                      penetrating into the ocean. OK, not completely, it penetrates ≈3μm deep ( bit.ly/133RtMo ). That is 3 millionths of a meter. That is 1/10th the
                      thickness of a human hair. Now consider that solar radiation penetrates up to
                      200 meters deep. Therefore the energy from solar radiation heats 67,000,000
                      times more water than it is theoretically possible for CO2 to heat.

                      Next we’ll see that the upper “interface layer”
                      of a few microns does not transfer any heat down into the ocean. This top
                      interface layer that CO2 influences is less than 1% of the skin layer of the
                      ocean.

                      “…the
                      skin SST, SSTskin, is a temperature measured at some depth, within a thin layer
                      (~500μm) at the air-sea interface” – Donlon2001

                      Now it must be noted that the interface layer is always
                      cooler than the layers just below it, as this diagram from Donlon2001 shows ( disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/oceans/… ).
                      The reason the interface layer is always cooler is because of evaporation. And
                      since heat transfers from warmer objects to cooler objects, this interface
                      layer does not transfer any heat down into the ocean. Thus GHGs can’t directly transfer heat INTO the ocean.

                      Peer
                      reviewed science says:

                      “Energy transfer
                      at the Earth’s surface is examined from first principles. The effects on
                      surface temperature of small changes in the solar constant caused by the
                      sunspot cycle and small increases in downward long wave infrared (LWIR) flux
                      due to a 100 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration are considered in
                      detail. The changes in the solar constant are sufficient to change ocean
                      temperatures and alter the Earth’s climate. The surface temperature changes
                      produced by an increase in downward LWIR flux are too small to be measured and
                      cannot cause climate change. … It is also straightforward to show that a 1.7
                      W/m2 increase in downward LWIR flux at the ocean surface cannot cause
                      measurable changes in ocean temperatures… Water is almost completely opaque
                      to LWIR radiation.¹⁹ The LWIR absorption/emission depth is less than 1 mm…
                      This heats the surface layer… The ocean responds by RAPIDLY increasing the
                      surface EVAPORATION rate… It is
                      therefore impossible for an increase in downward atmospheric LWIR flux of 1.7
                      W.m−2 to heat the ocean.” – Clark2010

                      Clark attributes the cooler interface layer to increased
                      evaporation that offset any heating due to GHGs. I rather refer to the basic
                      principle of thermodynamics that says cooler objects don’t transfer heat to
                      warmer objects, so the radiating CO2 molecules in the atmosphere don’t transfer
                      heat to the warmer water molecules on the ocean surface, so there is no
                      “extra” heat from CO2 ‘back-radiation’ to lose due to increased
                      evaporation. Either way, GHGs don’t directly add heat to the ocean. This
                      leaves the only possible way that GHGs could influence ocean temperature as
                      reducing the rate of cooling due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere.

                      In order to evaluate if that is the case, we’ll look at
                      the overall ocean heat transfer processes using a Columbia Univ. Earth &
                      Environ. Science lecture on ‘Ocean-Atmosphere Coupling’. ( bit.ly/10Sr1a4 )

                      It explains that the only heat exchange process
                      that adds heat to the ocean is solar radiation:

                      “Fluxes across the sea-atmosphere interface: Heat exchange between ocean
                      and atmosphere is a product of a number of processes: solar radiation heats
                      the ocean; net long wave back radiation cools the ocean; heat transfer
                      by conduction and convection between the air and water generally cools
                      the ocean as does evaporation of water from the ocean surface”.

                      Every ocean-atmosphere process cools the ocean except for
                      solar radiation. And here’s the quantification of those heat exchange processes
                      from the lecture that we will use in our later calculations:

                      “Solar
                      heating of the ocean on a global average is 168 watts per square meter. … Net
                      back radiation cools the ocean, on a global average by 66 watts per square
                      meter. … On average the ocean is about 1 or 2 degrees warmer than the atmosphere
                      so on average ocean heat is transferred from ocean to atmosphere by conduction.
                      … On global average the oceanic heat loss by conduction is only 24 watts per
                      square meter. … On global average the heat loss by evaporation is 78 watts
                      per square meter.”

                      Now we’ll begin our calculations to quantify the effect
                      of “reduced ocean cooling” due to increased GHG concentration in the
                      atmosphere.

                      According to the IPCC’s formulas, changes in CO2 forcing
                      over the last ~16 years is only ≈0.4W/m² ( 5.35*ln(396/367)=0.4W/m2 ). Per the
                      IPCC, base GHG back-radiation is 324W/m² ( bit.ly/1a0jcCV ). Thus over the GGWH (Great Global Warming Hiatus), the
                      GHG ‘back-radiation’ to “reduce ocean cooling” only changed to 324.4W/m².
                      This increase is a factor of 1.0012 (324.4/324) or less than a 10th of a
                      percent. Now according to the both the IPCC diagram (390-324=66) & the
                      previously cited Columbia ocean-atmosphere lecture, “net back radiation
                      cools the ocean, on a global average by 66 watts per square meter”, the
                      net back-radiation from the ocean to the atmosphere was 66W/m². Applying the
                      1.0012 factor to determine the change in net back radiation available to
                      “slow” ocean ‘back-radiation’ cooling & allow additional heat to
                      build up, shows that the net change in GHG CO2 forcing to the ocean is
                      0.08W/m². (66/1.0012=65.92; 66-65.92=0.08).
                      That is insignificant.

                      Moreover this
                      additional .4W/M2 forcing should be allocated between additional IR and
                      additional evaporation presumably using the same ratios of their current
                      out-going values ( bit.ly/1a0jcCV ) pro rata. Net outgoing GHG IR is 66W/M2. Current evaporation is 78W/M2. It’s plausible that this .08W/m2 ‘reduction’
                      impact on the sea-surface/air interface delta-temperature will be substantially
                      less and more than offset by additional [cooling] evaporation.

                      So
                      what caused the increase in OHC that has been observed? The Sun, as we will
                      see.

                      So what caused the increase in OHC that has been
                      observed? The Sun, as we will see.

                      Now the objection that one might raise is that the Sun
                      has been slightly decreasing its activity over the last couple decades. That is
                      true, but it’s not the TSI [total solar insolation] at the top of atmosphere that
                      is relevant, it is the solar radiation that reaches the surface of the Earth
                      that counts.

                      Global mean cloud amount during the last 15yrs has
                      averaged ≈65% vs ≈67% during the late 20th century says NASA ( bit.ly/19tIZBw ). This has allowed ≈3% (0.67/0.65=1.03) more solar
                      energy to reach the surface of the oceans. This 3% increase in solar energy
                      reaching the oceans means the net global average solar heating of the oceans
                      was 173 W/m² vs the 168 W/m² figure in the Columbia lecture. (168*1.03=173) So actual
                      change in solar heating of the oceans was ~5 W/m² vs. max theoretical
                      change in GHG base radiation of ≈0.08 W/m², in other words solar heating was
                      ~60X greater than the max theoretical heating due to GHGs.

                      That
                      was a rough calculation. What does peer reviewed science say?

                      “Applying a 3.6% cloud reflectivity perturbation to the
                      shortwave energy balance partitioning given by Trenberth et al. (2009)
                      corresponds to an increase of 2.7Wm-2 of solar energy reaching the Earth’s
                      surface” – Herman2013, “A net
                      decrease in the Earth’s cloud, aerosol, and surface 340nm reflectivity
                      during the past 33 yrs (1979-2011)”

                      And
                      then there is:

                      – “The linear regression analysis applied to 204
                      global averages of monthly mean DSR fluxes, reveals a significant decadal
                      increase in SW radiation reaching the Earth’s surface, equal to 2.4 Wm²,
                      associated with a corresponding decadal increase in surface solar absorption of
                      2.2 Wm², over the 17-year period 1984-2000. The performed analysis has shown
                      that the increased surface solar heating, indicated by positive DSR and net DSR
                      anomalies, started after the year 1992, and it has been caused by a
                      significant reduction in cloudiness during the last decade of the 20th century…
                      Our results are in agreement with surface observations (Wild et al., 2005),
                      also indicating an increase in DSR starting after 1990. A further analysis has
                      demonstrated that the reduction in low-level cloud amounts, accounts for about
                      70% of the computed increasing trend in DSR.” – Hatzianastassiou et al.,
                      2005 “Global distribution of Earth’s surface shortwave radiation budget”

                      So two peer reviewed papers quantified the increased
                      solar radiation reaching the surface was about half the ~5 W/m² of my rough
                      calculation. That still means that solar radiation is 97% of the cause of OHC
                      increase, and ~3% could be attributed to “reduced cooling” from
                      increased GHGs. Clearly the empirical evidence shows that the Sun has been the
                      overwhelming cause of the increase in OHC.

                      The bottom line is that increased GHGs are NOT a
                      significant cause of ocean heating and the increase in OHC does NOT explain the
                      absence of GHG-induced warming over the last ~16 years.

                    43. I assume you are familiar with the 2nd Law of thermodynamics which says net heat cannot flow from a cool object to a warmer one. Net heat only flows from a warm object to a cooler one.
                      I also assume you are familiar with Co2’s IR band is 15 microns.
                      What more do you need?

                    44. A full explanation that wouldn’t cause a high school physics teacher to wonder where they went wrong in their teaching.

                    45. There are many ways to state the second law. I’ve used one of them. Let’s cut to the chase: “Are you suggesting that a cold layer of water can warm a hot layer of water?” Yes or no?

                    46. Both of these disagree with you.

                      Why should we believe you and not them?

                      http://www.epa.gov/climatestudents/impacts/signs/oceans.html

                      http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/pd/oceans_weather_climate/energy_oceans_atmosphere.html

                      Or even
                      http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/09/why-greenhouse-gases-heat-the-ocean/

                      Actually, when your claim is searched for, the overwhelming majority of results are Spencer, Curry, and hockeyschtich blog.

                      So we’ll be interested in your explanation why you and they should be considered more trustworthy.

                    47. What you are saying is total horse pucky. None of these disagree with me. Which part do they disagree with?
                      1) that CO2’s IR band is 15 microns?
                      2) the 15 microns penetrates more than 3 microns of water
                      3) that the ocean skin is cooler than the waters below — day and night
                      4) the 2nd law of thermodynamics?

                    48. “Thus CO2 cannot warm the oceans. Thus AGW cannot warm the oceans. ”

                      Then why are they warming?

                    49. You haven’t read the Columbia Lecture series link I posted, have you. If you had you’d know that it’s the sun that warms the ocean. Save for the sun, all thermal processes at the ocean surface sever to cool the oceans — evaporation, conduction, and net IR.

                    50. And why is that “lecture” the most accurate, in your opinion?

                      What is your rationale for choosing it?

                      What college course relies on it?

                    51. You’ve cited one part of one lecture in a year long freshman level course to attempt to ‘disprove’ a significant portion of basic climate science…..

                    52. What I’ve done is prove that CO2 IR does not warm the oceans. That’s what I set out to do. I’ve proved it using my own logic and I’ve quoted real science and real scientists (peer-reviewed) that supports it. The Columbia Lecture series is JUST part of larger case (paper), albeit an important part.
                      What have you done? Ans: weasel.

                    53. “What I’ve done is prove that CO2 IR does not warm the oceans. ”

                      Then why are the oceans warming?

                      Again, what you are trying to do is cherrypicking: looking at one small part and trying to extrapolate to a much larger whole.

                      Sorta like the lead is heavier than feathers so it will fall faster…..

                    54. The more important question is can hot air pass from the fingers of a Climate Bot to a web page. Answer = Most Def!

                    55. I believe you are lying. I don’t believe you actually read WUWT. I think you are a doofus and a poseur, too.

                    56. “” limits search to specific phrase.

                      Site: limits search to specified site

                      Basic skills taught in school, works with most any search engine.

                    57. I see you are mentally disabled. Sorry, Mr. Diabled Man. I didn’t mean to offend you. Go play with your toys and leave the thinking to the big boys.

                    58. “… you are mentally disabled. ”

                      Sciencey.

                      Maybe your paper would reach a wider audience if you described the scientists you’re arguing against that way….

                    59. “… according the RSS database of satellite temperatures… ”

                      Give a good rationale for the cherry-picked of one database.

                      And whilst you’re cogitating, explain why we should accept your rationale over the findings of scientists and organizations with demonstrated expertise in the research and analysis.

                    60. Your post is somewhat incoherent and then again somewhat obscure. The temperature record is what it is, whatever the experts feel (or think) about it. I’ve given reasons why I prefer the satellite record (I recall 8 separate reasons, which I’ll not repeat here).
                      I actually don’t know what you are referring to by “findings of scientists and organizations.” Could you be more specific?

                    61. “(I recall 8 separate reasons, which I’ll not repeat here).”

                      Interesting choice of non-action….

                    62. If you really want to know the reasons all you have to do is search my recent DISQUS log which is public. I do a lot of posting and tire of repeating the same information over and over. Moreover I have you pegged as merely a trouble-maker and not a serious person. So my interest in teaching you is minimal.
                      I notice that you have dropped your claim about experts disagreeing with me. I tell you what. You tell me where I have made a scientific error and I’ll re-post my 8 reasons why I prefer the satellite temperature record. I’m not likely to hear on that score.

                    63. Do you have a mental disability? Why can’t you communicate a simple thought. WTF does “Can’t even post your paper….” mean? Do you wish for me to post it?

                    64. “.. actually don’t know what you are referring to by “findings of scientists and organizations.” Could you be more specific?”

                      Who else relies exclusively on RSS to support their claims?

                    65. So this is your answer? This is all you could come up with to clarify what all the scientists and scientific organizations disagree with me about? Not only is that pathetic, it isn’t even true. Indeed, it isn’t even true or false. It’s just a question. What a dope.

                    66. Clarify your position on the temperature record: what database do you use, what are the findings you agree with, whose data analysis do you use to arrive at your position.

                    67. Are you completely deranged? You know the answer. The very first post to which you responded to me is quoted verbatim:

                      “Because according the RSS database of satellite temperatures, there’s been no statistically significant global warming for 18 years. Geez. And you know this (because I’ve posted this on threads where we’ve interacted on countless occasions……”

                    68. “Could you be more specific?”

                      Explain why we should accept your rationale for choosing one database compared to the findings of scientists and organizations with demonstrated expertise in the research and analysis of the data.

                    69. Oh, fine. The satellite record is superior to others…..

                      Other temperature records that are:

                      1) using old technologies of multiple types
                      2) poorly sited
                      3) poorly maintained.
                      4) highly manipulated
                      a) currently — UHIE is multiples of noise more than signal.
                      b) historical — 1930’s records adjusted cooler…..sometime after 1997
                      5) spotty coverage
                      6) shifting coverage
                      7) not continuous
                      8) have no vertical coverage

                      How’s that?

    1. US became much more industrialized after WW2. Population boomed. I don’t even think oil was struck in Saudi Arabia until WW2 . So the fact that we had as much warming before than as since, seems weird if you are a “Co2 drives the weather” person.

      1. I googled ‘Monckton 1950 theoretically possible’ and it seems to be a stock assertion of his. On one blog I found reference to the apparent source: ‘according to the UN IPCC’. Hmmm, I suspect our good Lord is probably being a bit too cute for his own good.

        1. I don’t think so… Here is the graph of CO2 concentrations since 1960… you can see the rate of rise is increasing. It was lower in the past… This exponentially rising CO2 level should be trapping heat at an accellerated rate…. and it’s not… or of it is, it’s being offset by something much bigger. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

            1. Too small and not in place long enough. It’s not a separate point, the The CO2 is supposed to be acting like a blanket that is getting thicker and thicker. So the quantity is lower and it was around less time.

            2. Trolls sometimes need help with math, so here goes. The radiative forcing from the 20 ppmv CO2 increase over the 200 years 1750 to 1950 was just 5.35 ln(300/280) = 0.37 Watts per square meter. The radiative forcing from the 100 ppmv CO2 increase over the 65 years 1950 to 2014 was 5.35 ln(400/300) = 1.54 Watts per square meter. So since 1950 there has been 4 times as much forcing as from 1750-1950, and that forcing has occurred in just one-third of the time.Yet warming commensurate with the forcing has not – repeat not – occurred. That is why the failure of the world to warm very much after 1950 is so important. It is a demonstration that the exaggerated claims for the amount of warming to be expected from CO2 were just that – exaggerated. The experiment has been done and the models have failed.

              As Richard Feynman used to say, “It doesn’t matter how smart they are, it doesn’t matter how beautiful their hypothesis. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.” And that’s that.

              1. Yet warming commensurate with the forcing has not – repeat not – occurred.

                Both NOAA and Berkeley merged land-ocean-ice surface temperature records separately and distinctly say you’re simply wrong. RSS and UAH don’t hold a candle in ‘duelling’ data sets, given their short track record, the manifest bugginess of the coolant-leaking instrumentation, and most of all the audit-failing proprietarily secret algorithms used to derive their temperature trends run at least in part by Cornwall Alliance Declarees whose vow to deny, deny, deny, deny, deny (yes, five times; the Declaration is a matter of public record and utterly incompatible with either scientific or civilian service).

                http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4nh/from:1850.25/mean:6/every:12/mean:3/from:1984/detrend:-0.17/plot/hadcrut4sh/from:1850.25/mean:6/every:12/mean:3/from:1984/detrend:-0.17/plot/hadcrut4nh/from:1850.75/mean:6/every:12/mean:3/from:1984/detrend:-0.17/plot/hadcrut4sh/from:1850.75/mean:6/every:12/mean:3/from:1984/detrend:-0.17/plot/esrl-co2/normalise/from:1984/offset:0.6/trend/plot/hadcrut4nh/last:360/trend/detrend:-0.17/plot/hadcrut4sh/last:360/trend/detrend:-0.17/plot/esrl-co2/normalise/last:360/trend/offset:0.05/plot/none

                The very rough instrumental approximation of T(1750-1950):T(1950-2014) WfT offers is 1:3.77. The ratio of 0.37:1.54 is 4.16. Given the very rough nature of the approximations, well within bounds of prediction. Your claims fail.

                No ‘pause’. No ‘hiatus’. No ‘stop’. Just AGW, imprinted on the signals of the world’s vast climate mechanisms, clearly seen to demonstrate polar amplification with latitude, higher overland rate by hemisphere (and why higher overland but that mechanisms of trade winds and the Great Conveyor sometimes carry more, sometimes less, heat into the ocean?), steadier summer and more variable winter rise by season, and rise below the tropopause coupled with cooling above.

                This is the inevitable outcome of fossil waste dumping. It is not alone, nor is it the major part of the harm, but it is enough to call harm.

                As Phillip Ball said, “Do we, like Feynman, always underestimate what our current technologies can achieve?

                1. If “Bart_R” considers there has been no pause or hiatus in global warming, then he should take up his concerns with Railroad Engineer Pachauri, who for some reason is the climate-science chief of the IPCC. In Melbourne in 2013 he said that global warming had paused for 17 years.

                  The extent of polar sea ice reached a satellite-era maximum just a couple of months ago, and a recent report says the thickness of the sea ice had previously been much underestimated.

                  Be that as it may, IPCC in 1990 made certain specific predictions, reflected in the orange zone in Fig. 2 of the head posting. However, after 25 years the outturn has proven to be well below the entire interval of IPCC predictions. The IPCC has itself accepted this, and has all but halved its interval of medium-term predictions. However, as Fig. 3 of the head posting shows, even the new predictions are proving flagrantly excessive.

                  Even the IPCC recognizes there has been a pause in global warming, and broadly agrees with my own calculation of its duration, and has sharply revised its original predictions downward as a result,

                  1. https://academic.cuesta.edu/acasupp/as/404.htm

                    Name Calling? Check.

                    Glittering Generalities? Check.

                    Transfer? Check.

                    ..

                    Why “monckton” hits all the techniques of propaganda, practically as a reflex, seamlessly and habitually. Isn’t that remarkable?

                    Of course, given that @moncton’s words are glib plagiarism of WUWT without credit to source — or opportunity to interrogate for accuracy that citation permits, we can’t be too impressed. That the citation is further of an article which refused to directly quote Dr. Pachauri, so leading to open skepticism of what he actually said, makes this rank claim unimpressive indeed.

                    Polar sea ice? Why not rather say worldwide sea ice?

                    Sea ice in the Antarctic is at least half a continent away from a pole. Polar ice counting land mass reached an obvious nadir in the decade ending 2014. P’raps monckton confuses ice cover with snow cover, which is rather indicative of water content of air (rising as a positive feedback of fossil waste dumping)?

                    Even then, the extent of the past two months is no sort of record high whatsoever.

                    Sea ice?

                    When combining the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere sea ice extents, the globally-averaged sea ice extent during November was 26.99 million square km (10.42 million square miles), 1.10 percent below the 1981-2010 average and the 13th smallest November global sea ice extent on record. Global sea ice extent during November is decreasing at an average rate of 1.3 percent per decade.

                    http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global-snow/

                    Truly, getting all panicked over a change in trade winds and the Great Conveyor causing short-lived uptrends in ice extent in a zone where average air temperatures are measured in dozens of degrees below freezing is a sign of an overly sensitive constitution, not of ability to read a graph.

                    FAR, 1990? It made ‘certain predictions’, did it?

                    FAR presented an ensemble of simulated trends based on assumptions modeled for a world without the Montreal Protocol, the move from coal and oil to natural gas, the collapse of manufacturing in the Soviet block (you do remember the Berlin Wall coming down, and the End of Communism worldwide, right?) and movement of outdated manufacturing from the more developed nations to more efficient factories in LDCs.. and the Recession of 2008 that stilled demand, volcanic cooling and La Nina changes in Trade Winds. While a picture may be worth a thousand words, One mistrusts interpretation of fingerpaintings when the plain text is available, in Science.

                    https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_chapter_04.pdf section 4.11 pp 126-127 gives broad parameters for the limitations of the validity of the models. Comparing the model predictions to the purposes for which they were suited, we see their performance is adequate and within constraints. Other ‘predictions’ not associated with validated use of the models? Why should we care about those?

                    The SPM and the underlying report discuss a reduction in the surface warming trend during the last 15 years. We have several concerns with this matter (see also our specific comments on P 3 L 25-27, P 11 L 1-6):

                    Reference to relatively small time spans like 10-15 years in the context of climate change could be misleading. As indicated in Chapter 9 (See Box 9.8), internal climate variability might account for most of the recent reduction in surface warming. Longer time spans and moving averages instead of consecutive averages of temperatures and temperature trends should be considered. This has also been the position of the authors in AR4, when they refused to show the 15-year trend of global mean temperature in Figure AR4-TS.6 with the argument that periods that short are dominated by short term variability and, hence, cannot be used for statements on climate change. According to the WMO, the classical period relevant for climate is 30 years (http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/wcp/ccl/faqs.html).

                    If discussing such a short time span, why are exactly the 15 years from 1998 to 2012 considered? This is not consistent with the SPM of TAR and AR4 in which the temperature change since the year 1995 was discussed.

                    Furthermore, the information is missing that despite the decreased warming trend the decade of the 2000s has been the warmest in the instrumental record.

                    In addition, the underlying report and the TS label the recent reduction in surface warming as “hiatus”. The web site http://thesaurus.com gives as definition of this expression “pause, interruption”, http://www.merriam-webster.com gives “1a: a break in or as if in a material object, 2a: an interruption in time or continuity; break; especially: a period when something (as a program or activity) is suspended or interrupted. All these definitions do not appropriately describe the recent temperature evolution as there is not a pause or interruption, but a decrease in the warming trend, and the first decade of this century has been the warmest since preindustrial times, see Figure SPM1. (a), lower figure. Hence, the expression “hiatus” is strongly misleading and should not be used throughout the report./blockquote> — http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/drafts/WGIAR5_FGD_FinalDraftSPMComments.pdf

                    As an IPCC reviewer, @monckton ought p’raps be familiar with these words.

                    While some may use the word ‘pause’ in some sense, the reviewers of AR5 very strenuously objected to the sense in which @monckton implies.

                    Thus we see nothing but more @monckton mischief here.

                  2. A year later, and what do we find? RSS 4.0 has come out 60% hotter than RSS 3.03, correcting a longstanding error in calibration.

                    The IPCC based its claims on measurements it had available and the need to address RSS as best it could with what policy administrators could handle; deeper analysis of the data showed us then what we now clearly see; RSS was wrong.

                    There is no pause or hiatus, when all observations are considered.

                    http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/detrend:-0.4068/last:204/plot/rss/detrend:-0.4068/last:120/trend

                    Adjusting RSS 3.03 to match Mears & Wentz RSS 4.0, we find

                    #Selected last 120 samples
                    #Least squares trend line; slope = 0.0265698 per year
                    2006.17 0.466474
                    2016.17 0.732172
                    ..
                    #Mean: 0.599323

                    More than 15% beyond the 1990 projection, more than 4 years ahead of schedule.

                    So these straw man sophisms are looking pretty pallid, now.

                    Where will we see tax dodger Monckton admit and apologize for being so very wrong?

        2. It is generally accepted that the human influence on climate before 1950 was minuscule, because CO2 concentration had barely risen compared with 1750 – from 280 to 300 ppmv. It is also generally accepted that a human influence on global climate became theoretically possible after 1950: CO2 concentration rose from around 300 ppmv then to about 400 ppmv now. Applying the usual IPCC methods (see IPCC 2001, ch. 6.1), it is blindingly obvious that we cannot have had any significant influence before 1950 but might have done so thereafter.

          The question whether most of the global warming since 1950 was manmade remains open. However, of 11,944 papers in the reviewed literature on climate change published in the 21 years 1991-2011, only 0.3% agreed with the IPCC on that point: the rest were silent or opposed it. “TC”, therefore, should troll elsewhere, and should know that false or duplicate email addresses are contrary to site policy.

          1. You bring a rather different reading to 11,944 papers in the reviewed literature than the authors. I’ve certainly read more than 36 papers agreeing with the IPCC on that point, either directly in so many words as a major conclusion or by inclusion of such papers in their own references.

            1. “Bart_R” should check the data file generated by Cook et al. (2013). The authors are paid propagandists for the alarmist viewpoint on global warming. Yet even they were only able to find, out of 11,944 papers, just 64 abstracts explicitly mentioning that most global warming since 1950 was manmade. Reading these abstracts, we found that only 41 stated what Cook et al. said they had stated. Police on three continents are now enquiring into how it was that Cook et al. recorded only 64 abstracts as having said that most warming since 1950 was manmade, and yet went on to claim – falsely – that more than 97% of the 11,944 abstracts had said that.

              A private prosecution is also now in contemplation in two jurisdictions.

              1. No one is impressed by contemplated private prosecutions. Given the outcomes of the EIGHT Climategate inquiries compared with the contemplations of WUWTites, the notion has less than no credibility whatsoever.

                “Bart_R” did better than check the data file generated by Cook et al. (2013). “Bart_R” went out and read the abstracts and citations of all papers identified as supporting AGW — that’s over 4,300 of them — and randomly reviewed hundreds of the papers themselves.

                It is readily apparent Cook et al.’s version is more accurate than @monckton et al.’s mischievous misreading.

                Further, the measure of Science isn’t in count but in refutation. Forty one papers? Refute them with observation and inference strong enough to overcome their specific claims in logic. Present these 41 cases, or these 64 cases, or the cases for the hundreds of papers that cite these 64 or 41, or the thousands of papers in turn citing these papers.

                Failure to do so is simple admission of 100% of the accuracy and truth of AGW, until new contrary observation strong enough to require amended AGW hypothesis.

    1. In 3 more years, they won’t be able to be deniers any longer. Deniers, that is, that global warming has completely stopped and now it has started cooling. 2 more years should be enough.

      1. This year is the year of the second peak in the 24th solar activity cycle that had its first peak towards the end of 2011. This second peak is even higher than the first one, and the sun was still quite active in October. The current expectation is of a gradual fall in solar activity towards 2020, as cycle 24 ends, similar to where the sun was in 2008/2009, which was, at the time, accompanied by global temperatures falling quite sharply too. I’d say, the decade between 2020 and 2030 should provide conclusive proof of the key role solar activity plays in century-scale climate drifts, as we had seen in the 20th century.

        Chinese emissions will continue to climb, as they have assured us recently, towards 2030, as will emissions of India, Brazil and Russia, so the atmospheric CO2 concentration will continue to climb as well, and sharply. If the global climate cools at the same time, the CAGW theory will be discredited for good.

          1. It explains the small temperature rise this year–not enough to make it “the warmest on record.” Many past years, recent and more distant, were warmer, according to the satellite data and historic records. But this is the last “Hurrah” of this cycle #24 and of “global warming.”

            1. “Many past years, recent and more distant, were warmer”

              That’s true! The Earth has been much warmer and much cooler in the past.

              Was there ever a point in Earth’s history when it got cool enough for polar ice caps to persist with CO₂ as high as we have today?

              If you understand this has never happened before, why would you expect it to now?

              1. “>>> Was there ever a point in Earth’s history when it got cool enough for polar ice caps to persist with CO2 as high as we have today? <<<"

                Sure. The current period is characterized generally by … very low atmospheric CO2 concentration compared to just about any other time in the Earth's past–even with human emissions contributing. The Earth's nature remains very close to … CO2 starvation and has suffered it during the most recent ice age (doi:10.1073/pnas.0408315102).

                Looking at more distant past, we had a cold period between 150 million and 100 million years ago with CO2 concentration much higher than today and a warm period for about 100 million years duration before that interval with CO2 concentration being generally much lower.

                There is no correlation between CO2 atmospheric concentration and global temperatures neither in more distant nor in recent past.

                1. “we had a cold period between 150 million and 100 million years ago”

                  Uh huh, this is the Jurassic/Cretaceous cold period. I didn’t ask you about cold periods, I asked you about polar ice caps:

                  “The lighter blue shading for the Jurassic/Cretaceous icehouse refects the fact that true polar ice caps have not been documented for this time interval.”

                  http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Louis_Francois/publication/12199006_Evidence_for_decoupling_of_atmospheric_CO2_and_global_climate_during_the_Phanerozoic_eon/links/09e4150aa8d25d618f000000

                  If it’s so likely that polar ice caps will be able to withstand CO₂ as high as we’ve pushed it, why isn’t there a single example of them doing so in Earth’s history?

                  1. There is no real problem at either side of the globe. The Antarctic ice cover has reached the largest extent on record. The Arctic ice cover has always varied, recall the stories of Vikings settling in Greenland (for it was “green” at the time) during the Medieval Warm Period, commonly acknowledged to have been longer and warmer than today. In the 1930s the Arctic cover had shrunk ever more than in recent years, according to evidence gathered by a Russian expedition at the time.

                    The currently observed melting in the West Antarctic is caused by geothermal heat, below its ice cover(doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2014.09.023)–nothing to do with atmospheric CO2. The same holds for Greenland (doi:10.1038/ngeo1898). The Antarctic Peninsula, which is most exposed to ocean waters, therefore most affected by changes in ocean temperature, experienced similar melting in the early Holocene, which was then followed by a more stable period between 9,200 and 2,500 years ago (doi:10.1038/nature11391). Most recently, since 1993, the melt rate of the Antarctic Peninsula has decreased (doi:10.5194/tc-8-1519-2014).

                    The Antarctic was generally warmer than today between 4,300 and 2,250 years ago (doi:10.1177/0959683612460790). A recent inspection of Antarctic ice shelves by the Norwegian Polar Institute has found that the shelves aren’t melting at all.

                    There is nothing unusual, out of normal historic bounds, happening either in the Antarctic or in the Arctic today (doi:10.3189/201AoG66A189).

                    1. “The Antarctic ice cover has reached the largest extent on record”

                      NASA says Antarctica is losing 100 km³ of ice per year:

                      “The continent of Antarctica has been losing more than 100 cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice per year since 2002.”

                      http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antarctica_Melting.html

                      Which space agency informs you otherwise?

                      If you understand polar ice caps have never before in Earth’s history been able to withstand CO₂ so high, why would the meltdown currently in progress surprise you?

                    2. doi:10.1038/nature11391 reports that the total ice cover of the Antarctic is increasing. This is so because it is only in the smaller, western part that there is some melting, primarily because of tectonic activity under the ice. The eastern part, which is larger, continues to accumulate ice. The Antarctic Peninsula, which is said to be most vulnerable, also increased its ice cover since 1850. See doi:10.1029/2012GL052559.

                      Regarding the global sea ice area, see the data at

                      http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/timeseries.global.anom.1979-2008

                      You can see the record global ice cover earlier this year. It is, in fact, the largest that NASA itself has ever seen, since global satellite observations commenced.

                    3. “Regarding the global sea ice area”

                      Yes, why are you regarding the global sea ice area?

                      Is area the way we measure the amount of ice?

                    4. Global sea ice area, which this year has been the largest ever seen by NASA, is a very important parameter: it contributes to the earth’s albedo and therefore to the amount of solar energy the earth absorbs. The other variable contribution comes from clouds, of course. The more incident energy is reflected back into space, the colder it gets.

                      In the case of the North Pole, all there is to talk about is the sea ice, because there is no continent there: all ice floats. This is what makes Arctic vulnerable to changing sea currents. Greenland is much further south. The southernmost shores of Greenland are of the same latitude as Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Tallinn and St. Petersburg.

                      Floating ice, at either pole, does not contribute to sea level on melting (cf. Archimedes’ principle).

                      The growth of the Antarctic ice is contrary to the predictions of climate models: it is a yet another CAGW failure. A huge one.

                      The East Antarctic is by far the larger portion of the continent. It is currently cooling and gaining ice mass. See

                      http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/antarctica/east-antarctic-ice-sheet/

                      for more info on East Antarctic

                    5. “The growth of the Antarctic ice is contrary to the predictions of climate models”

                      It’s also contrary to reality.

                      NASA says Antarctic ice is declining at a rate of 100 km³ per year:

                      “The continent of Antarctica has been losing more than 100 cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice per year since 2002.”

                      http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antarctica_Melting.html

                      Which space agency informs you otherwise?

                      Did you notice I already asked you that question?

                    6. You are talking about supposed volume loss per year, I am talking about total surface area, which has grown larger than NASA itself has ever seen in satellite data. See this NASA article about this, published on the 7th of October this year:

                      http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/antarctic-sea-ice-reaches-new-record-maximum/

                      The total ice loss or gain over the Antarctic is very hard to measure because you have to know how deep the ice goes under the surface. In the Antarctic, the ice cover is 2km thick on average, but nearly 5km thick in places.

                      The total volume of ice over the Antarctic has been measured in 2001, then again, more accurately, in 2012/13. See

                      http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-21692423

                      for more information on this project. The measurements showed that the Antarctic appears to have GAINED 1.2 million km^3 between 2001 and 2012. See a paper about this published in The Cryosphere last year, doi:10.5194/tc-7-375-2013.

                    7. Obama closed Nasa. Are you stupid or just ignorant. Oh ya. FUK you for also closing Nasa down. That’s was stupid.

                    8. Antarctic sea ice is at its maximum extent in winter, when it is dark all the time. I doubt therefore whether its effect on albedo matters much one way or the other.

                    9. “You are talking about supposed volume loss per year, I am talking about total surface area”

                      Uh huh.

                      Is area or volume the way we measure the amount of ice?

                    10. According to NSIDC, the 1981-2010 mean dropped from 18.8 million sq. km. in September to 3.0 million sq. km.in February, about a 6 to 1 reduction, so your all time maximum hardly means beans as far as albedo goes.

                    11. The total ocean ice cover for the planet has been rising too. In 2013 CryoSat saw the Arctic ice cover to have increased by 60% compared to the year before.

                      As almost all Arctic ice floats, it is vulnerable to changing conditions of ocean currents. In the 1930s the Arctic ice had withdrawn even more than is the case today in places visited by a Russian expedition at the time. This is perfectly normal. As the climate cools in decades to come, as it has to on account of diminishing solar activity, the polar caps will grow too.

                    12. The graph I just posted from NSIDC clearly refutes your claim: “The total ocean ice cover for the planet has been rising too.” Did you even look at it? Do you understand how a graph works? Ask somebody.

                      To draw any conclusions from a one year increase in 2013 is laughable when the trend has been unmistakably downward over the past 30+ years.

                      Your statement about the 1930’s may be true in specific places visited by that Russian expedition, but it is not true for the Arctic Ocean in general.

                      http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2010.png

                    13. “>>> Your statement about the 1930’s may be true in specific places visited by that Russian expedition, but it is not true for the Arctic Ocean in general. <<<"

                      How do you know? Do you have the actual data for the 1930s? The truth is we don't have this kind of data. The earliest reliable ice extent data that covers both poles begins with the satellite age and even this from the late 1970s onwards only. But see below for more about the use of paleo-proxies.

                      Only recently a trove of old 1960 satellite data has been recovered. These are the only Antarctic sea ice records from the 1960s. According to this data and according to the newer data, the Antarctic sea ice extent in the 2014 was larger even than the previous record of… 1964.

                      The Arctic story for the 1960s is similarly surprising. It was a particularly cold time, so much so that people at the time hypothesized that the new ice age was imminent. Yet even back then there were ice-free areas in the vicinity of the north pole, 200 to 300 miles across. This is what the old satellite data shows.

                      That the floating Arctic ice would be shrinking in response to the solar activity grand maximum that unfolded throughout the 20th century, but especially towards the end, should be of no surprise. As the activity abates, the ice rebuilds, which is what we are seeing in the Arctic today and what paleo-proxies tell us as well.

                      What is happening in the Arctic today is… not the first time and not the last one either. The combination of satellite data with paleo-proxies, discussed by Miles et al in Geophysical Research Letters, January 2014, doi:10.1002/2013GL058084, tells us about persistent multidecadal (60 to 90 years) fluctuations of the Arctic ice, most pronounced in the Greenland Sea and linked to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.

                    14. “How do you know? Do you have the actual data for the 1930s? The truth is we don’t have this kind of data.”

                      Again, you just ignored a graph I just posted, from University of Illinois, quantifying the ice extent in the 1930s. Meanwhile, all you have is is based on pure speculation or anecdotal evidence.

                    15. I don’t ignore your graph. The graph is nonsense, because not only there were no satellites in 1910 to make global photographs and thus to measure the ice extent. There weren’t even aerial surveys. Not until the 1930s.
                      When you look at this kind of data, you should ask first how the authors arrive at it and whether their methodology is at all trustworthy. In this case, it isn’t.

                    16. There is good quality data, e.g., data produced by satellite observations in recent years, and shoddy data. There is also totally invented data. Any data pertaining to global ice cover, also many other global characteristics, e.g., global temperature, that precedes the satellite era is between suspect, shoddy and invented. This is the first thing that we all should keep in mind when discussing the alleged “climate change.”
                      Some paleo data is more trustworthy than other, though seldom 100%. For example, people look at Be10 to ascertain solar activity going back hundreds of thousand years. There is much good physics here and data produced this way can be trusted. But global temperature data is not in the same category and neither is the global sea ice extent.

                    17. I don’t pontificate. I merely discuss science and point to peer reviewed published papers.

                      But… as I’ve been waiting for your response the following came to my mind. We are told that all the global warming that separates us from the Little Ice Age some 150 years ago and today has been 0.7C. I am not at all convinced that this figure is at all trustworthy, because I don’t fully trust estimates of global temperature for, say, 1860, but… let’s assume the number is true, just for the sake of an argument. If you want to argue that it’s 0.8C, it’s fine with me. I don’t 100% believe either number.

                      Anyhow, 0.7C in 150 years means 0.0047C annually and 0.23C in the past 50 years. I bring 50 years here, because this is how far I actually remember, being an older person. Now, a typical daily temperature variation is something about 15C. A typical yearly variation where I live is something about 50C, between the coldest of winter and the warmest of summer. Do you really believe that I, or anyone else, would notice something as insignificant as 0.23C in 50 years? Do you really believe that Nature in a typical Midwestern town would care for a 0.23C average temperature change? Do you really believe that the 0.23C would make a difference, say, in the Antarctic, or in the Arctic?

                      Of course, not. And this is the problem that “warm-mongers” have selling their product. The alleged global warming, ever since the end of the Little Ice Age, which itself was by no means a normal or a desirable period, the warming was so small, and has been so small during the lifetime of a typical adult as to be, frankly, unobservable. As far as I can tell, just looking around, the weather today is, on average, no different from what it used to be 50 years ago!

                      This goes for every part of the world.

                      There is no way, you see, that the mere 0.7C since the end of the Little Ice Age would make the least of a difference to anyone and anything. And, because we can only talk of human impact since about 1950, the first 2/3rd of this temperature rise, which is 0.47C, must have been caused by… natural factors. Nothing at all to do with humanity. Why then attribute the remaining 0.23C to humanity and make fuss about it?

                      The various catastrophic nature phenomena which some people just so love to talk about aren’t at all catastrophic. Or unusual. They are all natural. 0.7C in 150 years just cannot have any visible impact on the world. And it doesn’t.
                      Still, it is certainly legitimate to ask how large human impact really is, if any. The impact can be due not just to CO2 emissions, I don’t believe this is important. Change in albedo, caused by agriculture, are likely more important. However, in order to ascertain the size of human impact on climate, we must learn first what the natural evolution of climate is. Then only we can try to figure out the size of human contribution to it.

                      This should be the focus of climate science in the next decade. It is already becoming so.

                    18. Well that’s not true of the dataset you supplied. Did you even open it up and look at it?

                      Sea ice extent means nothing anyway, even an all time record. Here is what is happening with the world’s ice. The increase in Antarctic sea ice pales in comparison to the rest of it.

                      The earth is losing a trillion tons of ice per year:

                      – 159 Gt Antarctic LAND ice volume…..McMillan el al, GRL (2014)
                      + 26 Gt Antarctic SEA ice volume…..Holland et al, J Climate (2014)
                      – 261 Gt Arctic sea ice…..PIOMAS
                      – 378 Gt Greenland…..Enderlin et al (2014)
                      – 259 Gt other land based glaciers…..Gardner et al. Science (2013)

                      TOTAL ICE LOSS PER YEAR = 1,031 Gt.

                    19. Of course the Earth is not losing a trillion tons of ice a year. Not only is sea ice extent at or close to a 35-year maximum: but there has been accumulation of ice in both the high plateau of Greenland and the high plateau of Antarctica. Why would the land-based ice be melting, when there has been no global warming for 18 years 2 months?

                      The fact is that figures such as those spelt out above are speculative, and are contradicted by other papers and measurements. Cherry-picking papers in this way, rather than accepting that we have insufficient evidence to establish a long-run trend of land-based ice change, is futile.

                    20. Yes, I am aware that the papers mentioned by the sneering and ever-impolite climate Communist “cunudiun” are reviewed. That does not make them right. As I noted above, there are other papers that come to different conclusions. See, for instance, Johannessen et al. (2005), which showed that in a wide study area on the Greenland icecap the ice had thickened by 2 feet in 12 years. See also Doran et al. (2004), which showed that the rapid cooling of the high Antarctic plateau had caused environmental damage. See the measurements of the British Antarctic Survey, which showed a few years ago that the ice at the South Pole was 8852 feet deep, and growing. See the reports of the US meteorologists in the early 1920s, which suggest (though we cannot be sure) that there was far less ice at the North Pole then than there is today.

                      The figures in the papers cited by “cunudiun” are not universally agreed; nor do they tell us what is the natural rate of variability in ice extent or thickness. As I have said before, it is best not to start from an aprioristic Party Line. One should instead understand lesson 1 in elementary physics: that all physics depends upon measurement, and all measurement is subject to various kinds of uncertainty; therefore all physical results are to some degree uncertain.

                      It is simply not appropriate, scientifically speaking, for the climate Communists to assert that there is no uncertainty and that we are all doomed unless the hated West is shut down. The predictions of doom made by the models that started the climate scare have been demonstrated to have been absurd and even childish exaggerations. So far, therefore, real-world measurement seems to suggest that the Party Line has a lot wrong with it. But the one part of it that is unquestionably wrong is the part that claims certainty for the prophecies of doom on which the climate scam is based. Anyone who talks of “settled science” is indeed what “cunudiun” calls itself – an idiot.

                    21. “…Communist….”

                      Is this the first instance in this thread? I remember the last one; that was really funny watching all the ways “..Communist..” kept being used…..

                      I’ll get the popcorn ready…..

                    22. I say “climate Communist” because it is the hard Left that is driving the climate scam and is insisting, as Communists do, that only one point of view is permissible. No questioning of the Party Line is tolerated. Also, the Left are prone to attack their opponents ad hominem rather than addressing their arguments in a scientific manner. If they behave like Communists, then that is what they are, whether or not they carry a Party card. The climate scam is proving to be a huge embarrassment to the hard Left, which pays various trolls to try to disrupt threads like this in the vain hope of persuading an increasingly skeptical world that the Party Line is justifiable, when – as the data in the head posting show – it is not.

                    23. “..that is what they are, whether or not they carry a Party card. ”

                      ” climate scam..”

                      Basically; namecalling…

                      And no science.

                    24. “Robert” appears not to have been able to read the head posting, which contains plenty of science. The climate scare is chiefly driven by the hard Left, and the hard Left have made a strategic error in trying to politicize science itself. With every month that passes, it becomes clearer and clearer that the exaggerated predictions of the IPCC and the computer models on which it unwisely relies are unreasonable and unjustifiable.

                      The regular trolls here are not interested in science: they are interested only in peddling the Party Line, accompanied by ill-informed, unthinking recitation of half-understood results from various rent-seeking agencies. To take their favorite example, they try to maintain that the “missing heat” that the models predicted but that has visibly not appeared in the atmosphere must have gone into hiding in the oceans. But they never ask why ocean temperatures are presented not as temperatures but as Zettajoules of heat. After all, the bathythermograph buoys measure temperature changes. Why, then, are these carefully converted into ZJ of heat? The answer, of course, is that if they were left as temperatures it would be blindingly obvious that the “missing heat” is making precious little difference to ocean temperatures – a maximum of 0.03 Kelvin per decade, globally.

                      Further examination shows that, for an unexplained reason, even this tiny increase is confined to the extra-tropical southern-hemisphere oceans.

                      Be that as it may, it is blindingly plain to all but the adherents of the Party Line that 0.03 K ocean warming per decade, or one-third of a Kelvin per century, is not enough to worry about – and that is if the measurements of ocean temperature by the ARGO bathythermograph buoys are correct. However, since each buoy has to try to measure 300,000 cu. km of ocean, and since no adjustments to allow for the concentration of these buoys along the ocean currents are published, the measurement uncertainties are enormous.

                      As I have frequently stated, if all that heat were going into the oceans, then the oceans would be warming up by more than the equivalent of a third of a Kelvin per century. But they are not. So why don’t the climate Communists who bang on about ocean heat content ever actually do the sums rather than merely parroting the Party Line that is handed down to them?

                      It is the characteristic of Communists to be pathetically uncritical of the Party Line. That, above all, is why I call the paid trolls here climate Communists. They betray all the usual characteristics of Communism, and they lack the desire to reach the truth about the climate that is the hallmark of the thinker.

                      No doubt they are not used to being called what they are. But I was brought up in Yorkshire, where we do not call a spade a one-person-operated, manually-controlled, foot-powered implement of simple yet adequately efficacious ligno-metallic composition designated primarily – though by no means exclusively – for utilization on the part of hourly-paid operatives deployed in the agricultural, horticultural or constructional trades or industries, as the case may be, for purposes of carrying out such excavational tasks or duties as may from time to time be designated by supervisory grades as being necessary, desirable, expedient, apposite or germane with regard to the ongoing furtherance of the task or objective in hand or, on the other hand, underfoot, Secretary-General.

                      We call a spade a spade and a Communist a Communist. Get over it.

                    25. ” climate scare is chiefly driven by the hard Left”

                      “regular trolls”

                      “climate Communists”

                      “Party Line ”

                      ” paid trolls ”

                    26. I happen to know some real Communists, in various countries, and… as they acknowledge the error of their ways, their commentaries on current affairs and ideas are quite different from what they used to be in their youth. While still proclaiming concern for the welfare of working men, they do recognize capitalism as being remarkably effective in this respect, not in the least deriving their observations from the current successes of increasingly capitalist China, the abysmal failure of Russian Communism in Europe and the simple truth that capitalism has delivered prosperity to more people on earth than any other social formation of the past or present.

                      At the same time, they distance themselves from what they term “The New Left,” and, on other occasions “The Green Gentry,” seeing them variously as utopian, starry-eyed fantasizers, or as Khmer Rouge style potential mass murderers, a rather broad spectrum into which some die-hard EU ex-communists had moved after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

                      But not only ex-communists. There is much flirtation between some business leaders in the US and in EU and environmentalists, “climate change” being used by both sides as a pretext for quite radical policies that would curtail democracy, freedom and prosperity for working people.

                      What we are seeing here is the age-old truth that totalitarians of all colors and persuasions naturally gravitate towards each other bending the political spectrum of Left-Right into a political circle in which the far Left and the far Right meet at the bottom and shake hands.

                    27. It’s become increasingly obvious that the exceedingly impolite “Monckton” is really himself an agent of the Totalitarian Left under deep cover. It’s still not clear what his ultimate game is or what havoc he plans to unleash upon the world, but piece by piece the picture is falling into place. He is himself a Communist pretending to be the opposite. He thinks that by tarring others with this brush he somehow can distract attention from this, but the jig is now up. Of course, he’ll deny this fact, as he denies most all facts, but just look at the way he’s been behaving over an extended period of time, pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes and making things appear to be what they are not. Only a Communist could behave like this. Does he even work for a living? Communist! I call you out!

                    28. Wonder if monckton could point to any verified statements by the author of the blog posting using the same language as being used in the monckton comments.

                      Or even using the same sources.

                      Or talking points.

                    29. It is a Communist pure and simple, and it will learn that it cannot prevail simply by name calling and childishly belittling those more intelligent than itself.

                    30. “Of course the Earth is not losing a trillion tons of ice a year. ”

                      “… papers mentioned by the sneering and ever-impolite climate Communist “cunudiun” are reviewed. That does not make them right.”

                      “…aprioristic Party Line. ”

                      “climate Communists to assert that there is no uncertainty and that we are all doomed unless the hated West is shut down.”

                      But nothing substantive as in a body of research showing us alternative numbers……

                    31. Don’t be lazy. Stop sneering in that Climate-Communist whine, stop demanding that I do your research for you. Get off your wobbly totalitarian bottom and do the math. A trillion tons of ice melting from the land into the sea would raise global sea level by – well, just 2.8 millimeters, or less than an eighth of an inch a year. But the official figures from the University of Colorado, the most exaggerated of the sea-level “rise” figures, show about 3.4 mm/year, of which at least half is attributable to thermosteric expansion of seawater, and not to ice melt. A large chunk is attributable to the bogus “glacial isostatic adjustment”, without which sea level would be barely rising at all, in line with the zero or even falling trends reported by the ENVISAT and GRACE satellites. So 2.8 mm of sea-level rise – small though that is – cannot be coming from melting ice. If, therefore, a trillion tons of ice a year are melting, where is most of the water going?

                    32. See upthread. And if one converts the supposed increase in ocean heat content to ocean temperature change, the ocean is warming at a terrifying 0.02 K/decade. However, such a figure is well within the measurement uncertainty, so that we cannot really tell whether the ocean has warmed at all, globally.

                    33. It is not for me to teach “Robert” how to do elementary math. All he will need is a manual of physical formulae and an atlas, and he can work out for himself just how little temperature is represented by the few ZJ of ocean heat content increase.

                    34. I agree that “Robert” has been making empty claims with no science attached. Let him go and get some elementary physics lessons, so that he will learn the basis of the units of measurement found in any good manual of physical formulae, and the relationships between them. The matter is entirely elementary: indeed, you will find a recent piece by Willis Eschenbach that sets out some of the relevant values and methods of calculation. Then “Robert”, instead of sneering like just another climate Communist, may actually learn some science.

                      If “Robert” wants peer-reviewed sources for my assertion that the supposed “missing heat” has not gone into the ocean, then let him wait for publication of my forthcoming paper which includes some interesting (and peer-reviewed) supplementary matter on precisely that question, with dozens of references.

                      Meanwhile, the discrepancy between the absurd predictions of the climate models and the reality of very little global warming persists, month after inexorable month. My paper gives some of the key reasons why the models ended up over-predicting global warming by such a prodigious margin.

                    35. “…recent piece by Willis Eschenbach that sets out some of the relevant …”

                      So, published in what journal?

                    36. “…let him wait for publication of my forthcoming paper ..”

                      Oh, oh, oh! We promise to get published!

                      Meanwhile,

                      Nothing….

                    37. Well, if a paper is forthcoming, that means it has not yet been published. Don’t continue to be childish.

                    38. A deliberate and characteristically malicious climate-Communist technique from “Robert”, who carefully misquotes me by omitting the word “forthcoming” between “my” and “paper”, and then sneers because my paper has not yet appeared anywhere.

                      Let him wait and see, and stop his Communistic sneering. He is getting Communism an even worse name than it already has.

                    39. Bottom para….

                      So, along with your insulting and name calling, we now get false accusations….

                      Is that sort of behavior what is expected from a Lord ?

                      “…Communistic sneering. ”

                      Waiting for the paper…..

                    40. Those who do not fully identify themselves, and use Communistic tricks such as the misrepresentation in which Robert has been caught out, must expect to be called out foe the trolls they are.

                      Those who use their full names and keep the conversation honest and civil will be treated with respect.

                      Anonymous paid trolls for the climate-Communist Party Line will be treated with the contempt they deserve.

                      Nor did I falsely accuse Robert, as he suggests with his characteristic mendacity.

                      He wilfully omitted the fact that I had said my forthcoming paper was “forthcoming”, then sneered because it had not yet appeared.

                      That is not the conduct of one who wishes to take part in scientific discourse. It is the conduct of a head-bangingly pietist if true-believer on learning that the dogmas oh the New Religion’s Party Line are not true.

                      As the head posting shows, the Party Line is indeed false.

                    41. “New Religion’s Party Line ”
                      “head-bangingly pietist”

                      “Anonymous paid trolls”
                      “climate-Communist Party Line ”

                      “Communistic tricks ”

                      “misrepresentation”

                      Bottom para; accurate quote.

                      If you forgot to add ‘ forthcoming’ that’s your fault.

                      As is the namecalling, insulting, and avoiding citing any published science.

                    42. I have not called any identifiable person names: those who skulk here behind concealed identities can expect to be dealt with firmly as the paid climate-Communist trolls they are. No point in whining. Clean up your act, say who you are and contribute science to the discussion, or expect to be scorned, deservedly.

                      And stop lying.

                      There is plenty of published science in the head posting and in some of my comments here. If “Robert” is incapable of thinking for himself, let him go and get an education. He can start by working out the relationship between changes in ocean heat content and in ocean temperature. He will find that the temperature change is remarkably small – about 0.025 K/decade – in line with the near-total absence of global warming in the past two decades.

                    43. “Clean up your act,”

                      YOU are the one name calling and insulting

                      “..say who you are..”

                      YOU arent posting your full name.

                      “… contribute science to the discussion..”

                      That’s why I’m asking for your references.

                    44. Reading the lying troll Robert’s increasingly pathetic whining shows the level of malevolent petulance to which the climate Communists have been reduced.

                      Robert, having repeatedly lied in this thread, now lies again by saying I do not post under my full name. Right underneath the title of the head posting my full name clearly appears.

                    45. Let the cravenly anonymous climate Communist trolls sneer as they will, their childish petulance cannot conceal the abject and utter failure of the Party Line.

                      There has been no global warming for a decade and a half. And even if one goes back a quarter of a century the rate of warming is less than half of what was predicted.

                      Let the paid trolls and grasping rent-seekers whine. They will not change global temperature by a fraction of a degree.

                      Global warming is a bust. The climate Communists will have to think of something else to keep the red flag of tyranny flying.

                    46. Does “cunudiun” have any scientific contribution to make to the discussion? Like most climate Communists, it is out of its league. The predictions of doom have not come to pass, and they are not going to come to pass. Hurling childish insults from behind a craven cloak of anonymity merely reveals the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the climate Communist Party Line and of the cowards and rent-seekers who espouse it.

                    47. Hiding behind its fake pause, climate criminal and abject coward “Monckton” whines like an adolescent when its duplicity is laid bare.

                    48. Is “cunudiun” seriously trying to suggest that if one goes back 18 years 2 months from the present on the RSS monthly satellite global mean surface temperature anomaly dataset one does not obtain a zero trend? And what evidence does it have that the trend in less than the first half of the satellite data will continue in the future? What basis does it have for that assumption? The first part of the RSS dataset was wholly within the warming phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which ended in about 2001. So far there has been no global warming at all during the cooling phase, which is likely to endure for some 15 further years.

                      And one notes “cunudiun’s” deafening silence when confronted with the fact that in 1990 the IPCC, with “substantial confidence”, predicted a warming rate by now that was a little over double what has actually been observed. That was a serious exaggeration on the IPCC’s part. That is why, in its 2015 report, it has all but halved its interval of medium-term warming estimates. It has, of course, pretended that the long-term warming will somehow get back on track. However, there is no evidence that the IPCC’s latest long-range predictions will prove to be any less catastrophically overdone than its earliest medium-term predictions.

                      And what on earth is “cunudiun” doing labeling a more-than-18-year stasis in global warming as a “surge”? That nomenclature is too childish for words. A more adult approach would be preferable. The fact that there has been no global warming at all during more than half the entire satellite record cannot be legitimately shrugged off with the assertion that so long a zero trend is a “surge”. Time for a less climate-Communist and more adult approach, one feels.

                    49. Look at the level of the so-called pause. It’s above what was happening before. I wish my bank account would take a “pause” like that.

                    50. Don’t be infantile. Look at the ever-widening discrepancy between the predicted and observed warming rates since 1979.

                    51. Discrepancy since when?

                      Hansen 1988 was the start of these predictions you’re complaining about no?

                      Scenario “B” is the one most like the human influences — downfall of the Soviet Union, success of the Montreal Protocol, Recession of 2008 (say, wasn’t Matt Ridley partly responsible for that?), shift from coal and oil to natural gas, some success of over two dozen national and subnational fossil waste reduction efforts — since 1988.

                      Since Hansen excluded trade winds and volcano influences as impossible to model but irrelevant over periods longer than a decade, it is necessary to figure them in for the sake of comparing prediction to actual.

                      Cowtan & Way remind us that Hansen’s GCM is omniscient within its world, while all instrumental records have omissions; NOAA and BEST both have adjusted their figures to account for polar amplification and like effects in under-represented regions.

                      When we make competent comparisons using all available evidence, we find Hansen “B” 1988 exactly matches 2014.

                      Sure, the freakish coincidence of a perfect prediction over a quarter century later by a prototype model not intended for that sort of prediction doesn’t prove AGW.. but your mad fenestrations prove you think it does.

                    52. Actually, the observed atmospheric temperature change since Hansen made his predictions to Congress in 1988 has not followed any of Hansen’s scenarios. Indeed, it is even below his Scenario C, where he posited a rapid fall in global CO2 emissions from 1988-2000 and no increase in emissions thereafter.

                      Furthermore, the suggestion that Scenario B was Hansen’s preferred scenario does not accord with the words of his testimony in 1988, in which he stated that his Scenario A was the “business-as-usual” scenario. The fact that global warming has fallen well below his Scenario C, and catastrophically below his “business-as-usual” Scenario A is probably explained by two factors: first, Hansen had by then become a fanatical propagandist for a particular viewpoint now discredited by the failure of its lurid predictions; and secondly, the manual for Giss ModelE, which is Hansen’s model, makes it plain that the flux adjustments (a.k.a. fudge factors) are one or two orders of magnitude greater than the quite small climatic changes the model predicts.

                      As for Cowtan and Way, it has been widely discredited elsewhere. Speculative interpolation is not a sound basis for contriving a global temperature record: yet it has become a staple among the small group of extremist scientists still flogging the long-dead horse of catastrophic manmade global warming. Besides, spherical geometry dictates that the polar regions – not well covered either by satellites or by the terrestrial record – occupy a very small fraction of the Earth’s surface.

                      As for the fenestration in the buildings I design from time to time, there is nothing “mad” about it. The windows I favor are Georgian-style sash windows with each pane individually triple-glazed, and beautifully felted and counterweighted to rise and fall at the lift of a finger. Such windows not only look enduringly stylish: they let in plenty of light. But I am not sure what the fenestration of my buildings has to do with climate change – except that my windows are better insulated against cold than nearly all others.

                    53. You’re simply making false claims.

                      Scenario “B”, compared to MLOST from NOAA or BEST, or Cowtan & Way, when adjusted for volcano and ENSO, is bang on the mark. Comparing any GCM to the faulty and irrelevant UAH or RSS is much like trying to fit shoes for horses to humans. Claiming C&W ‘discredited’ is a fine bit of silliness, considering independent validation.

                      Hansen couldn’t have been expected in 1988 to foresee the unfolding of the world as it did, and that only makes Scenario “B” more remarkable for how like the real unfolding of history it ended up being. Calling ‘fudge factors’ those details outside the model is a bit of flummery. We don’t call it a fudge factor when we measure someone for trousers that we use the floor as a starting point instead of sea level.

                    54. ” the red flag of tyranny…”

                      “Communist trolls ”

                      “Party Line.”

                      ” paid trolls ”

                      ” grasping rent-seekers ”

                      “climate Communists”

                    55. “Robert” is at last getting the point that the climate scam is not about science: it is about advancing hard-Left policies on a global scale using the fictitious “climate crisis” as the increasingly flimsy pretext. “Robert” has not yet contributed a single serious, justifiable scientific point to this discussion, confirming that he is playing politics rather than doing science, which – inferentially – is too hard for him.

                    56. “…use their full names and keep the conversation honest and civil. .”

                      Hmmmm; then that’s why you insult and namecall.

                    57. Pot calls kettle black. See elsewhere in this thread for some of my published science. Sneering from behind a cloak of concealed identity will be met with a firm response. Don’t whine.

                    58. “>>> It is not for me to teach “Robert” how to do elementary math. <<<"
                      Hmmm… User Monckton, as much as I love and respect your teaching, and follow it humbly, it is our job to teach the un-enlightened ones the required math, so that they would see the error of their ways and that they would open their eyes, minds and hearts to the truth we proclaim, for their salvation is ours, as our righteous path will be theirs, once they will have shed their blinkers.

                    59. I do not get my science from rent-seeking vested interests such as NASA, NOAA, NCDC, GISS et hoc genus omne. They profiteer by taking an extreme and one-sided position. Defective though peer review is, it is less bad than letting rent-seekers who profiteer by advancing one and only one side of the case dictate to us what is and is not science. And in the reviewed literature the preponderance of the evidence leans towards no warming of Antarctica over the past 35 years, and a considerable cooling of the high plateau of east Antarctica, which accounts for the greater part of the continent, and far the greater part of the ice there. See, for instance, Doran et al. (2004). The evidence, therefore, is that both land-based ice and sea ice are growing in nearly all of Antarctica, with the exception of the West Antarctic, and particularly the Antarctic Peninsula, where there is an anomalous warming caused partly by variations in the circumpolar circulation and partly by well documented subsea volcanic activity. The ice shelves that melted over the past couple of decades in the Peninsula may have been absent there during the mediaeval warm period: see Pudsey (2006).

                      On the evidence from the literature, therefore, it seems likely that there has been no great net loss of land-based ice from Antarctica. Similar considerations apply to Greenland, where Johannessen et al. (2005) found that in the preceding 12 years the mean ice thickness on a large survey area of the high plateau had increased by 2 feet, though there had been some loss of ice at the coastal margins. Subsequent papers showed that some of the accumulated ice had found its way into the oceans, but there is little evidence of substantial net ice loss from either Greenland or Antarctica. Indeed, if there had been, there would have been a great deal more sea-level rise than ENVISAT or GRACE have measured (the Jason/Topex/Poseidon series being unreliable owing to intercalibration errors exceeding the sea-level rise they claim has occurred).

                      As for mountain glaciers in the extratropics, it is now clear even to the IPCC that the ice in the Himalayas is not going to disappear in the next 25 years after all. Patterns of advance and retreat elsewhere are consistent with what is inferred as normal over the past millennium or two. The cryosphere, therefore, is not the bellwether of climate doom that was once claimed. And why would there be any accelerated loss of ice over an 18-year period when there has been no global warming to cause it? No doubt that absence of warming is one of the reasons why the extent of global sea ice is currently at or very near its 35-year maximum.

                    60. You say do not get your science from NASA, NOAA, etc. So where do you get it? Good taste requires that I do not hazard a guess. In your entire latest diatribe you were able to cite three cherry-picked papers, the most recent of them dated 2006. The author of the first of these claims his paper has been frequently misinterpreted by AGW opponents such as yourself, stating,”I have never thought such a thing … I would like to remove my name from the list of scientists who dispute global warming.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Doran
                      And it is just laughable that you conclude that because the IPCC retracted a misstatement they made once, there is no problem with the mountain glaciers. I already posted above an extension of your misleading graph showing the absurdity of your claim that there has been no global warming over the last 18 years.

                    61. It is not my business to educate known, paid trolls like “cunudiun” in climate science. Let it read its own scientific papers. I cited as many as i needed in order to make the points I wished to make.

                      And try at least to get the facts straight. I did not cite any authors as saying they disputed global warming: I cited each of them correctly and reasonably as establishing particular facts.

                      Likewise, it ought also to be clear even to the meanest intelligence that I did not say that because the IPCC were wrong about the Himalayas there was no problem with mountain glaciers. I separately considered two sets of mountain glaciers: 1) the Himalayas; and 2) elsewhere.

                      And whether “cunudiun” likes it or not, the farthest back one can go in the observed temperature record and find no global warming is 18 years 2 months, on the RSS dataset, as correctly explained in the head posting. Not exactly what the vaunted models predicted, is it? And, as I have pointed out above, the entire RSS dataset shows warming only at a rate equivalent to 1.2 K/century, or about a third of what IPeCaC predicts for the whole century, and less than half of what it predicted in 1990 should have occurred by now.

                      In mid-January, I shall as usual provide my six-monthly update on all five major global-temperature datasets. I expect this to show that three of the five have been tampered with in an uptrending direction over the past few months, inferentially in the desperate hope of influencing the Lima/Paris process by making it look as though there has not been as long a period without warming as there has.

                      I do understand that trolls who are paid to try to disrupt these threads find it near-impossible to be objective in their consideration of scientific questions. Indeed, on the evidence to date I suspect that “cunudiun” either has little or no scientific background or is making an extremely poor use of it. However, it is necessary to approach these questions not with an open mouth nor with an open check-book but with an open mind. “Cunudiun” has the unusually closed mind that tends to be widespread on the totalitarian Left.

                    62. The thought of you “educating” anybody in climate science is absurd. And you compound all your other lies by asserting I am “paid”.

                    63. I had made it plain that it was not my business to educate “cunudiun” in climate science. It has adopted a stubborn, aprioristic stance, and no amount of education would be of the slightest benefit to it. It seems incapable of understanding that the rate of global warming over the past quarter of a century is half of what was predicted. And, if it is not paid, it does seem to spend an inordinate amount of its time trolling on a wide variety of websites, and never with anything constructive or scientific to say. Why would “cunudiun” bother to advertise its ignorance, unless it was paid?

                      “Cunudiun” seems rather too free with its accusations of “lying”. Upthread I had plainly referred to two groups of mountain glaciers: the Himalayas, and elsewhere. I pointed out, correctly, that even the IPCC now acknowledges that it was wrong to suggest the Himalayan glaciers would disappear within 25 years – they won’t, of course. And I went on to point out, correctly, that elsewhere the patterns of advance and retreat are consistent with what has been observed or inferred before. There is a large literature on this.

                      Nor did I “claim” that glaciers cannot be melting because global warming has ceased. Perhaps “cunudiun” would benefit from some elementary lessons in reading and comprehension, as well as in manners. I had raised a question (and that is not a “claim”, it is a question) about why there would be an acceleration in the recession rate of glaciers given that there has been no global warming for 18 years 2 months. “Cunudiun”, instead of trying to answer the question, accuses me of “lying”. But a question is just that – a question. It claims nothing. It asserts nothing. It merely asks.

                      Frankly, it is time for this particular troll to grow up. The adult approach would be to admit that the models did not predict that global warming would occur as slowly as it has over the past 25 years. They did not predict that there would be no global warming at all for up to 18 years 2 months. Indeed, just about all of their predictions of doom have failed to come to pass. There comes a point where a grown-up, rather than continuing to screech “liar” in the face of the data and the facts, would try to do just a little thinking rather than merely adhering, mule-like, to a petulantly aprioristic standpoint.

                      The totalitarian Left, which, one suspects, is “cunudiun’s” spiritual home/wasteland, has made a strategic mistake of heroic proportions by bossily trying to tell us that the world would warm at a dangerous rate. The Left have strayed from the realm of politics to the realm of observable fact, and the observable fact is that – depending on the timescale one chooses – there has been a significant cooling of the Earth since the Holocene, Old Kingdom, Minoan, Roman, and Medieval climate optima, each of which was warmer than the present, or that there has been a slight warming since 1950, at a rate little greater than the 1900-1950 warming that we could barely have influenced; or that the rate of global warming since 1990 has been rather below half of what the IPCC had then predicted with “substantial confidence”; or that since the late 1990s (or early 2000s, on some datasets) there has been no global warming at all, notwithstanding record increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Take your pick.

                      Whichever starting-point one chooses, whichever dataset or sets one chooses, the picture is the same. The planet is not, repeat not, warming either at the predicted rate or at a dangerous rate. Thus far, therefore, there is little or no empirical evidence to support the exaggerated claims of the rent-seeking vested-interest nest-featherers in the pseudo-science agencies in which “cunudian” places such touching but misplaced faith, and a growing body of evidence that these profiteers of doom are no better at prediction, and should be no more seriously regarded, than the pointy-heads who march through the streets with sandwich-boards proclaiming that The End Of The World Is At Hand.

                      Ïn short, “cunudiun” is way out of its league. It should go away and read some elementary textbooks of statistics, of mathematics, of physics, and of chaos theory. Then it might be at rather less of an obvious disadvantage. And perhaps it would like to tell us what is its record of publication in the reviewed learned journals on the climate question. If it has none, perhaps it would be kind enough to explain why it is so ready to sneer at its scientific betters, especially if – as it falsely claims – it is not paid to exhibit the pusillanimous behavior of a spoiled child here and on many other blogs.

                      Either way, it is wasting its time. The facts in the head posting are unchallengeable. On the RSS dataset, there has been no global warming for 18 years 2 months. I expect that long Pause to shorten somewhat when the current el Nino picks up strength in the first three or four months of next year, but on past form it will be followed by a la Nina which will cancel the warming effect of the el Nino. Meanwhile, the solar cycle is probably past its peak and will begin to tail off. As it does so, the world may even turn colder (as a growing body of scientific papers attest), for the additional CO2 we have put in the atmosphere amounts to only 1 part in 10,000 of its composition, and even that overstates the position because below the upper troposphere the additional CO2 cannot make much difference to global temperature because its principal absorption wavebands are largely overlain by those of water vapor, which is a far more abundant and thus more significant greenhouse gas.

                      Therefore, such little warming as might in theory be able to occur as a result of CO2 enrichment can occur – even in theory – only in the upper troposphere. And that means most of such warming as occurs up there will make its way harmlessly to the adjacent infinite heat-sink that is outer space. This is probably no small part of the reason why the oceans – if they are accumulating heat at all, for our measurements are far from sufficiently resolved to give us a reliable indication – are doing so at a rate approximately one-sixth of what the models had predicted. Once again, there is no basis for the childish shrieks of faux alarm from the totalitarian Left. And, now that it is known that only a vanishingly small fraction of the reviewed literature even goes so far as to attribute most of the minuscule warming since 1950 to Man, it is no longer possible for the Left credibly to deploy its favorite fallacy – the headcount or consensus fallacy.

                      The game is up and the climate scare is over. Will someone tell whoever is paying “cunudiun”?

                    64. You are provably lying again about what you said two posts ago. Anyone can go back and read it to see for themself, but I’ll save them the trouble. Here are your own words:

                      As for mountain glaciers in the extratropics, it is now clear even to the IPCC that the ice in the Himalayas is not going to disappear in the next 25 years after all. Patterns of advance and retreat elsewhere are consistent with what is inferred as normal over the past millennium or two. The cryosphere, therefore, is not the bellwether of climate doom that was once claimed. And why would there be any accelerated loss of ice over an 18-year period when there has been no global warming to cause it?

                      Now you say, “Upthread I had plainly referred to two groups of mountain glaciers: the Himalayas, and elsewhere” Yes, you mentioned the word “elsewhere”, but you gave no evidence in support. Now you say, “Nor did I “claim” that glaciers cannot be melting because global warming has ceased.” That is obviously false. You also repeat the lie that I am being paid to write what I write. I am not. I wish I were. So either pay me or STFU about this.

                      These lies are just the low-hanging fruit, easy to use to prove on the spot what a habitual LIAR you are. Neither of them amounts to a hill of beans in comparison with your much more serious lies and deceptions including that Global Warming has stopped over the last 18+ years. Here, once again is your very own graph put back in context of the full RSS historical record, showing that the 18+ year period, which you cherry-picked really represented a surge or plateau in global warming rather than a “pause“.

                    65. “Cunudiun” continues to suffer from a reading disability as well as a deficit of manners. Only a paid climate-Communist troll would behave thus. It still fails to understand that when I referred to two groups of mountain glaciers – the Himalayas, and elsewhere – I was referring to two groups of mountain glaciers – the Himalayas, and elsewhere. Nor did I “claim” that glaciers cannot be melting because global warming has ceased: I raised a question – not a claim – about how loss of glacial ice could accelerate in the absence of global warming. Back to elementary re-education for our little Lenin, one feels, to learn the difference in logic and in semantics between an interrogative and a declarative statement.

                      Next, “Cunudiun”, paid to be furious that the Party Line has been so easily and persistently proven wrong, says I am a “LIAR” – written in capitals as though a baby or a spoiled child were writing – for showing that the longest period during which no global warming is evident is the 18 years 2 months from October 1996 to November 2014. It tries to maintain that “global warming” is really continuing, by using a statistically dopey method which can be just as easily used to show that we have been experiencing global cooling ever since the end of the Holocene Climate Optimum 6000 years ago. My RSS graph is not a “LIE”: it is the embarrassing truth – embarrassing, that is, to the paid climate-Communist trolls who take money from hostile foreign nations with alien, totalitarian political systems to try to turn the truth on its head.

                      The paid trolls like “Cunudiun” will fail. The satellite temperature record is not so easily or frequently tampered with or fiddled as the surface records have been fiddled. See Steven Goddard’s ever-growing collection of obvious fiddles that had been carefully hidden. Whichever dataset one studies, however, it is abundantly plain that the rate of global warming is less than half what the IPCC predicted with “substantial confidence” a quarter of a century ago in its First Assessment Report. That was the report that began the scare, and its central prediction was more than 100% too big. Get over it.

                      Increasingly, one has to treat the paid trolls as the children they are. They repudiate plain scientific evidence of the failure of the Party Line to which they had so unwisely and so completely deferred. Such repudiation of the manifest truth is childish in the extreme. The longer they try to deny that global warming is not happening at anything like the predicted rate, the sillier and less intelligent they make themselves look. I shall not say that “Cunudiun” is a liar. It is far worse. It is a paid hack, taking money via a cutout from a foreign government of a malevolently totalitarian stamp. In a less kindly age, its behavior would have been called treason. But let us call it what it is: greedy but dumb, and doomed – step by step and month by inexorable month – to abject, total, humiliating failure.

                    66. As much as I love your bizarre obsession with Communism, this thread is not about that. It’s about climate change.

                      NOAA says approximately 15×10²² Joules have gone into the Earth’s climate system in the last 18 years:

                      http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT

                      If you think this is false, how much energy has gone into the Earth’s climate system and how do you know?

                    67. This thread is full of comments by people who unthinkingly defer to the supposed authority of rent-seeking official bodies such as NOAA. That is one of the hallmarks of totalitarianism. Call it Fascism if you don’t like to be called Communist.

                      Here’s the scientific problem with CB’s latest head-banging deference to the overpaid profiteers of doom. If more energy enters than leaves the climate system, the temperature of the system rises to restore the pre-existing balance. But the temperature of the atmosphere has not risen in almost 20 years. We may take it, therefore, that the temperature of the ocean has not risen either, for it is 3 orders of magnitude denser than the atmosphere and intimately coupled to it. Try thinking rather than merely parroting the Party Line.

                    68. “rent-seeking official bodies such as NOAA. ”

                      “Party Line.”

                      “…hallmarks of totalitarianism. Call it Fascism if you don’t like to be called Communist.”

                      “overpaid profiteers of doom.”

                    69. Don’t be lazy, and don’t pretend that the question was politely asked. It was asked with a climate-Communist sneer. Do the math – if you’re capable, which I doubt.

                      Let us suppose, ad argumentum, that the NOAA pentadal graph (which neatly cuts off the past few years of no-warming) is correct to show as much as 55 ZJ of accumulated ocean heat content over the 94 months from the beginning of the ARGO record till the end of 2013. In that event, the temperature of the top 2000 m of the ocean is rising at a rate equivalent to 1/40 K every ten years. Note that, though the ARGO buoys measure temperature and not heat content, the results are converted from temperature to heat content because 55 ZJ sounds a whole lot bigger than a minuscule fraction of a Kelvin (or Celsius degree). So the ocean heat content record – even if it were competent, which I have repeatedly explained it is not, in that each ARGO sensor has to try to measure 300,000 cubic kilometers of ocean – appears to chime closely with the air temperature records in showing little or no global warming in the near-decade since ARGO has been reporting (before that, ocean heat content was even more of a guess than it is now).

                      If you were not a climate Communist, you would be able to think these through for yourself rather than expecting all the math to be done for you. So stop parroting the Party Line and accept that, whichever way one slices and dices the numbers, the models’ predictions of rapid warming have proven to be a spectacular failure. In the end, as Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany discovered, even Fascists and Communists have to face reality eventually. Time to get with the picture and stop pretending that there is a manmade “climate crisis”. There isn’t, and that’s that.

                    70. “>>> You say do not get your science from NASA, NOAA, etc. So where do you get it? <<<"

                      I can't respond for user "Monckton" (the name sounds familiar) but otherwise, I'd say, we all "get our science" from studying the subject: we read peer reviewed papers published in reputable journals. We use our own knowledge of physics, geophysics and geology–also derived from studying papers and textbooks–to make up our own mind.

                      Most papers that pertain to "climate science" are easy enough to read for anyone with a background in physics, numerical analysis, data processing, &c. Try it.

                      What about NASA, NOAA and the like? Well, sometimes in their learned WWW pages they choose not to mention results obtained by their colleagues from other institutions, often in other countries, if they don't fit their narrative. This is why it is important that you do your own readings–and your own mathematics. It is also useful to peruse literature published in other countries, e.g., in China and Japan. Their scientists are not beholden to NSF and don't have to toe the line, well, this particular line.

                    71. Thanks for the insult to my intelligence. Based on what I’ve posted so far, do you really think I need you to talk down to me like this? What about the results of peer -reviewed papers I’ve already given you? I assure you I have checked each one of these and the mathematical conversion of their results where necessary between cu-km. and Gt of ice. Of course you ignored all this when I posted it before, because you are only interested in those peer-reviewed papers that support your position and lots of bs about the area taken up by thin, floating Antarctic ice. You’re not really interested in science at all. Here it is again:

                      The earth is losing a trillion tons of ice per year:

                      – 159 Gt Antarctic LAND ice volume…..McMillan el al, GRL (2014)
                      + 26 Gt Antarctic SEA ice volume…..Holland et al, J Climate (2014)
                      – 261 Gt Arctic sea ice…..PIOMAS
                      – 378 Gt Greenland…..Enderlin et al (2014)
                      – 259 Gt other land based glaciers…..Gardner et al. Science (2013)

                      TOTAL ICE LOSS PER YEAR = 1,031 Gt.

                    72. When we talk about, say, Himalayan glaciers, isn’t the right thing to ask Indian scientists about this in the first place? Here is what they had to say about this in the April 2014 issue of Current Science (vol. 106, no. 7, pp. 1008-1013, 10 April 2014): of all glaciers observed, 1752 (86.8%) had stable fronts, 248 (12.3%) exhibited retreat and 18 (0.9%) showed the actual growth. The net ice loss observed was about 21 km^2 +/- 2.5%, which is 0.2% of the total ice covered surface area.

                      But at the same time, their Chinese colleagues report massive growth of 30Gtons/year in the glaciers of Tibet, see doi:10.1002/2013JB010860 in Journal of Geophysical Research 2014.

                      So, whereas ice shrinks in some places, it grows in others.

                      The real question in all this is if this is normal.

                      There is no such thing as a stable, unchanging climate. Climate always drifts. It either cools, or warms. It cannot stay fixed, because this particular fixed point is a “set of measure zero” in the sea of possibilities. As solar output varies due to the sun’s internal and external interactions (the sun interacts with Jupiter and Saturn, which produces 60 and 100 year long solar activity supercycles), the earth’s climate responds, as it has to. So, you will see glaciers advance, then, decades or centuries later, they’ll retreat.

                      “Schweiz am Sonntag” reported in September 2013 that some Alpine glaciers began to grow again after a decade of shrinking. Swiss geologists, having examined various dendro-chronological records, came to the conclusion that the currently observed summer temperatures in the Alps are at the low limit for the Holocene, doi:10.1007/s00334-005-0013-y.
                      The Little Ice Age, when Alpine glaciers were advancing so fast, they threatened well established towns and villages was not a desirable or normal time. As the world recovers from that anomaly, it is only normal that glaciers would retreat.

                      As the climate will inevitably cool in years to come, in response to abating solar activity, the glaciers will grow back.

                    73. “When we talk about, say, Himalayan glaciers, isn’t the right thing to ask Indian scientists about this in the first place?”

                      No. The right thing to do is ask scientists.

                      Retreating sub-polar glaciers are a tiny part of the ice that’s melting down on our planet.

                      If we aren’t headed for complete meltdown, just with the CO₂ we’ve already added to the atmosphere, why isn’t there a single example in Earth’s history of polar ice caps withstanding CO₂ so high?

                      Why are you having such difficulty with this question, Gus?

                    74. “>>> If we aren’t headed for complete meltdown, just with the CO₂ we’ve already added to the atmosphere, why isn’t there a single example in Earth’s history of polar ice caps withstanding CO₂ so high? <<<"

                      First, you have to demonstrate that the melting observed at the poles has anything to do with CO2. But even before you do this, you must demonstrate that it is in any way unusual.

                      As to the latter, there were to long periods in the recent history of earth that were as warm or warmer as today and of longer duration, the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warm Period, both global in scope. What can be said about the polar ice behavior at the time? There have also been very recent shorter periods, again, just as warm as today, e.g., in the 1930s. What was the polar ice behavior then?

                      Because we don't have photographic evidence for the polar ice extent in the previous epochs, we are forced to rely on proxies, which are not as reliable and not as global as satellite photographs. Still, it's better than nothing. And here the research, such as there is, shows that, for example, the conditions in the Arctic today are by no means exceptional. First, the Arctic was known to have been perennially ice free in the early Holocene, doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.10.022. Opel et al find that the Arctic was warmer than today between 1920 and 1940, doi:10.5194/cp-9-2379-2013, 2013; as does Rose, doi:10.1016/j.icesjms.2005.05.007. Rinne et al find that Northern Scandinavia was warmer than today during the Medieval Warm Period. Nazarova et al find that Kamchatka enjoyed two consecutive warm intervals between 4000YBP and 1000YBP both warmer than today, doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.01.018. Lohmann and Schoene find that Arctic temperatures around Iceland were generally warmer than today for much of the past 500 years with considerable multi-decadal variability observed, as it is today.

                      In summary, even with the present-day melting, the Arctic does not appear to be affected any more than it had been often in the past. The conditions in the Arctic, in other words, are pretty normal.

                      Much the same can be said about the Antarctic. For example, Mulvaney et al find that the Antarctic Peninsula, the fastest thawing bit of the Antarctic, experienced an equally warm period during the early Holocene. They also find that the present day warming started 600 years ago and is not unprecedented given the Peninsula's known history. See doi:10.1038/nature11391. Ekaykin et al find that in the past 350 years the Antarctic summer temperatures in the are of the Vostok subglacial lake oscillated with a period of between 30 to 50 years and amplitude of about 3.6C, the present day temperatures matching the observed pattern, see
                      doi:10.3189/201AoG66A189. Hodgson and Bentley find that temperature in the Pensacola Mountains in the interior of Antarctica were warmer than today for some 2000 years, between 4000 YBP and 2000 YBP, doi:10.1177/0959683612460790.

                      In summary, neither what is happening in the Arctic today nor what is happening in the Antarctic today is unprecedented. There is, in short, no catastrophic development taking place at either end. At either end there were extended periods of as high or higher temperatures than today–in all cases for perfectly natural reasons.

                      Now, let us turn to the question of what is causing melting in the West Antarctic and in Greenland. Damiani et al look at airborne gravimetric data Thwaites Glacier and find variable crustal thickness beneath resulting in high geothermal heat flux, see
                      doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2014.09.023. The story of Greenland is more complicated, because the island reaches very far south, into latitudes that are otherwise quite warm in summer. Indeed, Ding et al find that the recent warming in the region is associated with the negative phase in the North Atlantic Oscillation, doi:10.1038/nature13260. Additionally, Petrunin et al point to the role that geothermal heat flux contributes to Greenland melting due to anomalously thin lithosphere under the island, doi:10.1038/ngeo1898. The vagaries of ocean currents affect the West Antarctica melting too, because there is so little continental mass there: most of it is the four Antarctic seas (Weddell, Bellingshausen, Amundsen and Ross) and two huge ice shelves (Ronne and Ross).

                      In summary, yet again, nothing either in the Arctic or Antarctic today is unusual and without precedence, and whatever melting is observed at both ends is explained by ocean oscillations and geothermal activity.

                      There is no human produced CO2 finger print there at all.

                    75. “First, you have to demonstrate that the melting observed at the poles has anything to do with CO2”

                      Which part are you having difficulty understanding, that CO₂ causes warming or that warming melts ice?

                    76. “>>> Which part are you having difficulty understanding, that CO₂ causes warming or that warming melts ice? <<<"

                      … that atmospheric CO2 at present day minute concentration would have caused warming enough to melt this much ice. And, of course, we do know that it doesn't. We do know that most melting in the Arctic and in the Antarctic is not caused by atmospheric CO2 at all, but by ocean currents and geothermal heat.

                    77. “that atmospheric CO2 at present day minute concentration would have caused warming enough to melt this much ice”

                      If you understand that CO₂ warms planets, but you think there is a stronger driver of planetary temperature than CO₂, point to a single moment in Earth’s history when this driver caused polar ice caps to form with CO₂ as high as we have today.

                      If what you say is true, this should be happening all the time, right?

                      …so why doesn’t it?

                    78. “>>> If you understand that CO₂ warms planets… <<>> If what you say is true, this should be happening all the time, right? <<<"
                      And it (polar melting) is happening all the time. It was happening in the 1930s, it was happening during the Medieval Warm Period. Where volcanism is involved, as is the case under Greenland and under the West Antarctica, it is happening continuously. At the same time, the caps get replenished by snow fall, more during cold periods, like the Little Ice Age and the 1960s/1970s, less in warm periods like in the 1930s, today and during the Medieval Warm Period.

                    79. Here you go…in your very own words.

                      CB • 15 days ago Tues, 3-27-14 3:56 PM

                      “Yes, during the Eocene-Oligocene transition roughly 34 million years ago, polar ice caps formed with levels of CO₂ at roughly twice today’s levels, or around 800PPM.”

                      You don’t deny you said that, do you? Here’s the science supporting your position.
                      http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7267/abs/nature08447.html

                      So why are you now inanely asking “…point to a single moment in Earth’s history when this driver caused polar ice caps to form with CO₂ as high as we have today.”
                      YOU’VE ALREADY ANSWERED IT IN YOUR OWN WORDS!

                    80. “>>> geothermal heat, ocean currents… published science supporting that claim?<<<"

                      Of course. See doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2014.09.023 (on the geology beneath Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica), doi:10.1038/ngeo1898 (on the geology beneath the Greenland ice sheet), doi:10.1002/2013GL058084 (on the relationship between Greenland melt and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation), doi:10.1038/nclimate2235 (on the role of circum-Antarctic winds and currents in maintaining Antarctica's climate), doi:10.1038/ngeo1778 (on the connection between multi-decadal ocean variability in the tropics and Antarctica). There's plenty more… just follow the literature.

                    81. He’s as blind as he can be
                      Just sees what he wants to see
                      Nowhere Man can you see me at all?

                      — Lennon–McCartney

                    82. Kitsch.
                      If this is what passes for scientific discussion in your circles, no wonder you’re losing the audience.

                    83. “>>> So now take the whole body of research… <<<"

                      "The whole body of research" is a phrase that is meaningless. Should it include papers that were demonstrated later to have been in error? Should it include a countless number of papers based on "climate model" simulations that, we know, are all in error and a huge one to that?

                      How about if we start by rejecting all papers that are produced by running climate models and admit only the ones based on geological, oceanographic and satellite observations? Wouldn't this restore the badly needed sanity to climate science?

                      99% of "the whole body of research" in natural sciences is almost always in error. This is why we give Nobel prizes to scientists that managed to break out from "the whole body of research" to produce breakthroughs.

                      You do not seem to understand the power of counter-argument. Counter-argument is the most cutting of all tools of logic, and of science. Even the most elaborate theory based on "the whole body of research" can be demolished in an instance by a power of counter-argument. You may have a mathematical theorem, with a long and convoluted proof, acknowledged by "the body" of mathematicians to be correct. Then someone delivers a counter-argument and the theorem becomes… false overnight. It is up to mathematicians to go through its proof again and identify the error or errors made.

                      This happened many times in every area of science, also in pure mathematics.

                      The lack of warming over the past 19 years, as is evidenced by the Vogelsang-Franses HAC-robust trend variance estimator analysis of HadCRUT4 data (doi:10.4236/ojs.2014.47050) is one of such powerful counter-arguments. There are many more.

                      Climate scientists today, the real ones, not activists, are fully aware of the problem and take notice. This is why there is growing emphasis today on investigating natural mechanisms that drive climate fluctuations, reflected in comments made by National Academies of many nations: Norway, Poland, China, Russia… In the US, the American Physical Society made similar remarks in their recent 2014 review of climate science.

                    84. “”climate model” simulations that, we know, are all in error and a huge one to that”

                      Start there.

                      In your analysis you need to address Chapter 9 of AR5.

                    85. I presume, you mean WG1 AR6 Ch. 9.

                      No, I don’t, because, you see, Ch. 9 says remarkably little about clouds, other than that “their simulation remains challenging. They even add that “there is very high confidence that uncertainties in cloud processes explain much in the spread in modelled climate sensitivity.” In other words, they admit the models are garbage and admit that this is because they can’t do clouds.

                      They can’t do them, because they lack the physics, physics and chemistry of clouds not being fully understood for starters, but they also lack the resolution that is needed to do clouds. Yet, clouds are central to climate, because they regulate the amount of energy that the earth’s surface receives from the sun. If you can’t do clouds, you can’t do climate.

                      As to other issues that plague the models, see, for example, doi:10.1038/515338a (about the need for high resolution climate models), doi:10.1038/ngeo2253 (about atmospheric circulation being a major source of uncertainty in climate models), doi:10.1002/qj.2450 (why climate models cannot predict climate sensitivity), doi:10.1175/JAS-D-13-0392.1 (about a massive bug in some climate models, to do with the averaging the solar zenith angle), doi:10.1073/pnas.1413640111 (about the failure in many models to account correctly for far-infrared surface emissivity)… there’s plenty more where these come from. Neither is included in WG1 AR5 because… they’re all more recent.

                      Also, Ch. 9 talks little about the various “devices” of CFD, for instance, the Smagorinsky closure, which are known to introduce unphysicality into the simulated system, for example, they produce unphysical solutions that violate the second principle of thermodynamics. See doi:10.1002/qj.2404 for more on this.

                      This paper, doi:10.1016/j.atmosres.2013.11.009, looks at the clouds effect on the solar and radiation budgets in the Mediterranean. It is based on modeling and observations, but the models’ parameters are validated against CERES and ERBE satellite data. They find that the clouds have a huge cooling effect on the sea, which is 11 times greater than the IPCC claimed CO2 warming effect.

                      Clouds are the earth’s natural thermostat. The models vastly exaggerate the CO2 effect, because they vastly under-account the effect that the clouds have on the climate. And their authors know it. They even admit it in the very WG1 AR5 you want me to elaborate on.

                      Why then do the activists ignore such an important factor in the models’ and the whole CAGW theory’s failure?

                    86. “”climate model” simulations that, we know, are all in error and a huge one to that”

                      Start there.

                      In your analysis you need to address Chapter 9 of AR5.

                    87. “99% of “the whole body of research” in natural sciences is almost always in error. ”

                      I’d like to see how you are going to support that.

                    88. “99% of “the whole body of research” in natural sciences is almost always in error. ”

                      I’d like to see how you are going to support that.

                    89. “>>> I’d like to see how you are going to support that. <<<"

                      Simply, by referring you to the history of science. Take the luminiferous aether. Throughout the whole 19th century, every paper that talked about light, talked about the luminiferous aether and its various mechanical properties. They were all in error, weren't they.

                      Until about 1990s, just about every paper that talked about the causes of stomach ulcer referred to stress and other psychosomatic disorders. Nearly all were in error, weren't they? Today we know how important bacterial and viral floras are in the formation of stomach and duodenal ulcers.
                      Science and scientists, most of them, get about everything wrong until someone, usually just one person or a small group, get it right.

                      Such is the very nature of scientific research: trial and error. The moment you stop erring and your trial is a success, you finish working on your project and move on to another one, where you'll continue erring for another 10 years.

                    90. “They laughed at Galileo. They laughed at Newton. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
                      -Carl Sagan

                    91. Until the 1990’s??

                      1980’s, you mean?

                      There were perhaps four prior papers on the causes of stomach ulcers in the categories now associated provably with bacteria with wide acceptance before 1983. (There was rather a lot known about injuries one could inflict that would cause other categories of ulcer.)

                      Their conclusions were broadly, “we don’t know; treat the symptoms.”

                      Maybe you should know what you’re talking about before you write about it?

                    92. “.. In the US, the American Physical Society made similar remarks in their recent 2014 review of climate science.”

                      You mean this one?

                      “Conclusion: Earth is getting warmer. Basic atmospheric models clearly predict that additional greenhouse gasses will raise the temperature of Earth. To argue otherwise, one must prove a physical mechanism that gives a reasonable alternative cause of warming. This has not been done. Sunspot and temperature correlations do not prove causality.”
                      http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/hafemeister.cfm

                    93. No, not this one, another one. See “American Physical Society Climate Change Statement Review Workshop Framing Document, Climate Change Statement Review Subcommittee, December 20, 2013”
                      The one you refer to is just a tutorial by two specific individuals, who had placed their bets on the CO2 warming theory, it’s not even a proper paper.
                      This theory fails in confrontation with observations, beginning with the lack of warming in the past 19 years. But, every climate model failure, e.g., failure to correctly model monsoons, ocean currents, clouds, ice cover, and so on, is, essentially, a failure of the CO2 based CAGW theory too.

                    94. “No, not this one, another one.”

                      No exact quote?

                      So now your ‘proof/support’ is a half cited and unquoted claim; about as unreliable as ‘monckton’s ‘forthcoming’ paper.

                    95. “This theory fails in confrontation with observations, beginning with the lack of warming in the past 19 years. ”

                      Interesting; no support for two claims in one sentence.

                    96. The Vogelsang-Franses HAC-robust trend variance estimator when applied to HadCRUT4 surface temperature series shows a trendless interval of 19 years duration, doi:10.4236/ojs.2014.47050. Here. Nothing more needs to be said. Your CAGW theory is trash–disproved by this simple observation.

                    97. So one paper has ‘trashed CAGW’…… who’d a’known…..

                      Well, those who read currey’s and watt’s and gwpf’s blogs. Odd how so many of your cites originate at ‘anything but my tailpipe’ blogs.

                      “Nothing more needs to be said.”

                      Well put, thanks.

                    98. “>>> So one paper has ‘trashed CAGW’… who’d a’known… <<<"
                      One 1905 paper of Einstein trashed the whole theory of luminiferous aether that hundreds of 19th century physicists have been building up laboriously for generations.
                      This is how science works. One counter-example is enough to prove a theory false. In this case, there's been no "global warming" for 19 years in spite of CO2 emissions increasing at the same time. This is a fact. And this fact means that CO2 emissions have no effect on global temperature. Nature, kindly, provided us with the controlled experiment.

                    99. The whole body of research, note, is fully aware of what it calls “hiatus.” The IPCC WG1 AR5 report is full of references to it. The phenomenon as such is not questioned. The paper I’m pointing you to merely resolves the question of how long the said and acknowledged hiatus has been so far. The answer is 19 years. There is good, solid mathematics behind this result and good, solid data.

                      You can question, say, the integrity of HadCRUT4 surface temperature data set, or the applicability of the Vogelsang-Franses HAC-robust trend variance estimator to this problem. Be my guest. I’ll be glad to listen to your argument. Perhaps you can convince me.

                      Otherwise, accept the fact that there hasn’t been any global warming for 19 years now. This, in combination with known increase in the CO2 atmospheric concentration in the same time, disproves CAGW. There is no direct relationship between one and the other.

                      The common explanation for this problem, when it is acknowledged and explanation sought to begin with, is that natural factors interfere with the expected temperature rise. But this means that natural factors are at least as powerful as human released CO2 in controlling the earth global temperature. Furthermore, as it is irrational to expect that the natural factors would have switched on suddenly 19 years ago, while being completely absent before, we must admit that they may have been present all the time.

                      Indeed, since the global temperature began its rise some 150 years ago, at the end of the Little Ice Age, and attained particularly high rate of rise between 1900 and 1930, this being certainly natural, because human contribution at the time would have been negligible, we should admit the possibility that the same cause was present between 1980 and 2000. The similarity of global temperature rise slopes for both periods suggests that this may very well have been the case. This being so, relegates human impact to between negligible and small.

                      What could it have been that terminated the Little Ice Age and gave us warming–however little it was in reality, a mere 0.7C–that stretched over the 20th century? The 20th century solar activity grand maximum is just such an event and correlates well with the observed dates of warming. The activity began to drop in the 1990s and… lo and behold, the global temperature rise stopped too.

                      Why didn’t it get cold immediately with the diminished activity dropping? This is because the earth ocean having accumulated energy at the time of high activity, hoards it, like an inertia heater, and continues to release it slowly into the atmosphere. The result is that it stays warm, but doesn’t get any warmer. This is how inertia heaters work, too.

                    100. Regarding the “hiatus” (it is really a maximum, not a hiatus at all, see doi:10.1007/s11434-010-4204-2, if you like cites so much), see the IPCC WG1 AR5 report. You can begin with Box TS.3, page 61.

                    101. You mean the section that starts w “.. much smaller increasing linear trend”?

                      Which puts the ‘ no warming’ meme back on its hwels…

                      Also, the box is discussing only one part of the whole picture; part of the evaluation of models.

                      And a paper frequntly cited in the ‘anything but my tailpipe’ coterie. .

                      So yet again cherrypicking, exaggeration, and misinterpretation.

                      Which seems to be a pretty good example cof the intellectual level needed to twist the science to fit the desired outcome.

                    102. What the IPCC report chooses to label “much smaller increasing linear trend,” on closer examination with the use of proper statistical methods, turns out to be no trend at all for 19 years.
                      And this is the simple truth about “global warming.” It doesn’t exist. Whatever warming had transpired since the end of the Little Ice Age was natural, minimal and ended 19 years ago, in spite of atmospheric CO2 concentration increasing.
                      Clearly, human emissions have little or nothing to do with it.
                      In turn, whatever natural warming had occurred since 1850, most of it in the first 100 years, when no connection with human emissions was likely, was way too little to have any real effect on anything, and certainly not on weather or conditions at the poles or anywhere else.
                      This is precisely why “CAGW” is now the last on the list of American concerns. Americans, it transpires, are not this stupid and know the humbug when they see it.
                      Now, let’s talk about defunding EPA and American contribution to IPCC… It’s about time, isn’t it?

                    103. “the use of proper statistical methods, ”

                      Let us know when:

                      A} your paper is published
                      or
                      B} you’ve finished grading the class finals for all those published scientists who somehow didn’t take your class when they were earning their degrees.

                    104. “What the IPCC report chooses to label “much smaller increasing linear trend,” on closer examination with the use of proper statistical methods, turns out to be no trend at all for 19 years. ”

                      Who or what has informed your thinking?

                    105. The IPCC has acknowledged this pause, but there’s debate about the actual duration.

                    106. “One 1905 paper of Einstein trashed”

                      No, not until the expiramental physicists published….

                      And your one half a fact story doesn’t support your 99% claim…

                    107. “One 1905 paper of Einstein trashed the whole theory of luminiferous aether that hundreds of 19th century physicists have been building up laboriously for generations.”

                      No. Einstein’s paper was for a new hypothesis. The many experiments later supported that and moved the hypothesis towards theory. And now, there are some other hypotheses and experimentation toward supporting them.

                      Much like Climate Science; two centuries of research and experimentation.

                      And one theory: Anthropogenic Climate Change.

                      If you have an alternative hypothesis, bring it forward with whatever brought you to that thinking.

                    108. You do not understand what it was that Einstein did. His 1905 paper on special relativity demonstrated that you could have derived Lorentz transformation without any reference to Maxwell electrodynamics and thus, as people thought at the time, luminiferous aether and its specific mechanical properties. In this paper, Einstein demonstrated the concept of aether to be irrelevant and, essentially, unphysical. It was not really about “a new hypothesis.” He simply demonstrated that the aether hypothesis was not needed.

                      Much like climate science indeed, with its mistaken obsession about CO2, not even based on real physics, because the climate science numerical models attempting to simulate the whole earth climate system are naïve Mickey mouse cartoons of very limited scientific value. And without these models, the whole house of cards collapses.

                      The real causes of the tiny, teeny warming that has taken place since the end of the Little Ice Age, a mere 0.7C, the first hundred years of it, between 1850 and 1950 natural, because humans could not possibly have had any impact on the earth climate system at the time? Why, Svensmark effect combined with multi-decadal ocean oscillations. This combination explains pretty much everything, including what some climate science prefer to call “a hiatus”, hoping against all hope that it’ll cease and the warming restarts. Well, it won’t. On the contrary, it’ll get colder, towards 2030, see doi:10.1007/s11434-010-4204-2, doi:10.1007/s00704-013-0935-8, doi:10.1360/972013-1089, doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201423391,
                      doi:10.4236/acs.2014.44066, doi:10.1002/2013JD021308, doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2014.09.052, doi:10.1073/pnas.1213389110 …
                      As you see, I don’t have to advance any new hypothesis. It’s all out there already.

                    109. . “His 1905 paper.. ”

                      He had 5 papers that year….

                      And perhaps you’ll show us a paper he wrote on the experiment he did.

                    110. “.. with its mistaken obsession about CO2,.. ”

                      So, what is your most Informed resource that elucidates findings you agree with?

                    111. “.. what it was that Einstein did. ”

                      We’re going off-topic, and it is a somewhat moot point, since you are trying g to compare the average ‘anything but my tailpipe’ blogger and a few contrarian scientists with Einstein.

                      An obvious logic fallacy. And rather authoritarian, to boot.

                    112. Einstein was “a contrarian scientist” in his day.

                      Regarding the alleged “climate change” though, most scientists that I know personally, being one of them myself, are “contrarian” to IPCC’s inane propaganda. Schools of Earth Sciences and Physics Departments in this and other countries swarm with them. Even IPCC is “contrarian” to its own propaganda, what with increasingly honest admissions of simulation failures, observational and interpretational uncertainties, retraction of previously stated absurdities (Himalayas to melt in 30 years and the hockey stick) and admission of the cessation of “global warming.”

                      And if it is an experiment that you want, look no further than doi:10.1119/1.3322738, in which physicists show Al Gore’s classroom demo to be bunkum.

                    113. “… most scientists that I know personally, being one of them myself, are “contrarian” to IPCC’s inane propaganda.. . . … swarm with them. ”

                      And no support other than ipse dixit.

                      How convenient.

                      And so Sciencey.

                    114. “simulation failures,…”

                      Examples? Evidence?

                      “… observational and interpretational uncertainties,…”

                      Examples? Evidence?

                      “… retraction of previously stated absurdities ”

                      Examples? Evidence?

                    115. Simulation failures… Oh joy!

                      doi:10.5194/cp-9-1807-2013: climate models fail to reconstruct Holocene

                      doi:10.1007/s00382-013-1761-5: 23 climate models fail to hindcast the observed reality

                      doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2013.08.008: CMIP5 GCMs fail to account for climate cycles

                      doi:10.1002/qj.2404: climate model violates second principle of thermodynamics

                      doi:10.1029/2011JD017365: no model consensus on precipitation projections for Australia

                      doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/014024: CMIP5 climate model projections inconsistent with past warming

                      doi:10.1038/ngeo2253: atmospheric circulation as a source of uncertainty in climate change projections

                      doi:10.1002/qj.2450: why climate models cannot determine climate sensitivity

                      doi:10.1002/jgrd.50426: climate models can’t reproduce ground level radiation

                      doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024018: up to 50 more years of work needed on climate models

                      doi:10.1038/nclimate1972: overestimated global warming over the past 20 years

                      doi:10.1073/pnas.1413640111: climate models fail to account correctly for far-infrared surface emissivity

                      doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2013.02.003: IPCC models fail to simulate ENSO and monsoon

                      doi:10.1016/j.atmosres.2014.05.023: models fail to account for alto-cumulus clouds

                      doi:10.1007/s00382-014-2158-9: models make incorrect assumptions about clouds

                    116. Interesting places many of those are cited at…

                      Not necessarily where serious climate science is discussed, but interesting….

                      Also, would you care to comment on why a search for doi and what is ostensibly your description lands us at a small number or ‘anything but my tailpipe’ blogs?

                      And why that description often doesn’t tally well with the abstract or conclusions?

                    117. “>>> serious climate science <<<"
                      It's an oxymoron. There is no such thing really as "climate science," if only because the very notion of "climate" is so ill defined. There is atmospheric science, oceanography, geophysics, geology, all variants of earth sciences. "Climate science" if you were to define it at all, would be somewhere in atmospheric science, representing weather averaged over a century or so, of course, specific to every location on earth: this is covered well by the Koeppen climate classification. Of course, geophysics subsumes atmospheric science, oceanography and more, wherever physics manifests itself within the dynamics of the earth systems. Geophysical Research Letters is a good journal for geophysics, as is Journal of Geophysical Research. "Atmospheres" is one of its sections. Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics is another very interesting journal.

                    118. “Even IPCC is “contrarian” to its own propaganda, what with increasingly honest admissions of simulation failures,… ”

                      Normally there would be ( ) with a name and date citing a point being g made.

                      On this blog, is it really too much to expect a quote and link?

                      Seems so…

                    119. “… observational and interpretational uncertainties,…”

                      Examples? Evidence?

                      “… retraction of previously stated absurdities ”

                      Examples? Evidence?

                    120. “… admission of the cessation of “global warming.” ”

                      Normally there would be ( ) with a name and date citing a point being g made.

                      On this blog, is it really too much to expect a quote and link?

                      Seems so…

                    121. “There’s plenty more… just follow the literature.”:

                      joannenova

                      climatedepot

                      jennifermarohasy

                      3/5 papers cited by ‘anything but my tailpipe’ blogs.

                      Maybe you are following the blogs more closely than the literature.

                    122. “>>> 3/5 papers cited by ‘anything but my tailpipe’ blogs <<<"
                      An important paper is noticed by everybody.

                    123. Your cites, on the other hand, seem to be picked up primarily by the ‘anything but my tailpipe’ blogs.

                      Google scholar; look at impacts and who cites your blog cited papers.

                    124. Gus.
                      It has been long obvious that some, such as Cunudiun, are not interested in disproving what you say but only wish to ridicule your position. This is a standard ploy of those who believe but do not know. Their only goal is to frustrate and anger people to the point of not speaking further. They are best described a Global warming Zealots. For them to believe without knowing is considered to be a Blessed Status. I suggest that you do not reply to them and continue to speak to those who listen to all sides.

                      Ignorance can be cured with knowledge. Stupidity is forever.

                      I look forward to your next posting.

                    125. “>>> I look forward to your next posting. <<<"
                      Thank you,
                      Unfortunately, as this particular comment blog grows in size, it is increasingly difficult and slow to add and edit new comment–it's a purely technical issue, possibly to do with the server. Also, it ought to be recognized, as the article itself is becoming old, there are probably fewer people looking at it or bothering to read the very lengthy by now comment trail.
                      So, let's wait for a new article to comment on, if needed!
                      In the meantime, there are other venues where the topic of climate change is being contested.
                      As far as my own opinion on this matter… I frankly don't see any climate change around me at all. Weather today, where I live, is pretty much the same it used to be 50 years ago. Whatever tiny average temperature rise there may have been in the meantime, is pretty much invisible compared to our typical diurnal and yearly temperature cycles. Nature around here does not appear to notice anything either. Neither do we have a particular surge of inclement weather. Everything is just… normal, as it is everywhere else.
                      If global temperatures drop in the next 15 years, as is expected, in response to diminishing solar activity, CAGW will be dead and buried. But even here, you won't notice anything particular–the change of 0.5C or so, is too little to have any effect on anything and it can only be detected with satellite measurements.
                      What we are seeing today, these slow and small global temperature variations and trends, are not even climate and hardly "climate change." They are just "the weather," normal, every day weather as it responds to various stimuli, solar and oceanic input being the most important globally. It takes a century of observation to even define a climate point for any given location. This is how we arrive at Koeppen-Geiger climate classification: it is based on observing typical plants that grow, naturally, in a given area, native vegetation.
                      Where I live, the zone is called Koeppen Dfa, humid continental, but only a 100 miles south, the climate changes to Koeppen Cfa, humid subtropical–it's due to the topography of the terrain. The border between the two is based on half a century of observations, consequently, the map itself is labeled as 1951-2000 Koeppen-Geiger map.
                      It'll take another half a century to assess, for starters, if the borders have changed in any way. Then only can we talk about "climate change."
                      We are being taken for a ride by unscrupulous and corrupt politicians, enviro-fascist activists, dishonest profiteering businessmen, government and UN bureaucrats, you name it, a long line of despicable characters all trying to stick their greasy hands in our pockets.

                    126. I wonder if you actually read all those papers you cited about the Arctic or whether you just cut and pasted information about what they said from some dishonest propaganda source.

                      “First, the Arctic was known to have been perennially ice free in the early Holocene, doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.10.022”
                      That is not what that paper says. It says: “Whether or not the summer sea ice disappeared in the Holocene over the entire Arctic Ocean is far from resolved from paleo-proxies, although the majority of published results seems to indicate a substantial decrease in the earlier and middle part of the Holocene.”

                      “Opel et al find that the Arctic was warmer than today between 1920 and 1940, doi:10.5194/cp-9-2379-2013, 2013.”
                      Nowhere does this paper say that. But it does say: “The resulting warming induced a reduction of sea-ice cover and albedo mostly in the Barents Sea region. … Thus, they can be interpreted as a regional SAT feature restricted to the Barents and Kara seas region.”

                      “as does Rose, doi:10.1016/j.icesjms.2005.05.007”
                      All this paper says is: “A major warming event in Icelandic and Greenland waters between 1920 and 1940 was extensively documented.” It does not say the entire Arctic was warmer between 1920 and 1940 than today, nor anything about ice conditions.

                      “Nazarova et al find that Kamchatka enjoyed two consecutive warm intervals between 4000YBP and 1000YBP both warmer than today.”
                      The Kamchatka peninsula is between 50 and 60 N, far south of the Arctic Sea.

                      “Lohmann and Schoene find that Arctic temperatures around Iceland were generally warmer than today for much of the past 500 years with considerable multi-decadal variability observed, as it is today, see doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2012.08.006.”
                      I was unable to get beyond this paper’s paywall, but no one has ever claimed that today’s temperatures are the warmest ever at every locality on the planet, and this says nothing about the extent of the Arctic ice.

                      Kinnard et al. 2011, who you didn’t cite, on the other hand provide an historical assessment of that overall extent. The swan dive off a cliff would even be deeper if their graph, shown here, didn’t stop at 2000.

                      And to put the final nail in the coffin of your contention, “The conditions in the Arctic are pretty normal.”
                      Polyak et al. 2010, History of Sea Ice in the Arctic, find that sea ice “consistently covered at least part of the Arctic Ocean for no less than the last 13–14 million years.” Meanwhile, reputable scientists are predicting the Arctic to experience ice-free conditions within the next 5 years.

                      Conditions in the Arctic are not “normal”. ♫

                    127. As I had remarked elsewhere, there are no polar ice satellite photographs made before the 1960s and therefore all we can say on the subject must be based on paleo-proxies, which is always loaded with error. However, regarding, e.g., the first paper you quote, the one about the early Holocene, your very own quote states that “a majority of published results seems to indicate a substantial decrease (in the Arctic ice cover) in the early and middle part of the Holocene.” Whether there was still some floating ice left during summers at the time or not, frankly, we’ll never know, but then this is not the point, is it? The point is that the ice cover at the time was much lower than at present and this was for entirely natural reasons–as it is today.

                      Regarding other papers, the one about Kamchatka, the one about Iceland, they corroborate the observations made during the 1930s, which was an extremely warm period in the 20th century, likely warmer than the period at its closure, and again not related at all to human activities. We can’t, of course, know if the whole Arctic was affected at the time, because, again, no photographic evidence exists–it was before satellite and even aerial photography, because planes couldn’t fly this far back then.

                      The graph from Kinnard et al you quote is pseudo-scientific nonsense. Observe that only the last tiny bit of it is “observed extent.” The remainder is… *reconstruction*. The word means about the same as *fabrication* in the context of real, empirical science. This plot is not credible.

                      There is nothing about the present day conditions in the Arctic that, to the best of our knowledge, based on such observations and proxies as are available, based on the considerable body of geological literature, would classify as abnormal. Furthermore, as we know and understand pretty well by now natural mechanisms that affect the Arctic ice, that is, the geothermal heat under the islands of the region, including Greenland, the very important role of ocean currents that transfer heat from the tropics, the role of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, the periodicity of which corresponds to the observed periodicity in the Arctic ice cover, the attribution to human activities is rapidly disintegrating.

                      Our CO2 emissions today have negligible or no effect at all on the earth’s climate and hardly any in the Arctic and Antarctic.

                    128. Well I’ll sing it again:


                      He’s as blind as he can be
                      Just sees what he wants to see

                      According to you, the peer-reviewed studies I cite are “pseudo-scientific nonsense”, but the conclusions which you incorrectly attribute to other studies are to be believed.

                      Kitsch, yourself …

                      Who the f… are you to be telling anyone how do do science? It’s clear you believe what you want to believe, evidence be damned.

                      I spent hours going through those papers you cited, proved that you’d misrepresented them, and gave you two peer-reviewed papers proving that THINGS ARE NOT WELL WITH THE ARCTIC.

                      I’m through taking anything you say seriously.

                    129. “>>> Who the f… are you to be telling anyone how to do science? <<<"

                      I am a trained scientist who does science. Also, I don't use foul language, so this makes me better than you.

                    130. No the papers you pointed out do not cast serious doubt on the catastrpophic conditions that exist in the Arctic today, and I went through them one by one and explained why, but you simply ignored me. Hence the song. Sure, I’ll grant you that similar temperatures may have existed in the past sometimes in one locality and sometimes in another, but that is not what you originally said. You said “the Arctic was known to have been perennially ice free in the early Holocene,” and I showed you it wasn’t. And you said the other papers said things they did not say. A real scientist would be more careful. But most of all, you completely ignored the two papers I presented that were on the subject of ice cover, rather than (local) temperature. The most important, Polyak et al. is a detailed study of the history of the Arctic Ocean as a whole, not just one little piece of it, and they conclude things are remarkably different than they have been any time in the last 13-14 million years and the problem is human-caused. As I’ve already noted, you simply sneered at the Kinnard paper, which temperature reconstruction methods are as scientifically sound as the methods used in the papers you cited, simply because you do not like the results. I’m sorry my use of the word f… offends you. Next time I’ll spell it out, and you will really be able to claim that makes you “better than me.” LMAO ♫

                    131. “>>> No the papers you pointed out do not cast serious doubt on the catastrophic conditions that exist in the Arctic today… <<<"

                      Yes, they do. And there are many more like it. The truth is that the Arctic is always subject to large fluctuation of its ice cover, because the Arctic is mostly ocean, with ice floating on top. Whereas we cannot know the exact extent of the Arctic ice cover for before the satellite era, we do know from observations made by Russian, Norwegian and Canadian scientists and explorers that conditions in the Arctic even in the 1930s were little different than the conditions in the 1990s or today. Likely the Arctic was even warmer at the time.

                      We do know from historic evidence that the southernmost parts of Greenland were much warmer during the Medieval Warm Period than today.

                      We also know that in the 1960s, the period that was quite cold compared with the 1930s and with today, there were large holes in the ice cover, near the North Pole, hundreds of miles across. We know this from the recently recovered old satellite photographs.

                      This paper by Miles at al, "A Signal of Persistent Atlantic Multidecadal Variability in Arctic Sea Ice," published in Geophysical Research Letters in January 2014, discusses the fact that the long term natural modes of Arctic variability are little known. This is because, as I said, we don't have data, in particular, we have no ice extent data that would cover the whole of the Arctic for before 1960s. This is where your plot becomes pure demagoguery. But the authors combine paleo-proxy records with historical records of Atlantic Arctic Sea Ice–these are known from shipping records, but they pertain to North Atlantic only, which is a small portion of the Arctic. What they find is that such records as are available to them point to strong correlation between the Arctic ice extent and the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability, including the rapid change at the onset of the early 20th century warming.

                      That onset had nothing whatsoever to do with human activities. Yet we know that Greenland Glaciers, for example, retreated between 1900 and 1930 more rapidly than in the last 15 years. See this CIRES article on this:

                      http://cires.colorado.edu/news/press/2014/AGUgreenland.html

                      In summary, no, there is nothing happening in the Arctic today that is unprecedented, inexplicable or attributable to human activities. The Arctic is just fine, so is the Antarctica, and the rest of the Globe.

                    132. You have just repeated all the same arguments you made before that, yes, there are many local and regional similarities between what is happening now in the Arctic and what happened in the past, but again you wear blinkers whenever it comes to recognizing any evidence that doesn’t support your position, in particular regarding the amount of ice covering the Arctic Sea as a whole. One of the two peer-reviewed papers I supplied you sneeringly dismiss as “demagoguery”, calling their graph “my plot”. Well, it is not “my plot”. It is from Kinnard et al. 2011. And the other paper which doesn’t support your position, Polyak et al. 2010, History of Sea Ice in the Arctic you completely ignore. Here is its entire abstract:

                      Arctic sea-ice extent and volume are declining rapidly. Several studies project that the Arctic Ocean may become seasonally ice-free by the year 2040 or even earlier. Putting this into perspective requires information on the history of Arctic sea-ice conditions through the geologic past. This information can be provided by proxy records from the Arctic Ocean floor and from the surrounding coasts. Although existing records are far from complete, they indicate that sea ice became a feature of the Arctic by 47Ma, following a pronounced decline in atmospheric pCO2 after the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Optimum, and consistently covered at least part of the Arctic Ocean for no less than the last 13-14 million years. Ice was apparently most wide-spread during the last 2-3 million years, in accordance with Earth’s overall cooler climate. Nevertheless, episodes of considerably reduced sea ice or even seasonally ice-free conditions occurred during warmer periods linked to orbital variations. The last low-ice event related to orbital forcing (high insolation) was in the early Holocene, after which the northern high latitudes cooled overall, with some superimposed shorter-term(multidecadal to millennial-scale) and lower-magnitude variability. The current reduction in Arctic ice cover started in the late 19th century, consistent with the rapidly warming climate, and became very pronounced over the last three decades. This ice loss appears to be unmatched over at least the last few thousand years and unexplainable by any of the known natural variabilities. emphasis added

                      Finally, for your coup de grace to prove there’s no difference in the current and past situations, you link to a paper from CIRES, which states,”In the next century, Greenland melt may raise global sea level by one to three feet.” You sang your same tune. So I’ll sing mine again, nowhere man.

                      ♫ ♫ ♫

                    133. “>>> in particular regarding the amount of ice covering the Arctic Sea as a whole…. <<<"
                      This is because, as I have been telling you, the amount of ice covering the Arctic as a whole for past epochs is unknown and cannot be known at all other than for the time that is covered by satellite data. And this is precisely because the Arctic is a sea.
                      Whereas you can make some weak inferences on the basis of paleo-proxies, where you can correlate them with, say, historic records of floating ice, such records are only available for certain times and certain areas that are at the very edge of the Arctic and no records exist at all for most of the Arctic ocean. Furthermore, because the ocean is quite deep, between 3000 and 5000m, whatever traces of life you can find at the bottom, relate but little to the ocean's conditions at the surface.
                      The discovery that there were large holes in the ice cover in the Arctic, near the North Pole, hundreds of miles across in the 1960s, which was before human activities could have had any effect and during a singularly cold time, warns us against making inferences on the basis of peripheral observations, which are the only ones we have prior to the satellite age, pertaining to the Arctic ice cover as a whole.
                      Now, let us have a look at what your Polyak et al paper really says. First, it says right up front that the existing records are far from complete. Second, it does talk about the Arctic ice being reduced or possibly even the Arctic being seasonally ice free in the early Holocene–which is exactly what I had pointed out too. Third, the paper observes that the current reduction of the Arctic ice cover started in the late 19th century. What they do not note is, what the CIRES article I have pointed you to above, namely, that the Greenland glacier retreat between 1900 and 1930 was more rapid than in the past 15 years. Neither do they note that there is a certain periodicity to the observed Arctic ice cover size that is synchronous with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.
                      Why don't they talk about these in their paper? This is simply because these results are NEWER than the paper. The Polyak paper was submitted in May 2009, whereas the Miles paper I pointed you to was published in January 2014. Similarly, the CIRES article was published this year only, because it is only this year they looked at older aerial photographs and it is only this year that the 1960s satellite photos became available to scientists.
                      Similarly, in 2009, when Polyak et all wrote their paper, most scientists didn't even know about the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. The oldest papers about it I have in my data base date to 2013, when Lohmann and Schoene published their paper about climate signatures on decadal and interdecadal time scales seen in Iceland mollusk shells. This, I recall, was quite a surprise. It was accompanied by another result pertaining to multidecadal climate fluctuations in Greenland over the past 800 years, a paper by Kobashi et al published at roughly the same time.
                      Science is constantly moving forward. Ideas of 20 or 10 years ago are discredited and replaced with newer views. There is a huge difference between IPCC WG1 AR1 and AR5 reports. There is much more caution and admission of uncertainty, even failure, in AR5. But even AR5 is way behind where science is today, especially with respect to multidecadal ocean oscillations. Apart from the long recognized ENSO in the Pacific, there are also oscillations in the Atlantic, the Arctic ocean, the Indian ocean and the Southern ocean, and they are not all understood or even captured yet.

                    134. “>>> In the next century, Greenland melt may raise global sea level by one to three feet. <<<"

                      *may*

                      It's pure speculation. Right now the sea level rise rate has slowed, and even at the best of times it has not exceeded 3mm/year. At this rate, the ocean will not rise more than 30cm, which is less than a foot.

                      All these speculations, and they are nothing more than speculations, because whatever models or hand-waving arguments they are based on are pretty much worthless, so all these speculations ignore the fact that… there has not been any warming for 19 years now, and that the warming observed in the 20th century was, first, 100% natural until at least 1950, and second, quite likely natural or mostly natural afterwards, caused by the solar activity grand maximum that combined with the multi-decadal ocean oscillations, that happened to be in-phase at the time. See Qian and Lu, doi:10.1007/s11434-010-4204-2. It's a brilliant paper. These guys truly deserve Nobel Prize! And likely will get it when it gets really cold by 2030.

                      All the models and predictions that *assume* unstoppable warming throughout this century, will inevitably collapse when global temperatures not only stabilize–they've already stabilized 19 years ago–but begin to come down, which will happen in the next 15 years, according to Qian and Lu.

                    135. In your previous comment you dismissed the 2010 and 2011 papers I linked to because they contain “ideas of 20 or 10 years ago,” and you lauded the much newer CIRES report — except for the statement by CIRES researcher Mike MacFerrin, “In the next century, Greenland melt may raise global sea level by one to three feet,” which you dismiss as “pure speculation” on his part because we all know the sea level isn’t currently rising that fast. I.e. We must pay attention to the parts of the paper that support your ideas — only!

                      Then in this comment you cite a paper by Qian and Lu. This one is dated 2010, so I’m not sure why you don’t consider it ancient history too. But on the other hand, you say, “It’s a brilliant paper. These guys truly deserve Nobel Prize! And likely will get it when it gets really cold by 2030.” But what these Nobel Prize worthy authors say is summed up in the paper’s abstract, which concludes: “Based on the long-term trend during the GWP and the four periodic oscillations, global-mean temperature is expected to drop to a new cool period in the 2030s and then a rising trend would be towards to a new warm period in the 2060s.” Cherry-pick much?
                      ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫

                    136. The important aspect of Qian’s and Lu’s work is that their analysis and prediction do not make any use at all of the alleged greenhouse effect and human culpability in it. On the contrary, the explanation is rooted in natural climate oscillations in response to ocean and solar driving. So far, their prediction has panned out whereas those of CAGW proponents have failed monumentally. The expected warming towards 2060, after the cooling of 2030 will be natural too, and it will then be followed again by a yet another cooling period.
                      This is what real climate is like, you see. It fluctuates naturally all the time. The 20th century warming was just such a fluctuation. It had little to do, if anything at all, with human CO2 emissions.

                    137. Unfortunately for you, Nowhere Man — and for the rest of us too — earth’s energy imbalance as a result of the the “alleged” greenhouse effect has been confirmed, as in measured from space by NASA. I realize you will continue however to believe whatever the hell you want.
                      ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♪
                      ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♪
                      ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♪

                    138. If you refer to the measurement reported in, e.g., doi:10.1038/ngeo1375, the “measured” energy imbalance of 0.5 +/- 0.43 W/m^2 is loaded with such a huge measurement error that the result is quite unreliable and may as well be zero. Normally, in physics, the resonances are not considered resolved unless they are separated by more than three sigmas. Here the zero result is practically within just one sigma.

                      The IPCC AR5 estimate of this parameter was… 2.29 W/m^2, 4.6 times larger than the result measured, even if we are to ignore the huge inaccuracy of this measurement.

                      In this paper, doi:10.1002/2014GL060962, they talk about this parameter too, and compare it for the periods of 1985-1999, 0.34 +/- 0.67 W/m^2, and 2000-2012, 0.62 +/- 0.43 W/m^2. The error associated with the first estimate is nearly twice the size of the estimate, making the zero result quite likely. The error in the second estimate is nearly 70% of the estimate itself, again, making zero quite plausible.
                      Always look at the error bound, when discussing any physics measurement. The error is as important as the measured quantity itself. In this case, the errors are so huge, they swamp the claimed results altogether.

                    139. NASA has people who evaluated exactly this error. The size of the error implies that the measured result is too close to zero, within the accuracy of the measurement, to make anything of it. Every scientists knows this.

                    140. I’ve been for some reason reading some of this for amusement. I don’t entirely know who’s right about what, but that fact that you whistle at this like he’s just making excuses is absurd. If you actually think pointing out a 1.16 sigma signal as being weak, if you think that can be brushed off with a whistle and you claim to be more scientifically minded than gus, then you have no scientific credibility whatsoever (which is not to say it’s proof that he does, but…). 1.16 sigma is at best a very weak hint at a possible effect, and that’s assuming the error is even well estimated. One out of 4 studies will get a signal this strong (in one direction or the other) just by accident.

                    141. I guess I just got tired of his gish-gallop. We were talking about conditions in the Arctic. When he couldn’t answer anything I said, he just changed the subject. There’s a history of conversations between him and me to which the musical notes referred.

                    142. Ok, but the fact is, even ignoring the very weak statistical significance, that using basically standard error in the mean to reduce uncertainty by square root N (and that’s right about the level these errors come in at), in this case about 50 times below the sensor accuracy, requires first proving that the global distribution of sensor errors is actually stable at that level, an assumption that there is very little reason to believe and every reason to question, even with so called corrections. I would be shocked in fact if it is true. This proof would usually (for real science) need to come as periodic CONTROLLED tests of the full system of sensors where the control itself is understood to that level of accuracy. I’m not saying there isn’t any eventually measurable effect of humans on global temperature. It would be equally shocking if there isn’t, if for no other reason than that our ability to measure gets continuously better, but there is plenty of reason to be skeptical about what to make of it. Likewise the model predictions are equally suspect. In any other realm of science nobody would even consider trusting such effective (non-fundamental) models to PREDICT results in situations that are by definition new and unfamiliar. To be able to trust modhels of this type you need to rigoursly test and tune them, not just on any situation, but on very similar situations where the outcome is known. You need to ALREADY have an understanding of the situations, specifically of the key aspects and questions of interest in those situation, an understanding that you can then use to tune the model. Such models are useful as tool to monitor new data that fits entirely within OLD behavioral bounds, not to predict entirely new system behaviors. By definition this is not the situation, and the result of this is becoming clear by the failures of these models. This stuff (as reported in media) is so far outside the bounds of the usual burdens of scientific proof that it is laughable. The best arguments have been that “95% of all scientists agreee” and even that silly quote was extremely flawed at best.

                      The sad thing is that people should be worrying about these things, but with such incredibly irresponsible science, or at least science reporting going on, it’s very hard for anyone to take it all seriously with a responsibly level-headed attitude towards it all. Actually I don’t think the real science publications are all that misleading at the bare factual level. It is understood and/or (usually) honestly reported (in the publications) by scientists what assumptions and controls went into the results, and factually that’s enough. The conclusions sections, when read carefully, scientifically rarely make broad claims, but even many scientists, while honestly reporting such things, in their excitement go on to under-respect the importance of the asterisks, and the media then disregards them altogether.

                    143. Read James Hansen’s book Storms of My Grandchildren if you’re in doubt about the science and want to hear it from an expert. It’s available in Kindle version at Amazon for under $2 and you can download the software you need to read it on your computer for free, if you don’t have a reading device.

                    144. I’m really not in interested that much in best sellers. Science isn’t produced in books. It’s produced in publications, and not in casual restatements of those claims, not even if by the scientists themselves. Scientists are human too and the buck for that stops at the publication standards. They are “professional” in that they know what they must do to meet that, but they all have biases and ambitions beyond that too. You can have any gut feeling you want about what something “really” says, but when it comes time to publish, when things work right (and they don’t always) you only get to write in the conclusions PRECISELY what it really says. The level of precision of meaning of these statements is not something the general public is used to dealing with and in most cases insisting on such precision in conversation will even make most people quite irritated with you. They will say.. “okMr litteral, but the point is..” No, in science it doesn’t work that way. It’s not “ok, the point is” it is only the dry fact precisely as observed with all of its ugly asterisks attached. Nothing more, nothing less. A scientific statement with conditional asterisksks is a scientifically valuable, publishable, and valid statement and if stated correctly will never be proven wrong. However if the asterisk is proven not to apply the statement will be proven useless. I think it comes as a surprise to the general public but scientist do very often make VERY BIG unfounded assumptions, and this is a perfectly valid part of the scientific process. What isn’t valid is ignoring those assumptions as if they are just a footnote. The assumptions that I pointed out are huge.

                    145. Well that’s what I thought. It all falls back to flippant brush-offs with you, which is just where we started, and in response to — of all things — a post ADVOCATING looking at the peer reviewed science over popular narratives (you would think that would work for you). I should have just left it at the flippant critique in the first place. Never mind.

                    146. I know this is over a year on, but FYI, “Gus” there is a computer scientist. He’s clearly an intelligent person, but his views on this subject shouldn’t be taken any more seriously than any other layman’s (probably less so, given his obstinacy and inability to read a scientific paper).

                    147. The ability of the fossil-funded propaganda enterprise to craft sophisticated pseudoscience that can appeal to intelligent people trained in other disciplines is remarkable. Even Nobel Prize winners can be sucked in.

                      “I am not really terribly interested in global warming. Like most physicists I don’t think much about it. But in 2008 I was in a panel here about global warming and I had to learn something about it. And I spent a day or so – half a day maybe on Google, and I was horrified by what I learned. And I’m going to try to explain to you why that was the case.”

                      — Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever

                    148. “…paleo-proxies, which is always loaded with error. ”

                      I’d think that statement would need a whole lot of support….

                      But I’m sure there’s plenty available at iceagenow, wuwt, jnova, et al.

                    149. Thanks. He says he’s a scientist, so he must have randomly selected them in a scientific way.

                      Edit: So I guessed right in my first sentence. Should have stopped there and saved myself a lot of time. So it was probably not really Gus who stretched and misinterpreted what the papers said, it was Watts who provided the summaries for Gus to pick up and run with, making him gullible rather than an outright liar. Gullible Gus. That’s nice alliteration.

                    150. I think we’ve both run into those who copy paste right from the blog; I’ve read many who reword a blog like middle school kids rewriting encyclopedia articles to avoid plagiarism. Gus goes a bit further by not citing the title but using doi .

                      You did a fine fisking of his interpretations of the ‘anything but my tailpipe’ talking points.

                      Gus claims to ‘ read the papers’; we’ve found his index….

                    151. “The conditions in the Arctic, in other words, are pretty normal.”

                      Tell us if I’ve got this right; a person with internet access has come online to tell us that because of ~5 studies, virtually everything else in the scientific body of literature on the Arctic is wrong?

                      ” nothing either in the Arctic or Antarctic today is unusual …”

                      And the the same for the Antarctic; a few studies in support of that claim.

                      One person with no demonstration of expertise has contradicted virtually all the research we have in the journals; I’m not sure extraordinary is quite the right word.

                    152. “That’s some serious gas problem you’ve got”

                      Unless you live on a different planet, the problem is yours as well.

                      Are the poles losing ice?

                      Here’s a hint:

                      “The new estimates, which are more than twice as accurate because of the inclusion of more satellite data, confirm both Antarctica and Greenland are losing ice.”

                      http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/news/grace20121129.html

                      Because you have a habit of attempting to derail conversations about climate science with non sequitur and unsupported claims, you have one opportunity to clearly state “yes” or “no”.

                      If you cannot do so, you will be ignored.

                    153. “…..both Antarctica and Greenland are losing ice.”
                      Who has said otherwise?
                      Do you honestly think this is new information that was in doubt before? Bwahahaha. You’re such a silly-head.

                    154. Actually, Steven Goddard has tweeted, “Greenland has already gained 300 billion tons of ice this year,” and it’s being copied far and wide across the right-wing-nut-job-osphere. Google it. LOL.

                    155. I take responsibility only for what I post. I haven’t a clue whether SG is correct or wrong about this recent claim. Neither do you, I suspect.

                    156. I don’t hold you responsible for SG’s post, only for your own post ridiculing CB — “Bwahahaha.” you said to her — for stating that Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice. I’m just showing you that her assumption that someone might think otherwise was not so preposterous — you never know what kind of nonsense an AGW denier might come up with. Goddard was wrong, obviously, and your instincts were right. Wish I could say the same for your attitude.

                    157. CB deserves my ridicule and that of every thinking, informed person.
                      Laughing at her posting that Antarctica and Greenland are losing ice is hardly much of an insult. I don’t need to tell you that CB and I (and you) have a history. CB is a one trick pony as far as I can tell, to wit: “over 400ppm and the poles melt.” She repeats this without any scientific support or documentation over and over. It gets tiresome, so I laugh at her. She’s impervious in any event, so don’t worry about her.
                      As for my attitude, I try to be polite with those who are polite to me. With the rest I let them have it. It’s a hobby.

                    158. A thoughtful and decent question.

                      To repeat, this has a context, and I’ve shared it with you above. My comment (ridicule if you will) was not out of the blue, but rather in context. I have made a judgement about CB that she is a lunatic alarmist and it’s my stated hobby to humiliate alarmists wherever I encounter them. And again, it wasn’t much of an insult.

                      Moreover, the implication is that polar ice melt is the result of AGW needs to be quashed. There’s no evidence for it. In the case of Antarctica West Antarctica is the only place where melting is occurring and neither of the 2 explanations I’ve read has anything to do with AGW. Greenland is experiencing abnormally high temperatures, but this has happened in the past (1900-1940 — 6F Greenland temperature increase). Again no tie in to AGW.

                    159. The people who study Greenland have never seen the kind of melting that happened this past summer. I think NASA’s site will confirm that. And I think that there is general agreement that although the present surface temperature may have been rivalled at times early in the last century, the rate of melting has not, perhaps because of warmer ocean temperatures, perhaps because of black carbon surface deposition. Couple that with the whole Arctic Sea ice situation which according to the most complete studies I’ve seen is already in uncharted waters, so to speak. (Kinnard et al 2011; Polyak et al. 2010). You can argue about whether present temperatures were reached here or there at times in the past, but the cryosphere picture is unmistakable. And the influence on northern hemisphere weather is too. Ecological systems are highly complex, and we sorcerers’ apprentices mess around with the underlying climate them at our peril. Sea level rise is a longer term issue, but the melting mountain glaciers will kick in early this century and upset the relative linearity of the historical tidal gauge records, then Greenland, and finally Antarctica, maybe a century or more down the road to be sure, but this process already may be irreversible. That’s my take on it.

                    160. Didn’t the most recent IPCC summary refer toclimate change posing “serious, pervasive and irreversible” impacts on human society? That’s not overstating the case

                    161. Yes, I really just scratched the surface. Probably could have gone on for hours — or months — but I’ve devoted far too much of today to this stuff already. (Did somebody mention something about a holiday of some sort being imminent?) I’ll be interested in seeing DR’s reaction to what I have written so far. It’s nice to have a civil conversation with him for a change. We’ll see if it lasts.

                    162. Thank you Gary and we both wish you the same and the following years. We really do like you, you are a fine man.

                    163. This is another good post on your part. I’m impressed.
                      The Greenland situation bears monitoring and is indeed worrisome. The causes don’t seem to be related to AGW, and you don’t seem to be suggesting otherwise.
                      I’m not sure I get your Arctic sea ice point. It’s currently at a 10 year maximum although down substantially from 1979 when satellite records began (on the other hand, 1979 was the tail end of a global cooling period starting in the 1940’s so that skews things quite a bit).

                    164. I would not rule out a connection between warmer ocean water around Greenland and AGW. Arctic sea ice is at a 10 year maximum? Where are you getting that? Not NSIDC and not PIOMAS. There are good studies going back before 1979, and there is no indication the ice was ever even close to the condition it is in now. Are you familiar with the two papers I cited above? In one sense I agree with you guys about models. Yes they are imperfect and can only use the inputs they are given and so may overlook important factors. I’m thinking of the models that projected Arctic Sea ice cover. These models failed abysmally. Only a few years ago scientists were talking about the Arctic Sea being ice free in 100 years. Now it is looking like something closer to 5 years. My point is that models can underestimate negative consequences as surely as they can overestimate them, and the inadequacy of models should not be treated as a free pass to dismiss the possibility of negative consequences. Another example: none of the IPCC models factor in the possibility of runaway Arctic methane releases. Also I’m guessing that there are ecosystem complexities that no one has even thought of, let alone modeled. Climate induced species migration could lead to an almost infinite number of outcomes yet to be imagined. Couple that with political consequences of climate-spawned emergencies, and then add in the complex interaction between all these different levels of effect. This is not to scream the sky is falling, but rather to adopt a humble attitude toward the extent of our knowledge, which should lead to caution rather than barreling full steam ahead with business as usual. If there’s even a 10% chance that the IPCC’s warnings are correct — and I believe it’s much higher than that — then we need to take them seriously, rather than play Russian roulette with the entire planet. This is what I can never understand about the politics coming from the contrarian side. There’s never any attempt to do a rational risk analysis, admitting even a small probability that their analysis may be wrong. I would characterize this as a complete absence of skepticism. The sorcerer’s apprentice image once more comes to mind. I guess I’ve rambled on long enough.

                    165. Regarding Arctic sea ice 10 year maximum see: http://testclimate.wpengine.com/2014/09/11/2014-to-set-all-time-antarctic-sea-ice-extent-maximum/
                      I reject the “CO2 drives disastrous global warming” thesis and the situation in Greenland does not support this alarmist thesis… .AS YOU SEEM TO ADMIT. “Black carbon deposition” has NOTHING to do with Co2. Neither does “warmer ocean temperature” [at the poles] since human Co2 emissions have NOTHING to do with ocean warming. Warm[er] waters at the poles is an artifact of ocean currents bringing warm water from the tropics, typically driven by changes in ocean salinity due to evaporation.
                      I’m not as up on what’s going on in Greenland as I am on what’s going on in Antarctica, where all the excessive ice melt (confined to W. Antarctica — 8% of the ice on the continent) has been ‘explained’ as due either sub ice volcanic activity and/or shifting ocean currents bringing more warm tropical waters than usual poleward. This sounds pretty much like what you are suggesting (but not including the black carbon…..in any event nothing to do with AGW theory based on Co2 emissions.

                    166. Your link doesn’t support your earlier claim that Arctic sea ice is “currently at a 10 year maximum.” In fact it doesn’t say anything about the Arctic at all.

                      I think we part company at “CO2 emissions have NOTHING to do with ocean warming,” and I don’t really see a way around that which hasn’t been tried before, so I’ll just say have a good Christmas.

                    167. Please explain why you made a conscious choice to cite the graph you did. Especially when there are so many other choices. .

                    168. Just seems to be the graph of choice amongst the ‘anything but my tailpipe’ posters….

                      Might be google ‘helping’ ….

                    169. You are quite an odd duck…. with odd language and odd ideas.
                      You have come out and actually signaled your suspicions in the above, but without any clue as to what your issue is.

                    170. For today’s date you are right, though I believe both they and NSIDC have this year’s summer minimum, which I consider the more important point in time, in seventh place (not tenth) for all-time least amount of ice. Also I consider ice volume a more important measure than extent, and according to PIOMAS, 2014 is in seventh place both for today’s date and the summer minimum. More importantly, all three sources have us only two years removed from the 2012 all-time grand minimum, so whatever this year’s ranking relative to the last seven or ten all-extremely-low-ice years, that’s hardly the making of a trend or a significant reversal of the 30+ year downward trend. And Polyak has found that the lack of ice cover is already off the charts anyway relative to the last 13-14 million years.

                    171. Thank you for the extra input. I’ll not quibble on what’s more important….. this or that.
                      I’m less impressed with the 30 years trend as the beginning of the satellite record coincides with the ending of a 40 year cooling period.

                    172. You keep making the same ultimatum over and over. Don’t you know what an ultimatum is? You issue an ultimatum just once. If you keep issuing the same ultimatum over and over again, you lose credibity.

                      OP course, yYou didn’t know what a “puff piece” was in that other thread about Delingpole, although that didn’t stop you from bleating on and on about it.

                      You don’t seem to know much. You just have your canned belching and that’s about it. Wash, rinse, repeat: that’s you, Climate Bot.

                    173. The relentlessly unconstructive, sneering troll CB asks when there have been polar ice caps with CO2 at least 400 ppmv.

                      In fact, this has happened again and again. For instance, in the Neoproterozoic era, 750 million years ago, mile-high glaciers came and went twice at sea level at the equator. There was at least 30% CO2 in the air throughout that era.

                      Since there was ice at the Equator, there was certainly ice at the Poles. Stop spouting the Party Line and think, for heaven’s sake.

                      CO2 was not the driver of the climate then and it is not the driver of the climate now.

                    174. “in the Neoproterozoic era, 750 million years ago, mile-high glaciers came and went twice at sea level at the equator. There was at least 30% CO2 in the air throughout that era.”

                      Bzzzt!

                      I didn’t ask you for an example of a global sheet of ice, I asked you for an example of polar ice caps withstanding CO₂ as high as we have today.

                      A rise in CO₂ ended the Snowball Earth periods you mention, as it ended every sustained cold period in Earth’s history.

                      Peter Hadfield has a very nice explanation of Snowball Earth here:

                      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpF48b6Lsbo

                    175. Because folks just like their point of view and will go to abnormal lengths to protect it.

                    176. Hi, Gullible Gus. I happened to read your post again where you suggest we rely on Indian and Chinese sources to get our information about the Himalayan glaciers. Which is not a problem. I notice that first you cited an Indian source, which shows 248 glaciers retreating vs. 18 growing. But since the 0.2% net loss in area seemed small, you moved on without comment to a Chinese report that shows “massive growth of 30 Gtons/year in the glaciers of Tibet.” Surely, you noticed, Gus, that the abstract of that paper mentions three figures, not just one. Here is the passage:

                      The two generally accepted sources, glacier melting and India underground water depletion, are estimated to change at the rate of −35.0 ± 5.8 Gt/yr (0.09 mm/yr sea level rising) and −30.6 ± 5.0 Gt/yr, respectively. The third source is the remarkable positive signal (+30 Gt/yr) in the inner Tibetan Plateau, which is challenging to explain.

                      How interesting that two of the three figures are negative, representing ice or water loss on the same “massive” (30 Gt/yr) scale as the third figure which represents growth, yet the third figure was the only one you only saw fit to tell us about. I would say that your conclusion, “So, whereas ice shrinks in some places, it grows in others,” is not even a half-truth. It is a one-third-truth, and it has dishonesty written all over it.

                      Anyway, in keeping with the spirit of trusting sources from that part of the world, let me call your attention to “The Second Glacier Inventory of China,” which was just released last month. The story is here in Science Magazine, and so are links to the actual study itself, and the data is also freely available for download. The Science report begins, “Glaciers in China that are a critical source of water for drinking and irrigation in India are receding fast.” It goes on to state, “Liu and his colleagues calculated China’s total glacial area to be 51,840 square kilometers—13% less than in 2002,” despite some uncertainties characterized as “methodological quibbles.”

                      This is a very different picture than you tried to paint of the Himalayan glaciers, which are — after the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets — the third largest store of fresh water in the world.

                    177. “>>> The two generally accepted sources, glacier melting and India underground water depletion, are estimated to change at the rate of −35.0 ± 5.8 Gt/yr (0.09 mm/yr sea level rising) and −30.6 ± 5.0 Gt/yr, respectively. The third source is the remarkable positive signal (+30 Gt/yr) in the inner Tibetan Plateau, which is challenging to explain. <<<"

                      Note the word "estimated." Here the authors refer to other people's results. Furthermore, what were the figures for the same in the 1930s? Another well known very warm period in the 20th century that could not possibly have been related to any human activities. Without having the numbers for the 1930s we can't say whether the currently observed loss of ice mass in the Himalayas, which is not so great anyway, only about 0.2% of the total mass, with 86.8% of all glaciers not being affected at all, whether this loss is normal, i.e., within the known historic bounds: because we don't know what the historic bounds actually are!

                      As to the importance of Tibetan Glaciers, note that the most important rivers of China and Indochina all begin their course from Tibetan, not Himalayan, glaciers. The growth of Tibetan glaciers is therefore rather good news for the Chinese economy, isn't it? Since China is going to be by far the most important economy of the 21st century, this is not only good news from them, but for everybody.

                      The story in the Science Magazine you refer to is about scientists calculating total glacial area, based on satellite images of… importantly… varying resolution for 2002 and 2010. Because the 2002 images resolution was poor, temporary snow cover could have been mistaken for glaciers. This is not a minor quibble. It can be a serious shortcoming of this work, resulting in highly exaggerated estimate of the melt.

                      For comparison, the work by Ye and Sun doi:10.1002/2013JB010860, which I had pointed to you earlier, the one that talks about the growth of Tibetan glaciers, is based on 10-year GRACE RL05 models and data. This is a gravimetric measurement carried out by a satellite. It provides unprecedented insight into the structure of the earth cover, including precise data on glaciers, not only their area, but also their thickness, also data on the earth crust under the glaciers, which is how we know about geothermal heat affecting glaciers in Greenland and West Antarctica. This is a much more reliable result.

                      Another very interesting observation made by Yi and Sun, in the same paper, is that the observed glacier undulation in Pamir and Karakoram synchronizes with the Arctic oscillation and with ENSO. This tells us that natural drivers are at work here. Quite possibly, natural drivers are related to Himalayan melting as well, for example, the Indian Monsoon.

                      There are many interesting papers that show the connection between Indiana Monsoon and the Sun, e.g., doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2013.12.010

                    178. Well I can’t see beyond the first article’s paywall, but it is pretty clear that all three figures are given equal weight in the abstract, and there’s no reason to believe the word “estimated” doesn’t apply equally to all three. The sentences are back to back. The abstract even states that the positive signal from Tibet is “challenging to explain”, which would indicate to me that that is no more their own work than the two equally “massive” negative figures. Of course it’s no surprise that you try to find a way to discount the importance of the two results which do not suit your narrative.

                      I agree that without historical perspective, we certainly can’t declare the recent loss of 0.2% of total mass over a decade, with 248 glacers losing mass compared to 18 growing, to be normal.

                      You appear to dismiss the study reported in Science magazine lightly, as if it were just some magazine article compared to all the heavyweight peer-reviewed articles you bandy about (and generally misinterpret the findings of, as I documented in another post). But that Science article is a summary of The Second Glacier Inventory of China. This is not some fluff piece.

                      In 2002, Chinese scientists released the first full inventory of the country’s glaciers, the largest glacial area outside of Antarctica and Greenland. The data came from topographical maps and aerial photographs of western China’s Tibet and Xinjiang regions taken from the 1950s through the 1980s. That record showed a total glacial area of 59,425 square kilometers. The Second Glacier Inventory of China, unveiled here last week, is derived from high-resolution satellite images taken between 2006 and 2010. The data set is freely available online.

                      Liu and his colleagues calculated China’s total glacial area to be 51,840 square kilometers—13% less than in 2002. That figure is somewhat uncertain because the previous inventory used coarser resolution images that may have mistaken extensive snow cover for permanent ice, says Raymond Bradley, director of the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who was not involved in the project.

                      Methodological quibbles aside, the latest inventory flags a marked retreat of glaciers in the southern and eastern fringes of the Tibetan Plateau. “We found the fastest shrinking glaciers are those in the central upper reach of the Brahmaputra River, between the central north Himalaya [and] the source region of the tributary of the Indus River,” Liu says.

                      Are you implying Liu is not aware of the significance of the methodological differences between the two studies and doesn’t know how to take it into account? As usual, you are saying that everything that doesn’t support your position is bad science, while everything that supports it is good science, even if the papers you cite don’t say what you say they say.

                      ♫ He’s as blind as he can be.
                      ♫ Just sees what he wants to see.
                      ♫ Nowhere man can you see me at all.

                      ♫ ♫ ♫

                    179. “>>> I can’t see beyond the first article’s paywall… <<<"

                      If you are a university student, employee, faculty or an alumnus, you can access the paper from the university network. Most universities subscribe to Journal of Geophysical Research.

                      The paper is complex. What it shows, amongst other interesting things is that the Himalayan melt estimated by them is lower than the melting rate estimated by other authors in the past. There is extensive discussion in it of current literature on the subject. They find, for example, that the melting rate derived from another method, commonly used, overestimates Himalayan melting rate by 17%. Most importantly, upon observing the correlation between Pamir and Karakorum glaciers on the one hand and ENSO and AO (Arctic Oscillation) on the other, they conclude that "the snapshot method used in this area is not reliable, and continuous observations are recommended."

                      This, of course, applies as much to Himalayas, which are so strongly connected to the Indian Monsoon, which, in turn, is also driven by ocean and solar oscillations.

                      The growth of Tibetan Glaciers is related to increased rainfall in the area, but this is not enough, in the authors' opinion to explain all of it.

                      But let me comment briefly on your one statement, which is so revealing of what drives the "warm-mongers." You are saying "I agree that without historical perspective, we certainly can't declare the recent loss of 0.2% of total mass over a decade […] to be normal." In other words, what you are saying is that your fundamental assumption is that whatever observation is made, everyone is labeled a priori "abnormal," normalcy itself requiring a lengthy proof and not the other way round.

                      This is, of course, absurd and rather self-serving, isn't it? A hurricane hits New Jersey, "abnormal." A drought hits California, "abnormal." A tornado wipes out a town in Oklahoma, "abnormal." Glaciers retreat, "abnormal."

                      What then is "normal?" According to you, nothing that is currently being observed. Yet, glaciers were retreating in the past. We know this because, when they retreat, e.g., in the Alps today, they often reveal ancient settlements that remained buried under ice for hundreds of years. We know from existing aerial photographs and historic records that Greenland glaciers retreated faster between 1900 and 1930 than they are retreating today.

                      We know that the Himalayan glaciers are grown by moisture that is brought to the mountains by the Indian Monsoon, which, in turn, is strongly correlated with solar activity (via ocean oscillations, &c.) It is therefore perfectly normal that depending on the monsoons and solar activity they would either retreat or advance. It is the demand that all the glaciers should remain completely unchanging that is absurdly unphysical. This is not how the earth works. Glaciers are dynamic objects. They flow. On the geologic time scale, they all advance or retreat, some faster, some slower, some imperceptibly for the time being. *This* is normal.

                      And yes, without knowing, for example, what the actual numbers were throughout the whole of the past millennium, you cannot assume that what we observe today is in any way abnormal, especially since we know that the solar activity Grand Maximum had unfolded throughout the whole of the 20th century and that the world has been recovering, naturally, from the Little Ice Age. Such palaeo-studies as are available to us, show similar phenomena and trends in the past, both distant and recent, see, e.g., doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.04.022

                      on 1000 years of monsoons in south-east Asia, doi:10.1029/2011GL050722 on the 10,000 year history of Indian monsoons,
                      doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2014.10.021 on the 250 year history of droughts in China, doi:10.1126/science.1228026 on local (in 73 locations) and global temperatures over the past 11,300 years, doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2012.08.019 on south Pacific temperatures over the past 350 years.
                      These and countless other papers demonstrate that present day climate, weather and oceanic conditions are not outside of historic bounds: therefore, everything is … normal.

                    180. “And yes, without knowing, for example, what the actual numbers were throughout the whole of the past millennium, you cannot assume that what we observe today is in any way abnormal.” By the same logic, you cannot assume it was normal. That was my point.

                      I’m not going on a wild goose chase through half a dozen indirectly related doi references on the monsoon. There are lots of peer-reviewed references here from the United Nations Environment Program, including the attached chart.

                      “Despite inconsistencies in the published research, there is overall agreement that scenarios indicate a general decrease in ice volumes in HMA.”
                      – UNEP

                      ♫ ♫ ♫

                      http://na.unep.net/geas/articleImages/Sep-12-figure-3.png

                    181. “>>> By the same logic, you cannot assume it was normal. <<<"

                      Yes, but the onus of proving abnormality is on those who make catastrophic claims and predictions demanding sacrifices of the rest of the society, of the whole humanity no less. Yet, so far, they have proved nothing. Where we have data, nothing about the present day climate calls for alarm. Nothing is out of historic bounds.

                      How can it be, if all the warming that we have had since the end of the Little Ice Age has been a mere 0.7C? And most of it, at least from 1850 to 1950 would have been natural. Why then should the warming from 1950 to 2000 not be natural? It was not any faster than the warming that characterized the first 100 years. And since there is a good reason for it, in the form of the solar activity Grand Maximum, that stretched over the whole 20th century, why should we be concerned about it? It stopped now as the activity abated, hasn't it?

                      As to the opinions of any United Nations agency, and most of all, environmental one, I give it zero credence, on any pronouncement of theirs. The UN is the same corrupt and incompetent institution that had Ghaddafi's Libya preside over the Human Rights Committee for years!

                      Sure, the ice volume in the Himalayas has been diminishing slightly, 0.2% in a decade–but is it out of historic bounds? Wasn't it diminishing in the 1930s too? Didn't it grow back in the 1970s?

                      And… why? Since Himalayan glaciers are built up by Monsoons, the first culprit should be diminished amount of moisture brought to the mountains. During high solar activity periods, there is less cloud formation, so we would expect less moisture to be visited upon the Himalayas, which has been the case especially towards the late 20th century. It all clicks.
                      But there is also a problem of soot. It is Indian soot, not ours. Therefore it is theirs, not our problem. On the impact of black carbon see, e.g., doi:10.1002/jgrd.50171 and doi:10.1002/2014GL060349. But India is not going to reduce their coal consumption. On the contrary. Their recent announcement was that they wouldn't do anything until at least 2050. So, obviously, they are not worried. Do they know something we don't? After all they are their mountains, aren't they? Chinese rivers flow from Tibetan glaciers, not the Himalayan ones. If the Indians are not worried, why should we?
                      In December 2012, The Times of India reported that heavy snow fall received in the Himalayas has rejuvenated nearly 1000 glaciers. The Himalayas are perfectly safe. They may melt a little around the edges, what's 0.2% after all, but because they are so high, the glaciers will remain largely unaffected by whatever warming may happen in the future. This is why so many of them do not melt at all at present. This is the conclusion that Richard Armstrong of the Colorado University's National Snow and Ice Center arrived at. See a December 2011 report by Christopher Pala, IPS News, "High Glaciers Safe from Warming."

                    182. It’s really amazing that no one — even those whose job it is to specialize in these areas — has thought of any of this except you. The IPCC, for example, which has done the most exhaustive review of the most scientists ever in the histroy of science, has a different spin on things.

                    183. To call IPCC *reviews* (because IPCC does not do any science on its own) “the most exhaustive ever” is a fallacy. IPCC’s productions are dishonest, distorted, incomplete. They are produced by a mere handful of government picked researchers (only about 30 are involved in writing WG1 reports), who neither do a good job, nor do they even bother to be truly representative of their colleagues opinions.
                      If you care to visit any typical earth science department at a university and care to attend their seminars, you’ll hear all that I had pointed out plus more, regarding Himalayas, the Arctic, multidecadal ocean dynamics, &c. After all, I have not invented any of the papers I referred you to, about monsoons and their connection to solar activity, about Tibetan glaciers, about soot, about geothermal sources under Greenland and West Antarctica glaciers.
                      Also, note that NIPCC, having reviewed exhaustively the same body of literature as IPCC, has arrived at quite opposite conclusions. Don’t you care for having a second opinion? Why wouldn’t you want one on something as important as an alleged potential catastrophe for the whole of humanity? Why should we not consider a broad spectrum of scientific opinions on this matter?
                      Even if you were to look at IPCC reports only, observe a huge difference between the certainty of the early ones and the latest AR5 WG1 report that talks of climate science uncertainties, the “hiatus” (as they prefer to call it) and failure of climate models at some length. Why have the views of WG1 moderate so over the years? Well, this is in response to, first, global warming ceasing and, second, to the open criticism of their earlier reports by their very own colleagues.

                    184. It proves they are honest and recognize skeptical voices. Unlike the NIPCC which doesn’t do science at all.

                    185. “>>> Unlike the NIPCC which doesn’t do science at all. <<<"
                      How do you know? I bet you never even bothered to look at the NIPCC report. As a matter of fact it is very well done. All my colleagues have it on their laptops (you can download the PDF from the NIPCC site) and look it up quite often, alongside with the IPCC report. The NIPCC report is quite popular in China too, where the Chinese Academy of Science had a special joint conference with NIPCC authors, after the report's first publication, and translated the whole lot. The concessions made by IPCC authors are, in fact, partly at least in response to the NIPCC report, which was written, after all, by IPCC authors … colleagues.

                    186. “>>> I’m not going on a wild goose chase through half a dozen indirectly related doi references on the monsoon… <<<"

                      Let me help you, since monsoons are central to the climate of India and to Himalayan glaciers.

                      doi:10.1073/pnas.1219405110, March 2013, natural climate swings have more impact on monsoons than global warming

                      doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00482.1, 2014, east Asian monsoon rainband responds to solar variability

                      doi:10.1016/j.jastp.2014.11.005, cosmic ray variability affects monsoon rainfall and temperature

                      doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.04.006, Australian-Indonesian summer monsoon is related to grand solar minima/maxima

                      doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.08.008, summer monsoon in China is linked to solar activity and to sea surface temperature

                      doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2013.02.003, 2013, IPCC models fail to simulate ENSO and monsoon

                      doi:10.1016/j.jastp.2014.06.010, June 2014, sun drives monsoon rainfall over India

                      doi:10.5194/cp-10-1803-2014, 2014, east China monsoons were strongly related to solar activity over the past 700 years

                      doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2013.04.010, monsoons over the Diesham Mountains over the past 400 years
                      … just a few papers to start from.
                      The point is: you cannot talk about Himalayan glaciers without talking about monsoons at the same time. They are so closely connected.

                    187. ” we read peer reviewed papers published in reputable journals. We use our own knowledge of physics, geophysics and geology–also derived from studying papers and textbooks–to make up our own mind.”

                      Could you walk us through a couple of points?

                      We have a huge body of research, we have thousands of papers, scientists, researchers all pointing to

                      “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased (see Figures SPM.1, SPM.2, SPM.3 and SPM.4).”

                      “Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850 (see Figure SPM.1). In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983–2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years…”

                      “Total radiative forcing is positive, and has led to an uptake of energy by the climate system.The largest contribution to total radiative forcing is caused by the increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 since 1750..”

                      “Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident from the increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiative forcing, observed warming, and understanding of the climate system.”

                      IPCC AR5 SPM

                      We can read the C.V.s of those scientists, we can see who cites what, we can read how the WG1 reports from the first AR forward progressively builds stronger cases with accumulating data.

                      And we can see two posters here – neither with full names, C.V.s, or any evidence of demonstrated expertise – proclaiming they know better than all those publicly available scientists, papers, reports.

                      You’ve convinced yourself you are right and the other 97% of the science is wrong, and yet the only places you seem to ‘publish’ is on a blog that supports your opinion.

                      So, why aren’t you publishing your findings? Your reading would be the preliminary work toward a meta-analysis of papers supporting whatever your alternative hypothesis is.

                      And why limit your posting in comment threads on blogs that accept your POV? Why not be an advocate for your opinion and post your evidence on a wide range of blogs?

                    188. Explain the effects of the Air force trying to master weather thru various activity not limited to spraying the atmosphere.So long as there is a entity that tries to manipulate weather ,it is impossible to have this discussion.

                    189. “Explain the effects of the Air force trying to master weather thru various activity not limited to spraying the atmosphere.”

                      You are veering into paranoid-delusional conspiracy theory.

                      Humans do cause a certain amount of cooling through aerosol emissions. These emissions change the Earth’s albedo.

                      It is quite unintentional and does not override the warming effect we are causing through production of CO₂ and other greenhouse gasses.

                      http://www.skepticalscience.com/Measuring-Earths-energy-imbalance.html

                  2. Oh Climate Bot, there you go again with your gassy belching. You’ve asked that question over and over, as if it hasn’t been answered for you, over and over. There’s something seriously sick with your programming.

                  3. Your logic and honesty is typical of warmists… nonexistent then. Your question is a non sequitur. There is no correlation twixt CO2 and warming.. so there is no reason to suspect causation [laboratory boxes are not like the infinitely more complex whole Earth]. That should be the end of it but the brainwashing, arrogance and careerism continues. Basic logic, never mind science: no correlation = no causation. Your question should not even arise.
                    Let me rephrase your question so it makes my point: “If it’s so likely that polar ice caps will be able to withstand gummybear production as high as we’ve pushed it, why isn’t there a single example of them doing so in Earth’s history?”. See, there is no correlation between gummybears and ice caps so even though levels of gummybears before their invention were zero it makes no difference. It is absurd nonsense. Everything about warmism is absurd.

                    Here’s proof. We have not finished with your hysteria, so superabdundant is your dishonesty.. Even your question rests on several stupid lies. The answer is that the example of ice caps with today’s CO2 is today, the present. Caps not melting, caps still here. You pretend that the caps are melting but to claim knowledge of that is a lie. The Arctic cap is still there, Antarctic cap is growing, not thinning as your bankster masters [the ones whose Club of Rome got this globall warming hypetrain rolling] claim. That is what happens when you naively believe liars, you regurgitate lies. That is the first lie…but to cap it all off for something you think is a mighty question you lie by implication even greater: you pretend to know that the ice caps will totally melt under your imaginary warming [that is not happening], presumed to be caused by presumed CO2 levels [if the world’s economy is crashed, as it well might under your Masters’ machinations, even without Agenda 21, levels will drop rather than rise anyway.]. You have no evidence for this fantastic melting nor any reason to suspect that it could happen. There are many lines of evidence that refute both the veracity of both the [perennially wrong] models’ claimed mechanisms and the claimed data showing permanent melting. I guess your confirmation bias won’t let you see them.

                    Yet still your absurdity offers rich tragicomic pickings. Why ask about CO2 levels? I thought you thought it was higher temperature that melted ice, not CO2 directly. The trace gas CO2 is not that evil is it? LOL! Why not ask “If it’s so likely that polar ice caps will be able to withstand temps as high as we’ve pushed it, why isn’t there a single example of them doing so in Earth’s history?”? Hmmmm…. maybe it is because you know that GREENLAND, much warmer for very long periods in the past, has no signs of having lost its 400,000 years old icecap. Or are you denying that too? smh

                2. Gus has been commendable in his vigorous answers to the trolls who would like to deny that the changes in atmospheric temperature are not as predicted. However, in the interest of accuracy one should point out that in the past 800,000 years there has been a detectable correlation between air temperature and CO2 concentration. However, it was the temperature that changed first and the CO2 concentration that followed. Though it is theoretically possible for our adding CO2 to the air to cause some warming, on balance one should not expect very much of it, and the benefits in CO2 fertilization, in warming sub-polar climates and in releasing billions of acres of land in Russia and Northern Canada for agriculture far outweigh the few and generally inconsequential welfare losses that might be expected to arise from a small CO2-driven warming.

                  1. The correlation… indeed. I should have been more precise.

                    The comment about the lack of correlation pertains to longer time stretches, especially when CO2 concentrations were way higher than they are today–consequently, their impact on global temperatures should have been even stronger (unless we take saturation into account)–over the past 500 million years. This is illustrated, for example, in the NIPCC Report “Climate Change Reconsidered II, Physical Science,” Section on “Forcing and Feedbacks,” figure 2.1.1.1.1, page 147. The graph is taken from the Rothman’s classic 2002 paper in PNAS, doi:10.1073pnas.022055499, Fig. 4., p. 4170.

                    But, of course, we also know that the atmospheric CO2 concentration responds to seasons: it is from this that the CO2 residence time can be calculated (Essenhigh 2009, doi:10.1021/ef800581r). This is because the ocean and the soils outgas CO2 in response to warming, or reabsorb CO2 when it gets cooler.

                    Yet, even here this correlation does not appear to be as strong as people thought, in longer term. For example, the examination of Vostok ice cores shows common periodicities in the past 11,000 years between the Antarctic temperature and solar sunspot number (SSN) for millennial scale variations, with SSN leading temperature by… 30 to 40 years–this shows the degree to which the ocean slows things down by its enormous thermal inertia–whereas at the same time no strong or stable correlations are found between CO2 and temperature, see doi:10.1016/j.jastp.2014.11.004.

                    On shorter, yearly scales, one can see how the atmospheric CO2 concentration *lags* global temperature changes by about a year, see Humlum et al 2013 in Global and Planetary Change, doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2012.08.008.

                    These and other similar observations, I think, point to the minimal role CO2 has as a climate driver compared to other much stronger drivers, those of solar constant variations (this is related to the earth’s orbital geometry), solar activity (the two are not the same, but both are important), global cloud cover (variations of which are related to solar activity, amongst other factors), the ocean with its multi-decadal oscillations, earth crust dynamics (today responsible for the melting of Greenland and West Antarctica) and, of course, the biosphere, the impact of which is immense and extremely difficult to quantify: see, e.g., Ehn et al 2014 in Nature, doi:10.1038/nature13032.

                    1. Gus has correctly drawn attention to the formidable thermal inertia of the ocean. Of course, the thermal inertia of outer space, the other slice of bread in the atmospheric sandwich, is still more formidable: indeed, it is vanishingly different from infinity. As a consequence, the variation of global temperature either side of the 810,000-year mean is little more than 1%, or 3 Celsius degrees. The climate is, by the nature of the two massive heat-sinks by which the atmosphere is bounded, inherently thermostatic. Our petty perturbation of the atmospheric content (we have altered the composition of the air by 1 part in 10,000 over the past 250+ years) is hardly going to be sufficient to bring that spectacular thermostasis to an end.

                      It is a delight that Gus has such a wide knowledge of the climate literature, which, as he repeatedly demonstrates, does not support the alarmist conclusions that the climate-extremist trolls who are paid to camp on this thread are so fond of peddling.

                    2. Thermal.. inertia.

                      Inertia.

                      Thermal inertia.

                      A global difference of temperature of 1%?

                      That’s 1% up, and 1% down, a range of 2%?

                      Six total degrees between the coldest chill of glacial phases of the Milankovitch Cycles, with CO2 dipping below 180 ppmv a vanishing less than 0.1% of the time as far down as 172 ppmv, and rising above 280 ppmv only about the same 0.1% of the time as high as 304 ppmv?

                      Roughly 230 ppmv +/- 50 ppmv, or a change of (discounting logarithmic relationships for the moment) little more than a fifth either way from the average on a span of 50,000 years.

                      Yet now we’ve come over double that in just 250 years. The rate of change is two hundred times faster than is natural for such a rise, all due fossil waste dumping.

                      So.. reckoning without logarithms, that implies very nearly 2% above the maximum temperature of the last 810,000 years due fossil waste dumping, due relationships of Green House Gases and temperature we know to be established from the works of every experimentalist of note since Tyndall.

                      That would be nine degrees above the mean temperature our entire branch of primates has evolved to know.

                      And you think this is a time for delight and name-calling propaganda?

                    3. In fact the relationship between CO2 concentration change and temperature change is not at all well established. Conventional physics considers the mean value of the Planck parameter to be 0.31 Kelvin per Watt per square meter (IPCC, 2007, p.631 fn.), and the radiative forcing from a doubling of CO2 concentration to be 5.35 ln(2) = 3.71 Watts per square meter. The product of these two quantities is the climate sensitivity in the absence of temperature feedbacks, which is 1.16 K per doubling.

                      However, there is growing evidence that temperature feedbacks are actually net-negative, so that the global warming to be expected at equilibrium after a CO2 doubling may well prove to be around 1 K and could well be considerably less (Monckton of Brenchley, 2015 in press).

                      There is, therefore, no scientific basis for alarm about our emissions of the naturally-occurring and beneficial trace gas CO2, which once occupied at least 30% of the atmosphere by volume. Now, however, to the nearest tenth of one per cent, there is no CO2 at all in the atmosphere. One should keep these matters in perspective, and one should certainly not describe CO2 – on whose presence all life on Earth depends – merely as “fossil fuel waste”. Such phraseology cheapens the discussion.

                    4. “In fact” often precedes claims that are anything but; however, in this special case we may regard them of having served that office of flagging fiction to a very high level indeed.

                      No feedback sensitivity of 1.16?

                      Check.

                      Growing evidence of.. whoa. There’s where we enter Disneyland proper. Lindzen spent the last quarter century of his disgraced career failing to find this growing evidence before retiring in ignominy, defeated on the issue. The multimodal, sensitive-to-initial-conditions nature of ECS on varying timescales means claims for any one particular value are pointless. ECS has a range, not a single value. That range is most certainly dominated by the 2.95 +/- 0.15 node, but includes values from 1.8 +/- 0.5 through 6.0 +/- 2.5, as measured.

                      CO2 last occupied 30% of the atmosphere by volume before the Oxygen Cataclysm, a point at which the Sun was 20% cooler and life could be described as that which ate sulfur and farted ozone. Innumerate arguments minimizing the power of the source of CO2 in every living thing outside kingdom archaea are beneath deserving consideration. So naturally we expect them from @monckton.

      2. The Northern Rockies and Plains shows cooling since 1997
        The West shows cooling since 1999
        The Southwest shows cooling since 1998
        The Southeast, cooling since 1998
        The South, since 1998
        The Northwest, 1994
        Upper Midwest, 1997
        Ohio Valley, 1998
        Puerto Rico, 1971
        Hawai’i (Hilo), 1971
        Hawai’i (Honolulu), 1984
        Hawai’i (Kahului), 1972
        Hawai’i (Lihue), 1969
        District of Columbia, 2006
        Wyoming, 1997
        Wisconsin, 1997
        West Virginia, 1998
        Washington, 1985
        Virginia, 2005
        Vermont, 2010
        Utah, 1992
        Texas, 1998
        South Dakota, 1997
        South Carolina, 2004
        Rhode Island, 2010
        Pennsylvania, 1998
        Oregon, 1986
        Oklahoma, 1998
        Ohio, 1998
        North Dakota, 1983
        North Carolina, 1998
        New York, 2010
        New Mexico, 1998
        New Jersey, 2010
        New Hampshire, 2010
        Nevada, 1994
        Nebraska, 1997
        Montana, 1997
        Missouri, 1997
        Mississippi, 1997
        Minnesota, 1997
        Michigan, 1998
        Massachusetts, 2010
        Maryland, 2010
        Maine, 2010
        Louisiana, 1998
        Kentucky, 1998
        Kansas, 1997
        Iowa, 1997
        Indiana, 1998
        Illinois, 1997
        Idaho, 1986
        Georgia, 1997
        Florida, 1990
        Delaware, 2010
        Connecticut, 2010
        Colorado, 1994
        California, 1999
        Arkansas, 2004
        Arizona, 1995
        Alabama has been cooling ever since 1895, that’s right, 1895.
        The “Eastern NWS Region” shows cooling since 2010

        The “Northeast” has been cooling since 2010

      3. Two Northern Hemisphere, and three Southern Hemisphere temperature series, that all show cooling.

        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vsh/from:1996.6/plot/hadcrut3vsh/from:1996.6/trend/plot/hadcrut4sh/from:2000.6/plot/hadcrut4sh/from:2000.6/trend/plot/hadcrut3vnh/from:2001/plot/hadcrut3vnh/from:2001/trend/plot/hadcrut4nh/from:2001.6/plot/hadcrut4nh/from:2001.6/trend/plot/crutem4vnh/from:2003.2/plot/crutem4vnh/from:2003.2/trend

        Four sea-surface temperature series, that all show cooling.

        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2sh/from:1996.5/plot/hadsst2sh/from:1996.5/trend/plot/hadsst3sh/from:1997.3/plot/hadsst3sh/from:1997.3/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2000.6/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2000.6/trend/plot/hadsst2nh/from:2001.2/plot/hadsst2nh/from:2001.2/trend

        Eight temperature series, that all shows COOLING.

        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4tr/from:2000.5/plot/hadcrut4tr/from:2000.5/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000.7/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000.7/trend/plot/crutem4vnh/from:2003.6/plot/crutem4vgl/from:2003.6/trend/plot/crutem3vgl/from:2004.6/plot/crutem3vgl/from:2004.6/trend/plot/wti/from:2008.5/plot/wti/from:2008.5/trend/plot/uah-land/from:2008.6/plot/uah-land/from:2008.6/trend/plot/gistemp-dts/from:2009.1/plot/gistemp-dts/from:2009.1/trend/plot/rss/from:1996.7/plot/rss/from:1996.7/trend

        HADCRT3 Variance-Adjusted Southern Hemisphere mean shows COOLING from 1996
        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vsh/from:1996.6/plot/hadcrut3vsh/from:1996.6/trend
        HADCRT4 Southern Hemisphere mean shows COOLING from 2000
        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4sh/from:2000.6/plot/hadcrut4sh/from:2000.6/trend
        HADCRT3 Variance-Adjusted Northern Hemisphere mean shows COOLING from 2001
        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vnh/from:2001/plot/hadcrut3vnh/from:2001/trend
        HADCRT4 Northern Hemisphere mean shows COOLING from 2001
        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4nh/from:2001.6/plot/hadcrut4nh/from:2001.6/trend
        CRUTEM4 Variance-Adjusted Northern Hemisphere mean shows COOLING from 2003
        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vnh/from:2003.2/plot/crutem4vnh/from:2003.2/trend

        HADSST2 Southern Hemisphere sea surface temperature anomaly shows COOLING from 1996.5

        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2sh/from:1996.5/plot/hadsst2sh/from:1996.5/trend
        HADSST3 Southern Hemisphere sea surface temperature anomaly shows COOLING from spring of 1997
        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3sh/from:1997.3/plot/hadsst3sh/from:1997.3/trend
        HADSST2 global sea surface temperature anomaly shows COOLING since mid-2000
        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2000.6/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2000.6/trend
        HADSST2 Northern Hemisphere sea surface temperature anomaly shows COOLING since early 2001
        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2nh/from:2001.2/plot/hadsst2nh/from:2001.2/trend

        Remote Sensing Systems satellite global temperature series shows COOLING since September 1996
        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.7/plot/rss/from:1996.7/trend
        HADCRT4 Tropics (from -30 to +30 in Longitude) mean shows COOLING since June 2000
        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4tr/from:2000.5/plot/hadcrut4tr/from:2000.5/trend
        HADCRUT3 variance-adjusted global mean shows COOLING since 2000.7
        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000.7/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000.7/trend
        CRUTEM4 variance adjusted land global mean shows COOLING since June 2003
        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vgl/from:2003.6/plot/crutem4vgl/from:2003.6/trend
        CRUTEM3 variance adjusted land global mean shows COOLING since June 2004
        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem3vgl/from:2004.6/plot/crutem3vgl/from:2004.6/trend
        WoodForTrees Temperature Index shows COOLING since 2008.5 since June 2004
        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:2008.5/plot/wti/from:2008.5/trend
        UAH NSSTC LT Global mean (land only) shows COOLING since June 2008
        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah-land/from:2008.6/plot/uah-land/from:2008.6/trend
        GISTEMP dTs global mean (extrapolated) shows COOLING since 2009.1 since January 2009

        http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp-dts/from:2009.1/plot/gistemp-dts/from:2009.1/trend

  2. 18 years and 2 months, of no global warming till now. You ask, what will it be in a year from now? Easy, it will be 19 years and 2 months.

    Furthermore, with Solar Cycle 24 showing a very low cycle, and lots of evidence to show that the next solar cycle will have lower activity, the real science is telling us there could be a very cold period coming up. Now look at those above charts, it shows that years ’92 and ’93 have a slight global cooling, thus, if we really do have a cooling in Solar Cycle 24 and 25, we will be extending the starting point of the above chart by Monckton, back to the early ’90’s. That means these 18 years and 2 months may start growing rapidly to over 20 years, even by this time next year!

    However, it still remains, what are the real questions that should be asked (I know have I have asked some of these before, but nobody seems to answer them):

    – How many years must pass by where there is no global warming, before we call it no global warming? We have 18 years and 2 months now, so what do we need 20/30/50 or 100 years?
    – From what starting point should we be looking at? Everybody criticizes where Monckton starts his chart, well the same can be said by all the global warmers. But history shows the world has cooled since the Medieval Ages. So if we can’t specify, scientifically, a starting point that means something, what if anything, does any of this science or data mean? As a scientist myself, I think it means absolutely nothing, since the Scientific Method can not be applied. We are no longer talking about Galilean Science, but we are basing our economic and political decisions on Platonic arguments which means we are being led by dogma and idiots.
    – When is the Scientific Community going to start taking responsibility for false science and fraud? I am sick and tired of idiotic scientists getting and holding PhDs, of referring outright bad papers and referees cheating with other scientists in doing quid pro quo agreements in passing papers, of seeing crooks winning grants and funds based upon lies, and more importantly the really good scientists and science are dismissed and have to suffer the indignity of these crooks profiting. In short, when is Science going to be cleaned up?
    – When is the Scientific Method going to applied to science? Anything that can not be based upon the Scientific Method is not science and belongs in philosophy. We need better scientific standards of work, there is too much shoddy and dishonest work going on in science?
    – How many times do we have to state the problems, state the lies, state the dishonesty, and state the crimes, before we finally get around to stop stating, and start cleaning up? That is, enough talk, how about some action guys?

    How many years, decades, oh god for bid, centuries, must past pass by, and how many crooks must get away with their lies, and how much money, private or public, must be wasted, before we take action? Enough fraud, enough cheating, enough lying, enough stealing has gone on. If this kind of behaviour was carried out by the lower worker classes, it is clear, the federal authorities would be arresting people and locking them up. But, the higher white collar community seems to be immune from prosecution from these crimes. If a poor man, who steals $50,000 from a bank, even if done by a lie, can go to prison for 7 years, why does a scientist that lied and cheated to win a $50,000 grant be allowed to get away it!

    It is disgraceful how people here and on hundreds of other sites talk about how bad or dishonest are scientists, but nobody wants to hold white collar criminals like there in science to the same bar, as we hold the lower uneducated classes.

    What is the real crime here, ladies and gentlemen? Dishonest scientists or those who know what is going on and do nothing?

    To paraphrase Hannah Arendt, science is not like the kindergarten, obedience and support are the same thing. The paraphrased quote was based upon Arendt’s opinion of the German people how they would stay quite while the Nazi’s did their evil. You’d think people by now would have learnt this lesson. As a scientist/physicist I am ashamed of the scientific community that it has done nothing and will do nothing to clean up science. What evil will come of this remains to be seen. But the evil will come. I just don’t know how the rest of you can live with yourselves.

    This will be my last post, I’m tired of this endless, inane discussion. But I would like to thank Lord Monckton, thank you for all you are doing to shed a light on my community, how disgraceful it is that we have to rely upon a non scientist to show scientists how to do their jobs – I can understand how you Sir must laugh at us every time you do this chart, the irony is heart breaking for me, but I can see how amusing it is to you. However Lord Monckton, is it enough? I ask this respectfully. Blog sites like Climate Depot are welcomed, but you can write all you like, in the end, words don’t change anything, for the dishonest scientists and the politicians that support them have the power of their positions and the justice system behind them to enforce the lies and thieving, isn’t this how the Nazi’s started out in the early 1930’s? They were democratically elected, but racist science like phrenology, dishonest politicians and an obedient populace brought on evil.

    Yes we all know the truth…

    1. “Dorian’s” post is moving. Here is a cry of pain from a scientist heartbroken at the bastardization of his profession by a handful of evil but powerfully-connected totalitarians who are determined to take full advantage of the fact that, after a century of publicly-funded “education”, ignorance of even the most elementary science is widespread.

      “Dorian” asks whether we should be doing more than merely stating and restating the truth. Well, that is always a good and necessary starting point – and it is one which, if it is ever neglected, leads to great evil.

      But we can and should do more. “Dorian” understandably uses the word “fraud” of the “scientists” who have fabricated data and bent results to support a preconceived and now self-evidently erroneous conclusion. The first step, I think, is to bring a fraud prosecution against one or two of those who have gone so far beyond the realm of science that deception is plainly present.

      When I was recently in Australia, I gave a witness statement to police about a serious scientific fraud that had been perpetrated there – a fraud so influential that heads of state had cited it in support of their anti-scientific, superstitious belief in the catastrophist viewpoint. We are making some progress. The police have accepted that a deception unquestionably occurred, and that it was deliberate. To establish that fraud is present, we must now convince the courts that, even though no beneficiary or victim of the deception can be precisely identified, with the amount gained or lost by the deception, nevertheless it was calculated to inflict losses on the general taxpayer and on fossil-fuel businesses and was, therefore, fraudulent. A solicitor whom we have consulted has said he sees no difficulty in convincing the court of this point: for there are several other crimes (incitement to murder, for instance) where no victim can be identified but an offense has nevertheless been committed.

      An eminent barrister is now reviewing the affidavit and related papers and we should have an opinion available to us before too long. Unless the opinion is strongly against going further, we propose to instruct the lawyers to go into the magistrates’ court and use one of the most ancient rights that exist in the legal jurisdictions that inherited the British tradition – the right to lay an information before the magistrates, and to invite them to issue summonses against the alleged perpetrators.

      We are stepping slowly and carefully, but we are moving towards initiating a prosecution. Since the police have accepted that a deception was indeed practiced, we shall have little difficulty in persuading the magistrates, and eventually a jury, of that fact. If we can persuade the magistrates that there is a better than 50% chance that a jury would convict on the basis that the deception is monstrous and was perpetrated with the declared intent of influencing public policy, the magistrates will issue summonses and, shortly thereafter, will hold a preliminary hearing at which the defendants will have the opportunity to show cause why they should not be committed to the higher court for trial.

      If this prosecution were to succeed, the global warming scare would collapse overnight as other “scientists” who have been bending the data, the results and the rules scuttled for cover. At present, they think they are untouchable. They are about to find that, however powerful their friends in bureaucracy and in government, they are not above the law by which the rest of us are obliged to live.

  3. All this panic about carbon dioxide … it makes no sense. It’s as though the people spreading alarm suffer psychosis.

    Looking at the geologic data, nobody would ever suspect carbon dioxide played a role in changing earth’s climate in the past. There simply is no evidence.

    Why would carbon dioxide suddenly play a role now? It is illogical and absurd.

    The western world is panicking over human carbon dioxide emissions that account for only about 0.12% of the total greenhouse heat effect. And they claim this is causing dangerous global warming and is the key driver of climate change? Has the western world gone mad?

  4. It is neither a pause, nor a hiatus. It is simply a maximum. Some warm-mongers know this very well, which is why they are desperate to force countries of the world into a straight-jacket of enviro-fascist restrictions before it becomes obvious that the world is cooling. Then they’ll attribute the cooling to the “success” of their restrictive policies, while ignoring the continuing rise in the atmospheric CO2 concentration, which is inevitable, if India, China, Brazil, South Africa and other developing countries are to improve their economies and living standards to match those of the West.

    The relatively brief period of global warming, which correlates with the 20th century solar activity Grand Maximum (doi:10.12942/lrsp-2008-3) has now ceased (doi:10.1134/S1024856014060104). All that’s left is the earth ocean’s delayed response that will abate in its time as well.

  5. So you say that global warming has stopped (“paused”?) 18 years ago ? In my country people started to segregate waste two years ago. It’s like 16 years too late.
    Maybe there wasn’t global warming at all? Just joking. aromatyczna-kawa.pl

  6. No, “pause” is a good word. And Gus is right. There’s no fear mongering – just fact according to data. I’d like to see the manipulated data set they use to arrive at the conclusion that 2014 was the hottest year ever. Did they take an opinion poll and get a consensus on that too? Why should we believe land based temperature readings over satellite data, from people who are known to manipulate land based temperature data? Why? Because it is “acceptable” to manipulate historical land-based temp data? Who made THAT rule? The temperature in a given US town can vary 5+ degrees F at a given time, or more, simply by changing location a couple miles. Yet humans can measure the whole planet down to 1F? Riiiiggggghhhhttttt……… Remember, these are the same dimwits who made diagrams with arrows pointing downward toward earth implying (not infering, the word is implying) that greenhouse gases radiate heat to Earth. This is impossible. Take it from someone who studied heat transfer. If they want to walk that one back or change the terminology to “downwelling effect” or some other non-sense term, fine. But GHGs cannot radiate heat to Earth. I will accept the premise that greenhouse gases can insulate the planet and stabilize temperature fluctutions. Raise them – NO! This is a closed system. They can possibly influence the amount of the largest greenhouse gas: Water vapor (aka hydrogen, for the dopes who believe that CO2 is “carbon”). But I’m not convinced they can “heat up” our planet. If someone proves this too me I will happily join the heard of sheep who believe this government sponsored religious cult, and are dying off with each passing year. Until that happens then I guess I’ll just accept all the names they through around for “skeptics” (i.e., normal people with brains) since they have no real good arguments that are science based.

    1. “>>> I will accept the premise that greenhouse gases can insulate the planet and stabilize temperature fluctutions. Raise them – NO! <<<"

      They can slow down the rate of cooling (but also the rate of warming: it works both ways) much as a quilt does to someone underneath it. However, given their tiny atmospheric concentration, their effect is also minimal, negligible in comparison with other factors, such as variable cloud cover, ocean currents, ocean oscillations, aerosols, dust, soot, biosphere, etc. The earth's natural thermostat effectively prevents large global temperature variations and nullifies whatever tiny effect is produced by atmospheric carbon dioxide and other IR active gases. It takes a steady change in solar input into the earth's climate system, e.g., due to changes in the earth orbit and tilt, to effect a real climate change.

      The effective coupling of these various factors, but especially of water vapor and clouds is… negative. They cancel, not enhance, the impact of CO2 and methane, see, e.g., doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024039, doi:10.1038/ngeo2214 and doi:10.5194/acp-12-3791-2012.

  7. Actually, there hasn’t been any pause at all. What happened is that since October 1996, the temperature has surged so much that it could stay constant for another 10 years and we’d still be ahead of the trend that we were on up until that time.

    1. The RSS trends are as follows: Jan 1979-Oct 1996 0.7 K/century equivalent; Oct 1996-Nov 2014 0.0 K/century equivalent; Jan 1979-Nov 2014 1.2 K/century equivalent. All of these values, however, are very substantially below what was predicted. It is particularly strange that we have had 18 years 2 months without any global warming even though that period showed a faster increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration than any earlier period since the beginning of the RSS record in 1979.

      Two things are clear, therefore: first, that the rate of warming that is occurring is considerably below what was predicted (indeed, it is less than half of what was predicted with “substantial confidence” in 1990, and none of the models predicted so long a Great Pause), and secondly, that there is an increasingly obvious mismatch between the monotonic increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration year on year and the far more variable pattern of global temperature.

      In logic, absence of correlation necessarily implies absence of causation, so it is not at all clear that CO2 is exerting an appreciable influence on global temperature. That is why these monthly graphs are proving to be so damaging to the true-believers’ cause. They would regain some credibility if they at least admitted that they did not predict the Great Pause, and that the Pause does raise serious questions about the magnitude of CO2’s past and future impact on global temperatures. That would be the right approach, scientifically speaking.

      In the meantime, some of the fraudsters who have pushed the agenda beyond the science will in due course face prosecution, and that will perhaps encourage everyone who has been dishonest about the science to be a great deal more careful in future.

        1. Nice try, but no. The original version of this graph, which appeared in the Second-Order Draft that I and others reviewed, showed a very different picture: global warming was scraping along at the very bottom of the predicted interval. So the graph was artificially redrawn to try to push up the right-hand end of the observed record a little and to widen the envelope of predictions to encompass it. Steve McIntyre has done a thorough deconstruction of the misleading graph in the published version of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report.

          Close examination of other graphs in AR5 shows just how widely adrift the observed temperatures are compared with prediction. And this point was, of course, explicitly addressed in the head posting, where it was demonstrated that the rate of global warming since 1990 is less than half of what was then predicted with “substantial confidence”, and is entirely below the interval of predictions made in 1990. The only reason why the observations now appear to fit within the predictions is that the IPCC has just about halved its predicted near-term rate of global warming – and, if its new predictions were right, we’d have nothing to worry about. However, in fact even the new predictions are a very substantial exaggeration compared with what is actually happening to global temperature.

  8. There isn’t a ‘pause’ in global warming. There is interannual variability in global surface temperature due mainly to ocean oscillations, just as there has always been, but the climate system continues to accumulate heat at an undiminished rate. You can see this very clearly by comparing land temperatures to land+ocean temperatures and sea surface temperatures:

    http://images.sodahead.com/profiles/0/0/2/0/7/6/2/8/5/land-vs-sst-156060547635.png

    Warming of the land surface continues unabated. The lower rate of warming in the land+ocean temperature data is clearly the result of ocean oscillations which have acted to accumulate heat in the deeper ocean rather than in surface waters in the last decade or so.

    http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000m.png

    The planetary energy imbalance caused primarily by anthropogenic greenhouse gases is between 0.5 and 1W/m², with the most likely value for the last decade being 0.9W/m².

    Straightforward thermodynamics dictates that global warming will continue for decades to centuries as this top-of-atmosphere energy imbalance is gradually resolved by warming of the surface. The laws of physics are non-negotiable.

    1. Even ignoring the oceans and reasonable science-based arguments like your own, and playing the game by Monckton’s set of rules, he falls short. His own “No Global Warming for {fill in the blank} Years” chart is fraudulent, as the graph I just posted two hours ago shows. Mine is constructed from the same RSS dataset referenced in his chart, and his own chart is carefully overlaid, exactly matching the line it overlays. Even playing the game by his own cherry-picked rules, he loses. If you look at his “pause” in historical context, it disappears, or appears rather as a “surge” or a “plateau” rather than a pause. By the way, I should credit the brilliant Tamino for the inspiration for my chart and the idea itself.
      Global Temperature: the Post-1998 Surprise
      http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/global-temperature-the-post-1998-surprise/

    2. “Icarus62” says global warming is continuing, really it is, really and truly. Well, no, it isn’t. In the 25 years since the IPCC’s First Assessment Report, the rate of global warming has been half what the IPCC had then predicted with “substantial confidence”. And in the past 13 years (on the average of all five global-temperature datasets) or 18 years 2 months (on the RSS dataset, the most reliable of the five, in my estimation, though its modest managers would disagree with me about its reliability). None of the models predicted that.

      The IPCC itself has all but halved its near-term predictions for global warming. It has noticed, as “Icarus62” has not, that its 1990 projections were wildly exaggerated.

      And how can the supposed “missing heat” be hiding in the ocean without affecting the atmosphere with which it is coupled? The ocean is three orders of magnitude denser than the atmosphere: if the ocean were warming, the atmosphere would be warming, and it is not.

      Finally, parroting other people’s estimates of “planetary energy imbalance”, whatever that ill-defined term may mean, does not advance the scientific discussion one jot. In fact, the radiative forcing from the CO2 increase since 18 years 2 months ago is 0.5 W/m2, to which one could add 0.2 W/m2 for other greenhouse gases. So that’s a forcing of 0.7 W/m2 over two decades, not 0.9 W/m2 over the one decade suggested by “Icarus62”. From that one must make a hefty deduction – perhaps as much as two-thirds – to allow for the growing body of evidence in the literature to the effect that temperature feedbacks are net-negative, attenuating rather than amplifying the modest direct warming to be expected from atmospheric CO2 enrichment.

      Yet the atmosphere has not warmed; therefore the upper ocean has not warmed; therefore the benthic ocean has not warmed; and any measurements to the contrary are insufficiently resolved to do the job reliably, so we may continue to use our common sense and realize that the vaunted warming of the atmosphere and the ocean is either not happening at all or is happening at so slow a rate as to be entirely harmless and even beneficial.

      Try converting even the rent-seeking agencies’ claimed rate of ocean warming from heat content to temperature, and you will see how little the warming really is. They all use the statistical dodge of stretching the y axis to make the “warming” look steeper, but – even if it is real, which is doubtful, and which the measurements are too sparse and too seldom to establish – it is very small.

      Mere recitation of the Party Line handed down so eagerly and so profitably by the rent-seeking, non-peer-reviewed agencies does not advance the argument. It would be best to think a little rather than to scratch around for evidence, however tainted, to support the now-discredited climate-Communist Party Line.

        1. “Icarus62” cites the rent-seeking IPCC, which has a more or less entirely fictional account of the supposed accumulation of heat in the oceans. If the heat were accumulating in the oceans as that graph shows, then the atmosphere would perforce have to warm as well. Yet for the past 18 years 2 months it has not warmed. Accordingly, the “ocean heat content” storyline peddled by the official agencies is rather obviously false. How did they get it wrong? Well, the resolution of our measurements of ocean temperatures is wholly insufficient to produce meaningful global data, which are essentially little better than guesswork.

          And where is the conversion to tell us how much the oceans are actually warming? And where is the explanation of how the atmosphere, three orders of magnitude less dense than the oceans but intimately coupled to them, is not warming if the oceans are warming?

          1. “If the heat were accumulating in the oceans as that graph shows, then the atmosphere would perforce have to warm as well.”

            And it is, as you can see from the UAH and RSS 30-year trends below. Ocean oscillations – particularly ENSO – have a large interannual (short term) influence on global surface temperature, but little impact on the multidecadal forced warming trend. The evidence is very clear – the oceans are warming rapidly:

            http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000m.png

            … but in recent years, ocean oscillations mean that more of that heat is accumulating below the surface, and less in surface waters, giving rise to the reduced rate of warming in land+ocean data series, while warming of the land surface continues unabated –

            http://images.sodahead.com/profiles/0/0/2/0/7/6/2/8/5/land-vs-sst-156060547635.png

            As the Kosaka & Xie paper confirmed, there is no pause or hiatus in global surface warming, just the usual impact of ocean dynamics on interannual surface temperatures. Global warming continues unabated.

            1. Nice try, but the IPCC’s graph shows the upper ocean warming – and continuing to warm – even faster than the benthic ocean: yet the atmosphere that is intimately coupled to and three orders of magnitude less dense than the ocean is not warming. A team at the Chinese Academy of Sciences took a good, close look at the “ocean warming” hypothesis and concluded it was largely nonsense.

              It is really no good trying to perpetuate the climate scam. If the upper ocean were warming as the IPCC says it is, then the atmosphere would be warming too, and it is not. If the benthic strata were warming as “Icarus62” says they are, then we have nothing to worry about, for the heat capacity of the benthic ocean is very large and its mean temperature is very low.

              Also, the IPCC’s predictions were for changes in atmospheric temperature. The predicted changes are simply not occurring, and no amount of wriggling can cover up this fundamental and now severe failure on the part of the computer models.

              Now that even the IPCC has had to cut its medium-term projections by just about half, “Icarus62” is out of line with the “consensus”. The IPCC should also have cut its projections of warming to equilibrium, but did not have the courage to do that. All this will be explored in more detail in my forthcoming paper.

              1. You really ought to be familiar with ocean dynamics if you’re going to comment on climate issues. The IPCC explained the relationship between ocean temperatures and surface temperatures in their very first report back in 1990:

                IPCC FAR, 1990 (Working Group 1, Chapter 7, p.226):

                “During ENSO events, the heat stored in the warm tropical western Pacific is transferred directly or indirectly to many other parts of the tropical oceans. There is a greater than normal loss of heat by the tropical oceans, resulting in a short period warming of many, though not all, parts of the global atmosphere (Pan and Oort, 1983). Consequently, warm individual years in the record of global temperatures (Figure 7.10) are often associated with El Niños. Maxima in global temperatures tend to occur about three to six months after the peak warmth of the El Niño (Pan and Oort, 1983). Figure 7.21b shows monthly anomalies of combined land surface air temperatures and SST for the global tropics from 1961-1989. The strong, coherent, warming influence of the 1972-73, 1982-83 and 1986-88 ENSO events on the record of tropical temperature is very clear, as is the cold influence of the strong La Niña episodes of 1974-75 and 1988-89.”

                So it was already well known in 1990 that ENSO has a substantial short-term warming and cooling influence on global climate. What’s happening at the moment is that surface/atmospheric warming has been reduced because of the predominance of La Niña conditions in recent years, while ocean warming continues unabated (and in fact has been accelerating). You really should know this stuff. It’s why short term trends in surface temperatures, which represent only 3% of the heat content of the climate system, are not robust. It’s hardly new knowledge or information – it’s been known and published routinely for decades. Why aren’t you aware of it?

                1. “Icarus62” ought not to assume that I am unfamiliar with ocean dynamics. Its favorite explanation for the Great Pause is just one among approaching 70 that have been advanced at various times by various parties. This matter is considered in more depth in the supplementary matter accompanying my forthcoming paper.

                  Yes, el Ninos like the present one and the following la Ninas influence global ocean temperatures and, two months later, atmospheric temperatures. Yes, much of the warming from 1983-2001 was caused by a series of strong el Ninos. Yes, much of the reason for the absence of warming since the turn of the millennium is the recent preponderance of la Ninas. But the point is that neither IPeCaC nor the models predicted this particular pattern. They got it wrong.

                  Merely reciting the mantras proclaimed by IPeCaC is unsatisfactory, because IPeCaC’s predictions have proven to be such large exaggerations that even IPeCaC itself has realized that it must reduce its medium-term climate predictions by almost half. In essence, that removes the climate problem.

                  “Icarus62”. therefore, ought perhaps to read more widely in the scientific literature, so as to familiarize itself with the bewildering and mutually inconsistent array of explanations for the Great Pause. Using Occam’s Razor, however, the simplest explanation is that the warming effect of CO2 has been exaggerated, not least by the assumption that temperature feedbacks that are manifestly net-negative are strongly net-positive. The thermostasis of the past 810,000 years (Jouzel et al., 2007) makes it clear that feedbacks cannot be strongly net-positive and are more likely to be appreciably net-negative. So we shall expect some warming from CO2, but probably less than 1 K per doubling.

                  1. You really ought to be aware of the fact that climate models do not attempt to predict stochastic variability. So… why are you complaining that they haven’t predicted the recent pattern of El Niño and La Niña conditions, when you know they are not intended to or expected to? Why not instead acknowledge that the models accurately reproduce global temperature trends when driven by real world forcings and observed natural variability?

                    http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n9/full/nclimate2310.html

                    http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/pdf/1748-9326_6_4_044022.pdf

                    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12534.html

                    1. “Icarus62” really ought to be aware that climate models do not attempt to predict stochastic variability. However, the models did make specific predictions in 1990, and the rate of global warming since then – encompassing first an el-Nino-rich then an el-Nino-poor period – has been just under half the central estimate that was then predicted with “substantial confidence”, and entirely below even the very least prediction of the models.

                      Why does “Icarus62” continue not to acknowledge that the models inaccurately represent global temperature trends? Any fool can make a model backcast so that it accurately represents observation: however, in 2006 my own model showed there would be no global warming till at least 2015, and that has proven correct where the official models were wrong. My model was capable of predicting how observed natural variability might behave: the official models seem incapable of predicting that – or anything else – with respectable accuracy, because they are intended to produce a given (and extreme) result rather than to come to a genuine notion of what may actually occur.

                      The ever-widening discrepancy between the models’ predictions and observed reality can no longer be glossed over. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. The models disagree with experiment. They are wrong. Get used to it.

      1. “…growing body of evidence in the literature to the effect that temperature feedbacks are net-negative, ”

        And a list of the “growing body” is forthcoming, right?

        1. If “Robert” could bring his climate-Communist sneering to an end for long enough actually to do some scientific reading rather than trying – futilely – to challenge the absence of global warming for getting on for two decades, he would have realized that papers such as Monckton of Brenchley (2008, 2011, 2014, 2015 in press), Lindzen and Choi (2009, 2011), Spencer & Braswell (2010, 2011), and numerous other papers find climate sensitivity to be below 1 K – in short, we consider temperature feedbacks to be more probably net-negative than net-positive, and near-certainly nothing like as strongly net-positive as the conventional models assume. In fact, M of B (2015 in press) lists a dozen or two such papers. Given that there are not that many papers considering the vital climate sensitivity question (most papers do not consider climate sensitivity at all: they merely lazily assume that the IPCC’s obviously daft estimates are correct), the fraction of climate-sensitivity papers that finds sensitivity low can no longer be regarded as insignificant. The science is moving rapidly in the direction of lower sensitivity, and the IPCC’s clumsy attempts to conceal this fact are exposed in M of B (2015 in press).

  9. I see that the forecast for Arctic temperatures meant between 5 and 12 °C. This explains the melting of the ice as “Arctic” temperatures are well above freezing and the pause in warming since 12 °C in mid-winter is the new cold.

    1. cunudium, Both are partially correct, and incorrect.
      The pause is correct in the short term.
      The current temps are on the bottom line of the general rise in the longer term.
      This “Pause” is significant. Lets take out 1998. It doesn’t matter. What matters is all the models are now out of ranges predicted. It is simply not possible that the temps can be the same for 18 years with CO2 levels rising……unless the models, and theory are wrong.
      Even Michael Mann stated about five, or seven years ago, that if “we go to fifteen years we have to rethink the models.
      Your chart starts on the low after a thirty year pause. The pattern is now exactly as it has been for the last couple hundred years. This means we should have 15-20 more years of a pause, or even some cooling.
      One more….There is empirical evidence for CO2 warming, but not for the positive feedback loop that they theorize the co2 alone effect.
      The current temps seem to be about the co2 alone effect, which is 1/3 of predicted.

      1. Most of what you wrote is unintelligible gibberish, so it’s impossible to respond to that, but you did include a direct quotation which you claim came from Michael Mann. An internet search turns up nothing resembling this quote.

        1. ok….
          The pause may be short term so far
          Your chart shows a longer period of time, but does start at the end of a thirty year pause.
          The reason this current pause is important to note is that all the computer models do not allow this pause without the models to be in error.
          My earlier comment could have been written clearer, but to anyone familiar with this I assumed could figure it out.
          The quote from Mann was from memory a while back. I want to quote that again, and will find the source

  10. So, basically yet another blog posting claiming that everybody else is wrong. Posted on a blog that caters to ‘skeptics’ with the same POV…..

    Meanwhile, in the real world we can have productive discussions on how to move toward on goals to reduce the impacts:

    Climate Change 2014: What Do We Do Now? Bruce Melton, Truthout http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/28212-climate-change-2014-what-do-we-do-now

    Center for Research on Environmental Decisions
    Columbia University http://cred.columbia.edu/

    European Climate Foundation http://europeanclimate.org/

    Post Carbon Institute http://www.postcarbon.org/ http://www.resilience.org/

    Carbon Brief http://www.carbonbrief.org/

    Transition Network http://www.transitionnetwork.org/

  11. Could you walk us through a couple of points?

    We have a huge body of research, we have thousands of papers, scientists, researchers all pointing to

    “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased (see Figures SPM.1, SPM.2, SPM.3 and SPM.4).”

    “Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850 (see Figure SPM.1). In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983–2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years…”

    “Total radiative forcing is positive, and has led to an uptake of energy by the climate system.The largest contribution to total radiative forcing is caused by the increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 since 1750..”

    “Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident from the increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiative forcing, observed warming, and understanding of the climate system.”

    IPCC AR5 SPM

    We can read the C.V.s of those scientists, we can see who cites what, we can read how the WG1 reports from the first AR forward progressively builds stronger cases with accumulating data.

    And we can see two posters here – neither with full names, C.V.s, or any evidence of demonstrated expertise – proclaiming they know better than all those publicly available scientists, papers, reports.

    You’ve convinced yourself you are right and the other 97% of the science is wrong, and yet the only places you seem to ‘publish’ is on a blog that supports your opinion.

    So, why aren’t you publishing your findings? Your reading would be the preliminary work toward a meta-analysis of papers supporting whatever your alternative hypothesis is.

    And why limit your posting in comment threads on blogs that accept your POV? Why not be an advocate for your opinion and post your evidence on a wide range of blogs?

  12. Here we have some ocean, near the Kamchatka Peninsula, and off of Japan. The ARGO floats have told us that this area of the ocean is WARMING. I apologize for the low-res pics, in advance.

    http://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/documents/STM/2013-10/14_Global_averages.pdf

    NASA’s new satellite, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, has shown us images of carbon dioxide…

    https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/12/18/first-images-from-nasa-oco-2-satelite/
    Also, look to the URLs above, and look at the oceans around Australia and New Zealand…

    It appears as if the warming ocean is emitting carbon dioxide.

    1. The images are many years apart; the alignment of the warm ocean, from the ARGO floats, doesn’t exactly line up with the CO2 image, which is from this year…

  13. They call those who won’t step in line with the Global Warming hysteria “deniers”.
    WIth all the actual data proving there is NO warming taking place, who are really the deniers?
    THEY ARE REALLY THE DENIERS.

  14. NEWS FLASH the Earth’s weather has been changing since day one however Santorio Santorio, thought to be the inventor of the thermometer in 1612, changed everything, now people where able to say, How hot is it, instead of “Hey its hot’ or “Its a little chilly outside” Then fool like Al Gore came a long and said, “Hey! We have climate change and the worlds is going to get colder but its got to get warmer before it get colder’. And a whole bunch of fools said “HEY THAT IDIOT KNOWS WHAT HE’S SAYING BECAUSE HE WAS VP OF THE USA AND THEY DRANK THE COOL-AID.”

  15. when will people learn that greenhouse gases are necessary for our Earth’s functioning, and after all, CO2 created our atmosphere? They spew the same lies over and over. If global warming were real, we’d all be dead by now, according to the fear-inducive “statistics.” As was the case with Mccarthyism, the gases, much like communism, quasi-exist, but it doesn’t mean it’s dreadful as the politicians hypothesize. It’s another “issue” they use to garner support for their campaigns and usurp into power. Global warming is an overly-exaggerated myth!

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