Saturday, March 30, 2013

The fever has broken - Over at Powerline, Steve Hayward notes a shift in tone over at the Economist because the 95% certainty of global warming...isn't.  (H/T Maggie's Farm.)

21 comments:

Flora Carbunze said...

Chortle, chortle:
Equally problematic for the theory, one place where the warmth might be hiding—the oceans—is not cooperating with the story line. Recent data show that ocean warming has noticeably slowed, too, as shown in Figure 2 here.

Uh, yeah... not so much:
2013 research:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50382/abstract

2012:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/index.html

2011:
http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/8/999/2011/osd-8-999-2011.pdf

But yeah, some of these all-time high ocean temperatures are only creeping up lately, instead of rocketing up. Ha, ha! High five!

I wonder how Power Line feels about our national debt or federal spending, both of which have also slowed to a creep no matter whose disputed data one uses. Especially when compared to numbers that are as much as five, or even eight (!) years old. Is spending no longer a nation-threatening crisis, demanding severe and immediate remedies? Are the "debtkateers" who persist in thinking the deficit is a growing problem alarmist buffoons, for whom it's "about over"?

Oh well, them's the breaks for fanatics. A well-timed "heh" will shut those losers up. No known science can beat 'heh."

Eric said...

Heh.


Why so many cherry-picked sources? Ain't nobody got time for that. Instead, just go here:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/

You can start with "Wny have rising temperatures been on a 20-year hiatus?"

Anonymous said...

The years of the reports look just as cherry-picked. 2011, 2012, 2013, come on. Oh how conVENient that they just so happen to be consecutive.

Finding a scientific report that "debunks" global warming doesn't just require cherry-picking, it requires cherry pit picking.

Eric said...

You know this is moving the goalposts.

And to use another metaphor, the global alarmists have been hoisted by their own petard. This was their model, presented with error bars that couldn't wait to wander (to the low side of course). They put all their chips on CO2 = rising temperatures and it just didn't happen.

Oh, look at the ocean now? Sure, OK.

Alarmist Morissette said...

15 years, 15 years, last 15 15 15 years. Always choosing a baseline of 1998, the anomalous year that was tilted by the strongest El Nino ever recorded, why, that's not "cherrypicking" at all. That's just smart, unskewed science.

What's that? Climate trends are supposed to be assessed in increments of no less than 30 years? 15 + 15 = 30, so what's the problem?

The fact that these "wandering" temperatures that "may soon fall" are at an all-time high and are getting higher = "ha ha, so-called experts had said it was possible temperatures might have gone even higher than that, so warming is a fraud, Q.E.D.."

Temperatures continue to rise, but at the lower end of the predicted spectrum of rate increase = "hoist by one's own petard."

"Moving the goalposts" = "Global context, global shmontext, if I stop talking about this specific hand-selected premise, I lose." After all, whoever measured ocean temperature before? Any ocean number from before the "alarmists" lost the debate forever 5 minutes ago must be made up.

Don't like oceans, eh? On the surface of good old terra firma, 2012 was the warmest year on record (the data goes back to 1895).

In 2012, the ratio of daily record highs to daily record lows (34,007 to 6,663) was a 5:1 ratio, also greater than any in the United States' recorded history.

In 2012, 362 all-time record high temperatures were set in the United States, while 0 all-time low temperatures were set. This 362:0 ratio is also unprecedented. But it might have been over 400, which would have been more, so suck it, science. It's all good.

Eric said...

Geez, there's no talking to you global cooling denialists. Don't you know the science is settled?

And who hand-selected this hand-picked criteria for global warming? Only all these settled scientists from John Hansen to Al Gore. One-quarter of all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been deposited over the past decade, yet temperatures haven't budged a bit. Now: Emily Litella.

But, hey, I'm willing to play along. If I say that global warming is real, can I have an Academy Award and a Nobel Prize?

Anonymous said...

One-quarter of all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been deposited over the past decade, yet temperatures haven't budged a bit.

Another shrewd call. 2000-2009 was the United State's warmest temperature on record. 2012 was hotter than that, a full degree higher than any of the previous 117 individual years, including that same 2000-2009.

Globally, each of the last 12 years rank among the 14 warmest ever recorded. I wonder what numbers that did "budge" would look like?

But there was a cool breeze yesterday, so temperatures must be dropping. Keep unskewing that science!

Eric said...

Rising carbon dioxide levels will lead to higher temperatures! *

* Some averaging may occur.

Anonymous said...

Conservative thinking on the field of climate science:

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

Eric said...

Old and busted: The science is settled!

New and shiny: Who are you going to believe: my models or your lying eyes?

Anonymous said...

Geez, there's no talking to you global cooling denialists. Don't you know the science is settled?

Har, har! How can we believe scientists, when they were so wrong so recently?

How unfortunate that, despite a few scare books or "ice age?" articles, the legitimate peer-reviewed papers of the 1970s that predicted change in the climate ran 6-to-1 in favor of global warming.

The National Academy of Sciences issued a less confident report in 1975 stating that no prediction could be made on climate change until a greater qualitative understanding was reached. No global cooling blunder for them, either.

Thirty years pass (there's that number again). The same National Academy of Sciences has a new current consensus position (and they were joined by the Academies of Science from Russia, Germany, China, India, the UK, Italy, France, Brazil, Japan and Canada):
"There is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring... It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities... The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action."

But that old, lame "ha ha, the eggheads said global cooling!!!" line is too dear to abandon. Keep it handy with "Al Gore said he invented the internet," and "George Bush was baffled by supermarket scanners."

Reject decades of hard data, too. Skepticism born of desire worked so well for you last year with Nate Silver.

Eric said...

Well we all have our data blind spots from "this Solyndra looks like a good investment" to Obamacare will save us money.

As if I have to belabor this point, this model was a assembled from various models by these self-same scientists and their data couldn't wait to part ways.

But, hey, everybody agrees so we should listen. Because only the global warming believers are pure in heart while everybody else is a tool of Exxon and the Koch brothers. There's no reason to gin up a climate crisis aside from Nobel Prizes, fat speaking fees, and champagne on Lear Jets.

Keep unskewing that science! said...

As if I have to belabor this point, this model was a assembled from various models by these self-same scientists and their data couldn't wait to part ways.

Yeaahhh, a funny thing happened on the way to that model. Remember Ed Hawkins’ chart from your original Powerline link? The chart that shows climate alarmism in ruined tatters because, according to Powerline’s unbiased analysis, temperatures are in the process of "falling" towards the “low end” of the predicted higher range, and “may soon” fall below it?

Powerline wasn’t the first to use Hawkins’ chart to make the case against global warming. The Daily Mail published the same Ed Hawkins chart two weeks earlier as evidence that global warming proponents have been wrong all along.

But at least one prominent scientist disagreed with the Daily Mail, and presumably also with Powerline. His name is Ed Hawkins. In March, he wrote “[The article [] suggests that this figure proves that the forecasts are wrong. This is incorrect.
...[It] is certainly wrong to suggest that the figure shows a future cooling!”

Almost a year ago, Ed Hawkins wrote, “Climate simulators show a range of internal variability behaviours, and a decade with no global warming (or even a cooling) is not implausible. Various analyses indicate that around 5% of decades should exhibit a cooling trend globally, perhaps because the warming is in the deeper ocean. In fact, we might have expected a cooling decade sometime in the next few decades anyway... Global temperatures are still increasing... we would expect the trend to reemerge sooner rather than later.”

Oh, that tricky, tricky Ed Hawkins - sneakily moving the goalposts to consider ocean warming, before the football game had even started! (Doubtlessly while gargling champagne on his Lear jet.) Tsk, tsk. It’s getting so you can’t even trust the dude whose data you’re misrepresenting anymore!

Eric said...

Yeah, Ed Hawkins should stick with his original claims and ignore this new information. Scientists changing their positions based on data? What is this world coming to?

Also, almost nobody claims there is not global warming. Rather, cooler heads (yuk yuk) note that the change is minor, natural, and within historical norms. On this I'm 95% certain.

Keep unskewing that science! said...

Yeah, Ed Hawkins should stick with his original claims and ignore this new information.

It has to suck when your chosen hammer refuses to hit your nail. It's a bummer that the man who made the chart says no, you're wrong about his chart.

Having been contradicted in this way, a thinking person could either authentically consider what the data actually says, and weigh the overwhelming worldwide scientific consensus against "natural, normal warming" - of which the decidedly un-militant, non-alarmist Ed Hawkins is just a part.

Or he could dig deeper, and make up an imaginary "Ed Hawkins" who "changes his claims" and "ignores new information." (Despite his cited chart being nothing BUT a compilation of new information, and created to quantify a fresh scenario.)

It's so sad to watch the sincere two-week admiration of you guys for Ed Hawkins and his work fall apart. Not like this. Not over a dispute as simple as "he said/he didn't say what I badly wanted him to have said so it doesn't matter anymore what he said."

Maybe the leftwing champagne manufacturers "got to him." Anyway, who needs some jerk who thinks he knows his own work better than you do? You'll be much happier with Imaginary Ed.

Eric said...

Sign me up for a job as a climate scientist. Adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will raise the temperature, except when it doesn't, and global warming may be interrupted by decades of cooling. Because the heat is hiding down in the oceans, even though they're not showing a rise either. Splunge!

You're quite right, I can't contradict a "scientist" who already takes contradictory positions. I expect we'll see a lot of new caveats and hedging over the next decade now that a whole boatload of 30-year old predictions are reaching their hilarious ends.

“Nevertheless, I’m still right” = the blogger’s motto said...

When someone takes contradictory positions, their credibility flies out the window. Too true. Example: "Ta da, I was right, global warming IS a hoax, and this climate expert's chart finally proves it!" + "The climate expert says I'm completely wrong about his chart? Well, fuck that phony 'scientist'! He stinks now!"

That Non-Imaginary Hawkins hasn't actually taken contradictory positions makes your response all the funnier... and also, sadder... wait, ooooh, now you've got ME doing it!

Eric said...

"When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."

Science!

Anonymous said...

"`If there's no meaning in it,' said the King,`that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any.' "

Eric said...

James Hansen, 2009: "Coal is warming the planet!"

James Hansen, 2013: "Coal is cooling the planet."

Climate scientists: always right (depending on time of claim).

http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/344275/james-hansen-maybe-coal-emissions-are-cooling-planet-greg-pollowitz

Oh no, the weather of the Earth isn't uniformly "settled" said...

Climate scientists continue analyzing data as it comes, and adjust their assessments if and when it changes. Climate change deniers only accept data if it’s compatible with their permanent viewpoint, which is never adjusted or questioned.

Stupid scientists.