Satellites: No global warming for 20 years.

Article: Satellites: Earth Is Nearly In Its 21st Year Without Global Warming

After September of this year, the Earth will be entering its 21st year without statistically significant warming trend, according to satellite-derived temperature data. 

Since September 1994, University of Alabama in Huntsville’s satellite temperature data has shown no statistically significant global warming trend. For over 20 years there’s been no warming trend apparent in the satellite records and will soon be entering into year 21 with no warming trend apparent in satellite data — which examines the lowest few miles of the Earth’s atmosphere. 

Satellite data from the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) group also shows a prolonged “hiatus” in global warming. After November of this year, RSS data will be in its 21st year without warming.  Ironically, the so-called “hiatus” in warming started when then vice President Al Gore and environmental groups touted RSS satellite data as evidence a slight warming trend since 1979. 

[snip] 

But what Michaels and others say is more problematic is the growing divergence between NOAA’s new temperature data [because of a massive "adjustment" up of data since the 1990's] versus satellite data and records from the UK Met Office. NOAA’s data shows significantly more warming than Met Office or satellite records.

Article: Carbon dioxide satellite mission returns first global maps

The title summarizes the article well.

The graphic is interesting, and rich in information that is puzzling.

[graphic]

Note that the data is from late fall in the northern hemisphere and late spring in the southern hemisphere. Plant use of CO2 is lower in the fall than in the spring. Previous research shows that CO2 decreases in the atmosphere of the southern hemisphere and increases in the northern hemisphere at this time. The graphic generally shows the opposite of what might be expected.

There is a broad band with a higher concentration of CO2 in the southern tropics. The authors attribute this to "biomass burning." The northern tropics show a lower concentration in their "winter" than the "summer" southern tropics. However, why there would be such a larger amount of biomass burning in the southern tropics as compared to the northern ones is not clear. The difference between southern and northern Africa is especially dramatic.

The southern tropics also show areas with high levels in the open ocean, well away from any land. I would not put much credence on the "biomass burning" guess. It strikes me as a "climatically correct" guess pulled out of someone's **s.

England, and Europe in general, has a very low level of CO2 in their atmosphere. Given their reliance on fossil fuels, this is surprising. Germany is increasing its use of coal, and eastern Europe has always been more reliant on coal than the western part. [Note: of the fossil fuels, coal gives off the highest amount of CO2 per unit of energy. It is considered the most "polluting" of the fossil fuels.]

Oddly, too, the Pennsylvania/Ohio part of the eastern US has a lower level of CO2 than would expected given its reliance on fossil fuels in general and coal in particular. On the other hand, the southern US has a relatively high level.

China has very high levels of CO2, as to be expected given its very high reliance on coal.

There is also a large "spot" in the northern Pacific Ocean near the Arctic that has a high level of CO2. Perhaps it is to be expected that cold water would generate more CO2 than not, but does not explain why the southern Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, near the Antarctic, have a low level of CO2 as that water is generally cool, as well.

Given the recent failures of multiple climate models, one wonders if actual data from satellite sensors will not cause of the overthrow of more models. The NASA satellites recording the actual temperatures of the earth are producing data that is at odds with data from other sources and with existing climate models.

What global warming hiatus?

Article: Matt Ridley in the WSJ: Whatever Happened to Global Warming?

The original article is behind a paywall. This link has the complete article.

In effect, this is all that’s left of the global-warming emergency the U.N. declared in its first report on the subject in 1990. The U.N. no longer claims that there will be dangerous or rapid climate change in the next two decades. 

Last September, between the second and final draft of its fifth assessment report, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change quietly downgraded the warming it expected in the 30 years following 1995, to about 0.5 degrees Celsius from 0.7 (or, in Fahrenheit, to about 0.9 degrees, from 1.3). 

Even that is likely to be too high. The climate-research establishment has finally admitted openly what skeptic scientists have been saying for nearly a decade: Global warming has stopped since shortly before this century began.

NASA satellite data from the last 35 years is showing about 1 degree F per century. "If this trend continues" is a logical fallacy. However, 0.9 degrees F per 30 years or 3.0 degrees F per century is way over the current trend.

First the climate-research establishment denied that a pause existed, noting that if there was a pause, it would invalidate their theories. [Ed., yes, they have been invalidated.] Now they say there is a pause (or “hiatus”), but that it doesn’t after all invalidate their theories [magical thinking?]. 

When the climate scientist and geologist Bob Carter of James Cook University in Australia wrote an article in 2006 saying that there had been no global warming since 1998 according to the most widely used measure of average global air temperatures, there was an outcry. A year later, when David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London made the same point, the environmentalist and journalist Mark Lynas said in the New Statesman that Mr. Whitehouse was “wrong, completely wrong,” and was “deliberately, or otherwise, misleading the public.” 

We know now that it was Mr. Lynas who was wrong. Two years before Mr. Whitehouse’s article, climate scientists were already admitting in emails among themselves that there had been no warming since the late 1990s. 

Part of what Matt Ridley is describing is a preference cascade. One lonely scientist spoke up (like in the "Emperor's New Clothes" fable) and within a short time, it was acceptable to acknowledge the hiatus was real.

Preference cascade 

As described by Glenn Reynolds in a classic 2002 essay [Patriotism and Preferences], a preference cascade occurs when people trapped inside a manufactured consensus suddenly realize that many other people share their doubts.  Preference falsification works by making doubters feel isolated and alone.  In a totalitarian society, the dissenter fears that if he speaks up, his will be a lone voice, easily squashed by the enforcers of the regime.  When dissenters realize they are not alone, and the true strength of their numbers becomes apparent, “invincible” regimes vanish with astonishing speed.

People will say the thing that causes the least conflict, even if they don't believe it. However, when enough people realize that everyone else (even fellow scientists) are skeptical, the belief system will crash quickly.

It has been roughly two decades since there was a trend in temperature significantly different from zero. The burst of warming that preceded the millennium lasted about 20 years and was preceded by 30 years of slight cooling after 1940.

Other global warming links. 

Article: McKitrick paper: no warming for 19 years

Title says it. Not for the math-faint-of-heart.

Article: Climate Models Show Remarkable Agreement with Recent Surface Warming

...If you throw in a lot of processes that seem to have suddenly become important in the last 20 years, but not before.

People desperate to find global warming, when it is not there, will conjure it out of cold air. "The heat is all there, really! It is just hiding. Watch me find it!"

Maybe I should not scoff, he might be right. However, this is getting close to magical thinking. Why didn't these processes work before the hiatus? If they did work, then there is still a hiatus.

Global warming has little to do with global warming

Article: Global Warming Has Little to Do With Global Warming

Archives: Joe Bastardi

For years, Joe Bastardi was the weatherman on my "news" radio station. He is also, very clearly, a global warming "skeptic."

Over the last year, he has published a series of articles on the global warming and its politics. See the "archives" link, above.

This is his last one, because he has said everything he can and because he believes that the definitive experiment to show who is right on the global warming controversy is underway: the NASA satellites that measure global temperatures.

He sides with those that hypothesize that most of global warming we have experienced is natural and due to 30 year cycles in the way heat is processed in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Both were in a  "warming" phase between 1978 and 2008, but with no additional warming after 1998 due to the fact that world temperatures had already adapted to the heat flow. The Pacific Ocean has been in a "cooling" phase since then and the Atlantic Ocean is about to enter it, as well.

With both oceans cooling, global temperatures should decrease.

Global warming models have failed to predict the current 16 year global warming hiatus. They predict temperatures should have been warming and will warm in future due to increasing CO2.

Two hypotheses. predicting opposite things. Bastardi's view is that one will be proven wrong in the next few years.

It is possible that they both be partly right. We could be in a hiatus because two major climate change factors are pulling in opposite directions.

It is also possible that they are both wrong, and the sun has much more influence on recent climate shifts than we can currently account for in our theories and models

The second part of the article gives a quick overview of the enormous amount of money that is buying global warming activism (with links). And I am including money to scientists that have to tie global warming/climate change into their research, even if the link is tenuous.

Economically, anything that is subsidized will increase.

Global warming - Three links.

The top two stories have some good research. However, they are either poorly written or deliberately deceptive on someone's part.  The third one is a fun read, but hyperbolic.

Article: Is the SUN driving climate change? Solar activity - 'and not just humans' - could be increasing global warming, study claims

I think that the general conclusion that the solar activity drives some climate change is obvious. The problem with this specific article is how badly it is written. For example, the following quote can be interpreted to say that ALL the climate change we have seen in the last century is driven solely by the sun, which is not what I think they found.

Dr Raimund Muscheler, lecturer in Quaternary Geology at Lund University and co-author of the study, told MailOnline that solar activity in the modern day was causing about 0.1 degrees of warming in the 11-year solar cycle.

'Bit it's quite debated how much it really contributed in the last 100 years, since solar activity increased a bit,' Dr Muscheler says.

'The long trend is debated, but most people don't think it's much more than 0.1 degrees.'

However, he warned that the sun was not the only factor in causing climate change.

"About 0.1 degrees of warming in the 11-year solar cycle." At nine cycles per century, that equals 0.9 degrees of warming per century, or almost all of the observed warming over the last century.

What I think that they mean is that 0.1 degree of the 1.0 degree of warming seen in the last century is due to increased solar activity.

'The study shows an unexpected link between solar activity and climate change,' Dr Muscheler said in a press release.

'It shows both that changes in solar activity are nothing new and that solar activity influences the climate, especially on a regional level.

"Unexpected?" I hope this is a misquote, because it would be ludicrous to say that solar activity does not have link to climate. Either that, or they are saying that the link that they did find was an unexpected link over and above the expected link. Again, poorly written.  

'The study also shows that the various solar processes need to be included in climate models in order to better predict future global and regional climate change.'

In other words, the existing models are over-simplified and this missing factor is one reason why they have failed to predict "global and regional climate change." So, yes, I agree.

Article: Why global warming is taking a break

The average temperature on Earth has barely risen over the past 16 years. ETH researchers have now found out why. And they believe that global warming is likely to continue again soon.

Global warming is currently taking a break: whereas global temperatures rose drastically into the late 1990s, the global average temperature has risen only slightly since 1998 – surprising, considering scientific climate models predicted considerable warming due to rising greenhouse gas emissions.

The models are based in hypotheses about how the atmosphere works, and, specifically, how the increasing levels of CO2 should increase global temperatures. The models have failed to correctly predict both the amounts of warming and how the atmosphere actually warms. These hypotheses have now been falsified, they are no longer valid, they are ex-hypotheses. [Insert Monty Pythonesque, dead parrot routine joke, here.] They need to be modified until they can reflect actual atmospheric conditions.

Two reasons are given for this failure.

#1 El Niño warmed the Earth

One of the important reasons is natural climate fluctuations, of which the weather phenomena El Niño and La Niña in the Pacific are the most important and well known. "1998 was a strong El Niño year, which is why it was so warm that year," says Knutti. In contrast, the counter-phenomenon La Niña has made the past few years cooler than they would otherwise have been.

So, no warming over the last 16 years. Last big warming event was the 1998 El Nino. Earth warms when there is an El Nino event. Therefore, I predict that no El Nino events have occurred since 1998, since these events cause warming. What? There have been El Nino events since 1998? Impossible!

Sorry, this is simply bad reasoning, or a poorly written article (see above). Maybe they are claiming that large La Nina events have countered small El Nino events, but that claim is not made, and I have not seen anyone make that claim.

#2 Longer solar cycles

According to the study, the second important reason for the warming hiatus is that solar irradiance has been weaker than predicted in the past few years. This is because the identified fluctuations in the intensity of solar irradiance are unusual at present: whereas the so-called sunspot cycles each lasted eleven years in the past, for unknown reasons the last period of weak solar irradiance lasted 13 years.

So, changes in solar activity responsible for changes in the climate? I have no issue with that conclusion.

"For unknown reasons." Yes, the global warming/climate change models have failed because they are over-simplified. Again, I agree.

Another reason is given for the hiatus:

Incomplete measured data

The discrepancy between the climate models and measured data over the past 16 years cannot solely be attributed to the fact that these models predict too much warming, says Knutti.

Why not? The models have predicted too much warming. That is why they failed. They were over-simplified. Fix them.

According to Knutti, measured data is likely to be too low, since the global average temperature is only estimated using values obtained from weather stations on the ground, and these do not exist everywhere on Earth. From satellite data, for example, scientists know that the Arctic region in particular has become warmer over the past years, but because there are no weather stations in that area, there are measurements that show strong upward fluctuations. As a result, the specified average temperature is too low.

Really? The same satellite data that they claim is showing increased warming in the polar regions is also showing less warming, overall. It is also showing less warming than the ground based weather station data shows. So global warming is not only lower than the models predict, but also lower than the weather station data is showing. So ALL of the actual data is wrong compared to what?

Last year, British and Canadian researchers proposed an alternative temperature curve with higher values, in which they incorporated estimated temperatures from satellite data for regions with no weather stations. If the model data is corrected downwards, as suggested by the ETH researchers, and the measurement data is corrected upwards, as suggested by the British and Canadian researchers, then the model and actual observations are very similar.

Ah, so you correct the best data there is, from the NASA satellites, by correcting it upwards, "then the model and 'actual observations' are very similar."

Of course.

Despite the warming hiatus, Knutti is convinced there is no reason to doubt either the existing calculations for the climate activity of greenhouse gases or the latest climate models. "Short-term climate fluctuations can easily be explained."

1. "No reason to doubt." The logical fallacy here is proof by assertion. It is coupled with an appeal to authority by the study's author. That is, he is appealing to his own authority. 

2. "Short-term climate fluctuations can easily be explained." Yes, but he failed to do that.

Article: Mann v Steyn: If This Trial Ever Goes Ahead Global Warming Is Toast

Compared to the other articles, this one is dessert; just plain fun to read.

Michael Mann, global warming scientist, is suing Mark Steyn and others for slander because of comments published in National Review Online.

I think the claim ("global warming is toast") is hyperbole. Michael Mann is refusing to be deposed. This refusal, alone, could force the judge to throw out his suit, or force the judge to give summary judgment. As the person who brought the suit, he has to answer questions under oath.

It is obvious that Michael Mann is hiding something. It is already known that the algorithms that produced the infamous "hockey stick" could generate a hockey stick diagram out of telephone numbers. (I exaggerate, but barely.) The hockey stick model of global warming during the Holocene has been repudiated by the most recent IPCC report, and other global warming scientists have distanced themselves from it.

Not noted here, but an "amici" brief has been filed in support of Mark Steyn by the ACLU and a large number of other organizations left, right, and center. They may not like Steyn's opinions, but they recognize that Mann's lawsuit, if successful, would create a huge chill in first amendment rights.

Article: America's Weather-Tracking Satellites Are in Trouble

[The] polar-orbiting satellites, a primary and its backup, are the ones in crisis. The primary satellite—a short-term pathfinder built to test emerging technologies—was never really intended for use. Its backup isn't much better: an aging satellite with failing sensors that passed its predicted life expectancy last year. We would send up a replacement now, but it's still being built. When it is ready, should it survive launch, it could take until as late as 2018 to transmit usable data.

"If we can send someone to the moon, why can't we...." That is a well-known cliche. But NASA and NOAA actually cannot any longer "send someone to the moon."

NASA sent someone to the moon because there was the money, the vision, and the people available to carry it out. We went from a proposal by President Kennedy to launching Gemini space craft (though not the moon mission itself) in less time that it is going to take to complete and send up an already planned weather satellite.

For most of the 1970s and '80s a partnership between NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ensured that we always had two fully operational birds flying, with a backup in the barn. It was, says James Gleason, senior NASA scientist, a golden age. That all changed in 1994, when President Clinton tried to cut costs by combining the NOAA and Department of Defense weather-satellite programs. The marriage was doomed from the start. Both organizations came with top-heavy bureaucracies and their own specific needs. Together they formed a dysfunctional agency defined by budget overruns, infighting, and passive– aggressive stalemates. In all the turmoil, work on any new satellites slowed to a crawl, and any surplus dried up. By the time President Obama separated the two organizations in 2010, NOAA had to scramble to pull together a new program. As a stopgap, it sent up the only option left, our current satellite—that demonstration model, with a life span of only three to five years.

Sigh. Good intentions, trying to cut costs by cutting bureaucracy and doubling-up on missions. It could have worked, if someone had gone through and pruned the new agency of excess personnel. When a business acquires a new company, they will often fire a number of employees. But that is hard to do in the government.