Global Warming On Hold. Again.

I have never thought of myself as much of a global warming skeptic (not that there's anything wrong with that!). I have over several years of following the issue, mostly accepted the following propositions:

1. The world has been in a long term warming trend; and
2. Human activities are contributing to that warming.

Of course the devil is in the qualifications: whether the trend continues, and how much effect we have. I still hold to number one, but number two has become rather less certain as more research comes online. Weather is the textbook case of a chaotic system, and that means that precise determinations are impossible.

I have also believed in these propositions:

1. We don't know whether further warming will be good or bad on the whole.
2. We just aren't going to do anything significant to arrest the human activities that are said to be driving global warming.
3. The only practical policies are those that are directed toward dealing with climate change, whatever it may be.

Well, number one is addressed in a recent piece in The New Scientist:

Forecasts of climate change are about to go seriously out of kilter. One of the world's top climate modellers said Thursday we could be about to enter one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.

Now in fact, standard readings of global climate change has been flat or cooling for over a decade. But never mind that. Here is someone who knows his stuff and expects cooling for the next two decades. Now two decades of cooling is a blip on the screen in the long term, but this contradicts everything that we have been told to expect. Did any of the climate projection models project it?

"I am not one of the sceptics," insisted Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University, Germany. "However, we have to ask the nasty questions ourselves or other people will do it."

… Latif predicted that in the next few years a natural cooling trend would dominate over warming caused by humans. The cooling would be down to cyclical changes to ocean currents and temperatures in the North Atlantic, a feature known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).

Breaking with climate-change orthodoxy, he said NAO cycles were probably responsible for some of the strong global warming seen in the past three decades. "But how much? The jury is still out," he told the conference. The NAO is now moving into a colder phase.

I like those bits about "nasty questions" and "climate-change orthodoxy." In case you are wondering, nasty questions are precisely those that challenge an orthodoxy.

In fact, this undermines the case for anthropogenic global warming over recent decades, which is pretty much the entire case for AGW. And then there is this:

Another favourite climate nostrum was upturned when [Vicky] Pope [from the UK Met Office] warned that the dramatic Arctic ice loss in recent summers was partly a product of natural cycles rather than global warming. Preliminary reports suggest there has been much less melting this year than in 2007 or 2008.

In candid mood, climate scientists avoided blaming nature for their faltering predictions, however. "Model biases are also still a serious problem. We have a long way to go to get them right. They are hurting our forecasts," said Tim Stockdale of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading, UK.

Remember all those frightening stories about ice sheets melting and San Francisco drowning and how it was all our fault? Well, apparently they aren't, and probably it isn't.

And you can't help but love that bit about model biases. The climate change legislation in Europe and Cap and Trade in Congress are based entirely on climate change models. There is no reason any sane person should have such confidence in those models.

The world is unusually warm right now. That is a very good thing. Most of the history of this ball of dirt has been a rather nastier story. We are overdue for an ice age. I will worry about that after the health care bills go down.

There are sensible reasons to be concerned about the effect of human activity on the global climate. The Al Gore Global Warming Orthodoxy has nothing to do with that.

Comments

[Joe]

Vicky Pope also said "In many ways we know more about what will happen in the 2050s than next year".

Hmm.....

[Steve L]

It seems to me most scientists would generally agree with this article.
The scientific momentum seems to be towards natural climate change overwhelming man-made.
Any certainty about the need for drastic Gov't action comes only from a certain political leaning?

[A.I.]

Cherry-picking a few bits of data and some quotes does not a scientific consensus make. The jury isn't still out on climate change and its causes, it's in. The verdict is that man's activities contribute greatly to climate change and steps must be taken to reverse this. It's that simple.

[cbrtxus]

I started downloading and graphing climate data several years back. I would encourage everyone who can, to do that for themselves. It is an eye opener.
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The warming trend that seems to have ended now started around 1910 and ended around 2004. The end date depends upon how the data is smoothed. It has been flat for longer than that.
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There were actually two warm periods during that 90+ year warming trend. The first was from around 1910 until around 1942. It occurred during a period when the increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) was less than a third of what it was during the second warm period.
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Most scientists believe that the first warming was mostly natural. And natural forces were in a warming phase during the first warm period--it should have been warming. It was cooler from around 1944 until around 1980 even though CO2 was increasing. Actually it started warming again in the mid 1970's. It was around 1980 that the temperatures got back up to where they had been around 1944.
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The same natural cycles that were in a warming phase during the first warm period, were in an even stronger warming phase during the second warm period. The first and second warm period had approximately the same rate and magnitude of warming.
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How could CO2 be responsible for most [I have heard a claim of 70%] of the second warm period and those same natural forces when even stronger, be responsible for only 30% of the second warming as claimed?
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CO2 is bound to be a factor in global temperatures. But it must be a minor factor unless we are to believe that natural forces don't warm as much as they used to. And at the same time believe that natural forces that don't dominate when in a warm phase can dominate and cause cooling when they are in a cooling phase.

[Bobiscold]

Its the Sun Stupid!!! Unfortunately, there is a major flaw in pointing to the sun to explain climate change. The same flaw as exists with water vapor, ocean currents and all the other factors in skeptical climate science; you can't tax them, It'll never catch on!
Sone commentors have mentioned the preponderance of scientific opinion. There is no such thing nor is there consensus in science. It must be a proven scientific fact, a theory or a hypothesis to be tested. We don’t vote; we do reproducible experiments and research. Science is not, “let's all take a vote on the speed of light and see what number we get.” Science is dictated by nature's rules. The proponents of global warming base everything on their models, which when given 1960 data cannot predict today’s temperatures. They have created a phony money machine.
I predict that within a year or two at most the whole AGW religion will be totally discredited and many politicians and quite a few scientists who were so easily duped into abandoning healthy skepticism will be desperately seeking some kind of face-saving formula that will permit them to retain their jobs. So sad that in the meantime billions of dollars that could have been used to help the impoverished of this world will be wasted attempting the impossible task of "curing" a non-existent problem.

[Earl_E]

Global warming is not on hold, again. Your title isn't even worth discussing.

The Earth has not been cooling or even flatening out in temps. Oceanographers claim the ocean is the warmest this year since they began record keeping. Guess what, the ocean is 70% of the Earth's surface area.

Man not only adds to global warming, they also add to global cooling. Warming and cooling results from many man-made activities.

Jets create con-trails that block as much as 15% of the sunlight from hitting the ground.
Changes in orbit put the polar summer farther from the sun each year, so ice should be accumulating as it has been for several thousand years.
Why did it stop in the 20th century and start melting. Why are the last 3 years the 3 largest summer ice meltoffs in our short history?
There are many questions unanswered, but the Great White sharks spotted and tagged in the North Atlantic are clear evidence that Northern waters are too warm, and the ice melt may have already passed a tipping point.

Icemelt will slow the gulf current, this will force a re-freezing of the north eventually, but it may get much warmer before that happens.
El Nino is back, so I expect a warmer and dryer winter, but the west coast should get much needed rain but suffer the mudslides from all the burned forest areas. This happens regardless of what man does and shouldn't even be part of the discussion.
Ocean acidification in Alaska will collapse the fish markets forever, so reducing our CO2 and nitrous oxide pollution from fertilizer use is criical to the survival of the food chain.
It doesn't get more serious than that.
If you are still sitting on the fence it's because you are afraid to admit you have any impact on anything, that is the new American Thinker mentality.
Argue about Obama talking to schools while laying waste to the mideast to steal their oil.

[cbrtxus]

Bobiscold, fear not. The next "crisis" is warmed up and ready to go. Some of the same global warming crisis folks are claiming that between 1751 and 1994, the pH of the oceans are estimated to have decreased by 0.075.

I was having a yahoo group debate with a scientist (not climate scientist) about that a while back. My comment was that I didn't know that they were able to measure pH to three decimal places in 1751. Of course, I knew that the estimate was based on modeling. It was just speculation presented as something more. His response? He attacked me personally. Of course.

[Earl_E]

Ocean acidification is rapidly rising at the poles due to the way cold water absorbs differently from warm water.

So a quick rise in polar water temps along with a rise in polar acidity can start a collapse from the top and bottom of the world which could carry itself to the equator over time.

But since we are not sure, lets start massive CO2 pumps to find out. Same logic applies to driving drunk. Don't drive drunk, but if you do, drive really fast. That way you spend less time on the road and will reduce your chances of getting caught.

[Steve L]

Actually, the Oceans are in fact Alkaline! a little extra Co2, through various processes, actually neutralizes the Ocean ph, making it less bleach-like.

I understand the intuitive/romantic appeal of anything we evil humans do being bad for the MOther Earth, but the actual science doesn't always agree.

Most of nature would not complain about a little extra warmth, precipitation, or Co2- quite the opposite!

[Darren]

'Oceanographers claim the ocean is the warmest this year since they began record keeping'

You mean the study that removed the 'faulty' satellite data that they said had previously been showing a 'cooling bias'? - that study??

You really have to look at the science itself, not just what some political entity claims is science. The satellite data is by far the most reliable we have- it shows no unnatural warming trend whatsoever. You can look up the raw data yourself, you don't have to trust anyone's political 'interpretation' Isn't that the whole point of science?

[cbrtxus]

Steve, you are correct. The ocean water is alkaline. I don't think that ocean water is a bleach in the sense that it is an oxidizer or a reducer however.
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It would be virtually impossible to "acidify" the oceans as some folks seem to claim. At most, all that could happen would be to make it slightly less alkaline. Actually oceans water acts as a buffering system. At a particular temperature, it tends to have a particular pH and resists a change of pH. Warming it tends to lower the pH. Cooling it tends to raise the pH.

[Earl_E]

I suppose you guys are right. Why would I expect Alaskan fishermen to be honest about their fishing haul being 85% gone. All they want to do is sit in port and collect lobbyist money from the global warmers so they don't have to work.

And all that coral bleaching is probably done by greenpeace to try and swindle stupid people like me.

I feel so much better since you both are so sure of the science, not politics, you have discovered.

I'll bet those dead zones are simply fiction as well as 3 mile Island, Chernobl, Hiroshima, and man walking on the moon.

Who would have thought those evil scientists would partner with the democrats just for research money. It's a wonder we have any technology that works at all.

[cbrtxus]

Earl, if you look that HadCRUT, GISS, UAH, and the RSS data, they all show recent cooling. They vary somewhat about when it started. Many of the AGW crisis supporters admit to the cooling and explain that it is just a natural oscillation. And I agree. NASA is predicting that the next two solar cycles (#24 & #25) will be weak. That's 22 years approximately of what will probably be a cooling trend. There will still be El Nino years when there will be a warm spike. But as long as the sun remains inactive, we are likely to have cooling. Some scientists are saying that the sun has not behaved this way in over 100 years. We can just hope that we are not headed into something like the Little Ice Age. There is no way to know at this point.
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The "warmest" ocean claim is disputed. And do remember that the satellite record only started in the late 1970's as best I recall. The only records that we have of the previous Arctic warm period in the 1920's and 30's was from ships at sea so there would be no good way to compare.
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Actually 2007 had the greatest Arctic Sea Ice melt. 2008 had less melt than 2007. We will know in a few weeks, but it appears so far that 2009 will have less melt than 2008. It is looking like it will be similar to 2005 so far.
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The minimum each year occurs around the end of September. The Arctic Sea Ice Extent is more influenced by wind and ocean currents than by temperature. Wind can literally blow Arctic ice away from the pole and into warmer water. Many scientists belief that is what happened in 2007.
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The Arctic ice hasn't been accumulating for several thousand years. I'm familiar with that study. You should not ever assume that a hypothesis is a fact. The Arctic seems to cycle. There was a warm period around the 1920's and 1930's. There was another warm period during the Middle Ages which is when there were successful settlements in Greenland. Then there was the Little Ice Age that some say ended around 1850. It ended (fortunately) because it started to warm when solar activity started to increase. Probably it warmed because solar activity started to increase. The last warm period started around 1910.
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You mentioned a "tipping point." You should know that the tipping point business is based on the assumption that there are positive feedbacks. There is no evidence that confirms that such feedbacks even exist.
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Earl, a lot of us refer to the crisis articles and studies that you seem to have really taken to heart as "polar bear stories." You should remember that the climate issue has been politicized. You cannot trust what people tell you. You cannot trust talking points--either side. That's why I started downloading the raw data and plotting it myself. If you are unable to do that, your next best bet is to explore both sides. Often you will find that the truth is somewhere between.

[Steve L]

Earl-

Your sarcasm is a case in point of the emotional nature of the debate.

You are probably a perfectly intelligent person who is genuinely concerned for the well being of the planet, I don't think you're stupid, but as cbrtxus notes, you are taking to heart certain unscientific media stories that are meant to make you angry and fearful, that's their job.

The hundreds of billions of dollars that the Gov't wants transferred from the private to the public sector on the other hand is no conspiracy theory, it's quite real. and it's only possible if Co2 is 'officially' blamed for some harm- and the public accepts it. None of the actual causes of natural climate variation (sun, ocean currents, milanankovic cycles etc) are taxable- and hence worthless.

It's the government's job in a sense to try to convince us we need to give them more money, just the same as a private corp. not wrong, just business, I'd like more money for my job too. But if you're buying- you have to be skeptical of the sales pitch! I just want some proof before I buy!

[KB]

Wow! Thanks for the comments, one and all. I can't help but noticing that whenever anything (the oceans, the arctic, Al Gore's forehead) gets warmer, that's proof positive of anthropogenic global warming. Whenever anything gets cooler, that's usually proof of global warming as well. Except when it isn't, and then it's a blip or an anomaly.

Earl: Thanks for the feedback. But you might note that this line, "Argue about Obama talking to schools while laying waste to the mideast to steal their oil" doesn't really help your case.