“100% of Scientists Agree Global Warming has Stopped, Slowed or Paused!”

Posted by Tina

Scientists have acknowledged a cooling trend with many believing that cooling has been occurring for 17-18 years. This (debated) period of cooling is referred to as a “hiatus,” “pause,” or “slowdown.”

Using the same methodology John Cook used to arrive at the “97% of scientists” consensus opinion, Paul C. Knappenberger and Patrick J. Michaels, Center for the Study of Science – Cato Institute, determined to answer the question, “Is it the ‘consensus of scientists’ that this ‘hiatus’ is real, or is it just a manifestation of the ‘skeptical’ global warming naysayers?”

Guess what? They found they could say with a straight face, that “100% of scientists” acknowledged “in some way” that a “hiatus, pause, or slowdown in global warming was occurring.”

It should be noted that these men of integrity also acknowledge the methodology used by Cook is “debatable.”

Check out the full article at WUWT.

Side note: President Obama just pledged $3 billion to fight global warming.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

28 Responses to “100% of Scientists Agree Global Warming has Stopped, Slowed or Paused!”

  1. Chris says:

    Reminds me of the times you linked to an article claiming that a study found only 36% of climate scientists believed in global warming, when in fact the study did not involve any climate scientists.

    You never admitted the error.

    http://www.norcalblogs.com/postscripts/2014/06/21/evidence-warming-records-manipulated/

    http://www.norcalblogs.com/postscripts/2013/09/29/global-warming-activism-historians-write/

    http://www.norcalblogs.com/postscripts/2013/08/18/ofa-targets-climate-denier-republicans-fails-miserably/

  2. Libby says:

    Oh, geez, Tina, would you not waste our time. WUWT is not a reputable source. You go find one … then we’ll talk.

  3. Tina says:

    And that reminds me of all the times you have insisted that the global warming fake science and deceitful practices used by the phonies you follow and favor are right.

    It reminds me of all the times you, with your literature degree, have dismissed PHD scientists, as if you know better.

    What a pill!

    AND, you apparently completely miss the fantastic joke, the truth, in this article. It does not bother you in the least that the methodology used to get that 97% figure you tout so arrogantly is questionable at best and most likely deceitfully intended and used.

    Those interested in more information might consider this Forbes article. An excerpt:

    …temperatures dropped steadily from the late 1940s to the late 1970s. The popular press was even talking about a coming ice age. Ice ages have cyclically occurred roughly every 10,000 years, with a new one actually due around now.

    In the late 1970s, the natural cycles turned warm and temperatures rose until the late 1990s, a trend that political and economic interests have tried to milk mercilessly to their advantage. The incorruptible satellite measured global atmospheric temperatures show less warming during this period than the heavily manipulated land surface temperatures.

    In 2000, the UN’s IPCC predicted that global temperatures would rise by 1 degree Celsius by 2010. Was that based on climate science, or political science to scare the public into accepting costly anti-industrial regulations and taxes?

    Don Easterbrook, Professor Emeritus of Geology at Western Washington University, knew the answer. He publicly predicted in 2000 that global temperatures would decline by 2010. He made that prediction because he knew the PDO had turned cold in 1999, something the political scientists at the UN’s IPCC did not know or did not think significant. …Don Easterbrook. Easterbrook also spoke at the Heartland conference, with a presentation entitled “Are Forecasts of a 20-Year Cooling Trend Credible?” Watch that online and you will see how scientists are supposed to talk: cool, rational, logical analysis of the data, and full explanation of it. All I ever see from the global warming alarmists, by contrast, is political public relations, personal attacks, ad hominem arguments, and name calling, combined with admissions that they can’t defend their views in public debate.

    Easterbrook shows that by 2010 the 2000 prediction of the IPCC was wrong by well over a degree, and the gap was widening. That’s a big miss for a forecast just 10 years away, when the same folks expect us to take seriously their predictions for 100 years in the future. Howard Hayden, Professor of Physics Emeritus at the University of Connecticut showed in his presentation at the conference that based on the historical record a doubling of CO2 could be expected to produce a 2 degree C temperature increase. Such a doubling would take most of this century, and the temperature impact of increased concentrations of CO2 declines logarithmically. You can see Hayden’s presentation online as well.

    Be sure to visit ICCC – 7, the International Climate Change Conference sponsored by the Heartland Institute which will lead you to the various presentations.

  4. Pie Guevara says:

    The twin stooges check in. Their fear is palpable.

  5. Pie Guevara says:

    On an unrelated side note, Obama earns an upside down Pinocchio from one of the head stooge’s go-to publications. No Gruber here.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/11/18/obamas-flip-flop-on-using-executive-action-on-illegal-immigration/

  6. Chris says:

    The Heartland Institute is not a reliable source either.

    I did not read the WUWT article so I do not know if they replicated Cook’s methodology accurately. I do not see the need to until you address your previous misrepresentations of science. You can start with the study I mentioned earlier or your recent link to Climate Depot which misrepresented the views of a scientist from the Pulkovo Observatory to claim he said that reduced solar activity would likely cause global cooling, when in fact he was saying the opposite–that the impact of solar cycles was negligible.

    Until you address your own misrepresentations, your critiques of widely accepted science are meritless.

  7. Chris says:

    The only fear I have is that our world will not realize the severity of this problem until it is too late to fix. I fear that we will not listen to the well-founded concerns of NASA, NOAA, and the national scientific bodies of every industrialized country in the world simply because some oil-funded interests don’t want to change any of their behaviors.

  8. Peggy says:

    Off topic.

    Obama earns an “Upside-Down Pinocchio” on immigration from WP fact checker.

    An Upside-Down Pinocchio:
    “A statement that represents a clear but unacknowledged “flip-flop” from a previously-held position.”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/11/18/obamas-flip-flop-on-using-executive-action-on-illegal-immigration/

  9. More Common Sense says:

    Please disregard the previous post. It was sent by mistake.
    There are two questions here. First, is there warming? Second, is it caused by man? There was evidence of warming prior to 18 years ago and it lead to a theory that CO2 was the cause. Since then the warming has abated. Some people like to say it is a pause but we will not know if it is a pause or a stop until such time that it starts again, if that even happens.
    As I stated, the idea that this is all caused by CO2 is just a theory. Many scientists have attempted to explain how CO2 could possibly be the cause but to date there is no proof at all that CO2 plays a factor. In fact, the stop (or pause) in the warming tends to indicate CO2 is not involved because CO2 levels have continued to rise as the warming stopped. It IS possible that CO2 is involved but in a much more complicated way with a host of other factors.
    We all know weather is very difficult to predict because of the complexity of systems that create weather. What meteorologists do today is predict based on weather that is occurring else ware. I can stand on a highway overpass and predict a blue car is going to pass under the overpass in 1 minute if I know that a blue car has passed under another overpass one mile down the road. That is, by no means, predicting when blue cars will pass a particular overpass. That is essentially what meteorologists are doing. They are predicting based on information available about weather patterns in areas that are upstream in the jet stream. Take away that information and the reliability of the predictions falls off sharply.
    Climate is far more complicated of a system than weather. I believe that scientists are just fooling themselves if they think they can predict climate change and explain why it is happening. They might be able to do so in the future but to assume a theory is correct without proof is not science, it is self deception.
    Current theories about CO2 have not been proven and climate has not followed the climate models created using these theories. I can state that drinking water is the root cause of cancer because all people that have had cancer drank water. I believe the current CO2 theories are a more sophisticated than my example theory about cancer but without proof a theory is just speculation and may be as far off as the water cancer relationship theory.
    Chris mentioned that he is concerned that if we wait that we might wait until it is too late. This is a very dangerous perspective. People influence the masses and get them to follow their agendas by playing to their fears using such statements. Actions to regulate CO2 may have a crippling effect on our economy and push many more people into poverty. How do we justify this when there is no proof. Worse yet, there have been some scientists that have come up with some very scary ideas for reversing any warming. One such idea is to launch reflective particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight, thus reducing sunlight that reaches earth thereby reducing the warming effect of sunlight. Can you imagine the disaster this would cause if there was no true warming?
    Let’s not outlaw drinking water because there is a possibility it might cause cancer and to do nothing could lead to disaster. Let’s act on facts, not fears.

  10. Libby says:

    “The only fear I have is that ….”

    But isn’t it so cute, how they get all hung up on temperature fluctuations … like that’s what we’re talking about?

    Tina, when we have, via our inordinate CO2 production, acidified the ocean to the point it becomes unable to support sea life of the edible variety … we’ll be the next to go. And good riddance … such a stupid species.

  11. Chris says:

    More Common Sense, the tone of your comment is sober and sensible, but I think you have the particulars all wrong.

    “There was evidence of warming prior to 18 years ago and it lead to a theory that CO2 was the cause. Since then the warming has abated.”

    This is not entirely true. Yes, the temperature of the past 17 years has been relatively flat. But it has been flat at record highs. Fifteen of the past sixteen years have been among the hottest years on record.

    http://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/statements/2013/aug/25/steve-goreham/global-warming-skeptic-says-global-surface-tempera/

    More here:

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/02/05/global-warming-has-stopped-how-to-fool-people-using-cherry-picked-climate-data/

    “As I stated, the idea that this is all caused by CO2 is just a theory. Many scientists have attempted to explain how CO2 could possibly be the cause but to date there is no proof at all that CO2 plays a factor.”

    “Proof” is a very high standard when applied to science; almost no theory satisfies it. By the same logic, not only has evolution not been proven–neither has gravity. And yet both gravity and evolution are viewed by most working scientists as assumptions fundamental to our current understanding of science.

    So while there may be no proof that CO2 is causing global warming, there is plenty of evidence. The nature of CO2 as a greenhouse gas, and the effect that greenhouse gases have on the environment, have been well documented:

    http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/schmidt_05/

  12. Tina says:

    “Misrepresentations of science”…”not a reputable source”…you two are such arrogant jerks!

    Its a da*n shame that progressive opportunistic money grubbers have lied about and used this issue for their own political and self-serving purposes because they have given real scientist a big fat black eye and confused and frightened the public.

    Talk about disreputable! The party you two favor and support has been taken over by radicals that have scare mongered and manipulated in order to effect tax law and create power over the people in terms of their energy and fuel costs, the vehicles they drive…even the types of light bulbs they are “allowed” to buy. In cahoots with the UN the ultimate goal is one world government under their elitist leadership, global warming (climate change) is just a vehicle.

    You two don’t have a leg to stand on.

    As to the oceans if this is a real problem, instead of another trumped up problem, get the hell out of the way and let the scientist and the innovators work on solutions that work.

    If its just another IPCC hoax, and there are indications that it is, then fuggetaboudit!

    The celebrated and award winning WUWT from 2009 quotes from the “discredited” BBC debunked:

    “The world’s marine ecosystems risk being severely damaged by ocean acidification unless there are dramatic cuts in CO2 emissions, warn scientists,” – BBC

    This sounds very alarming, so being diligent researchers we should of course check the facts. The ocean currently has a pH of 8.1, which is alkaline not acid. In order to become acid, it would have to drop below 7.0. According to Wikipedia “Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.179 to 8.104.” At that rate, it will take another 3,500 years for the ocean to become even slightly acid. One also has to wonder how they measured the pH of the ocean to 4 decimal places in 1751, since the idea of pH wasn’t introduced until 1909.

    The BBC article then asserts:

    The researchers warn that ocean acidification, which they refer to as “the other CO2 problem”, could make most regions of the ocean inhospitable to coral reefs by 2050, if atmospheric CO2 levels continue to increase.

    This does indeed sound alarming, until you consider that corals became common in the oceans during the Ordovician Era – nearly 500 million years ago – when atmospheric CO2 levels were about 10X greater than they are today. (One might also note in the graph below that there was an ice age during the late Ordovician and early Silurian with CO2 levels 10X higher than current levels, and the correlation between CO2 and temperature is essentially nil throughout the Phanerozoic.)

    More about the scam that’s been pushed for some time now by hysterical glowarming radicals. Also from 2009:

    The evidence is inexorably mounting that the climate alarmists have been taking us all for a ride. It is only be a matter of time before their agenda is exposed as one of the biggest con tricks of all time. Thus they are already scrambling to breathe new life into the CO2 emissions scare. It will become obvious (by the passage of years if nothing else) that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not, after all, cause any significant climate change, thus it will be necessary to blame CO2 (and hence man) for some other catastrophic event. So, prepare yourself for the coming “ocean acidification” scam.

    Beware those who immediately discredit credentialed and award winning alternative perspective scientists, as well as those who listen to them and believe that politics and consensus agreement is the basis on which science stands.

  13. Tina says:

    More Common Sense thank you!

  14. Chris says:

    Tina: “Its a da*n shame that progressive opportunistic money grubbers have lied about and used this issue for their own political and self-serving purposes because they have given real scientist a big fat black eye and confused and frightened the public.”

    Until you address your very real and very obvious misrepresentations of science that I have already explained to you, this statement is completely meaningless.

    If you are going to accuse NASA, the NOAA, the IPCC, and the national scientific bodies of every single industrialized country in the world of lying, you cannot support that extraordinary claim with lies of your own and expect to convince anyone who doesn’t already agree with you.

    But then, you’re not very interested in convincing anyone who doesn’t agree with you–you seem to be fully on board with the Republican party’s current strategy of throwing out red meat to the base while ignoring any chance of staying a viable party…

  15. Libby says:

    Tina, you’re still quoting Watts, and he is not a credible source. I mean, seriously, all you have to do is Wiki Ordovician, and read a few paragraphs to realize that the man is full of it. He’s all apples and oranges.

    Humanity did not arise until those CO2 laden oceans receded and the planet cooled. If our current oceans become CO2 laden again (and who would do a thing like that?), humanity will recede.

    Why do you waste our time?

  16. Tina says:

    Chris: “…this statement is completely meaningless.”

    It isn’t original thought. Tell it to the very qualified scientists of all disciplines, that have expressed exactly the same thing.

    Blah blah blah…threaten and harrumph…you cannot support that extraordinary claim with lies of your own and expect to convince anyone…blah blah”

    A. I have told you not to “believe” anything I say.

    B. I have no delusions of convincing others.

    C. I do hope to inspire curiosity that brings others to investigate and realize for themselves what the truths, and there are many, are.

    “you seem to be fully on board with the Republican party’s current strategy…blah blah blah.

    Blow it out your various orifices and quit pretending you are not “on board” with a political strategy. The green movement is the number one progressive political vehicle and the world is full of progressives.

    “throwing out red meat”

    HA! The issue IS red meat for the left every single minute of the day.

    You are under the illusion that the Democrat Party is strong, superior, and in tact. Please don’t believe me.

  17. Tina says:

    Libby: “you’re still quoting Watts, and he is not a credible source

    The progressive stand by argument. Get bent.

    “humanity will recede”

    Wasn’t it you shaking that finger at Jack for trying to frighten people…phony!

    “Why do you waste our time?”

    Why do you try to position as my superior? If your time is wasted the simple solution is, either don’t read my comments or get your own blog.

  18. Tina says:

    PS to Libby…time, someone once said, is simply an invention to explain change. In reality we are doing a lot of guessing, smart guessing for sure, but still, in the much greater picture, we don’t have a clue how we got here or much about the “big wow” of how it all happened. Your lecturing is as tedious as Chris’s.

  19. Chris says:

    Tina: “Tell it to the very qualified scientists of all disciplines, that have expressed exactly the same thing.”

    The problem, Tina, is that some of the scientists you claim agree with you actually don’t. The first link from the Climate Depot article you cited earlier this week misquoted a scientist to falsely claim that he believed in global cooling, when he did not. Previously you have also posted distortions of a study, claiming it said that only 36% of scientists believe in AGW, when the study polled no climate scientists. You have never conceded either error.

    So your knowledge of which scientists agree with you isn’t even correct.

  20. Tina says:

    Chris first of all scientist don’t “believe in” their theories. Second, big whoop, one believing scientist was misquoted in error and I repeated it. If this constitutes proof of superior position then the “believing” scientists have stacked up a lot of proof! They’ve been purposely deceiving the public for personal gain and influence for decades.

    Third, it is your ignorant opinion that the scientist polled did not qualify as “climate scientists.” Climate science is a newly created branch created for the cause. It draws from every legitimate branch of science. There is no error on my part.

  21. Chris says:

    Tina: “Second, big whoop, one believing scientist was misquoted in error and I repeated it. If this constitutes proof of superior position then the “believing” scientists have stacked up a lot of proof!”

    The problem is that you didn’t even notice the error, and when it was explained to you multiple times, you refused to acknowledge it. This shows that 1) you’re not very good at reading critically, and 2) you’re not willing to admit when you are proven wrong about something. Neither of these traits gives your opinions on climate change much weight.

    “Third, it is your ignorant opinion that the scientist polled did not qualify as “climate scientists.”

    Ahahahaha no. It is a fact. The people polled in the study were geoscientists and engineers in Northern Alberta. Your James Taylor article claimed it was a representative study of climate scientists. Even the study’s own authors took Taylor to task for misrepresenting their work.

    See what I mean? You lack basic factual information, and then when this is pointed out to you, you mistake it for mere differences of opinion.

  22. Chris says:

    I did, though only to thank you for posting it. It’s exactly the kind of rational, fact-based article I’d like to see more of at Post Scripts.

  23. Tina says:

    Chris so much of what you claim is factual is not factual at all it is merely opinion, opinion that is widely believed and supported politically due to a lot of money and media support.

    You claim you have shown me I am wrong but you rely on opinion just as I do. The difference between you and me is that you insist that you are right. I am confident in my opinion but I don’t pretend to be right. An arrogant attitude doesn’t win the argument.

    You deny the egregious trickery that’s been used to fool the public.

    You refuse to acknowledge there is legitimate scientific disagreement, in fact, you insult credentialed, respected, sometimes award winning, scientists who disagree with your belief.

    You buy into the “climate denier” cause to discredit and demean, which definitely falls outside of the tradition of scientific inquiry.

    You refuse to acknowledge there is scientific evidence that the warming cycle has been absent for what some scientists say is up to 18- 20 years.

    You refuse to take seriously the opinion that the sun or volcanic activity is a primary force in climate change preferring the notion that humans have more influence. I find that amazing given the power of the sun and the obvious design and natural balance in the universe.

    I could easily continue with this list but its quite long enough. I will not make accusations that you are dishonest (with the insinuation that no one should listen to you) and I am disappointed that you do. Both Jack and I have given you full voice to express your opinion at Post Scripts, I would think that would be sufficient.

    There isn’t a single reason for me to bend to your bullying demand nor is there reason to show you the slightest bit of respect or answer to your petty niggling charges. We disagree, You have decided you are right and your sources are authentic and mine are not. That’s nothing but arrogance. All of this makes you look the complete adolescent fool; you fit right in with those who perpetrated consensus and the denier slur.

    This entire “you’re a liar” exercise is incredibly stupid. I doubt you’d even give me that.

    I have no idea if this article has been posted before. I don’t live to be the hall monitor. I do find it compelling.

    CNS News:

    Dr. Don Easterbrook – a climate scientist and glacier expert from Washington State who correctly predicted back in 2000 that the Earth was entering a cooling phase – says to expect colder temperatures for at least the next two decades.

    Easterbrook’s predictions were “right on the money” seven years before Al Gore and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for warning that the Earth was facing catastrophic warming caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide, which Gore called a “planetary emergency.”

    “When we check their projections against what actually happened in that time interval, they’re not even close. They’re off by a full degree in one decade, which is huge. That’s more than the entire amount of warming we’ve had in the past century. So their models have failed just miserably, nowhere near close. And maybe it’s luck, who knows, but mine have been right on the button…

    Easterbrook “is professor emeritus of geology at Western Washington University and author of 150 scientific journal articles and 10 books. He was an official reviewer of the IPCC reports”

    Apparently the warming community believed he was qualified to express an opinion.

    Roy Spencer, PhD, is a climatologst, author, and former NASSA scientist. His reasonable responses to climate change questions are worth reading, especially for the nontechnical person. Q& A number 12 is useful to this rebuttal:

    12) Why Do Most Scientists Believe CO2 is Responsible for the Warming? Because (as they have told me) they can’t think of anything else that might have caused it. Significantly, it’s not that there is evidence nature can’t be the cause, but a lack of sufficiently accurate measurements to determine if nature is the cause. This is a hugely important distinction, and one the public and policymakers have been misled on by the IPCC.

    So are #s 16, 17, and 18:

    16) Why Would Bias in Climate Research be Important? I thought Scientists Just Follow the Data Where It Leads Them When researchers approach a problem, their pre-conceived notions often guide them. It’s not that the IPCC’s claim that humans cause global warming is somehow untenable or impossible, it’s that political and financial pressures have resulted in the IPCC almost totally ignoring alternative explanations for that warming.

    17) How Important Is “Scientific Consensus” in Climate Research? In the case of global warming, it is nearly worthless. The climate system is so complex that the vast majority of climate scientists — usually experts in variety of specialized fields — assume there are more knowledgeable scientists, and they are just supporting the opinions of their colleagues. And among that small group of most knowledgeable experts, there is a considerable element of groupthink, herd mentality, peer pressure, political pressure, support of certain energy policies, and desire to Save the Earth — whether it needs to be saved or not.

    18) How Important are Computerized Climate Models? I consider climate models as being our best way of exploring cause and effect in the climate system. It is really easy to be wrong in this business, and unless you can demonstrate causation with numbers in equations, you are stuck with scientists trying to persuade one another by waving their hands. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that climate models will ever produce a useful prediction of the future. Nevertheless, we must use them, and we learn a lot from them. My biggest concern is that models have been used almost exclusively for supporting the claim that humans cause global warming, rather than for exploring alternative hypotheses — e.g. natural climate variations — as possible causes of that warming.

    Matt Riddley, writing in the http://online.wsj.com/articles/matt-ridley-whatever-happened-to-global-warming-1409872855“>Wall Street Journal:

    On Sept. 23 the United Nations will host a party for world leaders in New York to pledge urgent action against climate change. Yet leaders from China, India and Germany have already announced that they won’t attend the summit and others are likely to follow, leaving President Obama looking a bit lonely. Could it be that they no longer regard it as an urgent threat that some time later in this century the air may get a bit warmer?

    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.

    First the climate-research establishment denied that a pause existed, noting that if there was a pause, it would invalidate their theories. Now they say there is a pause (or “hiatus”), but that it doesn’t after all invalidate their theories.

    Alas, their explanations have made their predicament worse by implying that man-made climate change is so slow and tentative that it can be easily overwhelmed by natural variation in temperature—a possibility that they had previously all but ruled out.

    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. “The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998,” wrote Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia in Britain in 2005. He went on: “Okay it has but it is only seven years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.”

    If the pause lasted 15 years, they conceded, then it would be so significant that it would invalidate the climate-change models upon which policy was being built. A report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) written in 2008 made this clear: “The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more.”

    Well, the pause has now lasted for 16, 19 or 26 years—depending on whether you choose the surface temperature record or one of two satellite records of the lower atmosphere. That’s according to a new statistical calculation by Ross McKitrick, a professor of economics at the University of Guelph in Canada.

    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.

    This has taken me by surprise. I was among those who thought the pause was a blip. As a “lukewarmer,” I’ve long thought that man-made carbon-dioxide emissions will raise global temperatures, but that this effect will not be amplified much by feedbacks from extra water vapor and clouds, so the world will probably be only a bit more than one degree Celsius warmer in 2100 than today. By contrast, the assumption built into the average climate model is that water-vapor feedback will treble the effect of carbon dioxide.

    But now I worry that I am exaggerating, rather than underplaying, the likely warming.

    Most science journalists, who are strongly biased in favor of reporting alarming predictions, rather than neutral facts, chose to ignore the pause until very recently, when there were explanations available for it. Nearly 40 different excuses for the pause have been advanced, including Chinese economic growth that supposedly pushed cooling sulfate particles into the air, the removal of ozone-eating chemicals, an excess of volcanic emissions, and a slowdown in magnetic activity in the sun.

    The favorite explanation earlier this year was that strong trade winds in the Pacific Ocean had been taking warmth from the air and sequestering it in the ocean. This was based on a few sketchy observations, suggesting a very tiny change in water temperature—a few hundredths of a degree—at depths of up to 200 meters.

    Last month two scientists wrote in Science that they had instead found the explanation in natural fluctuations in currents in the Atlantic Ocean. For the last 30 years of the 20th century, Xianyao Chen and Ka-Kit Tung suggested, these currents had been boosting the warming by bringing heat to the surface, then for the past 15 years the currents had been counteracting it by taking heat down deep.

    The warming in the last three decades of the 20th century, to quote the news release that accompanied their paper, “was roughly half due to global warming and half to the natural Atlantic Ocean cycle.” In other words, even the modest warming in the 1980s and 1990s—which never achieved the 0.3 degrees Celsius per decade necessary to satisfy the feedback-enhanced models that predict about three degrees of warming by the end of the century—had been exaggerated by natural causes. The man-made warming of the past 20 years has been so feeble that a shifting current in one ocean was enough to wipe it out altogether.

    Putting the icing on the cake of good news, Xianyao Chen and Ka-Kit Tung think the Atlantic Ocean may continue to prevent any warming for the next two decades. So in their quest to explain the pause, scientists have made the future sound even less alarming than before. Let’s hope that the United Nations admits as much on day one of its coming jamboree and asks the delegates to pack up, go home and concentrate on more pressing global problems like war, terror, disease, poverty, habitat loss and the 1.3 billion people with no electricity.

    Mr. Ridley is the author of “The Rational Optimist” (HarperCollins, 2010) and a member of the British House of Lords.

    As reported earlier no one showed up in New York in September for the climate summit.

    Sometimes when they claim it’s “real” science it’s the same as when they say it’s “real” cheese.

  24. Chris says:

    Tina: “you insult credentialed, respected, sometimes award winning, scientists who disagree with your belief.”

    Obviously, so do you; you constantly accuse scientists who argue that climate change is happening of lying, fraud, and of being in it for the money or a political agenda.

    The differences are 1) You are insulting the vast majority of climate scientists, while I’m insulting a fringe minority, 2) I have actual evidence that the deniers are the paid hucksters, and you have no corresponding evidence of the massive, global conspiracy you assert exists among the majority of climate scientists and the heads of every single national scientific body in the world, and 3) I know how to read a scientific paper and check for flaws and you do not.

    The other helpful difference is that I know the difference between fact and opinion, and you constantly try to blur that difference because it’s politically useful to you.

    Don Easterbrook is paid by the Heartland Institute to lie on behalf of oil companies, the same way this Institute paid shifty scientists to lie about tobacco on behalf of tobacco companies in the 90s.

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=23

    Yes, I believe a think tank which puts the profits of corporations over public health is disreputable and discredited. Most people would think so. Disagree all you want; your disagreement is not rational.

  25. Tina says:

    Chris: “…so do you; you constantly accuse scientists who argue that climate change is happening of lyin”

    Many of them have been shown to be liars, tricksters, and manipulators. I have no problem with scientists that do research and report their results. I have a problem with scientists who politicized the issue, manipulated the data, push an agenda from a biased position, and set out to destroy industries and impose draconian taxes and energy costs on the public for an unproven theory by exclaiming it’s a crisis, creating propaganda cartoons, and brain washing students.

    The difference…: 1. See above paragraph, 2. Your biased conditioned opinion, 3. You are arrogant and full of $#%*, as Pie once demonstrated.

    “Don Easterbrook is paid by the Heartland Institute to lie on behalf of oil companies”

    Canned progressive response. Lefties green Zealots are paid (PROFIT) by foundations to push the green agenda. Ex VP Gore has made millions in profits for being a huckster on behalf of trickster scientists and the green organizational agenda.

    “disreputable and discredited”

    I’m sorry Chris, but for you to assume the superior ethical position because you think the HI is “disreputable and discredited” can’t be taken too seriously because you willingly buy and promote the BS “settled science” hawked by global warming zealots and hacks and because you demean qualified scientists, who take the scientific method seriously.

    And here’s a little clue about that canned response, “profits over public health”:

    If it were not for profits, you and the rest of us would still be shoveling horse dung from our dirt streets, using out-houses, hauling water from streams and wells, washing our clothes in the creek,and living in drafty hovels. Public health in America is superior because of freedom and the profits of those who used that freedom to be innovative and productive. OIL played a HUGE part in that you ungrateful little punk.

    Human beings, meantime, are responsible for their own smoking habits and were sufficiently warned since the link between smoking and dangers to health were first announced! Tobacco companies became a deep pockets source for unscrupulous lawyers. Smokers too were exploited by legal hacks that convinced them that they were not responsible. Lawyers made millions for themselves and the smokers were still victims of their own stupid choices. Tobacco companies required and were entitled to a defense in the courts.

    Your belief system is not rational or responsible. Grow up!

  26. Chris says:

    Tina: “Many of them have been shown to be liars, tricksters, and manipulators.”

    No. They have been accused of being liars, tricksters, and manipulators…by liars, tricksters, and manipulators.

    You have no objective criteria to evaluate which group is lying to you, because you simply accept what you want to hear.

Comments are closed.