As echoed by the answers so far, I guess it suggests that greenies will simply parrot the same things they always said except that they now deny that they previously suggested it is warming at an accelerated rate.... well some of them still say this. There is a disconnect between them an reality. That is why they are more like cultist than scientists.
There's no question that the contiguous U.S. has suffered recent harsh winters. (It is important to clarify that it's the contiguous portion because Alaska is about 17% of our land area and the warming there washes out the cooling in the rest of the U.S.) Of great concern is whether the cold winters are the new norm due to permanent changes in the jet stream or merely temporary changes due to some yet determined natural forcing, perhaps related to ocean currents. The jet stream hypothesis does explain how the U.S. has colder winters as the Arctic gets warmer winters and the whole northern hemisphere warms in total.
If you actually look at the data you see that the cooling over the past 10 years is a wintertime phenomenon. This is a chart of the exact same data that Anthony Watts pulled, sorted into seasonal periods: May-October and November-April. The trend has clearly been towards colder winters and hotter summers. The trend lines are calculated and drawn by Excel. I broke the year at November and May because it is at those months when the directional change clearly happens.
All of this has sample-size issues. It was Anthony Watts who decided that 10 years of data is indicative of something, not me. But to the extent that it does indicate something, it shows that as the entire northern hemisphere on average is warming, the contiguous U.S. is on average changing towards the extremes: colder winters and hotter summers.
I don't know what the greenies think about it although you would probably call me a tree-hugger (along with some other choice names), but I think it is an encouraging sign that nature may be more self-correcting than science has anticipated, buying us some time to more carefully consider potential impacts of climate change. The Forbes article isn't very objective and overlooks several things, one of which is of course the selective nature of the temperatures that were cited as Kano points out, but I find it encouraging that we are building more, better located and improved, and therefore more accurate temperature reading stations. I found the remarks about 'monotonic decadal increases' (I think that was what it was described as) very revealing in terms of linear progression when climate science itself seems to address natural variability pretty well so it makes me wonder where that comment came from-not the source, but what he was thinking when he made the remark that was quoted.
I would point out two things that are deserving of further comment; the first is that if global temperatures have plateaued through a weather cycle and are down .4C from the peak (assuming that the averages, etc. are consistent) they are still elevated, therefore impacts of that may be felt-the question is how sensitive climate is to the remaining .4C and what mechanisms nature employs to self-correct. Although I haven't really thought of it in this way before, this has been the weather pattern key to my more recent investments, several of which take advantage of increased precipitation in some areas and avoid disruption of long term weather patterns in others such as seem to be occurring-regardless of the cause.
Secondly, I don't clearly see the rationale behind the assumption that if the U.S. emits a majority of greenhouse gasses that it would be hotter here than elsewhere unless there were no winds or ocean currents and those gasses would remain hovering above their source. Of course, convection on a global scale (along with cloud cover) remain some of the uncertainties that are being studied and are among the variables that have brought some of the most severe criticism of computer models.
I concur that new satellite information along with improved on ground measuring stations will be interesting to see, but that doesn't reconcile very well with the perception of some that investment in studying weather and climate is not worthwhile. As a sidebar, I did recently hear that all the weather reports that are broadcast in the U.S. are sourced by the National Weather Service so that is a major benefit to our population; if the additional resources for more accurate weather are worthwhile for that and Climate Science can also get a better handle on longer term cycles, weather patterns and potential climate change it seems like a win/win situation. I have a wait and see attitude at this point-I'll be getting pretty old in another 16 years but if we are in one of the cycles like 1910-40, 1940-70, 1970-2000 and etc it could get interesting starting in 2030.
Too bad you cannot show ‘statistically significant’ cooling, huh? But, then, Deniers never have accepted the fact that there was a Scientific Revolution – and they lost.
>>Kano: Yes the US is not the world, but since we are the real meanie at producing all this greenhouse gas, it only stands to reason that the US would be hotter, or the greenhouse effect would be greater in the US than the rest of the world. It will be interesting to see what this new satellite will find out on this subject.<<
That’s brilliant – the US is not the world, but it really is; and, Deniers wonder why people say they are stupid.
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OM –
>>@Gary F: How far back do you need to go to find "statistically significant" warming? <<
Not very far. The last 17 year’s temperatures are statically significantly different from earlier temperatures at >99.99999….% (I ran and posted the output here a while ago).
>>Hey, are you acknowledging the hiatus, the flattening, the plateau? Do you have a favorite pet name for it?<<
I call it “variability” that provides no evidence of a change in AGW or in the multidecadal global warming signal.
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OM –
>>@Anybody who cares. The US is not the globe, it's a region. Well then, let's look at the globe over the same period: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp... <<
Can you show that either of those trend lines is statistically significantly different from each other or no trend?
I didn’t think so - you've got single-digit degrees of freedom, after all.
I've answered this question before. If you actually take the data and plot it, then fit a line to it, you find that the error in the slope is larger than the slope itself. You can search for my previous answer in which I've given the values.
Therefore, you cannot draw any conclusion about the 'trend'. You are in complete, total, utter, mathematical error if you attempt to draw such a conclusion and say it is warming or cooling on the basis of that decade's worth of data.
If you disagree, then kindly explain why you believe basic maths is wrong.
@Gary F: How far back do you need to go to find "statistically significant" warming? Hey, are you acknowledging the hiatus, the flattening, the plateau? Do you have a favorite pet name for it?
@That Guy: Does NOAA lie? http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip...
@Anybody who cares. The US is not the globe, it's a region. Well then, let's look at the globe over the same period: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp...
I guess insults are easier to give out than doing a little scientific digging. Especially when the data are indicating the science is not settled. It never has been and maybe never will be (in the near future).
That the US is responsible for so much emissions doesn't mean that's where the warming will be. It is not ground level CO2 emissions that causes the warming, but high in the atmosphere, where the CO2 has spread out.
The bigger question is, does the adjusted temperature record show the cooling. If not, then it calls into question the whole temperature record. History shows they have been adjusting the past cooler and the present warmer, which makes global warming look larger.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress....
Of course you will get the answer that the USA is not the world, but as it says it makes it difficult to blame climate change on increased wildfires droughts and floods, when there has been little change in temperature, wonder what they can go on about now.
Wow look at That Guy and they say skeptics are in denial,
Sagebush actually I think the U.S. is a fairly good indicator for the Northern hemisphere at least
The real question is when will the self centered egotistical fools that twist and distort the truth start claiming that they were the ones that first noticed the planet was warming.
Environmental changes like increase in temperature can be seen in many regions.. The Summers are becoming warmer & if nothing is done soon we will having people scorching their skin whence going out.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2014/06/25/government-data-show-u-s-in-decade-long-cooling/
Kano, I do too.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/30/ho...
0.87 degrees in 353 years
This tracks with the 1990 IPCC report and with what US data is available. It is from England) It may be crude but from what I can see it is honest.
I want to know what they think about the revelation that NOAA has been fudging data? Add to that, all of the "estimated" or "adjusted" data shows the same identical trend. Past was colder than measured and present is warmer than measured.
hhmmmm
Forbes are propagandists.
10 years does not make a trend.
That is only the US. (CO2 emitted here spreads over the whole Earth.)
Verybad trolling
They'll shriek something like, "The US is not the whole world!" or some lunatic BS like that
Ask the nearest high school student to open up a dictionary, if there any left who know what that is, and read you the definition of the word "global." The note the name of this category.
A lie , and you know it
