> A big picture look at the climate change pause?

A big picture look at the climate change pause?

Posted at: 2015-03-12 
Climate Realist, NOAA published a state of the climate report before that that said 15 year trend without statistically significant warming would mean a reevaluation of the level of warming predicted, based on an evaluation of models.

Santer wrote 17 years of trend is needed, examining model outputs, saying that a decade is not useful. Now some temperature datasets have reached 17 years with no trend. Is there bias in scientists' not looking back and saying that the models are overstating warming?

And it looks like this pause will continue. Gistemp just reversed its increase for last month, so the current year is going to be well in the range of the last decade.

'The Pause'! The problem with this latest attack on science, data and physics is that the situation is dynamic.. that is it changes over time. Certainly you can take a snapshot on a day and a date and honestly claim that the 'change over time' has stopped. Evidently that's the case here.

In real life the change over time never stops as shown by the jagged, very slow but steady upward trend in temperature. In any event simply stating that the atmosphere is not much 'warmer' than X number of centuries ago misses the point... the point is where all the added heat has gone.

Short answer: The added retained heat index doesn't stay in the atmosphere.. it moves to a cooler venue. The heat melts ice and warms seawater. Of course there's a lot of ice and a lot of seawater to act as a heat sink. So far, so good. As long as there's X amount of coolant in your car's radiator leaking radiator the heat indicator on the dashboard will hardly move... it may even 'pause' because radiators contain a degree of extra coolant. But... there is a cross over point when the radiator can no longer cool the heat generated by the engine. When that happens... the system begins to rapidly crash and the car rolls to a stop.

At this point ice fields and oceans are doing everything that the physics of heat is supposed to do.... for how long.... You tell me, but don't tell me that it isn't happening... the data says otherwise and data isn't an opinion!

Back when I was in school, we used to have things called 'reading comprehension tests'. We'd get an article, be asked questions, and try to summarise the points the writer was making in an attempt to show that we were capable of reading and processing the information contained within. The fact that we could read the piece and understand it was quite different to actually being able to write the piece in the first place. It is for this reason that not everyone can make it as a novelist or journalist.

When I read this article I'm reminded of those tests. What you have is someone who has shown themselves capable of reading stuff and regurgitating graphs other people took. And the upshot of all that effort is simply to state what the graphs show - temperatures haven't changed by an awful lot in the past 17/15/10/7 years depending on the graph.

All of which is interesting, but utterly pointless. None of this disproves AGW. It simply says temperatures haven't changed much over a time period that's close to what we think is required for statistical significance. And if you take it that 15 years is needed before a result is 'statistically significant' then that implies we'd need 30 years of data to confirm it. This obsession with the 'pause' is bordering on religious zeal. The only way the skeptics will be proven right/wrong and the warmists wrong/right is to keep taking data. Drawing a conclusions that AGW is bogus now, on the basis of a few years of data, is not the correct approach. Which is the difference between real scientists and wannabe scientists who believe science is simply about saying what you see in a graph rather than trying to understand why that graph is the shape it is.

Incidentally, your comment about the UK is utter nonsense. Just one-sixth of the recent price rises in UK fuel bills is due to green levies. Most is due to rising fossil fuel prices on international markets and investment in the infrastructure of the grid. Even the one-sixth of that increase that goes to 'green' initiatives is not all spent on power generation - a sizeable chunk goes towards social programmes such as insulation of homes, discounts for pensioners, etc. This idea that fuel bills have rocketed because of 'green energy' is rubbish. In the US, for example, green energy is the fastest growing sector of the economy and creates jobs faster than any other sector. The notion that 'jobs are being driven away' is also rubbish.

It's a big picture look at how Deniers can go on-and-on about statistical significance without a single one of them understanding what it means - and if you just show them a lot of color pictures and anecdotal quotes they will believe that it is science, that is relevant, and that it is "significant."

As for trend analysis - there is not one Denier here that knows (without looking it up) what ARMA stands for.

Or maybe one of you can explain the following --

Your WUWT story links to:

http://www.moyhu.blogspot.com.au/2013/09...

where we are told that: “stationarity implies Toeplitz matrices”

In fact, that statement is true.

I know why it is true – it has do with enigenvalues, Fourier transforms, and spectral density functions

But, you don't know that - therefore, you do not understand what any of the pretty littlle graphs in the story mean - and, therefore, you do not know if WUWT is lying to you or not ----- IT IS..

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campbelp2002 ---

>> I just think we just have to call it a random variation and go with the long term average.<<

The long-term average is non-stationary – so, what do you do about that?

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edit ==

>>WUWT explains that they are not responsible for the graphs as they come straight from the source, so are you saying organisations like NOAA and NASA are lying<<

WUWT is responsible for lying about the graphs. It’s like cutting just the pictures out of different books and then putting them together and writing a different story – and pretending that you have not changed anything.

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edit ==

Try to apply Elizabeth’s reading comprehension suggestion to CR’s answer.

Statistical significance is a function of sample depth. It is a measure of how reliably a sample of something represents the whole of that something. It is not the same thing as the dictionary meaning of the word “significant” (i.e., “important”). If you have the complete (100%) population then every little comparison is statistically significant – even if completely unimportant or irrelevant – simply because you have all of the information.

Personally I think the delta temperature change (still waiting on that) is so small it may never be noticed on a realistic scale. Even with the unprecedented fervor its still not a huge difference that effects the modern world. Of course alarmist are going to give isolated and regional examples, most will concern weather. But then they seem to have exclusive rights to such.

Your reference cites NOAA as a source but alarmist still whine and cry about legitimacy. I really truly believe they are just stupid.

From the link

"In 2010 Phil Jones was asked by the BBC;

" 'Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?'

"Phil Jones replied:

"'Yes, but only just.'"

Where is the rest of the interview with Phil Jones?

BBC: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Phil Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Phil-Jon...

I would say that the fact that they cut out the explanation that statistical significance is more likely for longer periods to be evidence of bias.



And how exactly does using clean energy imperil our economies? It seems to me that the way to imperil our economies would be to use up the remaining oil as fast as possible.



Every time there is a recession, people point fingers at whatever they want to blame. And when peak oil happens, it is countries that rely least on oil that will have the strongest economies. But even peak oil is nothing compared with rising sea levels.

I just think we just have to call it a random variation and go with the long term average. A 100 year average is climate. 5 years of data is just weather. I don't think we have enough data to completely understand the weather to say any more than that; at least not yet. To really know what is going on we need temperature, pressure, wind, humidity, salinity, cloud cover, and all kinds of measurements completely covering the world, with measuring devices located in every square (cubic?) mile everywhere, including mid ocean, the deep ocean, high in the air. We just don't have that and aren't likely to have it any time soon, if ever.

Gary F: Point of information: "there is not one Denier here that knows (without looking it up) what ARMA stands for." Oh, yes, I do!

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And then you link to a WUWT blog post by an anonymous source.

Oh dear.

OMG WWWT is biased as any denier blog, regardless of they they post. They present misinformation and ignore the truth about the reality of AGW When it comes to climate they are a non source

An unbiased comprehensive look at the hiatus, covers everything from the mesosphere to the ocean depths, from the Arctic to the Antarctic and all the different temperature measuring systems (no cherry picking here)

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/15/a-big-picture-look-at-earths-temperature-santer-17-update/

since when is WUWT unbiased? Get real