@pegminer:
"I have referenced the paper by Liebmann et al ("Influence of Choice of Time Period on Global Surface Temperature Trend Estimates") many times, but I think it's universally ignored. Everyone should have a look at that before talking about temperature trends."
And I have referenced "Separating signal and noise in atmospheric temperature changes: The importance of timescale" by Santer et al. which is a newer paper than yours and which states: "Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature."
Here is 17 years: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/fro... That's a trend of +0.03C/decade.
So in answer to the original question, pegminer is not even a rabid alarmist yet he seems to not have any doubts whatsoever. The recent temperature trend on all temperature data sets is well below those projected by climate models. Yet, not even specks of doubt are surfacing. The only thing surfacing among alarmists are possible explanations which would keep their predictions and hypothesis correct.
It's an amazing thing from these people who call others deniers while ignoring or explaining away current data themselves.
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@climate realist: "No. 17 years, starting in 1996, continues to the end of 2013."
Actually, January 1996 to December 2013 is 18 years. So you are correct in a way that my 1996-present is not 17 years but really 17 years and 7 months. If you are going to correct me on a technicality you could at least get it 100% right in your correction.
I will also concede that I did pick one of the cooler data sets for that timeline so I've come up with a much more accurate graph which is exactly the past 17 years which is August 1996 - July 2013 using the Wood for Trees average of all data sets: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/fro...
I'm fairly confident we can call that 17 years of no statistically significant warming. And the trend is certainly well below climate model projections and long enough for Ben Santer.
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@pegminer: " I see you've chosen the most dubious of the data sets"
I'm not sure why you would consider RSS "dubious". Although, as you see above I address your point about being selective on the data set and re-posted a new graph. If that changes my original argument, feel free to point out how.
"Maybe I have less doubt about AGW than deniers because I understand the physical system better, as well as its internal variability."
Richard Feynman would turn over in his grave. Even he wouldn't make a statement like that. It's called humility.
As stated, any doubts lie in the question of how bad it will be. I accept the science. I accept that the past few decades is mainly attributable to an increases in CO2. I'm certain that both flooding a heatwaves will increase in a warmer world. There are plenty of thing I am not certain about such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and so on, in a warmer climate. Just because we accept that CO2 causes warming does not mean we do not still have questions and uncertainties.
Your link to Big Gryph does not show the actual story. As I have stated numerous times before you need to measure the whole system. What that temperature record does is just measure the surface. I don't understand why it's so hard for you and people like Sagebrush to understand this. If we look at past temperature variations. we see that there have been many ups and downs.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs...
In the short term they have followed the ENSO cycle. This is why there are so many short term increases and decreases.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ts...
in the longer term temperature follows the PDO cycle.
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/img/pdo_...
As you can see the PDO went into it's negative phase in about 1998, the same year as the super El Nino. Since then the ENSO cycle has closely followed it, as it usually does. This is one of the major reasons why the planet has not shown a warmer year than 1998 in some of it's indexes. I have posted this numerous times yet people still continue asking the same exact question. Why is this? This is one of the primary reasons why it is expected that the globe will not see a warmer temperature in some data sets for a decade or so. The El Ninos are not powerful enough to overcome the warming of 1998 due to the super El Nino. There is still an energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere.
http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.or...
Despite your claim that you do not think we can measure this, and I have learned people that doubt anthropogenic global warming merely throw away data they do not like, which is what you are doing, chances are the scientists who record this have a lot better perspective on the issue than you.
Any doubts I have lie in the question of how bad it will be. From what I've learned I think it very likely that it will be bad, even catastrophic, if allowed to continue. There is uncertainty, particularly over our response to the developing situation. We are the biggest unknown!
I accept the instrumental record; what I "deny" is the statistical significance of the short term trend.
As we often point out, the increasing CO2 level is not the only driver of temperatures; there are a number of natural cycles which can have an effect over short periods. But the thing with cycles is that their effect is "cyclic"; positive and negative. The change due to CO2 increase is always positive.
A couple of other points worth keeping in mind are the anthropogenic cooling due to "global dimming", also the damping effect of the oceans.
Most of the warming from the CO2 released so far is yet to come.
The only thing the "recent stagnation in temperatures" proves is that deniers put too much emphasis on short-term trends, probably because they don't have much feel for statistical variation.
There are many signals in science that simply are not going to be detectable by looking at noisy data over a short time interval, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. I have worked on experiments that needed to be run 100 or even 500 times before the signal-to-noise ratio was sufficient to detect the effect, but the effect was absolutely real. So when someone produces a plot of temperatures over 10 or 12 years and tries to use that as evidence against global warming, I simply don't take them seriously--that's not science, it's rhetoric.
I have referenced the paper by Liebmann et al ("Influence of Choice of Time Period on Global Surface Temperature Trend Estimates") many times, but I think it's universally ignored. Everyone should have a look at that before talking about temperature trends.
But in answer to the first part of the question, there are certainly some doubts as to what exactly temperature will do as the carbon dioxide knob is cranked up--certainly climate models are just models, after al. However I have no doubt that it WILL cause climate change. Even denier favorites like Richard Lindzen are saying the climate will change with carbon dioxide--their argument is the temperature won't go up substantially. However climate change manifests itself, it seems like a poor idea for mankind to be running uncontrolled experiments on it.
EDIT for Pat: What do you mean my "own IPCC"? I know some IPCC members but I'm not involved with the IPCC, nor will you find me touting what they do. However, if you have a specific reference to something you believe that the IPCC said that you believe is untrue, I'll be happy to look at it and comment on it.
To be honest, though, I'd be willing to bet you're wrong in whatever you're claiming. I seriously don't think that the IPCC would be interested in making specific forecasts for the year 2010. The warming would be relatively small and could easily be masked by short-term variation. You're probably ignoring whatever range was given for the model (probably something like 1.0+/- 0.3 C) and drawing an incorrect conclusion based on that.
In fact, I've just gone back to the 2001 assessment report that you refer to, and it looks to me like what we're seeing now is within their range.
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/i...
Whether it is or it isn't, the fact is that the Earth has warmed substantially, and continuing to add carbon dioxide will increase the warming, unless some other climate change effect counteracts it (like an increase in Earth's cloudiness).
It's amazing how cavalier you people are about running a huge global experiment without knowing the full consequences of the experiment.
EDIT for jim z: You do understand you're telling blatant lies now, don't you? Very few scientists, even back in the 1970s, said that we were heading into an ice age. Most scientists that had an opinion about it believed then that we were going to see warming caused by carbon dioxide. I've quoted a meteorology book from the 1960s before, shall I again, or will you admit that you were lying? Some scientists were (correctly) worried about aerosols dimming the sun--but those emissions were cut drastically in the US and Europe, so cooling from dimming became much less of a concern.
EDIT for Ottawa Mike: I see you've chosen the most dubious of the data sets, and probably the one that will give you the lowest trend. There are also no error limits on your trend, so can you say
You also said (about me) "...pegminer is not even a rabid alarmist yet he seems to not have any doubts whatsoever.." [about global warming]. Just how do you reconcile such a claim with what I actually said:
"... there are certainly some doubts as to what exactly temperature will do as the carbon dioxide knob is cranked up..."?
It seems to me what you claim I said is not what I said at all.
Maybe I have less doubt about AGW than deniers because I understand the physical system better, as well as its internal variability.
I have more doubts about AGW than I do about evolution, but not by much.
I am reasonably confident that short-term trends, especially ones explained by a confluence of known anthropogenic and natural factors, are not indicative of an end to global warming. If temperatures continue at similar levels for the next 20 or so years, *then* I'll believe that warming has stopped. That is, when we have a long enough relatively stable trend (and it's not cooling, just not warming as quickly as we previously expected, as far as I know) that it counts as climate rather than weather, *then* we can talk...
Pegminer suggests skeptics put to much emphasis on short term trends. It is alarmists who insisted we were heading for an ice age due to global cooling. When it started warming, they adopted global warming as the dooms day scenario and when that didn't pan out, they changed it to climate change. They can't help themselves but blame every tornado or hurricane on human emissions of CO2 while pretending that skeptics are short sighted because we see their previous predictions failing. Alarmists never see their previous failures, only the future. It isn't a matter of if with these people. It is a matter of how bad and they feel it in their gut that it must be bad because they are saving the planet and it just wouldn't do if wasn't that big of a deal after all. Obviously being proved wrong hasn't deterred them.
Let's also remember the IP CC prediction in their assessment report in 2001 that stated a 1C rise by 2010. What was the actual change in average temperatures?
They don't admit that they were ever wrong about that. Climate "hacks"?
"Climate Change/Global Warming Goal Post Movers" is a more correct term for these inept alarmists.
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pegminer - Again you mislead in your assessment about short term changes. It was your very own IP CC that predicted the 1C warming by 2010. Disingenuous BS from you again!
Unfortunately there is not stagnation of temperature in the environment. 90% warming goes into the ocean. When sea level stops rising and ice stops melting, then we will be seeing global warming stopped.
If you read that blog by the weatherman who got fired from his small town TV station, then rejected by his neighbors from the small town school board, you will always get only half-answers. He makes his living fooling people like you.
We are seeing sea level rise, reduction of polar ice and changes in weather patterns related to the jet stream slowing due to the loss of Arctic ice, increased precipitation in wet areas, and decreased precipitation in dry areas. This is real; read the published science.
We deal with facts not denialist fantasies and conspiracy theories
Your wattsup link is weather. Are you denying this?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp...
Ottawa Maxx
No. 17 years, starting in 1996, continues to the end of 2013. Unless someone has actually gotten the computer models to work, the only dataset which runs to the end of 2013 is available here.
http://livepsychichotline.com/
Here is data from the last 17 years.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/fro...
Other datasets show more pronounced warming than the RSS dataset.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/fro...
One thing from the Psychic Hotline that "skeptics" will be happy to hear;
"There may be some dark clouds in your furture."
the slightest doubts about global warming, or do you deny the recent stagnation in temperatures?
There has not been any significant slowing of AGW Wake up and smell the climate
Try some real info VS the denier BS http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2...
The only doubt they have is whether or not today is the day they stop waiting for everyone else to believe before they have the character to act on their beliefs. They view humans as ignorant, unable to make the right choice; maybe not all humans, just the ones that disagree.
Does their favorite mantra "THE DEBATE IS OVER SO SHUT UP!" tell you anything?
This mantra is usually shouted very loudly by the faithful believer with their hands covering their ears so their "pure thoughts" wont be polluted by doubt.
If you attempt to show them actual charts indicating no temperature rise for more than a decade they will close their eyes so they cant see the blasphemy & shout their secondary mantra "ITS A CONSPIRACY BY EXXON/ KOCH BROTHERS/ HEARTLAND INSTITUTE!
Arguing with conspiracy theorists & religiously devout individuals can be interesting & educational but there's no profit in it.
