Basically, they are saying this is due to natural variation, and the warming will return. They need to consider the fact that if Nature can vary enough to drown out global warming, it can vary enough to create the warming as well. Perhaps the amount they've been contributing to CO2 is overstated.
There is another problem with their calculations, and any discussion of temperature trend separate from a straight subtraction between two intervals. They have not created a suitable statistical model for temperature. Without such a model, you cannot really say there is statistically significant warming, or have any discussion of a trend. I started this discussion in an earlier question, but never continued it.
The Met Office has basically said the same thing, that they do not have an appropriate statistical model to discuss temperatures, but then declared this irrelevant because they use models.
The warmers are about to have a reality check over the next 5 years which will continue for the next 20 years.
There is a very simple and easy trend to see. The PDO cycle of 60 years is currently on the downward trend. Over 30 years, by itself, it would see a decrease in temps of about 0.5-0.6 degrees. That is 0.16-0.20 degrees per decade. Add to this the increase in temps from AGW being about 0.15 degrees per decade, and voila, ..., you get no warming for the next 15-20 years.
Of course, for the next 5 years, the warmers are going to continue to deny reality. They will hemhaw around the issue. They will whine about cherry-picking. They will pretend their models are still accurate. All of the while, the temps will stay flat despite all of their hot air.
In the meantime, the global warming craze will fizzle out and die. Governments will stop talking about CO2 as being an issue because they will see none of the predicted warming by the warmists. Unfortunately, many of the good ideas may be scrapped, but I hope not.
Why? Because many of the warmers have very little knowledge of anything. They are too slow to understand that models that are constantly and consistently overestimating should not be considered fact. They are too silly to understand Occam's razor as they choose their overparameterized models over what can be plainly seen in the data. They are too busy forcing legislation and lying to people to be bothered by their lack of certainty.
In other words, their own stupidity in constantly scare-mongerign instead of taking an unbiased look at the data has blinded them to what is plainly obvious.
Here is the sad part. Their is still warming. There is still warming caused by CO2 emissions. We should continue to reduce our CO2 emissions, at least until we understand the overall effects of such emissions. It is only being masked by the negative PDO trend. If they had not been so stupid in their scare-mongering endeavors, they could have been truthful with people and the people would expect this pause.
One thing I will note: there's kind of a default assumption of "assuming nothing else is significantly altering temperatures". There is global dimming from Asian sulfate pollution, which was not necessarily predicted or predictable 15 years ago, and which is driving temperatures lower than they would otherwise be. Even with that, however, you need to cherrypick to get 15+-year temperature trends that are roughly steady or falling.
The current trend, is causing huge problems for the AGW crowd, it has simply squashed all their predictions/projections, it is obvious now that natural phenomena like ocean and solar cycles overwhelm the effects of CO2, that is not saying CO2 does not have an effect, just that it is probably a minor effect that is easily overshadowed by natural cycles.
In that case, I'm not worried.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp...
If the trend is still mostly flat by the end of the year, then we can talk. If temperature goes up to make the trend positive, will you agree to shut the hell up?
Based on the UAH satellite data (managed by John Christy), the linear trend in the lower atmosphere globally over the past 204 months (17 years) has been +.07 degrees per decade. Keep in mind that this chosen period was already in the beginning of a very strong El Nino period and already a bit warmer than the baseline, which is the average of 1981-2010.
In my first version of the question, I obviously had some loose wording because the answers are all over the place. So let's try again.
From the NOAA 2008 Climate assessment:
“Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.” http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/climate-assessment-2008-lo-rez.pdf
Does the current temperature trend provide the discrepancy? If not, why not?
From Climategate, we have Phil Jones comments to a colleague: "‘Bottom line: the ‘no upward trend’ has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.’
Has anybody heard from Jones? Is he worried? What would he be worried about?
From Santer et. al: "Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011JD016263/abstract
Has anybody identified the human effects for the past 17 years?
