How Can It Be Warming When It’s (Almost) Always Cooling?

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Here's an opportunity for all the deniers on this forum to educate and inform yourselves.
A great article that explains what you couldn't grasp before, in terms that even the most uninformed and should be able to grasp....

-------------------------------------


How Can It Be Warming When It’s (Almost) Always Cooling?

By Joe Romm on Nov 5, 2011 at 3:27 pm

The Koch-funded Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST) verified three things we already knew:

1. Recent global warming has been “on the high end.”
2. It’s accelerating.
3. The data won’t stop the deniers and their media allies from spreading disinformation, including the myth that it has stopped warming.

Dana of Skeptical Science has a good post on the denier’s latest spin, “Going Down the Up Escalator,” reposted below.

One of the most common misunderstandings amongst climate “skeptics” is the difference between short-term noise and long-term signal. In fact, “it hasn’t warmed since 1998” is ninth on the list of most-used climate myths, and “it’s cooling” is fifth.

This myth stems from a lack of understanding of exactly what global warming is. The term refers to the long-term warming of the global climate, usually measured over a timescale of about 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization. This is because global warming is caused by a global energy imbalance – something causing the Earth to retain more heat, such as an increase in solar radiation reaching the surface, or an increased greenhouse effect.

There are also a number of effects which can have a large impact on short-term temperatures, such as oceanic cycles like the El Niño Southern Oscillation or the 11-year solar cycle. Sometimes these dampen global warming, and sometimes they amplify it. However, they’re called “oscillations” and “cycles” for a reason – they alternate between positive and negative states and don’t have long-term effects on the Earth’s temperature.

Right now we’re in the midst of a period where most short-term effects are acting in the cooling direction, dampening global warming. Many climate “skeptics” are trying to capitalize on this dampening, trying to argue that this time global warming has stopped, even though it didn’t stop after the global warming “pauses” in 1973 to 1980, 1980 to 1988, 1988 to 1995, 1995 to 2001, or 1998 to 2005 [see Figure 1 above, Hat-tip to Skeptical Science contributor Sphaerica for identifying all of these "cooling trends."]

As Figure 1 shows, over the last 37 years one can identify overlapping short windows of time when climate “skeptics” could have argued (and often did, i.e. here and here and here) that global warming had stopped. And yet over the entire period question containing these six cooling trends, the underlying trend is one of rapid global warming (0.27°C per decade, according to the new Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature [BEST] dataset). And while the global warming trend spans many decades, the longest cooling trend over this period is 10 years, which proves that each was caused by short-term noise dampening the long-term trend.

In short, those arguing that global warming has stopped are missing the forest for the trees, focusing on short-term noise while ignoring the long-term global warming signal. Since the release of the BEST data which confirmed the global warming observed by all other global temperature measurements, climate “skeptics” have been scrambling for a way to continue denying that global warming is a problem, and focusing on the short-term noise has become their preferred go-to excuse.
The Noisy Group

Unfortunately, those making a lot of noise about the noise (and sweeping generalizations that global warming has magically stopped) include several “skeptic” and/or “lukewarmer” climate scientists, who really should know better. One of these, Judith Curry, is actually a member of the BEST team whose data has been used by climate “skeptics” as “proof” that global warming has stopped. Unfortunately, Dr. Curry herself fed these myths in a rather dismaying interview:

“There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped…To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate…This is “hide the decline” stuff. Our data show the pause, just as the other sets of data do. Muller is hiding the decline”

Predictably, Dr. Curry’s comments have been disseminated far and wide by climate “skeptics” who desperately want this myth to be true.

Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. has made similar claims in the comments on Skeptical Science:

“Since 2002, as shown in the lower tropospheric plot and in the upper ocean data, little of that heat has accumulated there. There is not enough melt of sea ice or glaciers to account for it there. “Global warming” has nearly stopped using these two metrics”

Dr. Roy Spencer has taken this argument to the extreme, claiming that based on one cool month in his University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) tropospheric temperature dataset, “the troposphere is ignoring your SUV” and that (perhaps sarcastically):

“While any single month’s drop in global temperatures cannot be blamed on climate change, it is still the kind of behavior we expect to see more often in a cooling world”

These climate scientists really should know the difference between short-term noise and long-term signal, and it’s a travesty that they’re misinforming the public, the media, and policymakers by conflating the two concepts.

The Signal Comes Through Loud and Clear

On the other hand, other scientists who understand statistics are doing an excellent job explaining the difference between signal and noise. For example, when asked if BEST showed that global warming had stalled over the last decade in response to the interview with Dr. Curry, Dr. Richard Muller (the BEST team lead) said:

“That’s incorrect…I mean, what they have done is an old trick. It’s how to lie with statistics, right? And scientists can’t do that because 10 years from now, they’ll look back on my publications and say, ‘Was he right?’ But a journalist can lie with statistics. They can choose a little piece of the data and prove what they want, carefully cutting out the end. If I wanted to do this, I could demonstrate, for example, with the same data set that from 1980 to 1995 that it’s equally flat. You can find little realms where it’s equally flat. What that tells me is that 15 years is not enough to be able to tell whether it’s warming or not. And so when they take 13 years, and they say based on that they can reach a conclusion based on our data set, I think they’re playing that same game and the fact that we can find that back in 1980, the same effect, when we know it [was] warming simply shows that that method doesn’t work. But no scientist could do that because he’d be discredited for lying with statistics. Newspapers can do that because 10 years from now, nobody will remember that they showed that.”

What the Science Says

The peer-reviewed scientific literature confirms Muller’s comments. For example, Santer et al. (2011):

“Because of the pronounced effect of interannual noise on decadal trends, a multi-model ensemble of anthropogenically-forced simulations displays many 10-year periods with little warming. A single decade of observational TLT data is therefore inadequate for identifying a slowly evolving anthropogenic warming signal. Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature.”

and Easterling and Wehner (2009):

“Numerous websites, blogs and articles in the media have claimed that the climate is no longer warming, and is now cooling.…We show that the climate over the 21st century can and likely will produce periods of a decade or two where the globally averaged surface air temperature shows no trend or even slight cooling in the presence of longer‐term warming.”

Not only are these short-term “pauses” just noise in the data, but observations show that they are entirley expected, and predicted by climate models (i.e. see Meehl el al. 2011).

Other Physical Evidence of Continued Warming

It’s also important to point out that global temperature measurements aren’t our only evidence of the long-term global warming trend. We’ve observed many physical indicators of global warming (Figure 2).

CONT....

[chadta]

Originally Posted by Bronco_Beerslug

Not only are these short-term “pauses” just noise in the data, but observations show that they are entirley expected, and predicted by climate models (i.e. see Meehl el al. 2011).

so when we look at the cooling trend we fail to see the " big picture" because we arent taking all data into account, but yet when we look back and see that the planet has done this before we are looking to big ?



im pretty sure they didnt have cars 4 million years ago

if we can trust the science to guess what it was like 1000 years ago when the data suits your purpose, then we must be able to trust that same science to provide data from farther back that isnt so favoring.

Now if youll excuse me i have to go start my car and idle it for a half hour to melt the frost off the windows so i can go to hockey practice.

For the record, im not a denier, i just dont care, it is entirely possible that the planet is warming, i really dont think its my fault tho, and if it is i still dont care.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Originally Posted by chadta

For the record, im not a denier, i just dont care, it is entirely possible that the planet is warming, i really dont think its my fault tho, and if it is i still dont care.

Excellent! Why can't all humans think in the complex terms you do?

[chadta]

Originally Posted by Bronco_Beerslug

Excellent! Why can't all humans think in the complex terms you do?

tell you what, ill stop doing what i do that may contribute to this " warming" when you get the 2 billion people in india and china to do the same, until them im not changing a thing.

[cutthemdown]

Did you hear despite all the efforts the world pumped out a record amount of co2? There is no stopping it, we should concentrate efforts on how to combat the symptoms of Global warming and sea rise, not stop it. It can't be stopped because of China and India joining the USA and Europe as huge producers.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Originally Posted by chadta

tell you what, ill stop doing what i do that may contribute to this " warming" when you get the 2 billion people in india and china to do the same, until them im not changing a thing.

Ah, the "they aint doing it so I aint doing it" logic. That line of thinking should solve all world problems for your kids and theirs, eh?

Both of those countries are decades behind us in basic infrastructure but are catching up in a hurry. I'm currently working in India and have a pretty good perspective on the progress of other countries throughout the world as they strive to "be like us" (including China).

BTW, China does not relish taking over the title from us as World's largest polluter but they are trying to take steps towards cleaning up their country as they experience unrivaled growth.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
China leads world in green energy investment
By James Melik Reporter, Business Daily, BBC World Service

Global investment in renewable energy jumped 32% in 2010 to a record $211bn (£130bn; 149bn euros), according to the Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2011 report.

Published jointly by the UN Environment Programme and the Frankfurt School of Finance, it shows that China has become the largest investor in renewable energy projects.

But the country still faces grave cases of pollution despite progress in cutting down on the number of new coal-burning power stations during the last five years.

According to Zhang Lijun, vice-minister of environmental protection, coal consumption increased by a billion tons between 2006 and 2010.

"And it is likely to see another one-billion-ton rise in the coming five years," he adds.

Yet the Chinese government is spending tens of billions of dollars every year on so-called clean-tech projects - commonly referred to as green energy.

"There is a very clear trend in Asia that people are becoming more and more interested in clean energy and clean-energy investing," says Vivek Tandon of Aloe Private Equity.

CONT...

[baja]

I wonder if ticks get together and say to one another, Hey I wonder if we should not suck all the blood from this deer because if he dies we will have to find another place to live.?

[cutthemdown]

No way warmer temps can destroy the Earth to the point humans cant live on it.

[W*GS]

The usual "let China and India dictate", and pure fatalism.

[W*GS]

Originally Posted by cutthemdown

No way warmer temps can destroy the Earth to the point humans cant live on it.

The Earth doesn't have to be destroyed for it to become very difficult to keep 7 billion (and growing) of us on it.

Do you consider anything short of extinction of the human race to be acceptable?

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by chadta

tell you what, ill stop doing what i do that may contribute to this " warming" when you get the 2 billion people in india and china to do the same, until them im not changing a thing.

That's the spirit!

[tebowisdabomb]

wonder what caused the glaciers to melt to form the Great Lakes? SUV's?

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by tebowisdabomb

wonder what caused the glaciers to melt to form the Great Lakes? SUV's?

When I read posts like that it makes me believe that mankind deserves extinction.

[W*GS]

Originally Posted by tebowisdabomb

wonder what caused the glaciers to melt to form the Great Lakes? SUV's?

Look up Milankovich.

[tebowisdabomb]

Originally Posted by W*GS

Look up Milankovich.

Interesting

[tebowisdabomb]

[ant1999e]

Originally Posted by tebowisdabomb

My wife would have beat her ass.

[Bronx33]

Originally Posted by tebowisdabomb

She has a prius so she obviously better than anybody else looks like a case of the (smugs).

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Originally Posted by cutthemdown

No way warmer temps can destroy the Earth to the point humans cant live on it.

OK, so who taught you this?
Or is this statement the result of a thesis you wrote when you obtained your Masters in physics and climatology?