New data suggests no warming in last 15years

Hooter23

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming--Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html

Im sure if the data had shown a rise in temperature it would have been all over the news :mad:

They now call it climate change instead of gobal warming which is a joke the climate is always changing and always has been and if it ever stops changing then there is something wrong :pac:

cherryghost

*reads post*

*sees link is daily mail*

*ignores*

gothwalk

Tell you what. Let's have a look at that nice chart those fine, ethical journalists in the Daily Mail have given us. It gives a series of average temperatures for the period from 1997 to 2011.

It also has a nasty downward tail at the end for 2012, so clearly they're very good journalists who can tell us the average temperature for this year will be in advance. Let's remove that, and look at the average values for the past instead of the future

They look like this to me:

Year Temperature
1997 14.34
1998 14.52
1999 14.3
2000 14.28
2001 14.41
2002 14.45
2003 14.48
2004 14.44
2005 14.47
2006 14.42
2007 14.4
2008 14.33
2009 14.44
2010 14.46
2011 14.36

Now, let's put those values into Excel, make them into a nice graph like the Daily Mail have, and do a simple trendline to see what the overall trend of temperature is.



What way does that trendline point? Up? Gosh. That's a little at odds with the text of the article, don't you think?

Deep Easterly

To borrow a quote from a book I am currently reading: "Always seek truth from facts - even if you have to make them up".

Hooter23

cherryghost wrote: »

*reads post*

*sees link is daily mail*

*ignores*

Lol I forgot it was from the daily:rolleyes: mail when I was reading it anyway I still think manmade gobal warming is rubbish :pac:

rhonin

Did they get that information from the makers of positive weather solutions?!

Deep Easterly

Hooter23 wrote: »

Lol I forgot it was from the daily:rolleyes: mail when I was reading it anyway I still think manmade gobal warming is rubbish :pac:

Well, whether man-made (anthropogenic) or not, mean temperatures across the globe are rising; even here in Ireland. Graph below shows the annual mean temperature at Malin Head since 1956. Black line represents its own 61-90 mean whilst the red line shows the 10 year running mean.


DATA SOURCE: European Climate Assessement & Database

nilhg

There was a good article on this subject in last Sunday's Sunday Times if someone can dig it out (their site is paid only so I can't link)

Godge

gothwalk wrote: »

Tell you what. Let's have a look at that nice chart those fine, ethical journalists in the Daily Mail have given us. It gives a series of average temperatures for the period from 1997 to 2011.

It also has a nasty downward tail at the end for 2012, so clearly they're very good journalists who can tell us the average temperature for this year will be in advance. Let's remove that, and look at the average values for the past instead of the future

They look like this to me:

Year Temperature
1997 14.34
1998 14.52
1999 14.3
2000 14.28
2001 14.41
2002 14.45
2003 14.48
2004 14.44
2005 14.47
2006 14.42
2007 14.4
2008 14.33
2009 14.44
2010 14.46
2011 14.36

Now, let's put those values into Excel, make them into a nice graph like the Daily Mail have, and do a simple trendline to see what the overall trend of temperature is.



What way does that trendline point? Up? Gosh. That's a little at odds with the text of the article, don't you think?

Statistics can mean what you want them to mean.

If you take 2001 as the base year, you get a different trend line and a different looking graph.

Nabber

Weather is consistant? Weather is the defintion of change, be it fast or slow. Global warming cant be proved or disproved, there is no 'control' to judge one year from the next. High pressure here low pressure there, next thing you know you have a 5degree annual change from last year.

Global warming as a theory is fine. The only thing is, it's the first taxable theory

riffmongous

Godge wrote: »

Statistics can mean what you want them to mean.

If you take 2001 as the base year, you get a different trend line and a different looking graph.

But he was just using the same data as the Daily Fail and yet got a different result to them,well almost the same data.

PseudoFamous

Godge wrote: »

Statistics can mean what you want them to mean.

If you take 2001 as the base year, you get a different trend line and a different looking graph.

Met office releases figures which show no warming in 15 years

That's the subheading. Not "since 2001", "in 15 years". They were factually incorrect. If they said "since 2001", they would have been correct, but they did not, so they were inaccurate. Inaccuracy is bad in a daily newspaper.

pegasus1

gothwalk wrote: »

What way does that trendline point? Up? Gosh

Oh gosh a 20th of a degree mean warming in 15 years...that's too much!:rolleyes:

Godge

riffmongous wrote: »

But he was just using the same data as the Daily Fail and yet got a different result to them,well almost the same data.

PseudoFamous wrote: »

That's the subheading. Not "since 2001", "in 15 years". They were factually incorrect. If they said "since 2001", they would have been correct, but they did not, so they were inaccurate. Inaccuracy is bad in a daily newspaper.

Inaccuracy may be bad in a daily newspaper but it is worse when it is used by policymakers to justify decisions.

If you accept that global warming caused by humans took place during the 20th century, given the flatlining since 2001, is there counter-cooling going on (the sun?) or have the steps taken to date by governments nullified the warming or was it a once-off effect caused by urbanisation or is it a statistical anomaly or a localised event? Or more likely, a combination of all of the above and what is the best policy direction as a result?

MetLuver

riffmongous wrote: »

Daily Fail

haha good one:D

weisses

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/08/glaciers-mountains

Keep ignoring guys ...

Yahew

riffmongous wrote: »

But he was just using the same data as the Daily Fail and yet got a different result to them,well almost the same data.

pegasus1 wrote: »

Oh gosh a 20th of a degree mean warming in 15 years...that's too much!:rolleyes:

Its not all that statistically significant. There is a tendency to ignore the recent slowing down, or levelling off of the Earth's temperature in the scientific literature. This debate has moved way past science to an idealogical position. Were we talking about measurements for something else and the data was contradicting models, then the models would be in jeopardy.

This debate is not running the way the debate on the Big Bang vs the Steady State universe ran. There, positions were held, the data became insurmountable, and positions were dropped. There was little or no name calling.

The Daily Mail's article for instance, was wrong, but it wasn't very wrong, and there has been a levelling off in the last 10 years, a slight but statistically insignificant rise in the last 15. If this keeps up we will have had two decades of moderate to no increases by 2020.

Prior to that there was clear warming, and it most probably had some human input, so the "deniers" are wrong too.

It's interesting that there is little effort to work out what has happened in the slowing down, or the levelling off, of the rate of growth.

If this were a non-political theory then the models would be examined.

gothwalk

Godge wrote: »

Statistics can mean what you want them to mean.

Sure they can. You can selectively pull data, choosing your segments of years, and present whatever picture you want. But in doing so, you know you're selecting, so whenever someone does that, and you have access to the full data set, you can see which bits they didn't select and look closer. That's a dead giveaway.

But in this case, I'm not taking selective data. I'm taking the same data as the chart in the Daily Mail article, and showing that the text is not supported.

Godge wrote: »

If you take 2001 as the base year, you get a different trend line and a different looking graph.

Of course you do. That's true of any year, and proves very little. Year to year variation swamps long term trends in the short term. And in climate, as far as we know, 15 years is still pretty short term.

mike65

The plateauing of global temperatures over the last 14-15 years in interesting but doesn't really prove much in the grand scheme of things. The more data that is gathered the less certain we can be about various phenomena. Who'd have guessed the glaciers of the Himalaya region would have shown no shrinkage over the last 10 years?

The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.

The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.

The study is the first to survey all the world's icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less then previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy.

Bristol University glaciologist Prof Jonathan Bamber, who was not part of the research team, said: "The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero."

The melting of Himalayan glaciers caused controversy in 2009 when a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change mistakenly stated that they would disappear by 2035, instead of 2350. However, the scientist who led the new work is clear that while greater uncertainty has been discovered in Asia's highest mountains, the melting of ice caps and glaciers around the world remains a serious concern.

"Our results and those of everyone else show we are losing a huge amount of water into the oceans every year," said Prof John Wahr of the University of Colorado. "People should be just as worried about the melting of the world's ice as they were before."

gothwalk

pegasus1 wrote: »

Oh gosh a 20th of a degree mean warming in 15 years...that's too much!:rolleyes:

It's not much of a rise. But it immediately proves that the headline, and most of the text is nonsense. It's not "no warming", it's "very slight warming". But that makes a far less effective headline, so in typical Daily Mail fashion, accuracy and truth are discarded in favour of something that supports their "editorial position".

Quotes because, frankly, calling it an editorial position rather than a polemical soapbox is stretching things.

Yahew

gothwalk wrote: »

Of course you do. That's true of any year, and proves very little. Year to year variation swamps long term trends in the short term.

But the argument has moved onto trend.

And in climate, as far as we know, 15 years is still pretty short term.

The 30 years of previous warming is also short term? Will we wait 200 years and see whats up?

The models actually predict a consistent, or rising increase in the Earth's temperature per decade, so this needs to be looked at.

weisses

gothwalk wrote: »

so in typical Daily Mail fashion, accuracy and truth are discarded in favour of something that supports their "editorial position

Same as the scaremongering in Al Gore's Inconvenient truth

gothwalk

Yahew wrote: »

The Daily Mail's article for instance, was wrong, but it wasn't very wrong, and there has been a levelling off in the last 10 years, a slight but statistically insignificant rise in the last 15. If this keeps up we will have had two decades of moderate to no increases by 2020.

Prior to that there was clear warming, and it most probably had some human input, so the "deniers" are wrong too.

I've a vague theory about this at this stage, and I'm not even sure how to go about backing it up with facts and figures, but I'll outline it.

Weather is the chaotic movements of the atmosphere. And I don't mean random, I mean chaotic, in the proper scientific sense - it hews to attractors in phase space, but it's not really predictable in anything more than the immediate short term.

Heat is energy. I think it's pretty clear that humans have been pumping heat into the atmosphere for a while now, in one form or another.

If you introduce more energy to a system, it responds in some way. Reactions speed up, become more extreme, or whatever.

So what we're seeing now in climate behaviour is not simple linear warming, we're seeing an even more chaotic mess of strange behaviours. I suspect that if you look at the number of weather records being broken, you'll see them busted all over the place in unprecedented numbers. Record snow, record rainfall, record drought, rain where there usually isn't, warm winters, cold summers, and so on.

And that extra randomness is making measurements hard. This is the metaphorical thermometer falling off the pot because it's boiling too hard; the effects of the initial warming are making an utter mess of anything we can measure now.

That's the theory.

Separately:

Climate change is indeed a better term than global warming, because it's entirely possible that the things humans have done could lead to another ice age - all we need is for weather to get chaotic enough to reach a particular threshold, and the earth can flip over to its other steady state, which is an iceball. It's spent a lot of its four billion years in that state.

And it's disingenuous to say that climate changes all the time; of course it does, but it does so in response to input. Saying that our input is mysteriously exempt from causing change is plainly rubbish. We're pushing on the atmospheric systems. We can't predict exactly what way they'll push back, but to provide action and expect no reaction isn't just unscientific, it's stupid.

gothwalk

Yahew wrote: »

The 30 years of previous warming is also short term? Will we wait 200 years and see whats up?

The models actually predict a consistent, or rising increase in the Earth's temperature per decade, so this needs to be looked at.

Oh, I'm not disagreeing on that. See my post above about increased chaos. My point with the graph, etc, was that the Daily Mail can't be relied upon to interpret data, and they don't want to handle subtleties. So a (somewhat) more accurate headline like "Climate change models shown to be flawed!" and a discussion of how predictions aren't quite being matched never gets anywhere.

Godge

gothwalk wrote: »

I've a vague theory about this at this stage, and I'm not even sure how to go about backing it up with facts and figures, but I'll outline it.

Weather is the chaotic movements of the atmosphere. And I don't mean random, I mean chaotic, in the proper scientific sense - it hews to attractors in phase space, but it's not really predictable in anything more than the immediate short term.

Heat is energy. I think it's pretty clear that humans have been pumping heat into the atmosphere for a while now, in one form or another.

If you introduce more energy to a system, it responds in some way. Reactions speed up, become more extreme, or whatever.

So what we're seeing now in climate behaviour is not simple linear warming, we're seeing an even more chaotic mess of strange behaviours. I suspect that if you look at the number of weather records being broken, you'll see them busted all over the place in unprecedented numbers. Record snow, record rainfall, record drought, rain where there usually isn't, warm winters, cold summers, and so on.

And that extra randomness is making measurements hard. This is the metaphorical thermometer falling off the pot because it's boiling too hard; the effects of the initial warming are making an utter mess of anything we can measure now.

That's the theory.

Separately:

Climate change is indeed a better term than global warming, because it's entirely possible that the things humans have done could lead to another ice age - all we need is for weather to get chaotic enough to reach a particular threshold, and the earth can flip over to its other steady state, which is an iceball. It's spent a lot of its four billion years in that state.

And it's disingenuous to say that climate changes all the time; of course it does, but it does so in response to input. Saying that our input is mysteriously exempt from causing change is plainly rubbish. We're pushing on the atmospheric systems. We can't predict exactly what way they'll push back, but to provide action and expect no reaction isn't just unscientific, it's stupid.

I don't disagree with any of that. You have some interesting views.

My problem with the global warming theory has never been about cause and effect (I would agree that human activity has been a factor in increasing global temperatures in the 20th century), my problem has been with the lack of clarity over the mechanisms for how it happened. If they are not understood (and it seems to be that they are not) future predictions are unreliable not only because of the lack of understanding of the mechanisms but also because of the lack of understanding of how and why the Earth went through previous cooling and warming periods.

As others have pointed out, the lack of warming over the last ten years was not predicted by the current models, that doesn't mean we will see a continuation of that trend, it also doesn't mean that humans are not contributing to climate change, all it means is that the models are wrong and we can't be certain of what will happen over the coming decade. A bit like the weather I suppose.

The biggest point is that we can't expect humanity to voluntarily decide to cease existing or give up its modern civilisation but we do need to figure out quickly why the models have been wrong and what that means. It is time that the debate left the extremes of "deniers" and "advocates" and headed to the middle ground where most sensible people would accept that humanity affects the climate but we are not really sure of what that means both in terms of long-term effects and potential remedial measures.

Deep Easterly

Godge wrote: »

Statistics can mean what you want them to mean.

If you take 2001 as the base year, you get a different trend line and a different looking graph.

Yep, that is statistics for you. They can be interpreted to suit either agenda really. A satirical take on this.

weisses

Deep Easterly wrote: »

Yep, that is statistics for you. They can be interpreted to suit either agenda really. A satirical take on this.

Do you have another satirical graph for the other "Agenda" ? i mean fair is fair :rolleyes:

MiNdGaM3

weisses wrote: »

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/08/glaciers-mountains

Keep ignoring guys ...

Same study, another perspective...

CU-Boulder study shows global glaciers, ice caps, shedding billions of tons of mass annually

Study also shows Greenland, Antarctica and global glaciers and ice caps lost roughly 8 times the volume of Lake Erie from 2003-2010

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-02/uoca-css020612.php

weisses

MiNdGaM3 wrote: »

Same study, another perspective...



http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-02/uoca-css020612.php

also same study

The scientists are careful to point out that lower-altitude glaciers in the Asian mountain ranges – sometimes dubbed the "third pole" – are definitely melting. Satellite images and reports confirm this. But over the study period from 2003-10 enough ice was added to the peaks to compensate.

Yahew

Deep Easterly wrote: »

Yep, that is statistics for you. They can be interpreted to suit either agenda really. A satirical take on this.

Not a very good satire. It seems to pick arbitrary dates, and lengths to prove the straw man case it is making. The last trend graph shows warming over 35 years, which can hardly be denied. "Sceptics", ( or people like me with scientific questions on recent trends) are also free to wonder about the last 10 years, or the last 15. Which is clearly not trending higher. Nor is picking the last 15 years in any way a statistical fraud, it is the most relevant for us.

You can use large trend lines to hide recent drop offs in Irish personal income, gap per capita etc, if you like, by starting at 1973. The trend line will smooth over the bust from 2006, we are much richer than we were in 1973 so the trend is up.

But the economy also stopped growing in 2006.

The last ( red) trend line would indicate to the statistically naive both that we are continuing to get hotter, and thet there's been a rise in the last 10 years, just as a trend line for Irish income from 1973-2011 would show a rising trend; however this is false in both cases. Income, and the Earth's temperature are standing still.

Godge

Yahew wrote: »

Not a very good satire. It seems to pick arbitrary dates, and lengths to prove the straw man case it is making. The last trend graph shows warming over 35 years, which can hardly be denied. "Sceptics", ( or people like me with scientific questions on recent trends) are also free to wonder about the last 10 years, or the last 15. Which is clearly not trending higher. Nor is picking the last 15 years in any way a statistical fraud, it is the most relevant for us.

You can use large trend lines to hide recent drop offs in Irish personal income, gap per capita etc, if you like, by starting at 1973. The trend line will smooth over the bust from 2006, we are much richer than we were in 1973 so the trend is up.

But the economy also stopped growing in 2006.

The last ( red) trend line would indicate to the statistically naive both that we are continuing to get hotter, and thet there's been a rise in the last 10 years, just as a trend line for Irish income from 1973-2011 would show a rising trend; however this is false in both cases. Income, and the Earth's temperature are standing still.

I agree and the problem with the current debate is that you have to be in one of two camps. You either have to be a "denier" or you have to be urging governments to take drastic steps. The middle ground would be accepting that global warming happened over the second half of the twentieth century but saying, can we try and figure out what is going on over the last 10-15 years? Is it just a statistical blip? Is it because we missed something? Is the orginal global warming theory still valid with minor adjustment? Do we need something radically different?

Unfortunately, neither of the extremes (and most scientists fall into one extreme or the other) appear able to stop and look. As for the media, no hope there.