Unsurprisingly, 2014 was the warmest year so far in the incremental record, as measured by NOAA and NASA. A few quick observations
* It’s silly to base global judgements on local observations. Still, living through January 2015 in Queensland, it’s easy to believe that the warming trend has continued into the New Year
* There’s nothing special about a calendar year. The first part of 2014, particularly February, was cooler than the rest of the year. So, it’s a safe bet that the 12 months ending Feb 2015 will be even warmer than the 12 months ending Dec 2014
* The biggest source of short-term fluctuations is the El Nino cycle, responsible for the very warm year in 1998 that is the basis for so much silly talk about “no global warming for x years”. 2014 was the first record year without a full-scale El Nino, though it kept threatening to emerge. Predictions are mixed for 2015.
* Of course, this long-expected news had no effect on denialists. But, like anti-vaxers, they are no longer getting the kind of “balanced” hearing they have counted on for so long, at least outside the Murdoch press. It’s now generally recognised that climate science denial isn’t a scientific viewpoint but a tribal shibboleth, and this is reflected in news coverage.
John Quiggin 
“this long-expected news had no effect on denialists…”
Actually, most of the denialists I know personally have moved in the last couple of years from “the earth is not warming” to “climate change is always happening and it has nothing to do with manmade CO2”. So reality is, even for the most ignorant and self-deluding, slowly moving them up the ladder of denial:
1) It aint happening
2) It’s nothing to with us
3) Maybe it was our fault but it’s too late to fix it now
4) It was those dirty hippies fault
That’s not what you said a fortnight ago in Catalyst teaches the controversy.
Uncle Milton, I think John may be referring to a trend. And while some things buck the trend, the increasing trend keeps on increasing.
@Uncle Milton
I meant to say “outside the Murdoch press”, and have added this. But even the Oz ran the story straight this time
An example of how far off the deep end people inside the Murdoch press bubble are – I was sitting in a waiting room and this guy reading The Australian turned to his wife and said “2014 was the hottest year on record” then added “but you can’t trust the Bureau of Meteorology, they will manipulate the data to say whatever they want”.
@derrida derider
This is a consequence of the term “climate change” being given so much more prominence than the term “global warming”. The denialists would sound a bit strange just from saying “global warming is always happening”.
It was always a mistake to use the term “climate change” instead of “global warming”. People who use the term “climate change” are playing into denialists’ hands.
@Chris O’Neill The term “climate change” is a bit of a trap for denialists; they can either say it is changing or it isn’t. Those that say it isn’t have a problem explaining where fossil fuels come from.
Those that can accept change find themselves agreeing with actions to conserve resources, like water and air. And fossil fuels are so polluting.
@rog
So what? (Assuming they care about complicated arguments anyway.) In any case, using the term “climate change” is a gift to denialists.
derrida derider
I like the ladder metaphor. Perhaps we could cause this the “nuancing” of denial. Without going through a comprehensive history, our dear federal government is spinning some (more) nuance into its position. Out of the Lima talks we see the firming of a position (that I have seen little critical attention directed at) that seeks to undermine the notion of “common but differentiated responsivities” – that is based on the (strongly positive) relationship between historic responsibility for carbon emissions and national wealth, used in the UN climate framework as a proxy for a country’s ability to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
This is denialism in the sense that, while formally accepting the science, the govt. is engaged in a history war on the 1992 Rio Summit that seeks to scuttle attempts to implement policy that is informed by the science. Upon her return from Lima, Julie Bishop tried to assert that the notion of “common but differentiated responsivities” agreed to by all countries in Rio, is passé. Her primary data source for this convenient repudiation of the UN climate framework is that some wag recently decided that not only was China the world’s number one carbon emitter (based on Kyoto carbon accounting), it was also the world’s biggest economy (based on purchasing power parity). The implications are simple: if China is the world’s “biggest economy” (whatever you think of using PPP for this purpose) then they are clearly very rich and so we shouldn’t do anything – they are rich they must do more than us.
@derrida derider
I have already seen a person on another blog make the equivalent of the argument “It was those dirty hippies fault.”
According to this right-wing person global warming was and is the fault of the Ecologists and Greens etc. for not arguing hard enough and well enough to stop all the actions leading to global warming.
It’s a bit like this. You drive your car at high speed like a madman while carrying three passengers. One person (as crazy as you) is unperturbed. A second calmly but firmly requests you to slow down. A third screams in panic “OMG! Please slow down!” Then you crash. Then you berate the others for not advising enough you to slow down. One, they mostly did and two, you should have had enough judgement yourself to slow down (which incidently demonstrates the fact you should not have a licence to drive).
The current people driving our economy don’t deserve a licence to drive it: neither in economic nor in ecological terms.
@Chris O’Neill
I agree, Chris. I try very hard to stick with AGW, i.e. “Anthropogenic Global Warming,” for the simple reason that this is the aspect of climate (change) which matters to humanity. We are responsible for AGW, irrespective of how the climate would have changed if we weren’t a force of nature. Furthermore, because AGW is happening at a rate far beyond most natural climate change events in the geological/paleontological records, the consequences are much more severe. Choice of words really matters, and the ones pushing the denialists’ tropes are acutely aware of it.
Another example of problematic word pollution is the trope of their being a “pause”. Climate scientists have been suckered into using that term themselves, and yet the evidence (which they have) before them says anything but. The fallacy of the “pause” is that the yardstick for measuring trend (upwards) is statistical in nature, usually based on the previous 30 years, or thereabouts; the trouble with the notion of a pause (in the last 16 years) is that it looks like a pause if you switch from long term statistical trend to short term year-by-year comparison. In other words, we inadvertently switch from one way of determining (long term) trend to a different way of determining (short term) trend, i.e. swapping from statistical calculation to using the eyeball. Bad mistake and an easy one to fall for. I personally like the work of Tamino on this front, and also Skeptical Science’s recent graphics, for their graphics clearly show the manner in which the statistics elucidate the trends.
@Michael
The BoM is so powerful they can bend NOAA and NASA to their evil will.
@Uncle Milton
Is there anyone who can challenge the power of these climate scientists overlords?
@Dave Lisle
One of the funny positions deniers find themselves in is that on the one hand they wring their hands and say that by limiting emissions we are condemning much of the undeveloped world to poverty, but on the other hand, they are fuming at the idea that action on global warming might actually transfer some wealth to undeveloped countries.
@Chris O’Neill I think that it’s more important to maintain factual correctness rather than catering to denialist idiosyncrasies.
There is a guy who lives around the corner and he drives around in a brand new noisy red ferrari.
Probably a climate scientist.
@John Brookes
Yes. As someone wiser than I recently noted “Coal is good for humanity”. Here was the alignment of Australia’s national interest with universal prosperity. To not expand our coal exports would be extremely selfish. We need to supply enough coal to drag the developing world out of poverty – the MCA makes this much extremely clear in its glossy brochures. And if you’re worried about the impact of global warming on those countries then just utter the words “climate science is crap”.
(Fun fact – the NSW Environmental Defenders Office is challenging Greg Hunt’s approval of the Carmichael Mine on the basis that it failed to take into consideration the environmental impact that might result if someone actually burnt the coal that Adani plans to export. Clearly the NSW EDO is anti-poor.)
@Chris O’Neill
There’s a very good reason why “climate chage” is a gift to delinalists. It’s because they invented it. Or more correctly, the George W Bush government spinmeisters selected this term to neutralise their vulnerability on environmental issues.
The whole denialist playbook was devised way back then and it’s taken more than a decade for the whole edifice of obfiscation that they created to start to crumble.
@Megan
Probably not. These socks and sandals types are good at a lot of things, but making money isn’t one of them.
I think it’s too late for a retreat to the line that climate change is real, but that human activity is not the cause. In scientific terms, the main alternative hypotheses (solar variation and cosmic rays) have been investigated and refuted. In polemical terms, there’s hardly anyone to present this view who hasn’t already accumulated a track record of denialism with respect to the temperature record.
Their best bet is the line that doing anything is too expensive, as pushed by Lomborg. But, Lomborg is a much less impressive figure now than he seemed when he first came on the scene, and they haven’t found anyone better.
The climate changed before people were around, as it has always changed and it will keep changing when we are all gone- it changes so what.
AGW has been classified a fraud by mainstream society as the data is virtual and homogenised. Also, people have been trying unsuccessfully since the beginning of time to control the weather and climate and it is delusional to think they can.
NASA scientists think 2014 was the hottest year on record but they are only 38% sure. (as they forgot to mention the increase is well within their margin for error) Not mentioning that their data is subject to a margin of error helps mask the fact that their data is imprecise (as wellas virtual and homogenised).
Gavin Schmidt has now admitted Nasa thinks the likelihood that 2014 was the warmest year since 1880 is just 38 per cent. This is because NASA’s homogenised virtual data has a margin of error 0.1degrees C which more than double the alleged increase of 0.04 decrees C.
No statistically significant warming trend since 1997’ – because the entire increase over this period was smaller than the error margin.
@John Quiggin
Indeed he seems to be now a marginal player. Why is this?
Lomborg is completely unmasked by real events. If you think young Professors, without even the Emeritus excuse, can’t be really stupid just look at the career of Lomborg. Clearly he only did well because he played the tune those who pay the piper wanted to hear. Of course our own Prof. Barry Brook is another one of these foolishly misguided young professors, in this case in terms of blind support for nuclear power and complete denial about the dimensions of the Fukushima disaster. Which is a shame, because at a personal level in his interviews B.B. seems like a really nice person.
Erm, am I allowed to say things like this? Does it fall under the rule of reasonable, if trenchent, criticism of public or well-known figures and their positions on matters of public debate?
You seem like reasonable and balanced (mainly) folks.
Come on over to this (Facebook) site:
Global Warming Fact of the Day
https://www.facebook.com/groups/GWFofD/
Our goal here is simple: to provide a lively forum where members and science communicators can discuss the topic of human caused climate change – which is a topic many of us consider to be mankind’s greatest challenge…and greatest opportunity.
Before posting and commenting on our wall we ask that you read our objective, guiding principles, membership guidelines and moderator responsibilities:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/global-warming-fact-of-the-day/membership-guidelines/10151659535115938
The forum is moderated. Moderators will do their best to enforce these guidelines as fairly and respectfully as possible.
Moderated, in other words, deniers not welcome.
Jack
@rog
That’s like saying we shouldn’t use tactics in a war because we are “catering to the enemy’s idiosyncrasies”.
@Uncle Milton
Lomborg is a lesser figure now because he has been revealed to be in possession of ‘feet of clay’. From the original description:
(Daniel 2:31-33)
We’ve reached the limits to spin.
@rog
What is factually incorrect about “global warming”?
@jungney
But we haven’t reached the limits of spin. Some people manage to spin nothing into something for many years.
Maybe Lomborg is a bit too counter-culture for his right wing audience.
Note that the corruption of science only extends to the fields of evolutionary biology and climatology. Research in pharmaceuticals, mining and agriculture are pure reason, untainted by concern for profit.
@Chris O’Neill Nothing but the effect of global warming could lead to localised cooling as climate patterns shift.
@Sancho Yes and errors are within acceptable limits!
I think the main thing deniers neglect when they mention this, and that CO2 levels have been higher in the past, is that none of this occurred at a time when mankind depends fundamentally on predictable seasonal variation. I’ve always thought that rather than “climate change” or “global warming”, “climate variability” or a similar term would be much easier for the general public to grok.
When you have seasons you cannot depend on, you can kiss goodbye to broad acre agriculture, so food shortages are a very likely consequence that most people will quite easily comprehend.
@bjb
Exactly. It’s goodbye to the relatively benign and very predictable Holocene climate during which humanity developed agriculture and civilisation. We are now entering the Anthropocene.
“You would have to go back at least 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels on Earth as high as they are today, a UCLA scientist and colleagues report Oct. 8 in the online edition of the journal Science. “The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today — and were sustained at those levels — global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland,” said the paper’s lead author, Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA assistant professor in the department of Earth and space sciences and the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.”- ScienceDaily – 9 Oct 2009.
bate.
Sorry I pressed enter key before I was ready. Sloppy fingers
RexR, the IPCC was actually formed in 1988 so the term climate change was being used by scientists well be Frank Luntz decided he could use to spin the debate.
@rog
So what you really meant was not just being factually correct (which “global warming” is) but trying to say something with even more facts than just “global warming”. A laudable goal but one at which the term “climate change” fails because it leaves you wide open to attacks such as “climate has always changed”.
When dealing with denialists the message has to be kept simple. The term “global warming” succeeds at this but the term “climate change” fails.
@phoenix
And no statistically significant slowdown in the global warming trend either. There just isn’t enough data since 1997 to tell either way. If you want information then get enough data.
PrQ … Suspect you meant ‘instrumental’ rather than ‘incremental’ at line one but got autocorrected after a typo.
David C … ‘Climatic change’ was in wide use in the 1950s and was taught to school students under that title in the 1960s. It assumed its current firm in 1977 and became commonplace in the early 1980s. That’s why when the WMO and UNEP formed a united body in the late 1980s, this term was chosen.
Best.
@Chris O’Neill
“If you want information then get enough data.”
Thats the whole point Chris. It is impossible to measure the whole atmosphere to get enough data. (that is why AGW proponents make up homogenised virtual data in a model)
So you can choose to ‘believe” it is warming and others (like me) can choose to say they do not ‘believe” or that it is not possible to know conclusively one way or the other.
The thing is most people hate having other peoples ‘beliefs’ shoved down their throats. AGW is just another metaphysical belief akin in more ways than one to worshiping the sun.
Maybe of interest: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/opinion/sunday/is-a-climate-disaster-inevitable.html?_r=0
Just who is the patron saint of hopeless causes, Phoenix?
I don’t think we know if that’s the case or not. The acidification of the oceans (which doesn’t fit easily under the ‘global warming’ descriptor) may well have greater impact on humans and be much harder to deal with. And of course there hasn’t been any ‘pause’ in ocean acidification.
@phoenix
That’s just not so, and if you knew more about atmospheric physics and were not pressing some other agenda you wouldn’t make such an absurd claim.
No, it isn’t, and once again your use of these terms and your comment at #21 underline your failure to grasp not merely this piece of science but scientific methodology. Your contribution here really is an excellent example of the Dunning Kruger thesis. On the face of it, you are asserting that you have a better grasp of which data is salient, how salient it is, and how to model it than whole teams of people whose expertise in this field has been developed over decades, and whose public reputations are put on the line before hundreds if not thousands of their peers and in a setting where some of the richest people in the world and the regimes they back in government want to show them to be wrong.
That you can assert equivalence with a scientific community of that standing under that scrutiny is bizarre. The odds against the ten hottest years in the instrumental record all occurring randomly in the last 20 years have been calculated as 1 in 1.5 quadrillion. Your chances of winning Lotto with a single ticket are better than that.
Yes. People can choose to believe anything. The mind is an infinitely malleable tool. Yet this is not about belief but about known (and thus knowable) physical processes that can be demonstrated under controlled conditions and that have multiple lines of corroborating measurable data. If you want to dismiss that as mere ‘belief’ in order to create equivalence between what you assert and what suitably qualified and responsible scientists and their peer organisations assert, then even your own existence, and that of the planet is merely a ‘belief’. The logic of your position is epistemically nihilistic and thus pointless. You hope nothing will be done, but most people pay little heed to the ramblings of the eccentric chap in the corner of the pub clinging tightly to his beer. I am a little kinder, because I care about others, but the untidiness of your commentary remains unappealing all the same.
In practice, AGW is not a belief but a salient scientific theory which ought to guide public policy unless and until a better description of the relationships between insolation, the atmosphere, the Earth’s heat sinks, and other elements of the biosphere relevant to human well-being is devised.
Our friend phoenix has a very ironic moniker. I’ve been attempting to find a clever pun combining (St.) Jude and phoenix but I can’t manage it. Something that would imply “genies and jinxes and unrisen phoenixes” would do it.
@Fran Barlow
The trouble is Fran, to convince someone like phoenix you have to advance an argument more complicated than he/she can understand. I wonder if there is a term for that or does “Dunning–Kruger effect” still cover it?
Thus I can read your argument which is against phoenix’s position and ostensibly directed at phoenix but I can see that phoenix will not be able to understand it. Even if phoenix could begin to understand it, emotional investment and emotional denial would come into play and still prevent understanding.
Therefore your argument is really for the delectation of the already convinced (I enjoyed it and I have argued in the same manner myself so no judgement is involved). Maybe it is also for the undecided. Even then I wonder what will decide the undecided? Is it facts or fear of ridicule? Whose ridicule do the undecided fear most? That would depend on which authority figures and authority narrative or grand narrative they have cathected to.
If someone hasn’t accepted the scientific world view and understood (at least implicitly) some of the philosophical underpinnings of this view, by about the age of say 20 years then in the main such a person is lost to reason based on empiricism (beyond the nearest and most obvious everyday phenomena). Thus education of the young up to 20 years is the key. On the other hand, a person who has accepted the scientific world view and understood some of the philosophical underpinnings of that view still faces a constant battle almost every day to avoid illogical analysis and emotive conclusions on complex matters.
Thanks for your timely comments on global warming John. I, too, find that basing warming on global and/or national figures to be irrelevant and that’s how most people think. Talking to people re global warming, I find that ignorance is a major factor ie denialism = fear, fear of the unknown similar to that of many people with new technology.
As an amateur weather watcher I decry the sensationalism the mainstream media carry-on with by cherry picking figures of the hottest this, the coldest that &c. Records are made to be broken, but as usual most hard work goes unnoticed. That is to say here in northern Victoria last October was hotter than the norm for November and November for December, but there no outright records broken. Furthermore, what happened here isn’t relevant to what occurred in the rest of the country. Climate statistics must be area/town specific.
After 6 years of collecting climate data the trend is quite evident. Even our cooler years are generally above average. We’re currently running 1.3 degrees C above the norm for both maximum and minimum temperatures. The biggest change to our weather, however, has been the increase in humidity levels which most people have noticed and are having whinge about.
Then again that may not be the only thing we’ll be having a whinge about if some of the stuff I’m reading at the moment is anywhere near right. The book I’m reading, Sustainable Futures, has a pretty grim message for those of us contemplating living to 150. Briefly the book discusses the topics of overpopulation, energy and resource depletion and environmental degradation.
With regard to the concept of body temperature and the consensus that hyperthermia is a real medical condition:
It is impossible to measure the whole human body to get enough data. (that is why hyperthermia proponents make up homogenised virtual data in a model)
So you can choose to ‘believe” in the existence of fever and others (like me) can choose to say they do not ‘believe” or that it is not possible to know conclusively one way or the other.
The thing is most people hate having other peoples ‘beliefs’ shoved down their throats. Hyper thermia is just another metaphysical belief akin in more ways than one to worshiping the sun or germ theory.
NASA discusses the terminology
@Ikonoclast
Oh I am not trying to convince Phoenix of anything. My (late) grandmother was in most matters a lovely woman though like many of her birth year (1916) her education was partial and her acculturation one of submission to all men and conflict avoidance in all social settings. Her policy was to agree with whatever the last person to speak said. Plainly, she had taken the lesson from The Taming of the Shrew very seriously indeed.
As a child, I found this utterly infuriating, because I realised quite quickly that it rendered all argument entirely moot. There really was no point discussing anything I cared about with her, much less seeking her opinion on any matter because she had none. She was merely a retailer. When I put this to her, at the age of ten, she responded without even a touch of bitterness ‘I suppose you’re right Love … would you like a Lifesaver?’ (This was a small lolly popular in Sydney at the time, and her standard way of diffusing incipient tension). Undeterred, and excited by her recognition that some tension might be arising, I continued … ‘So if I said that you were a prattling fool, you’d have to agree?’. ‘Yes, I suppose I would.’ she continued. ‘But wouldn’t that be rude and really nasty?’ I prompted. ‘If you say so Love’ she answered with a smile. ‘Sure you don’t want a Lifesaver?’
I groaned in defeat. ‘But that would mean there was no point talking to you about anything important at all wouldn’t it?’ I pleaded. ‘You could be right’ she added. I gasped and stormed off, a lot more irritated than she apparently was, but not before grabbing a Lifesaver.
People like Phoenix have assertions, but I doubt these point in a direct way to any underlying cognition peculiar to them. Phoenix is almost certainly no more than a retailer of the assertions of others who have lifted them wholesale from memes produced to serve those with a stake in the asset values of fossil hydrocarbons. No good purpose can be served trying to ‘change his/her mind’ because what drives Phoenix’s posts is derived ultimately from a macro feature of human organisation, possibly intersecting with Phoenix’s own personal cultural paradigm — possibly socio-spatial angst (SSA), a lot of free time, paid freeping — who knows?
I’d actually be more interested in Phoenix’s assertions about why s/he posts and what s/he gets out of it. I like tidiness and it would be nice to know, in an anthropological sense, what sort of troll category Phoenix best fits into.
I’m in shock, Fran. I think you’ve just explained many things i suspected about family members, but i’ve never seen it put so succinctly.
Ruth Ozeki, in “My year of Meat” says “Ignorance is an act of will, a choice that one makes over and over again, especially when information overwhelms and knowledge has become synonymous with impotence (p. 334)” She goes on to say that we live in a perpetual state of repressed panic. “We are paralyzed by bad knowledge, from which the only escape is playing dumb. (ibid.)” This explains why academics are derided whereas tv shows like masterchef thrive. She’s talking about the foods we eat and our subsequent thinking but it, obviously, is germane to the current discussion as well. a final quote: Ignorance becomes empowering because it enables people to live.
I feel like i live in Germany in the 30s (Godwin’s, I know.)