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 
@Fran Barlow
Your grandmother had a kind of zen-like but very negative position. As you say, it was a way of coping when put into a position of powerlessness and subservience. Her consistency in her position was quite impressive. It made her imperturable in the face of criticism and attack. I can even imagine that she had very strong secret thoughts that all those about her were hypocrites and fools and that precocious little girls were the worst of all. At least, I can’t equate her patronising (matronising?) attitude with genuine care for children and their development.
One has to pity her. It’s a lonely and isolated position to take. She missed out on a lot that an intelligent little girl could have taught her. She had nothing worthwhile to teach and therefore could not learn. Isn’t said that good teachers learn as much from their pupils as their pupils learn from them?
@Obviously Obtuse
“All of life and human relations have become so incomprehensibly complex that, when you think about it, it becomes terrifying and your heart stands still.” – In the Cart (1897) – Anton Chekov.
My 2 cents worth:-
1. In 1998 champions of AGW were not generally refering to it as an anomaly. So even if it was an anomoly they ought to reflect on their past rhetoric.
2. Increasing CO2 will cause warming, all else being equal. The physics is pretty basic. Anybody who denies that basic premise deserves to be called a denialists. But I don’t personally know anybody with that opinion. Nor do I know of anybody of prominence with that view. Occasionally I see such people in comments on blogs but I must say it’s pretty uncommon.
3. If you focus on the denialists (see definition above) you miss the best of the sceptics argument but that was probably your aim anyway.
4. Lomborg is right, most solutions cost more than they are worth and we have more important challenges. At current prices wind, solar and battery storage are completely ridiculous investments for society to make. Such investment can only be justified as some sort of innovation drive and even that logic is really weak. Or in some niche applications unrelated to CO2 reduction.
5. As Richard Tol points out warming will be of benefit to humans in many parts of the world. And maybe overall be a net positive on balance.
6. 10,000 years ago it was so cold that Tasmania was connected to the mainland. We probably don’t want to warm things up too much or too quickly but given our interglacial will end at some point a bit of warming offers some good insurance. As such there are risks attached to halting the warming which should be included in any risk assessement but usually isn’t.
I won’t stay for further chit chat because invariably I’ll get called a racist.
@TerjeP
I can’t believe you wrote all that with a straight face. What part of “a global temperature rise of more than 2 degrees will probably make agriculture (and therefore human civilization) impossible” don’t you understand?
@Ikonoclast
Indeed …
For her it was an absolutely impenetrable defence. She did the equivalent of the ALP’s small target strategy so well that by comparison the ALP would have looked like wild-eyed risk takers.
But as OO says it saved her having to think and allowed her to live in her own little box free of responsibility for anything and denied even the most hectoring of adults any shred of satisfaction. Nobody had het coined ‘whatevs’ but this was her version of it, decades early.
Years later, when I came to understand something about power relations between men and women, I regretted greatly dealing with her as harshly as I often did. She had been damaged by the culture whereas I had had the benefit of the 60s. Despite my utterly unfair and objectively cruel taunting — bullying really — I cannot recall an uncivil word from her. I came to realise that what I was dealing with was merely ‘the face at the window’ – not the source of the problem, but its manifestation, and that my argument was really not with her but with the usages that shaped and diminished her. There was another kind of invisible hand at the throat of every woman from childhood, squeezing and stunting them while others pretended all the while that we were all equal and thus all responsible for our opinions.
Certainly, my experience with her was both a source of great regret and one of the factors that inclined me to elevate inclusion and social justice to a foundational position in public ethics.
@TerjeP
I will reply to some points not all.
4. “Lomborg is right, most solutions cost more than they are worth and we have more important challenges. At current prices wind, solar and battery storage are completely ridiculous investments for society to make. Such investment can only be justified as some sort of innovation drive and even that logic is really weak. Or in some niche applications unrelated to CO2 reduction.”
There is plenty of good evidence now that Lomborg is wrong. The Lomborg Errors site is a good place to start.
“It has been richly documented that Lomborg´s claims are often erroneous and misleading. When his book `The Skeptical Environmentalist´ was reviewed in 2001/2002, it got favourable reviews in newspapers and other lay journals where readers were impressed by the amount of technical details, notes and references. But in Scientific journals, not least Nature, Science and Scientific American, the reviews were very negative because specialists were able to see that many of Lomborg´s claims simply were not true. Likewise, the more recent book by Howard Friel, `The Lomborg Deception´, documents many errors, especially in Lomborg´s book `Cool it´. And here at the Lomborg-errors web site are listed a total of more than 500 errors for the two books, some of them minor errors, but others are gross and severely misleading. To this may be added the manipulated and misleading outcomes of the Copenhagen Consensus conferences.
Lomborg´s response has mainly been to refuse to acknowledge the errors.
Many of the errors are of such a type that if they were corrected, then Lomborg would no longer be able to make the points that he is making. So there is an obvious suspicion why he would not acknowledge them – if he did, he would have to change or modify many of his conclusions – just those conclusions that appeal to many readers. ”
5. As Richard Tol points out warming will be of benefit to humans in many parts of the world. And maybe overall be a net positive on balance.
Most evidence now point to tha fact that warming will only be of a benefit to only a few parts of the world. Most parts of the world will be worse off as the benign and stable Holocene climate is disrupted and weather extremes become more common. If ocean currents change, climate disruption will be enormous.
6. … We probably don’t want to warm things up too much or too quickly but given our interglacial will end at some point a bit of warming offers some good insurance. As such there are risks attached to halting the warming which should be included in any risk assessement but usually isn’t.
“Next glacial period
See also: Milankovitch cycles
Since orbital variations are predictable,[5] computer models that relate orbital variations to climate can predict future climate possibilities. Two caveats are necessary: that anthropogenic effects (human-assisted global warming) are likely to exert a larger influence over the short term; and that the mechanism by which orbital forcing influences climate is not well understood. Work by Berger and Loutre suggests that the current warm climate may last another 50,000 years.[6]” – Wikipedia.
“Short Abstract
Today’s comparatively warm climate has been the exception more than the rule during the last 500,000 years or more. If recent warm periods (or interglacials) are a guide, then we may soon slip into another glacial period. But Berger and Loutre argue in their Perspective that with or without human perturbations, the current warm climate may last another 50,000 years. The reason is a minimum in the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit around the Sun. ”
So TerjeP, you suggest we worry about risks 50,000 years ago but not about risks running from right now to 100 years out (even to a 1,000 years out)? How does this make any sense?
The real long term view would say stop using fossil fuels now. Retain in cultural memory and data the knowledge of how to use them. If human scientific civilisation is around in circa 49,000 years times do an assessment of glaciation danger and start burning fossil fuels again if need be to avoid a long glaciation period.
Correction: “So TerjeP, you suggest we worry about risks 50,000 years in the future but not about risks running from right now to 100 years out (even to a 1,000 years out)? How does this make any sense?”
In 1998/1999, we were told it was one of the largest el Nino events of the 20th century: of course we were also told it was the hottest year, based on the instrumental record, of the 20th century.
The following is from a 1998 news article in the New York Times:
The other very interesting tidbit from that article is the following information:
which shows that, although the el Nino contributed to the temperature, the trend preceding the 1998 record was already itself a record.
While I’m sure we can find some tired scientist somewhere who has used 1998 in isolation, to make a point on something or other, the New York Times article conveys the facts as they were seen in mid-December 1998. The petulant snipes don’t alter the record, there for those inclined to look.
TerjeP, you wrote, “4. Lomborg is right, most solutions cost more than they are worth and we have more important challenges. At current prices wind, solar and battery storage are completely ridiculous investments for society to make. ”
There is no such thing as society. There are only individuals. And individuals can purchase rooftop solar systems that provide electricity at a far lower cost than purchasing it from the grid, making it an excellent investment for individuals. And so many individuals now own the means of production of half or more of the electricity they consume and have increased their wealth, independence, and freedown by doing so.
There are in this world running pig dog lackies of oppression who spread lies about the costs of solar power so that people will be unaware of their options and so reduce their freedom, but I, and others like myself who truly love freedom, will never stop fighting them.
“In 1998 champions of AGW were not generally refering to it as an anomaly. ”
That’s a lie, propagated from the denialist sites you frequent. Here’s the IPCC Third Assessment Report, published in 2001.
“A new record was set in all four series in 1998 (anomalies relative to 1961 to 1990 of CRU, 0.68°C; NCDC, 0.87°C; GISS, 0.58°C; and SHI, 0.58°C). 1998 was influenced by the strong 1997/98 El Niño; the warming influence of El Niño on global temperature is empirically well attested (e.g., Jones, 1994) and the physical causes are starting to be uncovered (Meehl et al., 1998).” (emphasis added)
I can’t be bothered re-refuting Lomborg and Tol for you until you stop recycling this trash.
@TerjeP
And some pointed out that slavery was of benefit to humans in many parts of the world.
You overvalued yourself at 2 cents worth.
@TerjeP
Rounding it out the amount becomes $0.00 which is about right; nonsense.
@TerjeP
Again, the “more important” challenges usually cited by deniers are things like third world poverty, and since we are doing precious little to solve that now, I don’t see that reducing global warming will make any difference. Its like telling people that you can’t go on a diet because your room isn’t tidy.
But, having been around in 1998, I can tell you what the view of at least one person at the time was. I thought, “Bloody hell, its happening more quickly than we thought!”. So I’m rather pleased that it was an outlier, as things would be getting unbearable had it marked the start of a more rapid upward trend.
@phoenix
No you are dishonestly moving the goalposts. You said:
There is statistically significant warming since 1996 and any previous year since the records began. So your point about there being none since 1997 is insignificant and irrelevant. Your response to being shown this irrelevance is to move the goalposts onto disinformation. You are nothing but a Gish Galloper.
That’s nice. Trouble is, climate change also includes everything affected by global cooling as well. As I said, a gift to denialists.
Why the sudden mockery of anti-vaxxers? I have been reading this blog and enjoying your commentary for over a decade and I am suprised that you have suddenly acquired this prejudice. Vaccination is a huge multinational industry which makes billions for big pharma, a sector with a terrible record of falsifying data, bribing politicians, influencing doctors to prescribe their drugs, demonising alternative therapies and generally embodying the very worst aspects of western corporate culture. With these mocking throw-away references to anti-vaxxers you are helping do their work and doing yourself no credit. Should you spend an afternoon critically examining the anti-vaxxers evidence and arguments you might find it time well spent. I don’t expect you will publish this comment. Consider it a personal message from a disappointed fan.
@John
Got some credible evidence for your assertions?
@Chris O’Neill I think you are overly concerned about the terminology; as Terje and Phoenix have shown is that despite a B-double or two of quality evidence they will continue to favour the opinions of some guy down at the pub.
TerjeP, one brilliant Dunning-Kruger is illustrative, two is, well, more.
Two D-K’s could be “Anosognosia”, according to Dunning. He says that the with the D-K, you’re incompetent so you can’t know you’re incompetent.
And has more recently said that this behaviour is very much like Anosognosia in which brain damage produces a deficit of self-awareness and a person who suffers certain and undeniable disability seems unaware of the existence of this disability and do deny that it afflicts them.
Might solar power be an issue in the Queensland election?
[brisbanetimes]:
Good to see that at least one party takes it seriously!
@Chris O’Neill
That is right Chris,
It could be cooling as you say Chris, because the entire increase (or decrease) over this period was smaller than the error margin.
i.e Climate Change is the correct term (as opposed to AGW) because the climate could be changing from hot to cold or from cold to hot, unfortunately nobody knows the exact temperatures only homogenised virtual ones, but a consensus of 97% of scientists do agree climate changes.
kind regards,
Phoenix
@Fran Barlow
Fran Barlow
Thankyou for the lengthy reply.
It is great to hear you and others resorting to narcissistic argumentum ad hominem. I suppose it is horrible to hear that it might not actually be warming when you are so sure that it is.
@rog I think you are under concerned about the terminology. Denialists will always be denialists but when you are fighting a war, every bit helps (and keeping the terminology as simple as possible is more than just a “bit”).
The PUP also have a policy on CSG:
“Coal Seam Gas needs to stop right now, until proper safeguards and procedures can be put in place…”
Asset sales:
“Successive generations have toiled, passing down from one generation to the next, building on what’s been achieved in the past for all of us, so that we can be secure in the knowledge that in the future our children and our grandchildren will have an even better future. Now Newman wants to privatize Queensland’s assets. …”
An Upper House (not adding extra pollies, just splitting the numbers so we have a house of review):
“Palmer United will use its seats in Parliament to achieve the re-establishment of an Upper house in Queensland so we can ensure checks and balances are in place for all legislation.”
Independence of Judiciary and police:
“Palmer United believes in the independence of our judiciary and of the police. Under Newman, the Queensland Police force has become the LNP enforcer of Newman policy. …”
What if PUP is being less slimey than the ALP/LNP duopoly and might actually deliver something of these commitments? In my view that would be OK.
@John
You forgot the thank you.
Terje, Phoenix et al should spend their time refuting the position taken by the CSIRO and BOM. Phoenix has demonstrated, on his website, that he is no stranger to defending himself (as they say, he has a fool for a client).
@ Megan
I understand your position on PUP – that you consider it (possibly) a less disastrous option. At the federal level the Palmer senators have certainly mitigated some potential liberal damage.
But the PUP position on CSG seems entirely disingenuous. Clive wants to stop CSG (bravo!) yet his party was foundered – inter alia – to get back at Newman for stifling his attempts to push forward his mine in the Galilee Basin (with its considerable warming potential and groundwater impacts).
While Ben Oquist is credited with turning Clive into a climate change believer, this alliance of sorts between the Australia Institute/Greens on the one hand and PUP on the other seems most ironic
When we clamor for (or at least faintly praise) “least worsts” like this, things must really be dire.
@phoenix
Perhaps you should take a course in statistics before (mis)using terms like “error margin”. The only way not to get a statistically significant upward trend in global temperatures is to cherry-pick the starting date, something you are warned against at the very beginning of such courses. Of course, most denialists can’t be bothered doing even this basic work before setting themselves up as experts: the handful who know enough stats to get it right (Lindzen, for example) don’t enlighten the others.
@rog
Rog,
I am not Shane Dowling,
I link to his site to promote it; some of his endeavours are worthwhile. He is not patently left wing like the majority of journalists, and that is rare.
I support any opposition to big business and big government.
I used to be econwit, but I was banned from this site many moons ago. Sometimes by the grace of JQ my comments get through moderation That is why I am called phoenix; I crash and burn and sometimes rise from the ashes.
JQ
Spencer a real climate scientist sums up the (mis) leading statistics this way:
“In what universe does a temperature change that is too small for anyone to feel over a 50 year period become globally significant? Where we don’t know if the global average temperature is 58 or 59 or 60 deg. F, but we are sure that if it increases by 1 or 2 deg. F, that would be a catastrophe?”
Kind regards,
Phoenix
@Dave Lisle
Things ARE dire.
Anyone who thinks “the pause” is anything other than natural variation overlaying an ongoing warming trend is loudly declaring how deeply ignorant of real climate science is. What is most disappointing is that our mainstream media “informers” fail to call out those who make such brazen declarations of their misunderstanding.
The problem isn’t that people like phoenix declare themselves ignorant and misinformed this way, it’s that people who hold positions of trust and responsibility and authority and influence also do so – and not merely manage to give the Phoenix’s the impression that their ignorance and misunderstandings have a credible basis, but appear to count it as good that a great many ordinary people hold such views, that are diametrically opposed to the mainstream scientific consensus. And such influential people count it as good that these people are effectively immunised against any persuasion based on compelling scientific evidence.
Of course when people in positions of power and authority decide they can no longer sustain their political rejection of mainstream science, a large body of voters (who’s views they helped establish through tolerance, encouragement and direct and indirect support) they will be reluctant to alienate will retain those false convictions and continue to impede rational policy.
Pheonix, the process underway is Global Waming induced by the heat trapping effect of initially Athropogenic Carbon Dioxide, AGW. That is the primary fact. Climate Change is one of many subsequent effecs caused by the increase in the energy within the biosphere. Average Atmospheric Temperature is one of the many measurements that assist in determining some aspects of the warming process. Air is a circulating and cooling medium, but its temperature is not the most significant factor in its role in moving energy around. The more significant factors are the atmospher’s near surface moisture content and its circulation rate.
The air temperature in your freezer will remain the same throughout the defrosting proces and it will only rise once the ice has all melted, at which point it will rise very rapidly. If you want to defrost your freezer more quickly the you would use a an to increase the energy transfer rate, but the air temperature will not change other than to perhaps become slightly warmer.
The above is exactly what is happening in the amosphere coupled with many other factors.
The reality is that the bulk of the biosphere energy absorption is in the ocean near surface waters, in atmospheric moisture, melted glacial and polar ice, and in accelerated chemical feactions through out the earth’s surface. We only talk about average surface temperature as this is the feature of global warming that we encounter most often. Climate Change being the general effect of Global Warming is the more general collection of Global Warming affects that we have to live with.
I suspect that you have been wallowing in the ooze of the climate denialosphere recently judging by your arguments. And I say ooze because denialists like to look back to the primeaval earth to mount arguments that climate has change over time. Yes Furnace Earth was hotter than now, and Snowball Earth was colder than now, but there were no humans then and no cities or condominiums on shore fronts during those times. The climate that our civilisation needs is the climate of the last one hundred years, the climate that enable it to thrive. Our problem is that the waste products of our rapid growth are so great in volume that they are affecting the stability of our environment.
The most important realisation that you need to make is that your opinion, and my opinion, have absolutely no bearing or influence on what is happening to our environment. This is not an argument to be won or lost, it is a realisation that must be understood.
We all thrive or perish on the basis of what we do with our emissions now.
The world’s scientists say we perish if we do not change. A legal blogger, a sociopathic political leader, an avaricious media mogul, a bunch of fossil fuel industry geologists, and some British psuedo peers claim that all of the scientists are wrong and there is nothing wrong, and we perish financially if climate action is taken.
Observe, think, decide, act.
@phoenix
No it cannot be cooling because there is other evidence that shows that it is warming even with just a few years data e.g. http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/ Graph 2.
climate
that most global warming is human caused.
Fixed your quote for you.
@phoenix
No there is no chance that it might not actually be warming. The only way to get that impression is to put on ideological blinkers that restrict the amount of data that you look at (e.g. only 18 years of surface data). None so blind as those who will not see applies to such people.
No it cannot be cooling because there is other evidence that shows that it is warming even with just a few years data e.g. http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/ Graph 2.
(My more detailed comment is being moderated btw. We’ll see if this gets through.)
An article by Noam Chomsky from about a year ago spells it out very well;
http://isreview.org/issue/88/can-civilization-survive-really-existing-capitalism
@TerjeP
I have never yet encountered anybody who is prepared to give a flat denial of the relevant basic physical facts. But I have encountered a number of people who, after having been given an explanation of them, are still not prepared to give an explicit acknowledgement of the truth.
Will phoenix do so, for example?
The Flat Earth Society, aka the paradoxers, still live. I read this article and shook my head.
@phoenix
Actually there is statistically significant warming in probably the best estimate of surface warming in 16 years. If you check the calculator at http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php and see what it gives for HADCRUT2 with either the krig v2 or hybrid compiled by Cowtan and Way then there is statistically significant warming since the beginning of 1999.
But of course only fools think that’s the only thing that matters anyway.
And of course, it’s only a few years since the line was “no statistically significant warming since 1995”. If you had a clue about statistics you’d understand why this goalpost keeps shifting. The number of observations needed for a statistically significant trend depends on the ratio of the trend to the variance.
https://johnquiggin.com/2010/03/03/lindzen-and-no-statistically-significant-warming-since-1995/
@Chris O’Neill
I agree with you, and to prove the point, Republican Senator James Inhofe says:
So much for that.
Meanwhile, Tamino plays a straight bat, and demonstrates that the last 15 odd years of temperature data march along the trend line from the 1970 to 2000 data: see the very first chart in his latest trend blog post.
As I’ve pointed out before, the so-called “pause” is a result of eyeballing the last 15 years of data, and ignoring the prior data of 30 years, which shows a clear positive trend (as in the very first chart in Tamino’s post).
Donald Oats
Meanwhile Roy Spencer plays a straighter bat and hits it out of the park
“Reports that 2014 was the “hottest” year on record feed the insatiable appetite the public has for definitive, alarming headlines. It doesn’t matter that even in the thermometer record, 2014 wasn’t the warmest within the margin of error. Who wants to bother with “margin of error”? Journalists went into journalism so they wouldn’t have to deal with such technical mumbo-jumbo. I said this six weeks ago, as did others, but no one cares unless a mainstream news source stumbles upon it and is objective enough to report it.
In what universe does a temperature change that is too small for anyone to feel over a 50 year period become globally significant? Where we don’t know if the global average temperature is 58 or 59 or 60 deg. F, but we are sure that if it increases by 1 or 2 deg. F, that would be a catastrophe? “
Stunning.
I read somewhere that he is describing 2014 as “the mildest year on record”.
His argument about not knowing the average temperature reminds me of the Japanese government’s reaction to radiation levels from Fukushima that were “higher than safe levels” – they increased the definition of “safe level”. No problem!
@chrisl
That would be the universe where solids such as ice melt at an exact temperature (under constant pressure) i.e. solid and liquid can both exist at exactly the same temperature.
chrisl
Would Monsanto lie to farmers? So wtf are they saying here in these direct quotes from a page on their site:
“we’re just beginning to feel the impacts of climate change. Some effects of agriculture—such as the greenhouse gases produced by farm machinery and the production of fertilizer—are contributing factors. And of course, agriculture itself can suffer from the effects of climate change. Agriculture needs to adapt to changing conditions and use farming techniques that reduce the impact of our changing climate.
…”the elimination of thousands of acres of trees also reduces the ability of the Earth to trap carbon. More carbon in the atmosphere can intensify the effects of climate change, increasing the potential negative effects on crop production.
“The relationship between agriculture and climate change is complex. Just as agriculture is searching for ways to dramatically increase food production, the effects of climate change are making production increases more difficult.”
I believe that corporations lie to us to sell us their crap but why would they lie to farmers who are supposed to not believe in climate change? Does not seem like a good marketing move to me but corporations are devious things.
http://www.monsanto.com/improvingagriculture/pages/how-agriculture-is-connected-to-the-planet.aspx
Would Monsanto lie to farmers?
Hell yeah!
Oh good we can agree on something then; so why are they lying about climate change?
Monsanto are a bit like jumping off a cliff, for most of the time they are correct except for the last little bit.