Study: Slowdown in warming last year not permanent

December 4, 2009 By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID , AP Science Writer

(AP) -- Cooler temperatures in North America last year do not mean global warming is easing, government and academic scientists said Friday.

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Their report comes just days before President Barack Obama heads to Copenhagen, Denmark, to speak at a United Nations conference on climate change.

Rising temperatures over decades have prompted scientific concern, and the last decade has been the hottest in thousands of years, according to climate records. However, the warming eased over North America last year, and groups seeking to deny climate change seized on that in an effort to challenge the idea of overall warming.

North America wasn't as warm as expected because of cooler water in the North Pacific - a condition called La Nina - but the rest of the world continued to warm, researchers said Friday. The overall warming trend is expected to continue worldwide.

La Nina caused cold air from the Arctic to move south into North America, temporarily overwhelming the warming influence from climate change in the region, said Judith Perlwitz of the University of Colorado, lead author of the report being published next week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

While temperature readings in North America dropped back to about the level of 1996 last year, it would have been even colder without the underlying effects of human-induced climate warming, said co-author Martin Hoerling of the Earth System Research Laboratory of the government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"Our work shows that there can be cold periods, but that does not mean the end of global warming," Perlwitz said.

Last year "was not an extremely cold year; it was not an extreme event," Hoerling said, but it did "raise a considerable stir."

The scientists launched their study of conditions last year and compared them with complex computer climate models, leading to the conclusion that it was a case of natural variability rather than any change in global warming.

The work was funded by the NOAA Climate Program Office, and other co-authors were from NOAA's National Weather Service and National Climatic Data Service.

On the Net: NOAA: http://www.noaa.gov

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omatumr
Dec 04, 2009

Rank: 2.7 / 5 (14)

"Government and Academic Scientists" . . .

. . . the unholy alliance that destroyed the integrity of science and gave us climategate, oscillating solar neutrinos, and other falsehoods in exchange for public funds . . .

. . . by a strange coincidence reported "just days before President Barack Obama heads to Copenhagen, Denmark" . . .

that "Cooler temperatures in North America last year do not mean global warming is easing."

I believe them - NOT.

With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA PI for Apollo
Emeritus Professor of
Nuclear & Space Science

Parsec
Dec 04, 2009

Rank: 4.3 / 5 (11)

"Government and Academic Scientists" . . .

. . . the unholy alliance that destroyed the integrity of science and gave us climategate, oscillating solar neutrinos, and other falsehoods in exchange for public funds . . .

omatumr - I am interested to know why you believe that solar neutrinos do not oscillate. How else do you explain the neutrino data? I mean after all, we are pretty confident we understand the reactions driving the sun's nuclear engine, and that they almost certainly produce electron neutrino's almost exclusively. Yet we see other types from the sun, and further that the detected flux of electron neutrinos is 1/3 the rate we would expect. If you have an alternate and compelling theory, I am pretty confident any top-line scientific journal would publish it. If not, please educate your obvious intellectual inferiors on the details. If so, please include a link.

Parsec
Dec 04, 2009

Rank: 3.7 / 5 (9)

that "Cooler temperatures in North America last year do not mean global warming is easing."

I believe them - NOT.

I am also curious why you believe that a one year temperature anomaly means that global warming isn't happening. If you impose a non-linear curve representing local climate variations in the climate on top of a linear curve trending warmer representing global warming, it becomes obvious that some years will be cooler than the previous year just on the basis of chance.

Add in a demonstrated cause like the La Nina which historically causes temporary global cooling pretty well sells the case.

So I ask you sir, with all respect, where is the question marks you see here?

deatopmg
Dec 04, 2009

Rank: 3.1 / 5 (15)

"Study: Slowdown in warming last year not permanent"

How can we believe that it is not permanent, or at least not for another 10 yrs or so? Not 1 (one, ein, ichi) climate warming model can duplicate the past climate, even a short stretch of it. How can they predict the future?
In fact, how can we believe their data in lieu of climategate? There is no transparency with these zealots. Lying and deception is the norm. The means justify the ends.

defunctdiety
Dec 04, 2009

Rank: 3 / 5 (9)

Parsec, you seem like you must have at least a decent capacity for deductive reasoning. You should be able to see then that no warming or cooling will ever be permanent. That the only constant in climate is change, constant variability.

The goals of the US (and the world) should not be dictated by what the climate is doing based on any 1, 100 or 400,000+ year trend. We need to proceed directly towards making our society as adaptable to climate as is possible. This means renewables and energy independence.

Do you disagree that carbon legislation is economically regressive and slows progress towards renewables (subsidies -such as ethanol receives- similarly are also regressive), as it not only harbors the mentality that we should keep using fossils, but facilitates it.

The entirety of AGW is working towards carbon legislation. You must understand this, yes? Cap-and-trade, sequestration, carbon budgets. Explain to me how this progresses our society towards a productive goal?

Parsec
Dec 04, 2009

Rank: 3.3 / 5 (7)

Oh yes, I certainly agree that we must move away from a carbon based society. Reasonable people can disagree on the means however. I happen to believe that cap and trade has so many holes in it that it will not work. I suspect the only viable mechanism is to have a carbon tax that steadily increases year after year. This shifts the economics towards renewable energy sources in such a way that most of the smart money will also shift that way.

I think AGW is simply the theory that the earth is warming on a linear trend, and that the source of the warming is the additional CO2 man has added to the atmosphere in the last 200 years, with most of the increase in the last 50 years. Of course that implies an agenda of reducing carbon emissions as fast as possible, by any means possible. I have never heard that it was associated with any particular means however.

Parsec
Dec 04, 2009

Rank: 2.6 / 5 (5)

But as far as the climate variability, if you take a variable climate graph and impose a linear trend on it, you still get a warming trend, its just that the trend can easily be overwhelmed for a year or two by the variability. The trend always wins in the end however, no matter how small it might be and how large the variability is.

omatumr
Dec 04, 2009

Rank: 1.3 / 5 (6)

If you have an alternate and compelling theory, I am pretty confident any top-line scientific journal would publish it.

If not, please educate . . . on the details. If so, please include a link.

1. Here are overheads for a paper, "The Sun Is A Magnetic Plasma Diffuser That Sorts Atoms By Mass", that was presented at the V INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NON-ACCELERATOR NEW PHYSICS in Dubna, Russia on 20 June 2005: http://tinyurl.com/2h8lpy

2. Here is a paper that was published in Physics of Atomic Nuclei 69 (2006) 1847-1856; and in Yadernaya Fizika 69, number 11, (Nov 2006); PAC: 96.20.Dt; ISSN 1063-7788;
DOI: 10.1134/S106377880611007X
http://arxiv.org/...609509v3

With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA PI for Apollo
Emeritus Professor of
Nuclear & Space Science

Velanarris
Dec 05, 2009

Rank: 3.7 / 5 (3)

Parsec, how would an ever increasing tax spur the innovation and intellectual freedom needed for altering our society and changing it to be more environmentally friendly?

Less money means you're more likely to stick to the status quo. Gone are the days of successful basement inventors, they have too many bills to pay to have the free time to engage in intellectual pursuit.

Shootist
Dec 05, 2009

Rank: 2.6 / 5 (8)

"Government and Academic Scientists" . . .

. . . the unholy alliance that destroyed the integrity of science and gave us climategate, oscillating solar neutrinos, and other falsehoods in exchange for public funds . . .

. . . by a strange coincidence reported "just days before President Barack Obama heads to Copenhagen, Denmark" . . .

that "Cooler temperatures in North America last year do not mean global warming is easing."

I believe them - NOT.

With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA PI for Apollo
Emeritus Professor of
Nuclear & Space Science

But Ollie,

Neutrinos do oscillate. And AGW is bunk.

Say it again! AGW is bunk and the people who believe it have either been hoodwinked or are fellow travellers.

christian_physicist
Dec 05, 2009

Rank: 3.2 / 5 (9)

omatumr (and others), regarding this climategate affair - I'm beginning to think that mixing science and politics is a lot like mixing religion and politics. You read the American founders, and the reason they were adamant about a wall of separation between church and state was to protect the CHURCH. Putting the pope in charge of Rome was bad for Catholicism.

So it is with science. What was supposed to be the objective search for verifiable truth is being corrupted by political money and power. Climategate has made that perfectly clear, if it wasn't already.

christian_physicist
Dec 05, 2009

Rank: 2.8 / 5 (11)

And to everyone, I would say lets be careful not to confuse the issues. At least before climategate, I was all but certain that the Earth had warmed over the last century. But even if that is true, it doesn't necessarily mean that:

1. Humans are causing it.
2. It is a bad thing.
3. Attempts to limit carbon are worth the cost.

The Earth has been plenty warmer than it is now, after all.

Mesafina
Dec 05, 2009

Rank: 5 / 5 (4)

Well I'll just say I really hope that global warming is not occurring, because we sure as hell aren't going to do anything about it.

CptWozza
Dec 05, 2009

Rank: 3.2 / 5 (11)

Well I'll just say I really hope that global warming is not occurring, because we sure as hell aren't going to do anything about it.

Don't worry, real scientists make observations BEFORE forming conclusions. Since warming can occur, has occurred and does occur without human influence (earth's past, other planets), the burden of proof rests with those claiming that something special is happening. Bizarrely, the warmists simply bleat that the 0.7 C warming in the past century constitutes proof in of itself that humans are to blame (huh??? Talk about muddling the event with its suggested cause).

They are treating us like fools. Do not be excessively worried. Comparisons to holocaust deniers and flat earthers, appeals to authority and/or consensus which have nothing to do with real science are intended as distraction mechanisms and are designed to deflect attention from the fraud.

david_42
Dec 06, 2009

Rank: 3 / 5 (5)

Last year at this time it was obvious that we were entering an Ice Age. Had more snow on the ground than in the previous two decades.

By July, global warming was back in full force.

Weather isn't climate.

bhiestand
Dec 06, 2009

Rank: 5 / 5 (1)

Last year at this time it was obvious that we were entering an Ice Age. Had more snow on the ground than in the previous two decades.

By July, global warming was back in full force.

Weather isn't climate.

Are you arguing against yourself, or are you saying that public opinion on scientific issues tends to be entirely uninformed and shifts with the seasons?

If so, do you think that lends support to either side?

CptWozza
Dec 06, 2009

Rank: 3 / 5 (8)

A pro-warmist on the news today stated that "climate change is an absolutely undeniable fact" or very similar words to that effect. He thought he was saying something profound here, but he wasn't. I wholeheartedly agree with him. Of course climate change is an undeniable truth - the climate is, literally as well as figuratively, fluid and always changing.

It's disappointing that this is the best they can come up with in response to a blatant cover up. They say that the leaked e-mails show "nothing untoward" when in fact that is precisely what they show. Nothing was taken out of context. Context matters sometimes, but usually it does not. Temperatures did not rise as they wished, so they sought to "hide the decline". And yet politicians have the bare-faced cheek to accuse skeptics of being "anti-scientific" when they point out these anti-scientific practices. Politicians do not value the truth, and unfortunately the climate science community has an adulterous relationship with politics

omatumr
Dec 07, 2009

Rank: 1.7 / 5 (6)

You are exactly right!

Scientists have been trained like Pavlov's dogs.

Grant funds for one.

Dog biscuits for the other.

omatumr (and others), regarding this climategate affair - I'm beginning to think that mixing science and politics is a lot like mixing religion and politics. You read the American founders, and the reason they were adamant about a wall of separation between church and state was to protect the CHURCH. Putting the pope in charge of Rome was bad for Catholicism.

So it is with science. What was supposed to be the objective search for verifiable truth is being corrupted by political money and power. Climategate has made that perfectly clear, if it wasn't already.

Oliver K. Manuel

Rank

3.4 /5 (20 votes)

Study: Slowdown in warming last year not permanent

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