Science insights as Judith Curry changes course

Dr Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology speaks during a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing on “Data or Dogma” in 2015

Judith describes a recent interaction with a senior student who works in a field that is certainly relevant to climate science but doesn’t identify as a climate scientist:

She says she gets questioned all the time about global warming issues, and doesn’t know what to say, since topics like attribution, etc. are not topics that she explores as a scientist. WOW, a scientist that knows the difference!

This struck me strongly. We’re so accustomed to it that we hardly notice when without evidence scientists claim they’ve found a human signature in climate data, repent ye, the end is nigh. Judith spells it out:

Personal opinions about the science and political opinions about policies that are sort of related to your research expertise are just that – personal and political opinions. Selling such opinions as contributing to a scientific consensus is very much worse than a joke.

We can be very glad that we’re not losing Dr Curry to some unrelated field.

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50 Thoughts on “Science insights as Judith Curry changes course

  1. Gary Kerkin on 05/01/2017 at 2:30 pm said:

    One of the comments she made related to teaching at Georgia Tech and how dissatisfied with it she had become. I can relate to that! It is not new! I taught chemical engineering at the University of Melbourne from 1965 to 1981. One of my reasons for leaving was the direction tertiary education was taking – not just in Australia, but around the world. In a rush to increase tertiary places cheap “universties” were being created and it was clear to me that the competition for students would result in courses designed by Walt Disney Productions. A friend and colleague admitted 30 years later that I had been correct. I didn’t want to be part of it.

    I regret the loss of an honest academic but I am glad she has not chosen to leave the field. I wish her well in her endeavours.

  2. Magoo on 06/01/2017 at 11:30 am said:

    Maybe Dr. Curry quit a bit early, the tide appears to be turning. 1000 peer-reviewed scientific papers refuting catastrophic global warming in the last 3 years – 500 in 2016 alone:

    http://notrickszone.com/2017/01/03/1000-skeptical-peer-reviewed-climate-papers-should-put-un-ipcc-to-shame-says-harvard-astrophysicist/#sthash.9Sw9PLVC.OZW0imzd.dpbs

    So much for the ‘97% consensus’.

  3. Maggy Wassilieff on 08/01/2017 at 1:35 pm said:

    Fox TV interview with Judith Curry from 6 Jan 2017 about why she is quitting work at a University.

    http://video.foxnews.com/v/5273586586001/?#sp=show-clips

  4. Dennis N Horne on 08/01/2017 at 8:12 pm said:

    Judith Curry is the pontificator who though Christy and Spencer’s half-baked satellite temperature record was the “gold standard”. Not sure if this was before or after other scientists had to show them their egregious errors. Or if she knew the satellites don’t measure temperature; they count photons. With a lot of “corrections” you can get some idea of temperatures somewhere – but not near the surface where we live. Maybe not deniers, with their heads in the clouds.

    Apparently Judith Curry was to work with Zeke Hausfather at Berkeley Earth but dropped out. Nothing to do with lack of the required and necessary skills, I heard.

  5. Magoo on 09/01/2017 at 10:30 am said:

    Ah Dennis dear boy, you’re back again.

    The IPCC shows the satellite records have the lowest +/- error margins, with Christy & Spencer’s dataset being the most accurate of all datasets, & their new version is even more accurate – Dr. Curry is correct. Maybe it’s all a big conspiracy and the IPCC are in the pay of ‘big oil’, taking orders from Elvis & bigfoot on the mothership at Area 51. 😉

    Happy New Year dear boy!! 🙂

  6. Simon on 09/01/2017 at 11:16 am said:

    http://www.ysbl.york.ac.uk/~cowtan/applets/trend/trend.html is any excellent tool for comparing the different global temperature measures with data points and confidence intervals. All measures are showing a warming trend of around 0.16°C/decade since satellite records began.
    This is unsurprising as satellites measure irradiance in the troposphere. At some point they have to be calibrated to actual temperature measurements from radiosondes and surface thermometers.

  7. Dennis N Horne on 09/01/2017 at 12:51 pm said:

    Giant hoax coming apart at the hippocampus … science deniers lose their way and founder in facts.

    https://twitter.com/hausfath

    http://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/whats-the-best-way-to-convince-a-climate-change-denier/

  8. Magoo on 09/01/2017 at 1:06 pm said:

    Simon,

    I’m just wondering, how come when your trend calculator is adjusted to the dates (1979-2012) in the AR5 report it gives completely different results both in trend and +/- error margin?

    Table 2.8, page 197, AR5, Working Group I.

  9. Magoo on 09/01/2017 at 1:14 pm said:

    Dennis dear boy,

    Hausfather? The guy who tries to claim a exaggerated warming trend by ending his temperature dataset at the peak of the 2015-2016 El Nino? BAHAHAHAHAHA!!

    Jeez, I knew you weren’t the brightest spark dear boy but that one takes the cake. Or perhaps you were being disingenuous – which is it, are you being stupid or dishonest?

    Hausfather. ROFLMAO!

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/04/yet-another-study-tries-to-erase-the-pause-but-is-missing-a-whole-year-of-data/

  10. Dennis N Horne on 09/01/2017 at 1:42 pm said:

    I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

    Oscar Wilde, on behalf of the global community of scientists.

  11. Simon on 09/01/2017 at 2:25 pm said:

    Magoo,
    Because both UAH and RSS have had to revise previous estimates due to satellite drift.

  12. Dennis N Horne on 09/01/2017 at 4:21 pm said:

    http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/1/e1601207
    Assessing recent warming using instrumentally homogeneous sea surface temperature records
    Zeke Hausfather1,2,*, Kevin Cowtan3, David C. Clarke4, Peter Jacobs5, Mark Richardson6 and Robert Rohde2
    04 Jan 2017 Abstract
    Sea surface temperature (SST) records are subject to potential biases due to changing instrumentation and measurement practices. Significant differences exist between commonly used composite SST reconstructions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Extended Reconstruction Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST), the Hadley Centre SST data set (HadSST3), and the Japanese Meteorological Agency’s Centennial Observation-Based Estimates of SSTs (COBE-SST) from 2003 to the present. The update from ERSST version 3b to version 4 resulted in an increase in the operational SST trend estimate during the last 19 years from 0.07° to 0.12°C per decade, indicating a higher rate of warming in recent years. We show that ERSST version 4 trends generally agree with largely independent, near-global, and instrumentally homogeneous SST measurements from floating buoys, Argo floats, and radiometer-based satellite measurements that have been developed and deployed during the past two decades. We find a large cooling bias in ERSST version 3b and smaller but significant cooling biases in HadSST3 and COBE-SST from 2003 to the present, with respect to most series examined. These results suggest that reported rates of SST warming in recent years have been underestimated in these three data sets.

  13. Magoo on 09/01/2017 at 5:02 pm said:

    The Hausyafather abstract should read:

    ‘Temperature trends are affected by known biases such as ending a temperature trend at the peak of the biggest El Nino recorded, which is how we achieved our exaggerated warming trend.’

    Alarmist desperation gets more hilarious every time Dennis dear boy, all you have left now is an El Nino to keep your catastrophic warming theory going. ROFLMAO!

  14. Magoo on 09/01/2017 at 5:09 pm said:

    Simon,

    Ah, right you are, my mistake.

    The +/- error margins still seem wrong though – e.g. compare the GISS error margins in your trend calculator to those given by GISS themselves:

    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/

  15. Dennis N Horne on 09/01/2017 at 5:27 pm said:

    Wasn’t Roy Spencer complaining UAH satellite temperature will have to shut down in a few years? Can’t find a younger scientist to replace John Christy.

    With Judith Curry gone, hopes of teaching the A-B-C (Anything But CO2) seem to have been vindaloo’d.

    Still, “thousands of papers are waiting to be published in Nature and Science” proving deniers know fyziks,

    Or that we need more psychiatrists.

  16. Magoo on 09/01/2017 at 5:40 pm said:

    Don’t worry Dennis dear boy, catastrophic climate change will be a footnote in history in the next few years.

    One thing we do know for sure is that NASA’s GISS will be out of action in the next year or so after the new POTUS shuts it down. 😉

    Didn’t you know that there were 500 sceptical peer reviewed papers published in 2015 alone dear boy?

    http://notrickszone.com/2017/01/03/1000-skeptical-peer-reviewed-climate-papers-should-put-un-ipcc-to-shame-says-harvard-astrophysicist/#sthash.9Sw9PLVC.OZW0imzd.dpbs

    Funny you should mention physics dear boy, let’s see what a physicist has to say on the sceptical papers:

    ‘Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon thinks the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has strayed way off track. “I’m not surprised by the large number or empirical evidence that rejects the CO2 dangerous global warming alarmism,” wrote Soon in an e-mail. “This sort of literature review ought to put the sort of biased, if not anti-science, reports by the UN IPCC to shame … It is high time for the wider public to not only bear witness to the unbalance and corruption of our science institutions, but also to demand answers on why there has been such a disregard for truth and fact.”’

  17. Dennis N Horne on 09/01/2017 at 6:01 pm said:

    https://www.desmogblog.com/willie-soon
    Soon is a prominent climate change skeptic who has received much of his research funding from the oil and gas industry.

    According to David Suzuki:
    “U.S. oil and coal companies, including ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, Koch Industries, and the world’s largest coal-burning utility, Southern Company, have contributed more than $1 million over the past decade to his research. According to Greenpeace, every grant Dr. Soon has received since 2002 has been from oil or coal interests.” [3]

    Stance on Climate Change
    “The evidence in my paper is consistent with the hypothesis that the Sun causes climatic change in the Arctic … It invalidates the hypothesis that CO2 is a major cause of observed climate change – and raises serious questions about the wisdom of imposing cap-and-trade or other policies that would cripple energy production and economic activity, in the name of ‘preventing catastrophic climate change’.” [4]

    Key Quotes
    December 8, 2016
    Speaking at “At the Crossroads II,” a conference co-hosted by the Heritage Foundation and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Willie Soon said:
    “I have never said this in public, so I’ll say it for the first time: that ultimately, that version that published in Climate Research was a hoax. (Speaking of his 2003 paper, after which three editors resigned in protest). [67]
    ……………………………………………………………….
    Ah, so it is the psychiatrists we need then.

  18. Dennis N Horne on 09/01/2017 at 6:07 pm said:

    https://www.skepticalscience.com/peerreviewedskeptics.php?s=12
    Peer-reviewed skeptic papers by Willie Soon

    This page lists any peer-reviewed papers by Willie Soon that take a negative or explicitly doubtful position on human-caused global warming.

    Implications of the secondary role of carbon dioxide and methane forcing in climate change: Past, present, and future
    (Year: 2007, Journal: Physical Geography, Citations: 8)
    Polar bears of western Hudson Bay and climate change: Are warming spring air temperatures the ‘‘ultimate’’ survival control factor?
    (Year: 2007, Journal: Ecological Complexity, Citations: 14)
    Global Warming: Soon & Baliunas
    (Year: 2003, Journal: Progress in Physical Geography, Citations: 4)
    Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years
    (Year: 2003, Journal: Climate Research, Citations: 64)
    Modeling climatic effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions: unknowns and uncertainties
    (Year: 2001, Journal: Climate Research, Citations: 20)
    Calculating the climatic impacts of increased CO(2): The issue of model validation
    (Year: 2000, Journal: Solar and Space Weather, Citations: 1)
    Climate hypersensitivity to solar forcing?
    (Year: 2000, Journal: Annales Geophysicae, Citations: 20)
    Variations of solar coronal hole area and terrestrial lower tropospheric air temperature from 1979 to mid-1998: astronomical forcings of change in earth’s climate?
    (Year: 2000, Journal: New Astronomy, Citations: 34)
    Inference of solar irradiance variability from terrestrial temperature changes, 1880-1993: An astrophysical application of the sun-climate connection
    (Year: 1996, Journal: Astrophysical Journal, Citations: 35)
    ……………………………………………………………………………………

    Yeah Nah

    More psychiatrists all right.

  19. Dennis N Horne on 09/01/2017 at 11:08 pm said:

    https://climatecrocks.com/2017/01/04/new-study-shows-again-deniers-wrong-noaa-scientists-right/
    Climate Denial Crock of the Week. with Peter Sinclair
    New Study Shows (Again): Deniers Wrong, NOAA Scientists Right. January 4, 2017
    Guardian:
    Once again, science is shown to work. The laborious process in which scientists check and recheck their work and subject their ideas to peer review has led to another success. An independent test of global warming data has confirmed a groundbreaking 2015 study that showed warming was faster than prior estimates.
    Because of its inconvenient findings, the study’s lead author Thomas Karl was subjected to harassment by Lamar Smith (R-TX), chair of the House Science Committee, in an effort to impugn his credibility. But now Karl and his co-authors have been vindicated.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QK5Kp2uM1E&feature=youtu.be
    Published on Apr 21, 2016
    Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Lamar Smith is accusing scientists of falsifying key evidence of a warming planet, even as global temperatures spike to frightening new highs.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnyX32nkYBs&feature=youtu.be
    Published on Jan 4, 2017
    In a paper published in Science Advances, we used data from buoys, satellites, and Argo floats to construct separate instrumentally homogenous sea surface temperature records of the past two decades. We compared them to the old NOAA ERSSTv3b record, the new ERSSTv4 record, the Hadley Centre’s HadSST3 record, and the Japanese COBE-SST record. We found a strong and significant cool bias in the old NOAA record, and a more modest (but still significant) cool bias in the Hadley and Japanese records compared to buoy, satellite, and Argo float data. The new NOAA record agrees quite well with these instrumentally homogenous records. This suggests that the new NOAA record is likely the most accurate sea surface temperature record in recent years, and should help resolve some of the criticism that accompanied the original NOAA study.
    ……………………………………………………………………..

    Earth is retaining more energy due to more GHGs. Temperatures up ice down.
    Predicted. Observed. Measured.
    Denialism won’t stop anthropogenic climate change.

    2016: Warmest year on record. Increase in surface temperatures might slow down a bit but energy is still accumulating in the climate system. We ain’t seen nuffin’ yet.

    Carry on.

  20. Magoo on 10/01/2017 at 8:06 am said:

    Speaking of the need for psychiatric help, I see the US Environmental Protection Agency are offering counseling services to their staff after Trump’s election:

    http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060045642

    EPA climate change delusion meets empirical climate change reality.

  21. Ian Cooper on 10/01/2017 at 8:44 am said:

    2016, currently warmer than 1998 by 0.02C and the jury isn’t out yet. Still well within the margin for error wouldn’t you say. Statistically insignificant in fact?

    Tell me Dennis why are you in denial about the influence of the sun generated phenomena “Grand El Nino’s” which are clearly responsible for those two ‘hot years?’ Are you taking your lead from NIWA who have failed to mention the true influence of ENSO in last year’s record breaking temperatures in recent pronouncements to the MSM, who then regurgitate these announcements from on high without question?

  22. Simon on 10/01/2017 at 10:49 am said:

    A highly recommended read on how to determine causation from correlation:
    https://extranewsfeed.com/what-climate-skeptics-taught-me-about-global-warming-5c408dc51d32#.2vo4nqtai

  23. Magoo on 10/01/2017 at 11:58 am said:

    The way to tell causation from correlation is to follow the scientific method & test the theory. The scientific theory to be tested is in the climate models which have all failed (the 2015-16 El Nino was a temporary natural weather event, not a warming trend). As the theory in the form of climate models failed against empirical data for both projected rising temperatures and positive feedback from water vapour, the theory is invalidated on both fronts. Here’s a hint, the failure of one of these things is the likely cause of the other failure – guess which is which.

    http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/figures/WGI_AR5_FigTS-14.jpg

    Alarmists are the ones ignoring the empirical evidence & perpetuating mistruths, exactly as the pro tobacco lobby did. Dennis’ paper by Hausyafather that tries to show exaggerated warming by ending at the pinnacle of an El Nino is a prime example.

  24. Richard Treadgold on 15/01/2017 at 10:51 pm said:

    Dennis,

    Willie Soon said: “I have never said this in public, so I’ll say it for the first time: that ultimately, that version that published in Climate Research was a hoax.

    This is an egregious extraction of a quote out of context that reverses its meaning. It’s the kind of ruse that DeSmog excels in. I’m still working on the transcript of his address and I’ll publish something shortly. His explanation (ignored by you) is at once a revelation and a bit of a bombshell. Willie Soon is one courageous scientist.

  25. Dennis N Horne on 16/01/2017 at 9:32 am said:

    There are only two rational positions on global warming:
    1. Accept the science
    2. Accept the need to learn it

    Denialism is not an option, it’s a diagnosis.

    Those who think they know more about climate science than the climate scientists and more about science than the Royal Society, National Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Physical Society, American Chemical Society … are either insane or brainwashed.

  26. Richard Treadgold on 29/01/2017 at 11:08 am said:

    Dennis,

    You’ve said some things.

    Soon … has received much of his research funding from the oil and gas industry.

    You say that as though it’s a bad thing. Do you really think that all scientists might slant their research to suit their employer? What you imply about Dr Soon applies also to scientists paid by Greenpeace for doing research. Do you think that professional scientists are tempted to tailor their results according to the beliefs or preferences of their paymasters? I take the opposite view (until evidence is produced to the contrary) — that properly sceptical scientists know how to stick with the science and are immune to the temptation. My latest post points out how easy it is to find evidence of bias, but you present nothing but innuendo.

    December 8, 2016
    Speaking at “At the Crossroads II,” a conference co-hosted by the Heritage Foundation and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Willie Soon said:
    “I have never said this in public, so I’ll say it for the first time: that ultimately, that version that published in Climate Research was a hoax.

    This was a deliberately startling announcement to make people listen. He immediately explained himself and it was clear he was not speaking of a scientific fraud, but a protest against attempts to silence his criticism of Michael Mann and others. See my latest post.

  27. Richard Treadgold on 29/01/2017 at 11:38 am said:

    Dennis,

    There are only two rational positions on global warming:
    1. Accept the science
    2. Accept the need to learn it

    Exactly.

    Denialism is not an option, it’s a diagnosis.

    I like this. It’s a good line. Glad you can’t pin that one on me.

    Those who think they know more about climate science than the climate scientists and more about science than the Royal Society, National Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Physical Society, American Chemical Society … are either insane or brainwashed.

    You’re too harsh here, since you include anyone with questions or valid objections to key parts of the theory of dangerous man-made global warming (DAGW). It’s not a matter of imagining one “knows more” than the scientists but of exercising the human faculties of observation and reasoning.

    When adjustments are made to a series of temperature readings without explanation, it’s valid to call into question the announcement of “unprecedented” warming. When the IPCC claims an “atmosphere-ocean heat flux” but fails to describe a plausible mechanism, it’s valid to keep asking for a description, and to suspend one’s support for the DAGW theory until one is provided. When the IPCC continues to imply that sea levels are rising due to a warming induced by our greenhouse gas emissions, yet they still fail to describe a mechanism whereby heat energy from the atmosphere might substantially heat the ocean, I say rubbish. When the IPCC claims that hurricane activity has increased over a certain period, prompting hurricane expert Chris Landsea in 2005 to resign from the IPCC in protest because the observational data show it has not increased, it’s valid to suspend one’s support for the DAGW theory. When the climate sensitivity to CO2 is observed to be about a third of that required to cause future global mean surface temperature rises in excess of, say, 5°C, yet the IPCC does nothing to correct its claims of very high sensitivity, it’s actually a highly intelligent response to reject forecasts of dangerous warming, no matter how qualified the scientists who make them. As to why they make them, I am deeply ignorant.

  28. Magoo on 22/02/2017 at 10:52 am said:

    A new paper from Dr. Curry on climate models:

    http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2017/02/Curry-2017.pdf

  29. Simon on 22/02/2017 at 2:03 pm said:

    That’s not a paper, it’s publicity material from a lobby group.

  30. Magoo on 22/02/2017 at 3:06 pm said:

    Simon,

    ‘That’s not a paper, it’s publicity material from a lobby group.’

    I think you’re confused, you’re thinking of the Karl et al. 2015 ‘pausebuster’ paper from the NOAA.

  31. Maggy Wassilieff on 22/02/2017 at 10:05 pm said:

    That’s not a paper, it’s publicity material from a lobby group.

    Perhaps Simon is unfamiliar with Scientific review papers.

    They are very common.

    Judith Curry’s 2017 “Climate Models for the Layman” is a review paper.

    It summarises the current understanding of Climate models in non-technical language.

  32. Andy on 24/02/2017 at 9:24 am said:

    The Curry paper/whatever is quite good at explaining some of the issues in a simple, easy to understand way for the layman.

    This, presumably, is a bad thing.

  33. Simon on 24/02/2017 at 11:03 am said:

    On the contrary Andy, it is chock-full of straw-man and God of the Gaps arguments; tactics that you are all too familiar with. Climate models do not cease to be useful because they can not predict solar variability, volcanic activity, and chaotic oscillations in weather patterns.
    It is a rather partisan piece that would likely only confuse the ‘layman’. Leaving a university tenure position means being no longer bound by academic rigour and code of ethics requirements.

  34. Simon on 24/02/2017 at 11:20 am said:

    BTW Andy, I gather Milo Yiannopoulos is now looking for a job. Are you still keen to invite him over to NZ to discuss climate change and whatever else that takes his fancy?

  35. Andy on 24/02/2017 at 11:26 am said:

    Yes I’d love to invite Milo to NZ.

    I don’t actually think he is looking for a job. I understand he has his own media interests and some other publishers interested in his book.

    If it offends NZers, even better

  36. Andy on 24/02/2017 at 11:51 am said:

    We will be waiting for the “corrected” layman’s introduction to climate models

    * tumbleweeds … *

  37. Richard Treadgold on 24/02/2017 at 12:02 pm said:

    Simon,

    Climate models do not cease to be useful

    Your reluctance to affirm the skill of climate models is a bit obvious — and even the IPCC laments their failure to predict the temperature (as you’ve been informed). No fewer than 111 climate models exaggerate the temperature.

    But do tell us their use, remembering they know nothing of solar variability, volcanic activity or the great oceanic cycles—but of course you already admitted that. Knowing nothing of clouds alone makes them useless for temperature predictions. Weather is chaotic (as you say) which is why the IPCC acknowledged it was impossible to predict.

  38. Simon on 15/03/2017 at 9:02 am said:

    Curry’s “paper” is paradoxical; she argues for a significant natural contribution to the observed warming AND a low climate sensitivity. That is an either/or proposition, it can’t be both.
    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2017/03/predictable-and-unpredictable-behaviour/#more-20247

  39. Andy on 17/03/2017 at 9:49 am said:

    Does a significant anthropogenic contribution to the observed warming imply low climate sensitivity?

  40. Simon on 17/03/2017 at 4:16 pm said:

    Good question. If most of the observed warming is due to greenhouse gas emissions as predicted, then the models are not underestimating feedback processes. If this is the case, then the higher estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity would be less likely to occur.

  41. Magoo on 17/03/2017 at 7:03 pm said:

    What ‘observed warming’? There’s barely been any atmospheric warming over the past 20 yrs except for when the ocean sporadically vents excess heat to space via the atmosphere due to an El Nino, and we all know that large quantities of heat escaping to space is actually a cooling event.

  42. Simon on 17/03/2017 at 9:20 pm said:

    You’re blind, Magoo or seriously delusional. The most recent El Niño was 14 months ago and yet February 2017 was the second hottest ever recorded:
    https://critical-angle.net/2017/03/16/global-temperature-update-february-2017/
    https://robertscribbler.com/2017/03/16/weird-polar-warming-appears-to-have-made-february-of-2017-the-second-hottest-ever-recorded/

  43. Magoo on 17/03/2017 at 10:50 pm said:

    Simon:

    That would have to rank as one of your more idiotic & disingenuous comments Simon, & you’ve said some pretty dumb things before.

    What you really mean is that the last El Nino PEAKED 14 months ago &, as you’re very well aware, it takes a while for temperatures to return to normal after an El Nino, just like it did with the previous El Ninos which can be seen in the temperature record:

    http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_February_2017_v6.jpg

    I realise the desperation on the part of the warmists over a lack of warming is palpable, but trying to use an El Nino as evidence of AGW is just scraping the bottom of the barrel. Save it for echo chambers of Hot Topic.

  44. Magoo on 17/03/2017 at 11:20 pm said:

    Simon,

    One last thing – I wouldn’t place too much faith in NASA claiming record temperatures in Feb as they claim all the warming happened at the poles, places that NASA has absolutely no empirical data for. Check for yourself, go to the NASA link below and change the ‘smoothing radius’ from 1200km to 250km and click make map – hey presto, all their so called record temperatures disappear (i.e. they made them up):

    https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/

    UAH actually does measure temperature over most of the poles, and shows that Feb was not the 2nd warmest. That is why NASA is about to lose all their climate funding in the upcoming U.S. budget.

  45. Simon on 18/03/2017 at 9:45 pm said:

    Surface temperature are accurate to known confidence intervals and under-estimation is as likely as over-estimation.

    Let’s assume that you are correct and that UAH is a better estimate of temperature. A linear trend of UAH to Feb 2017 indicates warming of 0.156ºC per decade. The rate for the last 20 years is 0.216ºC per decade.
    Not only are you incorrect in stating that there has been no warming in the last 20 years, UAH suggests that the rate of warming may actually be increasing.

    Are you being intellectually dishonest or do you suffer from a severe cognitive bias?

  46. Simon on 19/03/2017 at 8:29 am said:

    Correction, The UAH rate of warming for the last 20 years is also 0.156ºC per decade. The regression is very sensitive to start date over such short time periods, which is why at least 30 years of data is recommended.
    To reiterate, the climate is warming and even the most ardent climate change denier no longer denies this.

  47. Simon on 20/03/2017 at 2:39 pm said:

    Just for laughs, I have built a UAH trend plotter in R. For some reason, the UAH has updated v5.6 to Feb 2017 but not the beta 6.0. There has been no global warming since October 2015! Conversely, I can also show global warming has been increasing at over 1ºC per decade (i.e. 10ºC a century) if I mischievously choose a start-point between Jan-2013 and April-2014. The long trend gradually decreases to around 0.156ºC per decade as the time period increases. There is some evidence of an acceleration in warming but it is not statistically significant.

  48. Richard Treadgold on 20/03/2017 at 5:17 pm said:

    Simon,

    Are you being intellectually dishonest or do you suffer from a severe cognitive bias?

    If you’re responding to Magoo, I don’t believe anything you say refutes anything he said. From what UAH themselves have published, he’s right. You say:

    A linear trend of UAH to Feb 2017 indicates warming of 0.156ºC per decade. The rate for the last 20 years is 0.216ºC per decade.

    But Spencer and Christy say:

    Compared to the previous UAH dataset (V5.6), the most important change is a reduction in the global average lower-troposphere temperature trend from +0.140°C/decade to +0.114°C/decade over the past 36 years (Dec. ’78 through Mar. ’15).

    You comment:

    For some reason, the UAH has updated v5.6 to Feb 2017 but not the beta 6.0.

    I don’t know what you mean by this. Spencer’s website clearly states on the latest global temperatures (Feb 17) “(Version 6.0)”.

    I suggest your linear trend is influenced by the terminal El Nino. What do you think?

  49. Magoo on 23/03/2017 at 10:16 am said:

    http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2017/03/State-of-the-climate-2016.pdf

    Warming due to El Nino:

    ‘1. It is likely that 2016 was one of the warmest years in the temperature records from the instrumental period (since about 1850). However, by the end of 2016, global air temperatures were essentially back to the level of the years before the recent 2015–16 oceanographic El Niño episode, although there are small differences between the individual temperature records. This fact reveals that the global 2015–16 surface temperature peak was caused mainly by El Niño. It also suggests that what has been termed the ‘hiatus’, ‘pause’ or ‘period of gentle warming’ may endure after the recent El Niño episode.’

    El Nino heat radiated to space:

    ‘5. Much of the heat given off during the 2015–16 El Niño appears to have been transported to the polar regions, especially to the Arctic, causing severe weather phenomena and unseasonably high air temperatures. Subsequently, the heat may have been radiated out to space, as latitudes north of 70°N have been char- acterised by above-normal outgoing longwave radiation during the northern hemisphere autumn and early winter of 2016.’

    ‘In addition, much heat has escaped from the equatorial regions over the Pacific Ocean, corresponding to the area directly affected by the recent El Niño.’

    Oceans warming due to sun, not CO2:

    ‘6. Since 2004, when the Argo buoys came into operation, the global oceans above 1900 m depth have, on average, warmed somewhat. The maximum warming (from the surface to about 120 m) affects the oceans near the Equator, and surface warming is absent or small at higher latitudes in both hemispheres. The maximum ocean surface warming has taken place at latitudes where the in- coming solar radiation is at its annual maximum. Net cooling since 2004 is pronounced for the North Atlantic.’

    Etc., etc.

    Alarmists can’t help but froth & rant when confronted with empirical evidence proving them wrong, and it’s so easy to verify the empirical evidence that I can only assume that those who ignore it do so out of willful ignorance. If they do ever get around to examining it they usually try to misrepresent it (e.g. cooling is evidence of warming, the warming was due to CO2 not a giant El Nino, etc.). The 2015-16 El Nino was the last (false) big hope to save the AGW narrative, and now it’s subsiding the panic & desperation is setting in as the AGW conjob is all but up. ALL the predictions and models have failed, just like Y2K.

  50. Simon on 23/03/2017 at 11:16 am said:

    Every temperature time series show a consistent warming trend between 0.16 – 0.18 °C/decade since 1980.
    The climate is warming, no-one is denying this, unless they are a crank or a dodgy lobby group.
    Note how the GPWF concentrate on very short time periods or small parts of the globe to deliberately misinform the gullible.

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