No escape from climate reality or alarm

There’s no escaping the relentless barrage of climate alarm. Two weeks ago Mike Hosking accused us all of dishonesty over climate change, for we lament the potential of fossil fuels to destroy us while our emissions reach record levels and we use ever more coal, oil and gas but politicians around the world do nothing about it.

News media from Toronto to Te Puke hector us that “climate related disasters” are increasing but shoot themselves in the foot when they picture bushfires “caused by climate change.” The New York Times exemplifies the huge gaps between alarmist rhetoric and reality with blatant factual distortions designed to heighten public anxiety.

“Things are getting worse,” said Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, which [recently] issued its annual state of the global climate report, concluding a decade of what it called exceptional global heat. “It’s more urgent than ever to proceed with mitigation.”

To these doomsters it doesn’t matter what they say because the news media will never falsify it. The news media take the view that, since everyone else has been claiming rising temperatures over the last few decades, what does it matter if we say it again today? We can hardly be blamed for it.

Well, I’m drawing a line in the sand — it’s wrong.

Rising temperatures?

UAH (satellite) global temperature record since 1979 (41 years). The peaks where temperature suddenly soars and quickly returns to its origin occur under the influence of El Ninos, which generally increase the global surface temperature. In other words, they are one-offs, not a sign of a warming trend. This graph shows that, from about 1995 to mid-2019, there’s been precious little warming. If solar symptoms are any indication, we’re on the brink of substantial cooling.

But it’s so very tempting to think the temperature peaks are caused by human emissions. I pondered how to convey the sense that they are entirely natural events. The Multivariate ENSO Index Version 2 (MEI2), from NOAA (next), shows warm and cold events since 1979. The index is a mathematical amalgamation of the surface wind, sea surface temperature, surface air temperature and cloudiness. Warm (red) and cold (blue) periods are based on a threshold of +/- 0.5 of those dimensionless MEI2 units. It looks like this:

I wondered whether overlaying this index of El Nino and La Nina events on the temperature graph might give a reasonable sense of the correlation between them and the global temperature spikes, and here it is:

It seems to work. Remembering that there’s no correlation of the Y-axes, so it’s only the vertical movements in each graph (the blue lines and the red/blue shading) that might be significant. So from about 1995/96 there’s no distinct warming trend evident until the last 12 months or so, when that apparently descending 37-month running average might do anything.

I think it’s reasonable, but let me know what you think.

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13 Thoughts on “No escape from climate reality or alarm

  1. Simon on 16/12/2019 at 12:56 pm said:

    If El Niños were causing the increasing trend in surface temperatures, then the oceans would have to be cooling because that is where the additional heat is coming from. However, the oceans are also warming so the energy is coming from outside the system.
    It’s not the sun, as solar output is very slightly decreasing due to the current phase of Milankovitch and sunspot cycles.
    The source is the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases.

    • Mack on 16/12/2019 at 4:40 pm said:

      “…..so the energy is coming from outside the system”

      I must confess, it’s a strange feeling being “outside the system”. Perhaps “the system” is a closed system and all us humans should be outside “the system”. Seems the most logical scientific explanation to me.
      Whatever, Simon sez that a whole heap of energy is coming from some of us humans who’ve somehow managed to get themselves inside “the system”… too much human activity. I blame it on all those people jogging in the streets.

    • Maggy Wassilieff on 17/12/2019 at 12:13 pm said:

      Oh dear, how do we explain the warming of the Southern Ocean and melting of the West Antarctic Ice sheet when CO2 levels were low 1 million years ago?

      Southern Ocean temperature records and ice-sheet models demonstrate rapid Antarctic ice sheet retreat under low atmospheric CO2 during Marine Isotope Stage 31

      https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379119306122?via%3Dihub

    • Richard Treadgold on 17/12/2019 at 4:29 pm said:

      Wow, what a revelation, and impressive, Maggy, citing a paper not due for publication for another month! There’s no mention of the cause of the warming (average SSTs warmer by 5 °C around Antarctica!!). Any ideas yourself? They refer to “runaway retreat” of the WAIS, which I would guess needed most of that window of 30,000 years to melt—it’s a lot of ice.

      The abstract raises questions. It would help if I knew what ocean fronts and marine Isotope Stages (progressive changes in ocean floor deposits?) were. Also, how would cold Circumpolar Deep Water rise above the anomalously warm surface water to intrude on the continental shelf?

    • Maggy Wassilieff on 17/12/2019 at 6:50 pm said:

      This looks to be the full paper…
      https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-02385673/document

      they provide a diagram of how they imagine the deep water advects over the continental shelf.

      They are not sure of the cause of the warming… but it’s a well-studied interglacial stage… they postulate:
      The unusual MIS31 orbital
      configuration resulted in an extended period (~ 2000 years) of warm and long-lasting
      summer seasons that caused mild warming of Southern Ocean surface waters and the
      reduction of sea ice development or survival. Concomitantly, the prevailing Southern
      Hemisphere Westerly Winds and the easterly coastal winds migrated to the south
      (Fig. 6). The poleward shifted winds warmed the coastal waters, thus bringing heat
      southwards thereby initiating basal melting of ice shelves and the retreat of the
      marine-based grounding lines.

      Marine Isotope stages – the numbering system used for alternating warm and cold periods of Earth’s paleoclimate (we are in MIS 1 ….the last 12000- – 14,000 years)

      There’s about 100 stages (warm/cold) back through the last 6 Million years.

    • Richard Treadgold on 18/12/2019 at 9:33 am said:

      Thanks, I found that link yesterday but it didn’t appear to respond. Today it does. Interesting that six of the authors are attached to NZ institutions. But I came across an ambiguous sentence, the second sentence of the Introduction, p 4. Appears to say the global temperature increased in the Northern Hemisphere.

    • Maggy Wassilieff on 18/12/2019 at 4:42 pm said:

      That sentence is referencing this Paper
      https://www.clim-past.net/15/735/2019/

      The mention of the boreal summer temp increase of 1.2C is in 3rd para down in the section 2.2.1 atmospheric conditions.

      It is confusing, as elsewhere that paper talks of global T being up to 6C higher during the MIS31 superinterglacial…than present day temperatures.

      (but as it is basically a speculative modelling exercise… I can’t be bothered reading the paper thoroughly)

    • Simon on 17/12/2019 at 9:53 pm said:

      Interesting paper Maggy. It’s a scary read:

      We show that the Paris Agreement target temperature of 1.5°C is sufficient to drive runaway retreat of the WAIS.

    • Maggy Wassilieff on 17/12/2019 at 10:24 pm said:

      It’s a scary read:

      Oh gosh, I haven’t ruined your Xmas, have I?

      Relax Simon… there’s a fair degree of spin in the paper…

      Anyway, these chaps reckon the WAIS collapse has all ready started
      https://science.sciencemag.org/content/344/6185/735

      but… Wait….the Earth rebounds…
      https://theconversation.com/the-west-antarctic-ice-sheet-is-in-trouble-but-the-ground-beneath-it-may-buy-some-time-98368

  2. Gwan on 16/12/2019 at 6:37 pm said:

    I have to agree with you Richard .
    Our regional news paper part of the Stuff group announced they were going “full retard’ all out on climate change .
    We have been bombarded with absolute lies and today some clown wrote about climate gate and stated that although climate gate threw a spanner in the great climate scam , this clown claimed there was nothing wrong with the texts between climate scientists .
    We really can pin this back to 1995 and Ben Santer who was appointed lead author of chapter 8
    “Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes” of the 1995 IPCC Report .
    His fellow chapter authors agreed to a final draft
    Here is what they agreed to at a meeting in Madrid .
    1″ None of the studies cited have shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed (climate ) changes to the specific cause of increase of greenhouse gases.”
    3 “Any claims of positive detection and of positive detection and attribution of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial untill uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced ”
    4″While none of these studies has specifically considered the attribution issue ,they often draw conclusions ,for which there is little justification .”
    Santer then turned all this on its head and blatantly stated that .
    1 There is evidence of an emerging pattern of climate response to forcing by green house gases and sulphate aerosols …from the geographical ,seasonal and vertical patterns of temperature change…these results point towards a human influence on global climate.”
    2 “The body of statistical evidence in chapter 8 when examined in context of our physical understanding of the climate system ,now points to discernible human influence on the global climate,”
    It didn’t take long for disclosure of Santers actions .It required a quick cover up to provide a” peer ”
    reviewed paper .
    This paper is full of errors but is taken as gospel by the warmists ,
    There is no proof that CO2 is the control knob of the climate ,it is a very minor trace gas and methane is so dilute in the atmosphere at 1,9 parts per million that it cannot effect the climate now or in 100 years .
    There is no climate emergency except in the minds and fears of those pushing this fable .
    Graham Anderson ,
    Proud to be a farmer feeding the world with milk an beef

    • Brett Keane on 17/12/2019 at 2:58 am said:

      Yeah, Dead right! Brett

    • Richard Treadgold on 17/12/2019 at 11:05 am said:

      That’s right, Graham! Thus by patient advance over years they turn the narrative to their design. It is clever.

      Simon suggests I claimed the El Ninos are

      causing the increasing trend in surface temperatures

      but I haven’t. There is no such trend. He says:

      the energy is coming from outside the system.

      Yet:

      It’s not the sun

      But there is no other source of energy outside our system and it’s not credible that the minor gas CO2, at 410 ppm and in the absence of any increase in tropospheric water vapour, might cause any detectable warming at all.

      I must admit to doubts about the physics of that. Are we saying that bouncing a tiny amount of energy around the atmosphere raises the surface temperature? Hard to accept that. Besides, according to the global temperature datasets, there’s been no substantial warming this century, so I don’t understand why he says that.

      All the peaks to date were caused by El Ninos and returned to their starting points (except the most recent, for which a little more time is needed to be sure). If ENSO is the cause, it also explains the oceans as the source of the energy.

    • Brett Keane on 20/12/2019 at 8:53 am said:

      Yes, and Maxwell’s ‘KINETICS OF GASES’ plus Einstein’s 1917 follow-on totally aborted all CO2 possibilities as touted. Ignored because they are old, another century will see them remembered with respect while warmista will be cursed by the survivors. The trolls will perish much sooner with Soros’ funding, anonymous Simons et alia. Brett Keane
      PS, notice how late Spring and since, waqrming weather is soon followed by colder spells. This is noticed more in less Maritime climates, and crops have begun failing….

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