Let's start with the temperature record since 1850, which is the starting point for showing that industrialization is causing global warming by the excess introduction of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2067537/2011-set-10th-warmest-record-despite-cooling-effect-La-Nina-weather-system.html
Since 1850, temperatures have generally gone up. Although it was generally flat, with a rise and then decline around 1880, until 1910, there was a rise to the 1940s when there was a decline until the 1970s. then temperatures went up again until a period of about 1998 to the present when temperatures have been flat.
And that variation has taken place with carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere which the models say will increase air temperatures.
Let's go to the article:
The rise in the surface temperature of earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that. And that lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace.
Note how easy it is to shade the data. A statistically flat period back to 1998 is described as showing surface temperatures rising at a "markedly slower" pace! Flat is markedly slower all right. Is it so hard to say the surface temperatures haven't risen in a decade and a half?
I have no problem admitting that the temperatures rose in that previous 20-year period. I have questions about the validity of the surface temperature stations over time, but at some level temperatures are rising even if we are over-stating the increase from shaded data.
Indeed, since the starting point for showing human-caused global warming has been 1850--the ending point of the Little Ice Age--it would be shocking if temperatures didn't rise even with no human activity at all. Wouldn't it?
But there's an out for this inconvenient "slowdown" (well, zero is much slower, to be fair), apparently:
The slowdown is a bit of a mystery to climate scientists. True, the basic theory that predicts a warming of the planet in response to human emissions does not suggest that warming should be smooth and continuous. To the contrary, in a climate system still dominated by natural variability, there is every reason to think the warming will proceed in fits and starts.
Yes! This is basically the heart of my position hitherto called "denialism"--other factors besides human activity affect the climate. Indeed, with periods of decline and no-change even as carbon dioxide climbs, those factors of natural variability seem to be stronger than human causes, no?
And until now, I've just seen predictions of global warming extending decades into the future with no caveats about plateaus and declines. I welcome this new embrace of natural variability that can be stronger than humanity's impact.
The article goes on to say that anti-global warmers say the recent lack of increased temperatures (the author finally admits this plateau to make this point) proves there is no global warming.
I don't pretend to speak for the entire global "denialist" community, but I'll say that while I accept that carbon dioxide has a theoretical effect on climate (warming it), I do not accept that our contribution is the determining factor in our climate change. If it was, why haven't temperatures increased as carbon dioxide levels have gone up? Obviously, there are other factors involved, and the idea that we should cripple our economy to limit what may not be a very important part of climate change is pure insanity to me. Climate has changed without us and is changing all the time. Why are we so important to this change?
Just because there is a theory that carbon dioxide is causing the rise does not make it so. And now even a pro-global warming article is admitting what had been my "denialist" position all along!
But then the author turns on the anti-global warming claim that temperatures haven't risen with a very unconvincing argument:
Rarely do they mention that most of the warmest years in the historical record have occurred recently. Moreover, their claim depends on careful selection of the starting and ending points. The starting point is almost always 1998, a particularly warm year because of a strong El Niño weather pattern.
Really? In what way does complaining about the starting point of 1998 invalidate the fact that temperatures have not statistically risen since around then? I'm not denying that going back to the 1970s will show an increase from that point to 1998 (or near that year), after all. Why choose those points? Because that's when the temperature vectors changed! Why wouldn't you read the data at the points before and after the late 1990s and the late 1970s to ask what changed?
And if you want complaints about arbitrary starting points, let me remind you that the start of our industrial age used to track carbon dioxide's effects conveniently starts at the point when the Little Ice Age is considered to have ended! All things being equal, of course temperatures will have gone up since then.
And here's a lovely straw man:
We certainly cannot conclude, as some people want to, that carbon dioxide is not actually a greenhouse gas. More than a century of research thoroughly disproves that claim.
Who is denying that CO2 is a greenhouse gas? I'm certainly not. And the sites I read don't deny it. I just wonder--as this author is newly wondering--what is being missed that isn't explaining real world temperatures as opposed to the certainty of the models' predictions?
Could the deep oceans be absorbing the heat that will eventually warm our atmosphere? Could be. Look into it. But until recently, the models simply claimed air temperatures would continue to rise with no caveats that the oceans would absorb the heat. Now that the atmosphere isn't warming, they are looking for ways to explain the real world. I welcome that effort.
And while the article evolves from calling the halt in global warming since 1998 a slower rate of growth in the beginning to calling it a "plateau" (that is, flat) as the article went along, the urge to slant is strong. Remember that decline from the 1940s to 1970s? Look how the author describes it:
Now, here is a crucial piece of background: It turns out we had an earlier plateau in global warming, from roughly the 1950s to the 1970s, and scientists do not fully understand that one either.
Huh, at this point an actual decline in temperatures--so much so that there were discussions of a new Ice Age--is called a plateau! Later the author calls this decline a "lull!" That was a heck of a lull. Why did scientists at the time interpret it as the trend?
Is the author unable to look at a graph and say temperatures declined? After all, the article explains that pollution caused the lack of warming from the 1940s to the 1970s (thanks planet-killing Clean Air Act and EPA!), implying that without that pollution counter-factor, carbon dioxide would have continued to warm the planet.
Is the Earth's atmosphere really dirtier today than in the 1960s and 1970s? Is that really the simple mechanism? Or is the heat sink of the ocean the cause? Why wasn't the ocean carrying out a heat-sink function in the 1980s and 1990s? What about volcanic activity in those decades?
If using a strong El Nino warming year of 1998 is not valid, should we eliminate the cooling years from the volcano effects in those decades, too? When that might extend the period of no statistically significant warming back farther? We really should clear that up.
And if pollution is bad enough to halt global warming the last 15 years, what makes the author believe that temperatures will soon start to go up again? Is China cleaning up their emissions? I see no evidence of that. So why will temperatures resume an upward trend in the absence of a change in the pollution factor? Will the ocean start putting heat into the atmosphere? What's the mechanism for that change?
If this plateau continues (and I have no idea if this is a lull, a plateau, or a trend), the factors that need explaining grow, don't they?
And what about that big hot thing up in the daytime sky that just might have some strange ill-comprehended way of warming our planet? Could variability in the Sun's output have an effect on our climate? Far-fetched, I know. Humor me.
Should we perhaps just give tax credits for large Hummers that cough planet-saving particulates into the air and ban those planet-killing EVs?
I deny that the science is strong enough to justify crippling our economy to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere. And the inability of an author in a major fact-checked newspaper to even accurately describe the temperature data without shading it to the pro-warming side discredits them in my eyes. What else they're shading that isn't so easily checked is worrisome.
Why I'm the anti-science one is beyond me.
UPDATE: I welcome this change:
The conversation is no longer solely about how to save the planet by cutting carbon emissions. It's becoming more about how to save ourselves from the warming planet's wild weather. ...
After years of losing the fight against rising global emissions of heat-trapping gases, governments around the world are emphasizing what a U.N. Foundation scientific report calls "managing the unavoidable."
It's called adaptation and it's about as sexy but as necessary as insurance, experts say.
It's also a message that once was taboo among climate activists such as former Vice President Al Gore.
Without crippling our economies in a futile effort to halt global warming that is probably beyond our influence, we'll have more wealth to cope when and where we need to cope.
And coping with weather events is useful at the point of impact whether or not global warming reappears or is generally harmful. So this is good.
I'd like to note that if our weather is increasingly "wild" it isn't because of global warming. Since the global temperature has been flat for fifteen years or so, that can't be a cause and effect, can it?
Personally, I figure our current wild weather is due to short memories, more building on the coasts, and paying attention to weather events more because the media is looking for proof of global warming's impact.
When the global warmers are moving closer to "denialist" positions, I call this progress for science.
UDATE: This is what I'm talking about:
What is far from clear is the influence, if any, from CO2. Its influence must be very small, for it seems easily overwhelmed by natural influences such as the PDO [Pacific Decadal Oscillation] and the three phenomena studied by SteveF. ...
Disentangling the true contribution of CO2 to warming from not only the numerous natural influences but also from the effects of data revisionism is near impossible. We shall have to wait and see. The one fact that is already clear, however, is that the warming rate predicted by the models on whose output the climate scare is founded is proving to be a hefty exaggeration.
The global warming industry has been promoting the simple idea that CO2 is the cause of increased temperatures and that our failure to dramatically reduce CO2 emissions (sadly--or not, for some--tanking our economy in the process) is a crime against humanity justifying those who question the centrality of CO2 as "deniers" with all the guilt baggage that term implies.
UPDATE: How is it scientific to fret that the search for explanations about why the Earth isn't warming as the models said will eliminate the simple explanation for warming that is being utilized to promote policies favored by the Greens?
That's the problem. The science is complex. The policies are simple. And I don't accept that the linkage between the science and the proposed policies has anything to do with science at all.
