Climate Temperatures Plateaued for 10 Years. How Many More Years of Steady Temps Before You Don't Believe

Question

it's going to warm any more?

Where's the point for you where you can no longer believe that the Earth is going to get warmer?

You probably believe in global warming, even though the Earth hasn't warmed in 10 years.

Will you still believe the Earth is warming if the temperatures haven't changed in 15 years? How about 20?

Will you still believe in global warming if the Earth's temperatures haven't increased after 25 years?

Where's your personal tipping point?

Answer 1

Thankfully we have been in a "warming" trend for 150 years.  There is an old gambler addage:  Always bet on a streak to continue.  I would be inclined to bet that it will continue to get warmer.  Not much of a plateau unless you are standing too close to the graph.

I have a theory though.  What if what we are seeing in a warmer surface temp is actually global cooling?  

Only a tiny portion of the earth's heat is contained in the atmosphere.  For heat to escape the main body of the planet itself it must somehow transfer through the atmosphere.  There have been reports that the oceans have actually cooled in the past few decades.  Has that heat merely moved to the surface on its way out to space and the net heat content of the earth is actually lower?

Answer 2

For a lot of them (Dana) they will be on their death beds preaching global warming even though the temperatures will stay consistent. How do we know what the ideal temperature for the earth is. Maybe we have been 5 or 10 degrees below the optimal temperatures. Good thing the earth has those natural temperature controls that keep the temperatures within a stable range. The temperature has only went up or down a few degrees in the past 100,000 years. I would say that is pretty stable. As for me if the temperature increased a half degree over the next 10 years it would be no big deal. I am not expecting any 200 foot tidal waves or huge catastrophe like some freaks are predicting (algore).

Answer 3

Jello,  unfortunately there are individuals and organizations that have so firmly entrenched themselves in the 'Man-did-it' AGW craze..... either philosphically or financially.... that they are hard-pressed to buck it up and admit their mis-guided cause.

Sad to say, but this cause will simply have to wear out as time and even more scientific facts show the cause to be remiss.

For Bob:  

You need to pick your 'heros' more wisely.  The American Meteorological Assoc. aka American Meteorological Society, has some mighty unscientific membership.... unscientific to the point that it was proposed that any broadcast member not subscribing to the 'Man-did-it' Global Warming doctrine..... be stripped of their AMS seal of approval.  I suggest that you remove them from your 'copy-and-paste' collection!!

"The Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to "Holocaust Deniers" and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists.

The Weather Channel’s (TWC) Heidi Cullen, who hosts the weekly global warming program "The Climate Code," is advocating that the American Meteorological Society (AMS) revoke their "Seal of Approval" for any television weatherman who expresses skepticism that human activity is creating a climate catastrophe."

Answer 4

good links Dana.

Tamino Rocks!

(and it's hard to get exited by a mathematician!)

Answer 5

Get with the program Dr Jello, global temperature data is old news.  Climate researchers don't want to talk about it any more.  

Researchers have already started asserting that there are more significant indicators of climate change than global temperatures.  Apparently they have learned their lesson since the IPCC made a 20 year forcast in 1990, there is no future in using proper scientific methods.  Climate change indicators must be identified after they have produced agreeable results.

Try googling climate change indicator - no references to temperature anymore.

Answer 6

The house of cards is beginning to tumble.  So many people have so much money and personal credibility tied up in this that they are going to fight tooth and nail until they are utterly humiliated.  No one disputes that CO2 levels have been increasing at a much greater rate than in the past, yet temperatures haven't been climbing.  Maybe they are cooling, but they definitely have plateaued.  How does that fit with the AGW hoax?  It doesn't.

Now, Algore and his minions are going to be laughed out of "science" once their hoax has been exposed.  Sadly, Algore is likely to make millions off of his carbon offset scam before all is said and done.

Answer 7

A conversation I had with a person in private told me never.  It makes good sense to cut energy output regardless of global warming.

I notice that people here are not answering your question.  If temperatures stay the same for five years or ten years, they still will believe in global warming because they believe reducing energy consumption is good policy regardless of global warming.  That is the reason why environmental groups jumped to support the AGW theory in the early eighties, way before the study of climate even began.

Answer 8

10 years is nothing.  Earth acts in millenial cycles, so your question has no meaning.

Answer 9

Al Gore saved the earth in one year

Answer 10

At this point all indicators are pointing towards another Solar Minimum.

So far you have to go back to 1954 to match the lack of sun spot activity = the Sun appears Deathly Quiet.

http://spaceweather.com/

Records of Sunspots:

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/ftpsu...

The Sun's 'conveyor belt' (heat from within) appears to be shutting down:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/...

Is Anyone preparing for a coming ice age?  We would need a tremendous amount of energy just to survive any major cooling. Of course they may be thinking of implementing an Eugenics program - but what makes these Elitists believe they will survive?

A very telling quote from an leftists researcher:

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/hitran/

"The only solution is to have fewer humans."  =

ONLY Solution - Eh?!?!?

Answer 11

I don't believe it even right now.

Answer 12

"I can't believe others don't have the ability to see this is a hoax."

YEAH!  I guess these guys are REALLY stupid!

The National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Physics, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Association, etc.

Or they're a secret society lying to us all.  Yeah, that's it.

Answer 13

Too bad the data doesn't support your claims.  The planet continues to warm.

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

I've repeatedly said what it will take to convince me that global warming has stopped - 2 years in the blue region here before 2 years in the pink region.

http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/0...

Are you afraid to take the wager?

*edit* no we're not in the blue.  The graph is of yearly temperatures, not monthly.  Notice how I said '2 years'?  Yeah, 1 month isn't quite as long as 2 years.

And the GISS graph didn't stop in 2006 (it goes thru 2007 -'02 and '03 are basically overlapping so they're hard to distinguish), though if it did, it would simply illustrate my point better, because 2007 was warmer than 2006.

Still too scared to take the wager?  I don't blame you.

*edit2* I didn't say there was anything wrong with the monthly data, but it doesn't applyl to my wager.

You're accusing me of cheating?  That's got to be the most ironic statement of the century.

If you're not willing to take my wager then you should just remove this question and stop talking about global warming havinng stopped.

You don't have a million dollars and neither do I.  Make a valid bet, chicken.

Answer 14

My skepticism came with the 91-2001 mystery lag .Still haven't heard  anything about that missing data. I think they actually knew before hand, but wanted to kept it low profile. After all the mass of a planet does seem to be a regimental factor.

Answer 15

Now, Dr. J-lo, have you actually done a regression analysis on this data set, or are you just eyeballing the numbers and saying the trend is negative?

The computer I'm using right now doesn't have a spreadsheet program or I'd do it for you. And I'd be willing to bet the trend is positive for the period.

If somebody wants to do it and post their results up here, that'd be just peachy.

Answer 16

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.c...

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.c...

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.c...

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.c...

All of them show no statistically significant warming. They are all three four, so yeah, it hasn't warmed.

frflyr,

It is cherrypicking when you choose 1880 as your starting point? Because you know we were, and still are coming out  the little ice age. If you choose 1000 years ago, temperatures have remained relatively flat.

Answer 17

This is the same old misleading argument which uses 1998 as the starting point.  1998 was the strongest El Nino year in the last century, and so it was an unusually warm year.  This is the old cherry picking trick.  Pick a year that is an anomaly and measure everything else against that.

"At the time, 1998 was a record high year in both the CRU and the NASA GISS analyses. In fact, it blew away the previous record by .2 degrees C.

"According to NASA, it was elevated far above the trend line because 1998 was the year of the strongest El Nino of the century. Choosing that year as a starting point is a classic cherry pick and demonstrates why it is necessary to remove chaotic year-to year-variability (aka: weather) by smoothing out the data."

"Clearly 1998 is an anomaly and the trend has not reversed. (Even the apparent leveling at the end is not the real smoothing. The smoothed trend in 2005 depends on all of its surrounding years, including a few years still in the future.) By the way, choosing the CRU analysis is also a cherry pick -- NASA has 2005 breaking the 1998 record, though by very little."

"Now, this is an excusable mistake for average folks who do not need the rigors of statistical analysis in their day jobs. But any scientist in pretty much any field knows that you cannot extract meaningful information about trends in noisy data from single-year end points. It's hard to hear a scientist make this argument and still believe they speak with integrity in this debate -- seems more like an abuse of the trust placed in them as scientists."

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11...

Answer 18

you are using monthly data over only 10 years. if you look at the long term trend over many years temps are still rising eaven over that 10 years you are singeling out.

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

Answer 19

They are only plateaued if you use the last ten years for comparison.  They are rising if you use the last 100.

Answer 20

Ok, now I'm really confused. The other day you tried to tell us the "global warming stopped in 2008"[1] and now you are back to "global warming stopped in 1998" arguments.

Which is it? And do you really believe that we will not see another record breaking warm year in the very near future?

Answer 21

I became a skeptic when the experts told us that global warming would cause more hurricanes than we had in 2005.

I was dubious when they said the melting of the ice caps would cause positive feedback and cause more warming.

I was doubtful when they said that warming was thawing the permafrost causing trillions of tons of methane to enter the atmosphere.

I was suspisious when they said we reached the "Tipping Point"

I started believing this was a con job when they started showing gore's movie in schools.

I knew global warming was a fraud when they started raising taxes.

I can't believe others don't have the ability to see this is a hoax.

Answer 22

well...i think global warming is due to sunspot activity

we are having a 'spot activity period' that seems to be lasting longer than the usual 11 year cycle

the earth fluctuates in temperature, it has always changed due to co2 and whatnot, i believe in global warming and global cooling for what its worth

i really dont think that there will be a tipping point for me

the sun will cool and humans will be happy again