Does anyone still believe "climate change stopped in 1998"?

Question

"Even if the atmospheric temperature near the earth's surface has become cooler recently, that doesn't mean the planet as a whole isn't heating up.

what matters is how much heat is gained or lost by the entire planet - what climate scientists call the "top of the atmosphere" radiation budget - and falling surface temperatures do not prove that the entire planet is losing heat.

Water stores an immense amount of heat compared with air. It takes more than 1000 times as much energy to heat a cubic metre of water by 1 degree Centigrade as it does the same volume of air. Since the 1960s, over 90% of the excess heat due to higher greenhouse gas levels has gone into the oceans, and just 3% into warming the atmosphere (see figure 5.4 in the IPCC report (PDF)).

Globally, this means that if the oceans soak up a bit more heat energy than normal, surface air temperatures can fall even though the total heat content of the planet is rising. Conversely, if the oceans soak up less heat than usual, surface temperatures will rise rapidly.

This is why surface temperatures do not necessarily rise steadily year after year, even though the planet as a whole is heating up a bit more every year. Most of the year-to-year variability in surface temperatures is due to heat sloshing back and forth between the oceans and atmosphere, rather than to the planet as a whole gaining or losing heat."

from;

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn14527-climate-myths-global-warming-stopped-in-1998.html

Answer 1

The climate is always changing... So I don't think climate change actually stopped at 1998.

Answer 2

The data showing that the earth is heating up is garbage. U go back far enough that I know that the thermometers were poorly calibrated. Also to try to make a true world average is near impossible.When taking average of averages the sample must be the same size or it is a math ERROR.Is the temp. in the Vallie's or up on the mountains. When U break it down into warm & cold climates the sample must be EQUAL..

Answer 3

Since climate has been changing for the past, oh, 4 billion years and will undoubtedly continue to do so for as long as the earth retains an atmosphere, this seems like a rather odd question.

Answer 4

Sounds you like got it all figured out, why was there just as much warming between 1910 and 1940 as there was between 1970 and 2000? That warming happened before human CO2 emissions could have had much impact, did the oceans absorb that heat as well? Nothing is simple when it comes to the nature of things, this warming is no more unprecedented than the numerous other occurrences that have happened throughout human history. Currently the world has cooled, many climate scientists have made predictions that global warming will not continue for another 7 years because of natural climate variability, so yes I believe that the warming ended as do many climatologists. The question is will it continue, less hope so, because if it doesn't humanity will see what REAL negative aspects of climate change.

EDIT Dana:

Unfortunately we did not have satellites in orbit from 1910  - 1940 so we do not really know for sure what TSI did during that time period, it is only estimated from a proxy.

Answer 5

Do you people change ‘what matters’ every other day?   And then you expect any thinking person to take you serious?

Do you really expect us to believe the same ones who can not tell us if it will rain on Friday, with any degree of accuracy that we should just accept their word when they tell us the ice caps will be gone in 10 years if we don’t end our lives today?

Answer 6

The climate is always changing.

The change we saw from 1980-1998 was warming.    The alarmists blamed it on the same things they'd blamed the cooling from the 1940s-1970s on - energy consumption, i.e., the lifeblood of the free economy, that most of them had opposed for other reasons as well.

Since 1998 yes, the warming stopped.    Even though energy consumption grew.

Now you change it to "well it's really climate change, and it means all kinds of things - - if the cooling observed over the last 16 months continues, you'll blame that on energy consumption too.

And then you call anyone who points out the inconsistencies and the constant changes in your thesis stupid, unscientific deniers, and ask questions like this one.

It's getting old.   It's getting really old.

Yes, "wished," they change what matters all the time.

They change their whole story.     After Katrina, global warming supposedly made hurricanes more frequent and severe - and they predicted it would get only worse.  Then in 2006-2007 it didn't - and they started saying well maybe global warming makes hurricanes less likely to hit land and less severe, and possibly less frequent.    Now some of them are saying well the hurricane season will be longer.....  

Every year there's SOMETHING different about the weather, and about the hurricane season.     The difference is that no matter what that something is, they'll claim that that's global warming and that that's what we can expect in the future.

Now some of them have started to realize that in the long run, people like you and me recognize the changes in their story and call them out on it, and so they're saying that the fact that the weather changes, and the hurricane seasons are not exactly the same, that variability is caused by global warming.

And they'll measure variability in whatever way they have to to get that conclusion.

Answer 7

Deniers like to say it has been cooling since 98' but it hasn't the temp has gone down a tiny proportion of the 98' temp and stayed well above the temps of 99% of the record before 98' statisticly they are talking rubbish.

Answer 8

Since 1998, the year global warming ended (and I will emphasize that the global warming to that point was natural, not man made) the atmospheric and ocean temperatures have been cooler.  That's not a yearly adjustment, it's a ten year decline.  (A ten year trend can only be dismissed by alarmists, clearly.)  Over the past year and a half approximately, the cooling trend has increased.  Global warming is finished.

Answer 9

The problem is that the oceans have stopped warming.

Over the past 4-5 years, "there has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Josh Willis of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently told National Public Radio.

Nothing very significant—except the ocean warming trend has stopped?!  This, in the midst of the biggest furor over global temperatures and climate overheating in human history?

Willis monitors the data from a nifty new set of Argo ocean buoys. They not only record sea surface temperatures but periodically dive 3,000 feet under water and record sub-surface temperatures as they rise back up. These wonderful new Argo floats say the oceans have been cooling slightly for the past 4-5 years, instead of accentuating a continuing global warming trend.  

Answer 10

And what is even more informative is that the great 1998 was noticeably cooler than 1934, which is clearly the hottest year in the last 300 years. And 5 of the 10 hottest years in the last 300 were in the 30s and one of them was in the 1920s. So maybe Co2 is keeping the planet cool instead of warming it like the pundits believe. Historians who have actually studied their subject know when someone is redacting history for political reasons!

Answer 11

I wasn't aware that anyone had suggested that Climate Change stopped in 1998!

All I know is what I see with my own eyes. I am 53 years old and, over the years, I have clearly witnessed the summers here in Northern Ireland getting wetter and wetter; the winters are getting milder and drier; spring is arriving much earlier than it used to ( plants starting to grow sooner, buds are appearing on trees earlier than they used to, birds are nesting earlier each year).

If the dramatic changes that I witness are not being caused by global warming, then something else, equally dramatic and worrying is happening to the weather and the seasons.  

Answer 12

Climate change is on going always will be...The important thing to remember it has nothing to do with man kind stinking up the place...When we finally manage to kill ourselves off, the planet will keep spinning and the climate will keep changing... Ps if you look at the latest data the planet has started to cool!!

Answer 13

Does it really matter, the technical why's and werefores.

The results ARE stronger hurricans, tropical forests burning up, the level of the sea  rising and the poles and glacias  melting.... and lots lots more...

Even if we know the answers there's not too much we can do about it now. Maybe in the life span of the earth we aren't doing too much damage..... but as far as the human race is concerned we have sh** in our own nest just once too often and will  have to pay the bill VERY soon. Before the Multinationals stop milking  what we still have left and everybody else( me included) keeps buying thier stuff. There will have to be a MAJOR ecological, naturel or man made disaster that wipes out half the planet.... and then maybe.

Answer 14

Certainly not the people of the Carteret Islands, a group of tiny atolls 85 kilometres north-east of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, who were recently in Australia trying to raise funds to enable them to leave their soon to be swallowed by the sea island home, and move to a place gills won't be necessary.

The fact that these tiny, and incidentally mostly poor, island nations are being swallowed up out of sight of the mass media in the rich western and asian countries does not mean it's not happening, just that it's not newsworthy ~ yet.

Best wishes :-)

Answer 15

Denialist will look at 1 year or 1 place on one day and not the big picture.  The big picture (the 5 or 10 yea trend) is the planet is heating up.  Weather is not equal to climate (as denialist like to equate it).  The whole 1998 cooling trend is a myth.  No where in the scientific literature is this discussed as "the end" of global warming and not one reasonable person can look at the data and draw a defensible, accurate conclusion that that is the case.  Here is a link that illustrates the temperate change (from normal) and clearly show the trend.  

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/

It clearly shows an upward trend, discusses the data (and flaws), and compares observed with corrected data.  Only a moron will try to say 1998 shows a clear downward trend, much less that global cooling is occurring.

This page from NOAA gives a more historical perspective to put some of the other lies to rest posted by idiots:  http://www.oar.noaa.gov/climate/observin...

also for greenhouse gases:  http://www.oar.noaa.gov/climate/observin...

Notice the scales on the radiative forcing.  CO2 is 3x worse than methane and 10 times worse than nitrous oxide.   Water vapor is by far the most abundant greenhouse gas, but the forcing is so much less than any of those listed.  The concentration in the atmosphere varies wildly with time of day and location.  It is more of a feedback to the other gases - as the other gases increase and cause more warming, the air can hold more water and water vapor will increase, exacerbating the situation. Reducing the major gases will reduce warming, and water vapor will decrease, reducing the effect even more.

The denialist are only trying to hide the truth from people and are just sheep following their corporate shepherds - parroting misinformation and lies not bothering to look at and read up on the science of the subject.  The care only about politics. You think they would be persuaded by facts, logic and reason, but this is would require action to correct a man-made problem and is beyond their political agenda.  They work hard to remain stupid and want to bring the unsuspecting along with them.  I have little patience for willful stupidity of these morons.

Answer 16

No climate change has NEVER stopped in the history of this planet...we're simply getting cooler now instead of warmer.

Answer 17

No it is still happen

Answer 18

Charles M - he is still hiding his eyes from the truth. He still believes 1934 was the warmest year on record when that has been debunked just about every day on this site. HEY CHARLES, 1934 was tied as the warmest year on record ONLY, and I repeat ONLY, in the UNITED STATES.

GLOBAL temp graph...

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

UNITED STATES temp graph...

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

You can tell which one is which. One says GLOBAL and the other US. Get it??? I doubt you will, because you're only here to spread lies!

Answer 19

Sadly some do.  Just like some believe the oceans have stopped warming.

"Initial results from the Argo data seemed to indicate that the ocean cooled quite dramatically from 2003 to 2005 (in strong contradiction to the sea level rise which had continued) (Lyman et al, 2006). But comparisons with other sources of data suggested that this was only seen with the Argo floats themselves. Thus when an error in the instruments was reported in 2007, things seemed to fit again."

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...

Or how some believe the warming has stopped since 1998 even though the temperature data directly contradicts that claim.

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

Or how some believe that we can't explain why the 1910-1940 warming was similar to the recent warming, when in reality during that period TSI increased (which is not currently the case) in conjunction with increasing anthropogenic CO2 increase and volcanic forcing.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Ima...