What evidence can deniers provide that global warming has stopped?

Question

In a seperate question, a denier claimed that it was AGW proponents who are the true deniers because he claimed we deny the evidence that global warming has stopped.

The evidence he provided to support this claim were a few temperature plots from Anthony Watts' website which showed monthly data, emphasized the cold January of 2008, and showed no trend line.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080820165156AAWiAaJ

As global warming is a long-term warming (a.k.a. upward trend in temperature data), these links do not support the claim that global warming has stopped. In fact, the denier in question claimed that the NASA GISS and Hadley Centre data show that global warming has stopped. Here's what Hadley has to say about that:

"A simple mathematical calculation of the temperature change over the latest decade (1998-2007) alone shows a continued warming of 0.1 °C per decade."

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/2.html

And NASA shows even more warming than Hadley (because they model for the Arctic, where warming is greatest).

So what evidence can deniers provide that global warming has stopped? If they cannot provide any and yet continue to make this claim, are they not deniers by definition?

Answer 1

You and I both know it all depends on the starting and end point. AGW proponents like to use the 1970's as their starting point, or the late 1870's. Why? Because these were periods where the temp was bottoming out. So any line starting at this point would naturally go up. So why do you cry foul when the AGW skeptics use data to prove their side? Sort of like the Chinese gymnast calling other gymnast cheaters.

The really funny thing is that everyone knows there was a little ice age that ended in the 1860's (all except Micheal "The Scam" Mann). So the question is, coming out of an ice age, how much should we warm? So far about 1 degree. Seems about right to me.

As for NASA data, it is no longer reliable. Hansen has destroyed any credibility that agency had when is comes to AGW. Seriously, why would you need to "Adjust" temps? How about decommisioning those that need "adjustments".

Answer 2

Figure 9 on the link below shows that global warming stopped somewhere around shorty after 2003, which is the peak of solar cycle 23. If it were not for the volcanic cooling associated with pinatubo from 1991 through 1994 or the large 1998 El-Nino, global warming may have in fact ended in the mid - to late 90's. But since we have had no major El-Nino event or volcanic events the solar cycle can be clearly seen in the last 7 years.

http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spen...

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Answer 3

Yes there is very clear evidence that global warming has stopped.

The evidence is accessible to everyone, and easy to understand. The evidence is remarkably uncontroversial; there are no ‘urban heat island’ effects, no proxy’s, no local or regional or other issues to complicate the picture.

Sea levels are falling.



Please graph this for yourself... (‘save target as’, then open it in Excel using the ‘fixed width’ option)

http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_...

The amount of water on the planet is finite and fixed. As far as I’m aware only 2 things can cause this decline in sea level.

-Increasing land borne ice mass (removes water from the oceans)

-Decreasing Sea Temperature (causes the water to contract)

These two events can only occur when the globe is cooling.

Further evidence that both 1 and 2 are happening is... Global Sea Surface Temperature is dropping. (Source NOAA)

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomali...

Antarctic Ice mass is increasing (Source American Geophysical Union)

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/20...

If the globe is not cooling, then please explain to me the mechanism that is causing this sea level drop.

Answer 4

If you look at graphs that show a very long time scale the current warming is utterly unimpressive. Inconveniently for AGW proponents, none of those big warming spikes represented on the graphs could be caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Why don't we really study the climate and find out what really causes are climate to change. It might actually be important someday.

Are we really making any new discoveries about climate change by already claiming we have the answers? History unmistakably has shown that our climate has and will change. Is it the scientific assertion that CO2 has caused all of the warmings in earth's history. I should think not. Is the focussing on CO2 a nice compliment to the scientific method? It appears climatologists are chasing ghosts or UFOs as you have accused skeptics of doing.

Answer 5

RE:  What evidence can deniers provide that global warming has stopped?

I don't know about the 'deniers', but as a 'skeptic' I am still waiting for the evidence (scientific proof) that global warming (aka 'man-did-it') exists in the first place.

Until the your ('Believer's) data is viable, AGW cannot be proven.

Answer 6

Dana while there was some minor warming in the 90s the real warming ended in  the 1940s as shown once the added temps are removed from the Mann/Hansen/Gore charts. Being as meaningful warming ended over 70 years ago I find that the proponents need to prove to educated skeptics why we should believe fabricated figures that are about as real as the book limits to growth that inspired them.

Answer 7

Looking out my window and saying this has been the coolest and mildest summer we've had in a long time.  No two-week heat waves in the high 90's, not much rain, but that's common too.  No global warming here.  Al Gore the politician was WRONG!  

So does this mean the idea of "carbon footprints" is also false?  The only problem is, what are we going to be threat-taxed with now?

Answer 8

People, people,.... we are still coming of the last Ice Age, since Greenland is still covered by ice, we haven't reached the full Interglacial phase yet.

Why as more ice melts in Greenland, they find more Viking settlements being uncovered?  Either the Vikings decided to dig hundreds of feet and build a village under ice or there were no ice or glaciers to begin with when they settled there.  They raised cattle there, raised crops, and that was hundreds, perhaps a thousand years ago.  So why didn't the Vikings listen to Al Gore and buy his carbon credits?

Yes, the temperatures may continue to rise, but not because of people, but because of normal climate changes.

Answer 9

I feel cooler now.

Answer 10

Hey Dana, it's been awhile...

Your question has been brought to my attention.

As long as we have evidence that the oceans are warming, and other significant factors such as the majority of the world's glaciers rapidly melting out of existence (not normal), enormous areas of reflective ice melting away in the antarctic, coral reefs bleaching, methane thawing and releasing and all the other negative feed-backs we're seeing, coupled with the obvious increase in GHGs, at a pinnacle time of warm temperature during this interglacial period which is taking things to levels not seen for 50 million years, is not good.  It's bad.  Global Warming can happen. And it's happening now.  We can try to ignore it, dismiss it, deny it, but that won't change the reality.  There's a reason why smarter people than those of us on Yahoo Answers are taking large measures to deal with the future of 'global warming' climate change.

As for the cooling argument, there are going to be fluctuations, but they always will end up climbing steps in temperature over time from here on out (not just the past several decades).  For example, 2006 was the warmest year on record, 2010-12 will be worse.

Answer 11

There's absolutely no mystery about the Arctic. You know that PDO's also have a warm phase. The most extreme example occurred during the first 2 yrs of the Aleutian trend(low). But has steady remained in the warming cycle. It will not last forever.

Answer 12

if you are interested in artic warming, go to the woods hole oceanic institute and look up "gakkel ridge"

Answer 13

The burden of proof isn't on the skeptics to disprove AGW.  The burden of proof is on proponents of AGW.  To which I must say the evidence supplied to date is woefully inadequate on a purely scientific basis. What I am taking away from it, is that the facts are being changed to fit the theories, while it should be the other way around, being that the theories should be changed to fit the facts.  

Answer 14

why proved it stopped if it never got started?

Answer 15

It is silly to observe a Global temperature increase that occurs for thirty years and say that the Earth's climate is warming and will continues to rise in that trend for 100+ years.  

It is also silly to say that the average temperatures have stopped rising and therefore the Earth's climate will cool for the next 100+ years.

Climate changes should be looked at in a geological timescale.  Both sides must stop looking at the past century's temperature when judging climate.  They should start looking at the past hundreds of thousands of years to judge how the Earth will change.  In a graph on the website posted below you can see such a graph in the geographic scale.  I believe the graph is at the bottom of the page.

Answer 16

Listen, I've grown tired and somewhat disinterested is the subject, why?  In 2005 Dr J Willis and Dr J Hansen announced the had it all figured out, "it's a match!".  Yet when more accurate data is collected in the ARGO program, theories fall apart.

Here is an article about such an instance.  The oceans are not warming, but for the numbers to match, they must.  

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story...

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/news/fea...

I'm not saying Dr Willis is doing bad science, but it certainly does not look good.

Dr Trenberth on the otherhand is quite right in saying

"I suspect that we'll able to put this together with a little bit more perspective and further analysis," Trenberth says. "But what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board."

The Lesson: Don't become entreached in dogma and orthodoxy.