

HadCRUT4: no warming for 16 years - gwright
http://motls.blogspot.com/2012/10/hadcrut4-no-warming-for-16-years.html

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MaysonL
See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4657540>

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anon1385
Zero content or analysis in the article. Hacker News is not the place for your
pseudo science climate change denialism.

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gwright
Pseudo science? The article is referring to the HadCRUT dataset of global
temperatures.

Are you suggesting that the UK Met Office is doing bad science?

Are you suggesting that warming is occurring despite the fact that there is no
warming trend evident in the data?

Catastrophic global warming is a hypothesis based on the output of climate
models. Unfortunately the actual data hasn't aligned with the predicted output
of the models for many years. This dataset is yet another example.

~~~
anon1385
It is pseudo science because the post contains no scientific analysis of the
statistic(s). Just because I use data from the large hadron collider in some
mixed up argument for a geocentric universe doesn't make my argument
scientific.

You can find all sorts of things if you cherry pick time intervals, especially
with such noisy data as global temperature.

>Unfortunately the actual data hasn't aligned with the predicted output of the
models for many years. This dataset is yet another example.

No it isn't. You are practicing pseudo science again. You have made no
comparison between the temperature data and the models, and no argument as to
why a system as complex as global climate should be stable enough for direct
correlations with models over relatively short time spans.

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gwright
The catastrophic global warming crowd seems to have no problem at all
predicting a grim future based on temperature increases over a short period of
time.

I tend to agree with you that planetary climate trends are not visible within
the span of available global temperature data. But that argument works against
the catastrophic global warming theory also.

Here is one discussion of the models vs. reality:
[http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/15/james-hansens-
climate-...](http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/15/james-hansens-climate-
forecast-of-1988-a-whopping-150-wrong/)

~~~
anon1385
>I tend to agree with you that planetary climate trends are not visible within
the span of available global temperature data

Uh, we have temperature data available for far longer than 17 years, and it
does show a clear warming trend. That is why you had to cherry pick the 17
year interval remember?

WUWT is not a credible source of scientific information or analysis so I'm not
going to waste my time reading it. A model from 1988 is hardly relevant:
climate science has advanced hugely since then. If scientists though the 1988
models were good enough why have they spent the last 24 years making better
models?

~~~
gwright
I was a little unclear. What I meant is that the instrumentation record
(thermometers and satelites) is quite short (geologically speaking) vs. the
proxy record (ice cores, tree rings, etc).

And maybe I can make another clarification. I accept that there is a warming
trend visible in the geological record. I don't think that trend is the source
of the 'debate' with regarding to catastrophic global warming.

The debate arises when climate modelers predict a _catastrophic_ rise in
temperatures that is a distinctly different signal layered on top of the
accepted climactic trend and which is triggered by human activities. This
comes not from direct increases in CO2 but via postulated positive feedbacks
in the system triggered by increases in CO2 or other greenhouse gases.

A 17-year pause in the background climactic trend (i.e. what the planet would
be doing without human activities) is not at all surprising nor does it
conflict with long term climactic trends.

A 17-year pause in the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming predicted by
the models is a completely different story. When that is coupled to the
continuing increase in CO2 concentrations you now have a way to evaluate the
magnitude of the _postulated_ CO2 feedback. The pause, despite the increased
C02 would seem to indicate that the models have overestimated the positive
feedback.

Without the positive feedback the dire consequences predicted by the models is
much less likely and so the massively expensive and disruptive policy choices
are that much harder to justify -- especially in the short-term.

TL;DR A 17 year pause in warming is a strong indication that anthropogenic
climate models are woefully incomplete and shouldn't be the basis for massive
policy disruptions in the energy sector.

