Global warming has continued, unchanged, since the 1970s

At Open Mind, Tamino has a masterful post in which he shows quite clearly that there has been no “pause” or “hiatus” in the rate of global temperature increase since at least the 1970s:

Both NASA and NOAA report 2014 as the hottest year on record. Despite the new #1, neither the news itself nor the response to it has surprised me.
The news that last year was so hot is certainly no surprise. The simple reason is that for the last 15 or 20 years, let’s say since the turn of the millenium just to be specific — you know, since back when we expected global warming to continue without slowing down — global warming has continued and shows no sign of slowing down.

As a matter of fact, according to the NASA data this year is dead on the projection we would have made back then by using the “global warming continues without slowing down” hypothesis. By the time 1999 came to a close, a warming trend was abundantly clear:

But besides just rising with the trend, temperature fluctuates up and down from year to year; hence the dashed red lines above and below the red trend line showing the likely range. Assuming global warming continues without slowing down, we would have expected this:

This is what actually happened:

Just what was expected, that’s what actually happened.

……. Read the rest of the article here.

2 Comments

Frederick Bennett permalink

This posting at Open Mind does demonstrate with simple clarity how the global warming trend has persisted over the last 15 years or so. It gives us global warming advocates or people who are persuaded by scientific evidence another little bow in the quiver to aim at the climate change (or anthropocentric climate disruption) deniers. It is a complete waste of time however.

People like Ted Cruz and Jim Inhofe and just about any other member of congress along with a considerable portion of the Australian parliament don’t care about the facts, they care about the money.

Tony Abbott doesn’t have an intellectual problem with the climate science, he agrees with it, but his commitment to his political donors is much stronger than to the truth. We all know that. We know that about most prominent politicians, they have no more interest in being honest than poking their eye out with a knitting needle.

This is why I think we should stop pretending that if only we could come up with a simple, clever and irrefutable argument supporting our stance, the problem will be solved because deniers will suddenly see the light. We have excellent science based evidence on the subject that has been continuously developed for over 120 years (if we start with Svante Arrhenius).

There are two things that I think we need to do. Firstly, we need to simply exclude deniers from the discussion. It sounds arrogant, but we are wasting our time by trying to debate them over and over again. The very act of participating in the debate gives legitimacy to the notion that one exists.

The other critical action is to address the systematic problem of money in politics. The conflict that politicians have between appeasing their donors and representing their constituency has to be resolved before we can move on I’m afraid. The system of legal bribery (especially post citizens united) has basically served to paralyse the US Congress. It may not be as influential a factor in this country, but it is still significant enough, particularly on this issue. In the Australian context, consider the new political donation laws in Queensland and the NSW ICAC …the list goes on.

I don’t think I have to elaborate further on these two points, I think everybody can fill in the gaps. Maybe read Thomas Piketty and Naomi Klein if you need some inspiration.

Thanks Graham, I hope I didn’t put everyone to sleep with my cynical rant. Stepping down from soapbox now.

Fred

- Graham Coghill permalink
  
  You didn’t put me to sleep at all, Fred. I couldn’t agree more with the way you feel. Interestingly enough, some of the comments at Open Mind are along the same lines.