In The News

[Devonian]

http://www.telegraph.../climatechange/

No Keith. Where did the MO say global temperatures will not rise after 2015? Again they have not said that, your claim is plain wrong.

[4wd]

It's still a major ..well...admission really.

It will like as not still prove rather conservative and need further tweaking downwards.

So 'Alarmist' really was a very good term.

[4wd]

Look a lefty person with sceptic comments!

Is that allowed?

We have been told you must be some sort of rampant right wing capitalist to think this way.

He even hints at the Met Office being a bit sneaky....

Labour MP Graham Stringer accused the Met Office of “burying bad news†by releasing the data on Christmas Eve and said it should give up climate change forecasts as well as long-term predictions.

He said: “They failed completely with their models to predict the flattening out of global warming. I think that they are just trying to bury bad news that their predictions in the medium and long-term have been pretty poor.â€

[BornFromTheVoid]

I haven't seen any major admissions? Just an updated forecast for the next few years that shows, despite a lowering from their previous forecast, new record high temperatures.

Is there any scenario where a prediction of strong warming wouldn't be labelled as a "warmist" prediction by you 4wd?

Of course scepticism is welcome from all political sides, it's denial, misrepresentation and plain lies that aren't appreciated. When the comments come from a known sceptic MP, they're hardly going to contain anything surprising, or balanced.

[4wd]

And they thought we'd like to read it through the holidays, nothing to do with hoping no one would notice a Christmas Eve release.

[knocker]

Got it at last. The sceptics are anti ratsnakes.

Global warming beneficial to ratsnakes

URBANA – Speculation about how animals will respond to climate change due to global warming led University of Illinois researcher Patrick Weatherhead and his students to conduct a study of ratsnakes at three different latitudes—Ontario, Illinois, and Texas. His findings suggest that ratsnakes will be able to adapt to the higher temperatures by becoming more active at night.

"Ratsnakes are a species with a broad geographic range so we could use latitude as a surrogate for climate change," Weatherhead said. "What are ratsnakes in Illinois going to be dealing with given the projections for how much warmer it will be 50 years from now? Well, go to Texas and find out. That's what they're dealing with now. Snakes are ectotherms, that is, they use the environment to regulate their body temperature. We were able to compare ratsnakes' ability to regulate their temperature in Texas as compared to Illinois and Canada."

The research showed that ratsnakes in Canada, Illinois, and Texas would all benefit from global warming.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-01/uoic-gwb010813.php

[BornFromTheVoid]

And they thought we'd like to read it through the holidays, nothing to do with hoping no one would notice a Christmas Eve release.

It's not like it was hidden, or even difficult to find. Surely with most people off work, xmas would be the perfect time for people to read it

I'm sure if it was released on a Monday, we'd hear claims that it was because people would be too busy working to read it!

[knocker]

Interesting take by the Times on this,

Global warming is over for five years, says Met Office

There will be no further warming of the planet over the next five years, the Met Office has forecast. The downgrading of its predictions for the effects of climate change means that by 2017 there is projected to have been no global increase in temperature for almost 20 years.

Having previously forecast a rise of 0.3 degrees between 2004 and 2014, The Met Office now expects that during the 2013 to 2017 period temperature is likely to remain between 0.28C and 0.59C above the 1971 to 2000 average.

With much of this warming having already happened since 1971, the practical consequence is that there will have been a plateauing of the global temperature graph since the turn of the millennium.

However, the Met Office said this revision, based on an updated computer model, did not affect assessments of climate change into the future. “The fact that the new model predicts less warming, globally, for the coming five years does not necessarily tell us anything about long-term predictions of climate change for the coming century,†the organisation said in a statement.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/environment/article3651191.ece

[4wd]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/

One of their most high profile forecasts came in late 2009, coinciding with the Copenhagen climate conference.

It stated that half the years between 2010 and 2015 would be hotter than the hottest year on record, which I wrote about on my blog.

This already appears wide of the mark.

It's bound to raise questions about the robustness and reliability of computer simulations that governments around the world are using in order to determine policies aimed at combating global warming.

The Met Office says natural cycles have caused the recent slowdown in warming, including perhaps changes in the suns activity, and ocean currents.

How is it that 'Natural Cycles' are powerful enough to effectively stop warming for 20 years, but cannot be the reason for warming in the previous 20 years?

These 'Natural Cycles' must be rather clever and mischievous.

Any downward movement is explained by 'natural cycles' but upward movement must be due to CO2.

It just won't do, it really won't.

Expect more climb downs trickling out but it will be like pulling teeth and will take years.

[BornFromTheVoid]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/

How is it that 'Natural Cycles' are powerful enough to effectively stop warming for 20 years, but cannot be the reason for warming in the previous 20 years?

These 'Natural Cycles' must be rather clever and mischievous.

Any downward movement is explained by 'natural cycles' but upward movement must be due to CO2.

It just won't do, it really won't.

Expect more climb downs trickling out but it will be like pulling teeth and will take years.

More misrepresentations 4? Amazing how there has now been no warming for 20 years, where did that come from?

Lets take the upward spike in global temps in 1998. Caused by a very strong El Nino event, yet constantly cherry picked by "sceptics" to show a slowdown in CO2 induced warming? Surely this is where sceptics are ignoring the potential of natural variation!

What mechanism do you propose caused the warming over the past century?

Edited January 9, 2013 by jethro
To make it comply with the code of conduct.

[Gray-Wolf]

Firstly 4 the AGW impacts, and associated augmentations, are not a constant and grow with time.

Initially AGW forcings had little impact on 'natural climate cycles' but as time rolled on it's impacts grew. The 'accellerated warming we saw was the 'positive temp forcing' augmenting' the natural warm drivers. When we entered the 'negative natural temp forcings', back in 98/99 AGW offset their impacts making their 'negative forcings' mute. As those 'negative cycles' peak (with the last extended low solar adding into the winter of 09/10) warming still occured.

In fact , once PDO-ve ends and we realistically find it's 'start and end dates' I think many folk will be surprised at just how much it has now 'milded' under the general warming of the planet.

AGW is now itself augmented (not just by the negative impacts of 'dimming') by the rapid changes across the arctic. Because this is a brand new, rapidly evolving forcing, I do not think that the MetO can have weighted it's impacts to the extent that we will see them over this short period. For me I would observe that though we can see a 'shift' in circulation patterns since 02' (primarily short term over Barrentsz and Kara) it is only the past 2 or 3 years that has really started to show a major influence on northern hemisphere circulation.

Though the high side of the revised temp forecast is still impressive I feel that the MetO have bowed to the pressures of the very vocal 'No warming' mantra we are bombarded with from certain areas of the climate debate. Sadly this will prove to be a lose/lose situation with any increase in temps above the latest forcast mean being heralded as a sign that they do not know what they are talking about and ,should the temps follow forecast, a climb down on their behalf rom an 'larmist' position.

My personal take on things is that we have one factor that the meto cannot predict. this would be the reduction in particulate pollution from Asia. This will have immediate impacts as pollution dropping out of the atrmosphere is not replaced and a longer term impact as the 7 year lifetime of the pollutants plays out. couple this with the increased forcings across the Arctic/Sub Arctic and we have two very positive forcings to add into the growing AGW forcing. I feel that the PDO-ve (whose workings are not fully understood) is now in it's final phases (as opposed to entering the peak of it's influence) and we will see an increasing tendancy toward neutral temps from the end of 2013 onward (the 'milding' of the PDO has been noted since the 1980's but we have not had a chance to see how this impacts a full -ve cycle yet) and it's 'ending will co-incide with a 'Super Nino' (as was called ...in reality a Nino pushing global temps beyond the 98' spike). This 'Nino' may well already be in the pipeline for later this year though?

So , let us see how warm 2013 turns out to be? Last years Nino year proverd to be a record warm 'nino year' (again) and , as of today, we are looking at a 'neutral' year. Should MetO's temp forecast for this year prove 'ballpark' then the windup to the Nino year should push temps further with the Nino year spiking higher than that (

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/13

I wonder how the global year will pan out? I think we started at 19th warmest but then clawed our way through to a top 4 position? Not bad for a nina year eh?

[knocker]

The melting Arctic

The extent of the sea ice in the Arctic reached a new record low in September 2012. Climate change is melting the sea ice in the region at a rate much faster than estimated by earlier projections. The snow cover also shows a downward trend. The melting Arctic might impact not only the people living in the region, but also elsewhere in Europe and beyond.

http://www.eea.europa.eu/articles/the-melting-arctic?&utm_campaign=the-melting-arctic&utm_medium=email&utm_source=EEASubscriptions

[keithlucky]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/images/weather_banner.jpg

[Gowon]

A fine contribution PLR, keep it up

No problem, LOL

PS. I admire you and BW's knowledge, I just haven't got the brain capacity for the complexities of it, but do enjoy reading the different opinions.

[4wd]

A summary of media reaction to the Met Office announcement

http://www.thegwpf.org/met-office-warming-2017-media-do/

[keithlucky]

NASA admit bias reporting http://principia-sci...s-key-role.html

[4wd]

NASA admit bias reporting http://principia-sci...s-key-role.html

Wow, for a minute I thought that must be one of those spoof news sites like the onion..

[knocker]

Met Office Says No Warming Before 2017 according to your link

forecast

Global average temperature is expected to remain between 0.28 °C and 0.59 °C (90% confidence range) above the long-term (1971-2000) average during the period 2013-2017, with values most likely to be about 0.43 °C higher than average (see blue curves in the Figure 1 below).

The warmest year in the 160-year Met Office Hadley Centre global temperature record in 1998, with a temperature of 0.40°C above long-term average. The forecast of continued global warming is largely driven by increasing levels of greenhouse gases.

BfFV has already covererd this.

[Devonian]

Wow, for a minute I thought that must be one of those spoof news sites like the onion..

'Principia scientifica' is pretty close. They deny CO2 is a ghg....

[knocker]

Interesting article from the same site. Are they all in the same institution?

http://principia-sci...n-religion.html

Edited January 9, 2013 by knocker

[jethro]

Whilst I've popped my head in here, there's a thought I've had about the new METO projection.....It's now in line with the projections made a few years ago by Bob Spencer and with the same reasoning/thinking behind it. The METO now agreeing with the arch enemy sceptic, who'd have thought it!

[BornFromTheVoid]

Who's Bob Spencer btw?

An interesting video clip on the human contribution to warming over the past 16 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_0JZRIHFtk

[Gray-Wolf]

You do tend to have your 'black and white' view paint a bleak picture of things P.P. !

I cannot name one person on these threads who has maintained there is only one cause for recent climate change and not acknowledged that 'natural drivers' have driven , and been augmented by AGW, for the 1900's.

The problem is that AGW has both an inertia built into it's forcings and is then further complicated by positive reinforcements once it becomes a force rivaling the 'natural' forcings. LI always seemed hell bent of showing the past changes could easily be attributed to 'natural' without the need for AGW forcings when AGW forcings at that time were consumed overcoming climate inertia and their own flip side of dimming?

The 21st century appears to have started with climate inertia being overcome and climate shift gaining steam. Once the polar ice secumbed to melt out then both the energy freed up from ice melt and the energies now absorbed (and re-emmited) begin to show impact even in a period of negative natural forcings.

[pottyprof]

New Leaky Integrator thread open here. http://forum.netweat...aky-integrator/

If you have a post missing from this thread, it's either in the new thread or as it was moved it lost it's context and was deleted. Apologies if yours was deleted.

Please be respectful of each other if you join in. Any failing in that respect will result in a ban.

Feel free to ask questions in there.

Edited January 12, 2013 by pottyprof