The BBC is responsible. The article, by the climate correspondent Paul Hudson, is called “What Happened to Global Warming?” Highlights:
For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise. So what on Earth is going on?
And:
According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.
The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).
For much of the 1980′s and 1990′s, it was in a positive cycle; that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too. But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down. These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.
So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles. Professor Easterbrook says: “The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling.”
So what does it all mean? Climate change sceptics argue that this is evidence that they have been right all along. They say there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature.
Let the shouting begin. Will Paul Hudson be drummed out of the circle of environmental journalists? Look what happened here, when Al Gore was challenged by a particularly feisty questioner at a conference of environmental journalists.
We have a chapter in SuperFreakonomics about global warming and it too will likely produce a lot of shouting, name-calling, and accusations ranging from idiocy to venality. It is curious that the global-warming arena is so rife with shrillness and ridicule. Where does this shrillness come from? Some say that left-leaning activists have merely borrowed their right-leaning competitors from years past. A reasonable conjecture?
In other climate-change news, here’s an interesting piece in today’s Times by Andrew Revkin and Clifford Krauss about the apparently large value in stemming even small leaks of methane at natural-gas facilities. That’s because methane is far more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
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Very interesting. Unfortunately, because it doesn’t go along with the orthodox source-of-funding doctrine, this will never be considered by decision makers.
I think it’s unfortunate that our culture is in a state where we can’t have an intelligent debate on the various questions surrounding global warming and what can/should be done about it. Good evidence like this is brushed off by “the arguement from intimidation,” generalities about “what science says and what’s just a lie” and the whole issue is oversimplified into some binary war between true believers and deniers.
It’s really a complex issue about which there are more than two possible positions. And I think industry and the environment are both suffering because we look at it in such a naive, polarizing way.
Why did you stop the the quotation there? Why not include the following?
“The UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new.
In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors that influence global temperatures – all of which are accounted for by its models.
In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling.
What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.”
The current issue of Science has a short reply to (I think) Hudson’s article. I’ve only read the title of that reply, but I may be able to access the article again today.
The shrillness comes because to challenge the notion of anthropogenic warming is to challenge the religion of many people.
The “believers” are utterly convinced that man is causing the warming, despite the presence of a giant, burning ball of fire in the sky.
I will make a prediction. When the oceans have risen, what is it—a foot, two feet—in one hundred years, then people will…..move inland a few yards to avoid getting their feet wet. There; catastrophe averted!
The deniers and the activists are both dishonest. The deniers refuse to consider any evidence presented to them and often ignore fundamental science. The activists claim that climate change is a “scientific fact” even though it is not a fact in the same sense as most things we consider facts. All climate data has a sample size of 1. We have no other planets to compare to or run experiments on.
Gravity is a fact, verified by countless experiments. We have not come remotely close to verifying a hypothesis that would “prove” climate change in the same way. Concern about climate change is warranted, because fundamental scientific fact lends credence to the possibility and the potential consequences merit concern.
To say that global warming is a “fact” is just as dishonest as saying that it is a lie. It is real possibility with dangerous consequences that we should try to mitigate. Making it more than it is does more harm than good.
Davey- I don’t know what this new data means. But your understanding of ocean levels is wrong. If an ocean rises by 2 feet, then all coastal land, that is only 2 feet above the ocean gets flooded. In many places, that would go far inland, far beyond a few feet. It wouldn’t take much to cover large parts of Florida and other coastal areas.
What about ocean acidification?
There’s more to climate change than a few degrees on the thermometer or a few feet of seawater in your yard.
I will make another prediction: Even when the last fish floats belly up in Puget Sound, there will be people denying anything manmade is happening.
Deniers favorite claim to make is that we haven’t seen an increase in temperatures since 1998 (as seen here as “in 11 years”).
1998 was abnormally hot due to El Nino. It’s what most people would call an outlier.
If you look at the rest of the years, it’s extremely clear that the trend is rising and we’ll soon be at levels similar to 1998