# Has the world actually been cooling since 2002? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 19, 2014, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728 "2014-02-19T19:32:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 32
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/621 "2014-03-08T02:17:59Z")
I suspect those who are in denial get their information from blogs, rather than keeping up with current research. Especially those who don’t realize why theory predicts winter warming. The unexpected colder winters is of course being used by the political minded to try and cast doubt on all climate science. Hell, anything and everything is used by the political factions, who could care less about the science. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/622 "2014-03-08T02:40:49Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > [http://news.sciencemag.org/2012/01/global-warming-may-trigger-winter-cooling](http://news.sciencemag.org/2012/01/global-warming-may-trigger-winter-cooling) > > Those who still deny that it is happening, I just don’t understand that mindset. Weather is not climate. And a suggestion is not good enough to dismiss other research. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/623 "2014-03-08T03:31:43Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > I suspect those who are in denial get their information from blogs, rather than keeping up with current research. Especially those who don’t realize why theory predicts winter warming. The evidence is already here that you do rely on denialist and debunked sources. And the last blogs you called the scientists quoted “nobodies” BTW the last “nobody” I quoted from “The Conversation” was Andrew Glikson, earth and paleo-climate scientist at Australian National University. Just like in the case of your failed attempt at disparaging the scientists at Realclimate it is clear that it is mostly ignorance what is driving the dismissal of what scientists are telling us. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/624 "2014-03-08T04:25:04Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > I’ve been in discussions where the positions of the debaters are not fully understood because not everyone is using the same terms the same way. When that problem comes to light, it’s almost a relief, because so often everyone can understand each other better when they know what the other person meant by X. > > The baffling part to me is that this is Logic 101, or Debating 101. And I would think that the people that would have the greets appreciation for precision in language would be those in the science field. That’s not the problem here. If one looks at any of the legitimate papers mentioned here, or anything else in the contemporary mainstream literature, none of them are taking a metaphorical ruler to some arbitrary temperature graph of the past 10, or 11, or 12½ or 15¾ years and squinting to see if the graph is going up or down. This is childish nonsense. It’s incontrovertible that the planet has been warming in the post-industrial era at a rate that greatly exceeds any gradient typically found in natural variations, it’s incontrovertible that CO2 exerts a significant climate forcing, it’s incontrovertible that there is presently a huge and sudden CO2 spike unprecedented in millions of years, and virtually no one in the mainstream climate science community disputes the dominant role of human activities in post-industrial warming. These questions don’t even arise. The real research questions are focused on issues like more accurately quantifying climate sensitivity and, in the short term, better understanding the impacts of internal variabilities. The entire premise of the OP is a misdirection. > [@FXMastermind](#): > > The unexpected colder winters is of course being used by the political minded to try and cast doubt on all climate science. Hell, anything and everything is used by the political factions, who could care less about the science. It’s unfortunate that you appear to be among them. > [@](#): > > It actually could be true as well. If so, [then the AGW theory is completely wrong](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17166658&postcount=561). > [@](#): > > [But it’s not AGW](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17171076&postcount=591) as the current theory and models predicts > [@](#): > > Scientists who have spent a lifetime in study and research of these matters are some of the biggest skeptics of the “climate” experts, as they can see [how the “science” is agenda driven, not evidence based](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17122677&postcount=27). You also had some other priceless stuff about how CO2 couldn’t possibly be an effective GHG because it only absorbs in the same wavelengths as water vapor, but I can’t be bothered looking for that now. Perhaps you would care to clarify your views. I have had no problem being very clear about my position on AGW, for example [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17121374&postcount=14) and [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17169395&postcount=586) and [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17129671&postcount=662). Your position has been an apparent mass of contradictions, but here’s your chance to clear the air. Please provide your views on AGW in several paragraphs in your own words, so that we know exactly where you stand. By “AGW” I mean the role of human activities in post-industrial warming. This shouldn’t be hard. I’ve done it in dozens of posts. **Please make sure that you cover – as I have – the important things like the role of CO2, the role of feedbacks like water vapor, the role of solar variations, and your view of the credibility of climate science as published by the National Academy of Sciences and the IPCC.** That would go a long way toward clarifying what at this point seems to be a very ambiguous and constantly shifting position on your part. Thanks in advance. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/625 "2014-03-08T06:37:42Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > That’s not the problem here. If one looks at any of the legitimate papers mentioned here, or anything else in the contemporary mainstream literature, none of them are taking a metaphorical ruler to some arbitrary temperature graph of the past 10, or 11, or 12½ or 15¾ years and squinting to see if the graph is going up or down. They certainly do when the trend is going up. Then we’re treated to non-stop dissertations on the proof before our very eyes that global warming is happening. Every time there’s a storm that does damage we’re told that this is the cost of global warming. I agree, it’s childish nonsense. But that cuts both ways, doesn’t it? If a 17 year trend isn’t long enough to disprove global warming, it also is not long enough to prove it. And even if we’re in a short-term cooling trend in the middle of a longer warming trend, the fact that it’s cooling means that any storm that is happening today cannot be triggered or amplified by higher than average warming. > [@](#): > > It’s incontrovertible that the planet has been warming in the post-industrial era at a rate that greatly exceeds any gradient typically found in natural variations, it’s incontrovertible that CO2 exerts a significant climate forcing, it’s incontrovertible that there is presently a huge and sudden CO2 spike unprecedented in millions of years, and virtually no one in the mainstream climate science community disputes the dominant role of human activities in post-industrial warming. These questions don’t even arise. Yes, they do. There is considerable debate in the scientific community on the magnitude of the forcing. Much depends on on the response of the entire climate system in response to the CO2 forcing. There is also much legitimate debate over what constitutes ‘significant’ warming, as this requires a cost-benefit analysis and not everyone agrees on where the line should be drawn, despite your side’s efforts to demand lock-step obedience not just to the science, but to your judgment as to the necessary and proper policy responses to it. > [@](#): > > The real research questions are focused on issues like more accurately quantifying climate sensitivity and, in the short term, better understanding the impacts of internal variability. While I agree that these are important and valid questions. But these are where the debate _starts_ - not where it ends. I think you greatly overestimate the certainty we have when it comes to understanding the climate system. Climate scientists treat this problem as understandable through the traditional reductionist scientific method - if you can understand the effects that go into the process, you can understand the process. Break the problem down, solve each little piece, and when you find all the significant pieces and understand them, you understand the process and can then determine how to fix it. The problem is that climate is a complex adaptive system, and these are notoriously opaque to standard reductionist discovery. That’s because the structure of the system is an emergent property of a highly complex interconnected network of decision machines, and it can and will behave in very unpredictable ways. And such systems are resistant to reductionism because they are much more than the sum of their parts. You can see the hardware, but not the software. There isn’t just one ‘feedback’, or a dozen. There are cascades of feedbacks that pulse through the system, causing readjustment everywhere. And every time it’s different, hence the ‘adaptive’ part. Understanding this behavior is much harder with climate than it is with, say, neuropsychology or immunology, both of which deal with complex systems as well. In those fields, you can do controlled studies. You can instrument the system out the wazoo. You can attempt to falsify results. You can study the constituents of the system under electron microscopes and FMRI machines that let you want the information propagate around in real time. The climate is such a system, but it operates on geologic time scales as well as smaller ones. Our understanding of how it works is in its infancy as compared to say, our understanding of how the immune system functions - which isn’t all that much either. We all know how noisy climate data is - part of that noise is simply the unpredictable and sometimes random ways in which the climate responds to outside forcings. One response may cause a change that makes the next response to such an event completely different. One common characteristic of complex systems is that they are inherently stable - it’s an emergent property. That means they are dominated by negative feedbacks, and which makes me somewhat skeptical that there is a large positive feedback out there just waiting to tip us over the abyss. That feedback may be there, but it may be just one of a huge collection of feedbacks of which the overall impact is neutral or negative. I’ve been reading a lot of literature lately on complex systems and the challenges of understanding and modeling them as part of my job. It’s striking that in less politically-charged areas of field there is widespread understanding of the uncertainty involved in any prediction of complex behavior. Predictive models are treated with suspicion and predictions are generally couched in caveats - so much so that it’s generally felt that the true value of these models is to help understand how the system behaves - not to be able to predict its exact state in the future. If you want to understand how an ant colony emerges from ant rules, you can make a hypothesis, model it, and see if the model does something that looks like an ant colony. That’s useful, but it doesn’t mean the model can predict where a real-world colony will form, what its food harvesting pattern will look like, What direction it will migrate in, how long it will survive, what final shape it will take, or much of anything else about its specific future properties. But when it comes to climate science, the validity of the models are assumed to be a settled issue, and the uncertainties of the estimates are downplayed. And anyone who questions them is deemed a ‘denier’ and treated like a heretic. Complex systems look simple on the surface and reveal ever-more complexity as you drill down into them. In most fields that study complex systems, that’s been the pattern. Problems that look simple reveal hidden complexities, and more appear, fractal-like, as you dive deeper. But that didn’t happen with climate change. We went from “we should study this effect” to "We can predict not only the climate 100 years from now in our models, but we can predict what the economy will look like then, how much of a certain compound society will be emitting into the atmosphere over that time. And not only that, we can also predict what effect that change will have on the economy 100 years from now to a degree where we can assign dollar values to the economic cost of the damage. I think the basic atmospheric physics is correct. I think we do know pretty well how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere, and what the forcing from the basic thermodynamics is. I know CO2 has risen, and would accept that the immediate effect on temperature is understood. It’s the next part that I think is not so well understood. What are the secondary forcings? The tertiary ones? Where are all the feedback loops, including the ones between the secondary effects? How long does it take for the feedback to propagate? Is it even possible for us to really understand a complex process that operates on this scale, given the amount we still don’t understand about its mechanisms? I think there are valid questions here. And it may be that even if the system is stable in geologic time frames, it’s still possible for a sudden forcing in the right way to seriously screw it up. So I’m not arguing against the possibility or even probability of AGW. I just think maybe a touch more humility is called for in light of what we really understand about the climate system. I also worry about the quality of the science in such a politically-charged and politically funded field - on both sides. For example, when it was starting to be obvious that the real trend for temperature was going lower than the model, scientists started madly looking for previously-unknown mechanisms to account for it. They found one, corrected the model accordingly, and problem solved. But I wonder if as much effort would have been spent on finding such events if the temperature trend had matched or exceeded the forecast? And if not, what does that bias do to our overall perception of the state of the science? What if we’re committing more type I errors on one side and more type II errors on the other? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/626 "2014-03-08T07:51:28Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > I’m completely baffled why the three of you aren’t eager to define the terms you keep arguing over again and again. > [@FXMastermind](#): > > I don’t need to define the terms cooling or warming, magellan, does that set your bafflement at ease? FX asks for a definition of terms, but won’t be the first to show his hand, because obviously, you can’t play “gotcha ya” that way. > [@](#): > > it’s just a semantic diversion, the last move of desperation. _I_ wasn’t the one who directly equated cooling and warming. _I’m_ not the one who cried “semantics”. _You_ did. I merely pointed out that “little to no warming”=/= “cooling” and “(regional) neutral trend” =/= “(global) negative trend”. But then I don’t expect someone who’s furiously defending [the Escalator approach](http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=47) to be able to even _begin_ to define his terms. Because then it becomes obvious that “trend” means "any short-term average starting with the highest possible value I can find and always less than one full repeat (22 years) of the short term 11-year solar cycle. " ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/627 "2014-03-08T07:56:51Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > One common characteristic of complex systems is that they are inherently stable - it’s an emergent property. Cite? _Meta_stable, sure, but “inherently stable” needs justification (beyond just May’s '71 paper) ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/628 "2014-03-08T08:22:13Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Cite? _Meta_stable, sure, but “inherently stable” needs justification (beyond just May’s '71 paper) No, you’re right - ‘stable’ is not the right descriptor, and metastable is much better. A complex system can certainly have cascades of changes and make sudden moves from one state to another. A financial panic might be an example. Or an avalanche. Maybe climate could do the same thing. I guess my reticence about large positive feedbacks is more specific to the climate system. It has survived for billions of years within a fairly narrow range of temperature changes despite receiving massive numbers of shocks, and with fairly widely varying atmospheric chemistry. It seems awfully robust. Of course, it might be robust in geologic scales but be quite sensitive on human time scales, so we should still care and not just assume it can absorb whatever we throw at it. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/629 "2014-03-08T08:40:34Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > They certainly do when the trend is going up. Then we’re treated to non-stop dissertations on the proof before our very eyes that global warming is happening. Every time there’s a storm that does damage we’re told that this is the cost of global warming. I agree, it’s childish nonsense. But that cuts both ways, doesn’t it? If a 17 year trend isn’t long enough to disprove global warming, it also is not long enough to prove it. And even if we’re in a short-term cooling trend in the middle of a longer warming trend, the fact that it’s cooling means that any storm that is happening today cannot be triggered or amplified by higher than average warming. As you so elegantly stated. Going forth into the other issues quickly turns a discussion into a virtual malström, which like the actual maelstrom, seems to offer more suction than is encountered in reality. The amount of time and energy devoted to resisting even the suggestion that the “global climate” isn’t warming at present, and fast, is certainly large. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 9:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/630 "2014-03-08T09:32:05Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > It’s going beyond those ‘basic facts’ into extrapolating severe positive feedbacks, estimating future temperatures and economic effects on a civilization that doesn’t yet exist is where the real debate is for me, but we never seem to get to that debate because we’re stalled out at step 1. Or, stalled out before step 1 even shows up. While it’s a sidetrack, the semantic “games” being played are indicative of a basic problem with “climate science”, in the sense that a certain illogical rhetoric is employed by some, to avoid using the words cooler and colder. > [@MrDibble](#): > > FX asks for a definition of terms, but won’t be the first to show his hand, because obviously, you can’t play “gotcha ya” that way. When in fact what occurred, and it was just a day ago at most, was the objection to my bringing up a peer reviewed paper that once again, noted the trends. > [@MrDibble](#): > > I disagree because **nowhere** in their paper do they say there has been **global** cooling. In fact, they **explicitly** say there _has_ been **global** _warming_. “Little to no warming” is not the same as “cooling”. Rather than let a semantic issue divide, logic says define and explain,even when it isn’t needed. > [@FXMastermind](#): > > Ah, the semantic hurdle. > > **Lets try, and I mean really try, to come to an agreement on what words mean, in regards to this topic**. > > Cooling trend - > > Warming trend - > > Also what the mean temp anomaly means. > > > [@](#): > > > > The average earth land surface temperature, Tavg, is a key indicator of climate > > change. Detailed analyses of Tavg have been reported by three major teams: the > > National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA; see Menne et al. > > [2005]), the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Science (GISS; see Hansen et al. > > [2010]), and a collaboration of the Hadley Centre of the UK Meteorological Office with > > the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia (HadCRU; see Jones et al. [2003], Brohan et > > al. [2005]). > > [http://static.berkeleyearth.org/pdf/berkeley-earth-decadal-variations.pdf](http://static.berkeleyearth.org/pdf/berkeley-earth-decadal-variations.pdf) > > Things like that. Certainly if I restated every instance of “cooling” with “no warming”, the entire topic would be politically correct. And that gets twisted by MrDibble into “FX asks for a definition of terms”, as well as describing the exchange like a game of poker. What is happening, in regards to the debate, is quite interesting, since it is a constantly changing gish gallop of claims and reasoning. In essence, those denying are saying multiple things at once. “It’s not happenig” at the same time as “it’s not important”. > [@wolfpup](#): > > 1. The paper doesn’t actually “show” that the planet hasn’t warmed in that period, and neither did you (tracking specific months is not the same as tracking annual average temperatures), nor – most importantly – is such a short-term eventuality of any particular relevance. Or the “it was warm in Sochi” so it can’t be happening. > [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > Regarding Ecco’s comments about the bad winter we’ve had in the Eastern US, I would point out that “Eastern US” is not equal to globe. Just ask the people in Sochi how their winter is going. Or the “you are picking a start point” defense. > [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > When 2018 becomes the hottest year on record, I’m sure that FxM and his ilk will restart the clock and say that there has been no warming between 2018 and 2023 therefore global climate change is bunk. And of course the “warming switched to the oceans” so **surface temperature no longer matter** defense. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > As my previous posts remarked, for the question of “Has the world actually been cooling since 2002?” > > The answer is no. > > The most defensible position would had been that for the surface temperatures there is an apparent holding pattern, but this is not the whole picture, once the oceans are taken into account that “pause” is not there. And then we have the “it was expected” defense. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > As Latif and others showed, pauses were not unexpected. You are not being listened to by the scientists. From a science POV we have the arctic causing cold winters, along with the Pacific cooling, the “trade winds buried the heat”, the “China coal pollution caused it”, and of course “the sun went quiet”, all explaining something that didn’t actually happen. Unless it did happen/ Meanwhile, the most interesting part of this is ignored. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/631 "2014-03-08T10:10:36Z")
OK it’s time to look at the NOAA/NCDC data, which clearly nobody has bothered to check yet. > [@FXMastermind](#): > > You can easily check the GISS yourself. The others not so easy, but if anyone isn’t convinced by the GISS, then we might give it a try. (can’t link directly to the evidence, you have to create some yourself) What can we see with the NOAA data? A: Global mean B: Winter cooling trend C: Warming trends for the other seasons D: Winter trend bringing global mean down and E: Trends for each hemisphere There is of course the ocean issue as well, but one thing at a time. I can’t link you directly to the evidence, which is a real problem, and a shortcoming of the NCDC web site. But based on the denial so far, it probably wouldn’t make any difference. However, the NCDC has a great advantage over the GISS maps, and that is **the ability to measure trends by Hemisphere**. So instead of a global trend, you can see the Hemisphere trends, which really makes it clear that the NH winters are the reason for the global “cooling” trend, or the “lack of warming”, which is the PC way to say it. In essence the NH land temperatures show drastic cooling. 2002-2013 the land trend for winter is -.63 C That is for the NH land. Land+ocean is - .26 C And once again looking at the cold season for the NH, the trend is - .30 C Which means the annual trend is 0, which is amazing, but true. **The warm season warming cancels the cold season cooling trend if you look at the NH land only**. . If you add in the oceans, it changes. To a slight negative trend. What? Yep. The NH annual mean would be flat except for the ocean cooling. The SH is negative, no matter how you look at it. Added together it’s a slight “cooling”, or “no warming”. But, and this is the amazing thing. The winter. The NH winter. It is cooling so fast, it is the reason for the entire global mean being slightly negative. If th NH winter was just flat, no trend, **we would see global warming still taking place**. Remember, the NH shows a 3 degree per decade warming for the warm season! That is huge. But so is the - 3 C cooling. It’s pretty damn dramatic changes. It’s most unexpected, and it’s most unpleasant. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/632 "2014-03-08T10:44:53Z")
To sum up, because it’s quite possible this will be my final post, there is something very strange going on with the global temperatures, and I don’t think it’s a measurement problem. As Cohen et al points out, there is asymmetrical seasonal changes, and it’s not what AGW theory predicted. And, it does NOT MEAN there is no climate change. In fact, it is more than likely climate change, and it may be exactly what some are saying. Warming from greenhouse gases and land use change, being fucked with by “natural” variations. In essence, global warming at the same time as global cooling. Which is just so fucked up. You can check the figures for youself, don’t take my word for it. > **[National Time Series | Climate at a Glance | National Centers for...](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/national/time-series)** > > Historical and spatial comparisons of local, county, state, regional, national, and global meteorological data to determine trends and patterns NH land only trends, decade trends, 2002-2013 Winter - .63 C Spring +.28 C Summer +.30 C Fall +.20 C That’s the facts. The models were dead wrong. Something unexpected is happening. This does not mean human caused forcing is not happening. It means something unexpected happened. If it continues, it’s the worst possible climate change. Hotter temperatures except for winter. Winters will be colder with more snow. That is a very bad sort of climate change. If it’s being caused by CO2, we are truly fucked. If it’s a combo of things, then nobody in charge actually has a handle on climate science. My view is cautious skepticism, since I can’t tell you why it’s happening. I suspect the early cold pole hypothesis, combined with a cooling Pacific and low solar heating, but I can’t prove it. The thing is, I can’t find any past period that matches this sort of trend change. It looks like, as Coehn et al says, it’s not natural variation. It might be human influenced. It could be. It could also be something completely unexpected. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/633 "2014-03-08T10:48:00Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > Remember, the NH shows a 3 degree per decade warming for the warm season! That is huge. But so is the - 3 C cooling. It’s pretty damn dramatic changes. > > It’s most unexpected, and it’s most unpleasant. The winter and the northern hemisphere are not all the seasons and not the whole globe. Once we look at the big picture we can see again how misleading just looking at areas of the NH is. [http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?year\_last=2013&month\_last=12&sat=4&sst=3&type=trends&mean\_gen=1203&year1=1950&year2=2013&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=rob](http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?year_last=2013&month_last=12&sat=4&sst=3&type=trends&mean_gen=1203&year1=1950&year2=2013&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=rob) Reported analysis of the observations and modelling studies tell us that an unexpected asymmetric cooling in some areas is neither inconsistent with a warming planet nor unexpected as the authors of the paper in the OP and the ones referenced by it show. So, once again what the organizations that manage the data are telling us is: [http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20140121/](http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20140121/) > [@](#): > > NASA Finds 2013 Sustained Long-Term Climate Warming Trend > > Posted Jan. 21, 2014 > > NASA scientists say 2013 tied with 2009 and 2006 for the seventh warmest year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. > > [http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20140121/gistemp\_maps\_100.jpg](http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20140121/gistemp_maps_100.jpg) > > With the exception of 1998, the 10 warmest years in the 134-year record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the warmest years on record. > > NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, which analyzes global surface temperatures on an ongoing basis, released an updated report Tuesday on temperatures around the globe in 2013. The comparison shows how Earth continues to experience temperatures warmer than those measured several decades ago. > > The average temperature in 2013 was 58.3 degrees Fahrenheit (14.6 degrees Celsius), which is 1.1 °F (0.6 °C) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline. The average global temperature has risen about 1.4 °F (0.8 °C) since 1880, according to the new analysis. Exact rankings for individual years are sensitive to data inputs and analysis methods. > > “Long-term trends in surface temperatures are unusual and 2013 adds to the evidence for ongoing climate change,” GISS climatologist Gavin Schmidt said. “While one year or one season can be affected by random weather events, this analysis shows the necessity for continued, long-term monitoring.” > > Scientists emphasize that weather patterns always will cause fluctuations in average temperatures from year to year, but the continued increases in greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere are driving a long-term rise in global temperatures. Each successive year will not necessarily be warmer than the year before, but with the current level of greenhouse gas emissions, scientists expect each successive decade to be warmer than the previous. > > Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat and plays a major role in controlling changes to Earth’s climate. It occurs naturally and also is emitted by the burning of fossil fuels for energy. Driven by increasing man-made emissions, the level of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere presently is higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/634 "2014-03-08T13:25:28Z")
Of course none of this, the strange asymmetric change, will matter to the true believer in all things are awful and warming. They actually can’t see it. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > The winter and the northern hemisphere are not all the seasons and not the whole globe. And nobody is saying that. > [@GIGObuster](#): > > Once we look at the big picture we can see again how misleading just looking at areas of the NH is. Cherry picking a cold start time is a tactic to try and make it seem all warming. Which is why GISS avoids showing you a trend from 1930-present. [December 1930-2013](http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?year_last=2014&month_last=1&sat=4&sst=3&type=trends&mean_gen=12&year1=1930&year2=2013&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=rob) [January 2030-2014](http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?year_last=2014&month_last=1&sat=4&sst=3&type=trends&mean_gen=01&year1=1930&year2=2014&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=rob) [February 1930-2013](http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?year_last=2014&month_last=1&sat=4&sst=3&type=trends&mean_gen=02&year1=1930&year2=2013&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=rob) That shows no warming, and even cooling, for large areas of the NH, including parts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Note the December cooling for almost all of the US, as well as the north Atlantic. This is a 84 year trend. But looking at the trend from 1930-1980, or[1940-1977](http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?year_last=2014&month_last=1&sat=4&sst=3&type=trends&mean_gen=1203&year1=1940&year2=1977&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=rob), shows what happened. there was dramatic cooling, the “coming ice age” period, where drastic drops in winters alarmed a lot of people. It was an extreme trend in areas. Because it got cold, and fast. The warming since then, if you start in 1950, masks that period, and makes it seem like there has been dramatic warming, since it starts in the cold period. It’s a trick, it’s cherry picking. Looking at ALL the data tells another story. I want everyone to look at it all, not just a cherry picked trend. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/635 "2014-03-08T14:21:59Z")
Thank you, **Sam Stone** , your [post #624](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17174114&postcount=624) is very well written and does a good job encapsulating a “middle ground” position. I admire your bravery to state such a position in this highly polarized environment. You have my deepest sympathies … ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/636 "2014-03-08T14:38:10Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > Of course none of this, the strange asymmetric change, will matter to the true believer in all things are awful and warming. They actually can’t see it. And nobody is saying that. > Cherry picking a cold start time is a tactic to try and make it seem all warming. Which is why GISS avoids showing you a trend from 1930-present. > > [December 1930-2013](http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?year_last=2014&month_last=1&sat=4&sst=3&type=trends&mean_gen=12&year1=1930&year2=2013&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=rob) > > [January 2030-2014](http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?year_last=2014&month_last=1&sat=4&sst=3&type=trends&mean_gen=01&year1=1930&year2=2014&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=rob) > > [February 1930-2013](http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?year_last=2014&month_last=1&sat=4&sst=3&type=trends&mean_gen=02&year1=1930&year2=2013&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=rob) > > That shows no warming, and even cooling, for large areas of the NH, including parts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. > > Note the December cooling for almost all of the US, as well as the north Atlantic. This is a 84 year trend. > > But looking at the trend from 1930-1980, or[1940-1977](http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?year_last=2014&month_last=1&sat=4&sst=3&type=trends&mean_gen=1203&year1=1940&year2=1977&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=rob), shows what happened. there was dramatic cooling, the “coming ice age” period, where drastic drops in winters alarmed a lot of people. It was an extreme trend in areas. > > Because it got cold, and fast. > > The warming since then, if you start in 1950, masks that period, and makes it seem like there has been dramatic warming, since it starts in the cold period. > > It’s a trick, it’s cherry picking. > > Looking at ALL the data tells another story. I want everyone to look at it all, not just a cherry picked trend. As many that I respect noticed already in the forum that you claimed here that is allowing a discussion, you are indeed posting maps that do show that globally the warning is happening, the cold areas you point at are not enough to refute what they are reporting in happening overall, what your sources are reporting is already taken into account. Your affirmation that “no one is saying that” is the real desperate move, NASA, GISS, and even NCDC are saying what is the overall trend, of even the northern hemisphere. > [@](#): > > Global Highlights > > ``` > The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for January was the warmest since 2007 and the fourth warmest on record at 12.7°C (54.8°F), or 0.65°C (1.17°F) above the 20th century average of 12.0°C (53.6°F). The margin of error associated with this temperature is ± 0.08°C (± 0.14°F). > > The global land temperature was the highest since 2007 and the fourth highest on record for January, at 1.17°C (2.11°F) above the 20th century average of 2.8°C (37.0°F). The margin of error is ± 0.18°C (± 0.32°F). > > For the ocean, the January global sea surface temperature was 0.46°C (0.83°F) above the 20th century average of 15.8°C (60.5°F), the highest since 2010 and seventh highest on record for January. The margin of error is ± 0.04°C (± 0.07°F). > > ``` > [@](#): > > During January 2014, most of the world’s land areas experienced warmer-than-average temperatures, with the most notable departures from the 1981–2010 average across Alaska, western Canada, Greenland, Mongolia, southern Russia, and northern China, where the departure from average was +3°C (+5.4°F) or greater. Meanwhile, parts of southeastern Brazil and central and southern Africa experienced record warmth with temperature departures between 0.5°C to 1.5°C above the 1981–2010 average, contributing to the highest January Southern Hemisphere land temperature departure on record at 1.13°C (2.03°F) above the 20th century average. This was also the warmest month for the Southern Hemisphere land since September 2013 when temperatures were 1.23°C (2.21°F) above the 20th century average. Some locations across the globe experienced departures that were below the 1981–2010 average. These areas include the eastern half of the contiguous U.S., central Canada, and most of Scandinavia and Russia. The most notable cold anomalies were in Russia, where in some areas the departure from average was 5°C (9°F) below average. **Overall, the Northern Hemisphere land surface temperature was 1.17°C (2.11°F) above average—the warmest January since 2007 and the fourth warmest since records began in 1880.** ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/637 "2014-03-08T14:53:36Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I also worry about the quality of the science in such a politically-charged and politically funded field - on both sides. For example, when it was starting to be obvious that the real trend for temperature was going lower than the model, scientists started madly looking for previously-unknown mechanisms to account for it. They found one, corrected the model accordingly, and problem solved. Speaking about politics, we had this conversation before, in the political arena there is a clear false equivalence, see the use of debunked sources by Republican senator Inhofe in this thread. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > But I wonder if as much effort would have been spent on finding such events if the temperature trend had matched or exceeded the forecast? And if not, what does that bias do to our overall perception of the state of the science? What if we’re committing more type I errors on one side and more type II errors on the other? I do not wonder about this one, the answer is yes, as I reported before scientists did not grabbed 1998 as atypical year in reality most of the trend in the 1980’s was described as a warming that was going up more than expected. On the northern hemisphere scientists are indeed trying to figure out why the ice loss is much higher than expected. And part of effort to find what events caused that was found in recent studies that show that the warming of the Arctic was higher than was assumed before. > **[RealClimate: Global Warming Since 1997 Underestimated by Half](https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/11/global-warming-since-1997-underestimated-by-half/)** > > RealClimate: A new study by British and Canadian researchers shows that the global temperature rise of the past 15 years has been greatly underestimated. The reason is the data gaps in the weather station network, especially in the Arctic. If you... > [@](#): > > A new study by British and Canadian researchers shows that the global temperature rise of the past 15 years has been greatly underestimated. The reason is the data gaps in the weather station network, especially in the Arctic. If you fill these data gaps using satellite measurements, the warming trend is more than doubled in the widely used HadCRUT4 data, and the much-discussed “warming pause” has virtually disappeared. > > Obtaining the globally averaged temperature from weather station data has a well-known problem: there are some gaps in the data, especially in the polar regions and in parts of Africa. As long as the regions not covered warm up like the rest of the world, that does not change the global temperature curve. > > But errors in global temperature trends arise if these areas evolve differently from the global mean. That’s been the case over the last 15 years in the Arctic, which has warmed exceptionally fast, as shown by satellite and reanalysis data and by the massive sea ice loss there. This problem was analysed for the first time by Rasmus in 2008 at RealClimate, and it was later confirmed by other authors in the scientific literature. > > The “Arctic hole” is the main reason for the difference between the NASA GISS data and the other two data sets of near-surface temperature, HadCRUT and NOAA. I have always preferred the GISS data because NASA fills the data gaps by interpolation from the edges, which is certainly better than not filling them at all. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/638 "2014-03-08T15:12:45Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Thank you, **Sam Stone** , your [post #624](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17174114&postcount=624) is very well written and does a good job encapsulating a “middle ground” position. I admire your bravery to state such a position in this highly polarized environment. > > You have my deepest sympathies … What you miss is that the polarization is artificial, and made by the same forces that deny the basic science, that Sam Stone does accept. There is a big problem with that supposed middle. [http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/01/1381111/new-year-open-thread-whats-your-climate-resolution/](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/01/1381111/new-year-open-thread-whats-your-climate-resolution/) That middle is not real when the false equivalence is the one that is creating it, the middle show by scientists academics and people that debunk pseudoscience for a living is not that. > **[Let's be honest – the global warming debate isn't about science | Dana...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/oct/04/global-warming-debate-not-about-science)** > > Dana Nuccitelli: The scientific evidence on human-caused global warming is clear. Opposition stems from politics, not science. > [@](#): > > The IPCC warns that if we want to avoid very dangerous climate change, we’re on track to blow through our allowed carbon budget in as little as two to three decades if we continue on our current path of relying on fossil fuels. If we’re lucky and the low sensitivity scenario is accurate, perhaps we’ll have an extra decade or two, but even in this best case scenario, we’re on an unsustainable climate path. > Politically biased media climate coverage is not a coincidence > > The scientific evidence is what it is, and it has no political bias. The same is not true of the media outlets that cover the topic. It’s not a coincidence that politically conservative tabloids and newspapers like the Daily Mail, Telegraph, Australian, and Wall Street Journal spend a disproportionate amount of time amplifying the voices of the less than 3 percent of climate contrarian scientists, as well as many non-scientist contrarians. > > It’s certainly not the case that David Rose has some brilliant insight into the state of climate science that climate scientists don’t have. He and his fellow climate contrarians simply approach the question backwards. They start from their political ideological opposition to climate solutions and work backwards, seeking out cherry picked evidence to justify their predetermined conclusions, thus ignoring the 97 percent of inconvenient scientific evidence. This climate contrarianism ideological bias is illustrated in a new study, summarized by Graham Readfearn: > > > [@](#): > > > > ``` > > "if you're a conservative who believes the world runs best when businesses operate in a "free market" with little government interference, then the chances are you don't think human-caused climate change represents a significant risk to human civilization." > > > > ``` > > Let’s debate the solutions > > Even if you’re not convinced by the scientific evidence, you should support taking action to mitigate global warming. What if you’re wrong, as the body of scientific evidence indicates is the case? There is unquestionably a possible scenario in which our greenhouse gas emissions cause harmful and potentially catastrophic climate damages. > > I know what contrarians are thinking – what if I’m wrong, and we end up wasting money deploying green technologies, cleaning the air and water and transitioning away from limited fossil fuel resources in the process? That’s why we need everyone helping to craft the best possible solutions to maximize the economic benefit of this inevitable transition. > > Take the USA as a prime example. The Obama Administration recognizes the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but Republicans in Congress refuse to even consider any climate legislation. As a result, government greenhouse gas regulations are the only available option. From an economic perspective, it’s far from an ideal solution, but because the Republican Party won’t participate in crafting better legislation, we’re forced to implement less than ideal solutions. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/639 "2014-03-08T15:46:05Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > No, you’re right - ‘stable’ is not the right descriptor, and metastable is much better. A complex system can certainly have cascades of changes and make sudden moves from one state to another. A financial panic might be an example. Or an avalanche. Maybe climate could do the same thing. Fair enough - that’s generally been my experience with natural systems - metastability and rapid changeover seems to be the rule - it certainly is in geology, you only have to look at a phase diagram to see that. > [@](#): > > I guess my reticence about large positive feedbacks is more specific to the climate system. It has survived for billions of years within a fairly narrow range of temperature changes despite receiving massive numbers of shocks, and with fairly widely varying atmospheric chemistry. It seems awfully robust. I don’t know - within just the last billion of years we’ve had everything from [Snowball Earth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth) to the [Pangean Megamonsoon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangean_megamonsoon). Each of which was a meta-stable persistent global climate system, but very different from each other or other climate states inbetween and since. I wouldn’t call the [paleo-temperature range](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.png) “narrow” given the widespread effects of just a couple °C change. > [@](#): > > Of course, it might be robust in geologic scales but be quite sensitive on human time scales, so we should still care and not just assume it can absorb whatever we throw at it. That’s how I feel about it. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728/640 "2014-03-08T15:50:24Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > When in fact what occurred, and it was just a day ago at most, was the objection to my bringing up a peer reviewed paper that once again, noted the trends. No, the _objection_ was to your wrong assertion that the paper reached the same conclusion as your OP. An outright false statement by yourself. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728.md?page=31) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-the-world-actually-been-cooling-since-2002/681728.md?page=33)