You might as well debate gravity FX.
NASA ends the Earth Observatory lesson with this:
The stories do not contradict that more warming is coming, they only explain the “pause”
The point here is that those natural cycles that explain the current “pause” will come back as they did after the 70’s (there is a reason why they are called cycles) and the warming they bring will be added to the warming caused by human emissions that are accumulating in the atmosphere.
BTW, when you claim that one should not do such a “sweeping pronouncement, with surety, that rankles the scientific and the logical mind”, we have to remember that you offered pronouncements that confused the number of sun spots with the total solar irridance. Continue to pronounce that cherry picks are more effective than long trends and that we should ignore the experts at NASA GISS and others. And then you came back (ignoring the failed pronouncements) by claiming that “Obviously, at present, CO2 isn’t causing the world to warm.”
A wrong statement on top of being a sweeping pronouncement. As NASA and many other scientific groups and organizations report, the warming is going to the oceans [last time I checked, they are also part of the world], and the cycles will make a good portion of that heat to eventually show up in the surface temperatures.
Cite? This sounds like a really exaggerated and sloppy way of characterizing mainstream climate science.
Again, I think your problem here is not so much with what you probably mean to say as with the misleadingly loose way you’re expressing it. It would be more accurate to say that “at present, the apparent long-term warming trend that is apparently being primarily driven by anthropogenic greenhouse-gase emissions is not preventing the occurrence of a short-term decrease in some temperature indicators”.
In other words, CO2 can still be causing the world to warm even if that ongoing warming is temporarily masked (in some of its manifestations, at least) by other effects.
Cite? Once again, sloppy fulmination against the vaguely characterized reactions of unidentified “some people” is not really relevant to a debate on science issues.
You’re the one who started this thread with a specific, objective, science-based question about whether the world has “actually been cooling” in recent years. And when confronted with specific, science-based arguments that suggest it actually has not—at least, not in the sense of actually contradicting or counteracting a long-term warming trend—you sluff off into unfocused lamentations about how “some people” just inexplicably hate the idea. Point: missed.
You are possibly mixing up the concepts of reversing warming and masking warming.
While I agree that it would indeed be a terrific thing if our climate systems had somehow really pressed the “pause” button on a long-term warming trend and produced a genuine delay in the timescale of climate change, that is not necessarily what a short-term cooling trend implies. Temperature fluctuations due to natural variability don’t automatically mean that the overall trajectory of global warming has slowed.
If indeed it has slowed, then yay great super wow and talk about glorious dumb luck. But the mere existence of a short-term cooling trend, if it’s due to natural climate variability, doesn’t necessarily indicate that global warming overall has slowed.
Here’s a simplistic analogy for purposes of illustration: Suppose I decided it would be nice to breed a few rabbits in my backyard, and the project got out of hand until I’m up to my hiney in baby rabbits and more of them just keep coming. Now suppose that suddenly for a short while I notice that the number of rabbits has not been increasing and has even dropped a bit. Whew, what a relief, right? Well, maybe not.
If the rabbits’ reproductive rate has indeed permanently or even temporarily dropped, for whatever mysterious reason, that’s wonderful news and gives me at least a bit of breathing space to cope with my rabbit problem.
But if, on the other hand, the apparent decline in rabbits is due simply to the fact that a bunch of them are managing to get through a hole in the fence to live in my neighbor’s backyard instead, and it’s only a matter of time before my neighbor discovers them and furiously dumps them and all their subsequent progeny back into my own backyard— then the temporary “rabbit cooling” wasn’t really such a lucky break for me as I thought it was.
Worst winter in Toronto we absolutely had in last 15 years.
Dont care what the global warming freaks are telling us, this doesnt help their cause
It really does not help when scientists are called freaks, the only result is that even in Canada the ones resorting to that are called deniers, and not just by the scientists.
If you think that an unusually cold winter somehow discredits the hypothesis of a long-term anthropogenic global warming trend, you really don’t understand climate science at all.
For a more informed perspective on what climate scientists are actually telling you about climate trends, take a look at, for example, these data (from Government of Canada Historical Climate Data) for February average minimum temperature (degrees C) in Toronto over the past nearly 50 years:
1965-1974: -10.5 -9.4 -14.2 -12.2 -9.3 -11.6 -8.9 -13.1 -13.0 -12.7
1975-1984: -7.3 -7.3 -9.8 -14.5 -15.1 -12.3 -6.2 -11.9 -6.9 -5.5
1985-1994: -9.9 -9.4 -10.8 -11.7 -10.6 -8.0 -6.7 -7.8 -13.4 -13.0
1995-2004: -11.8 -9.5 -7.7 -4.0 -5.6 -7.4 -6.5 -5.5 -11.5 -8.0
2005-2013: -8.2 -7.2 -12.2 -9.3 -8.2 -6.7 -9.8 -3.8 -8.1
You can see that on average, February in Toronto has been getting noticeably warmer over the past half-century. The fact that you’re currently experiencing winter weather that is unusually cold for the past couple of decades (but would have been unremarkable in some of the decades before that) doesn’t mean that the general trend isn’t real.
Obligatory link to XKCD cartoon about “brutally cold” subzero weather in St. Louis.
Climate Change Denial. “Because what used to be normal now feels too cold.”
Sure, for about 60% (common) of the Earth’s history, temperatures were 15ºC to 20ºC warmer that today … about 30% (uncommon) of the Earth’s history, temperatures were about as they are today … and about 10% (rarely) of the Earth’s history, temperatures were much much hotter, like over 100ºC hotter.
… roughly speaking …
How is that relevant, though? AFAIK, nobody at all is claiming that current climate trends are in any way extreme compared to the entire course of the planet’s history.
What we as modern humans need to be concerned about is how current trends compare with previous trends during the time that the planetary environment has supported modern humans. Especially for the part of that period that has supported what we loosely call “civilization”.
What’s humorous to me is that people think that even if we dive into a temperature trend that’s downward for 40 years and gives us coldnesses that are inline with the 40 years of cooling that hapened from the 30s to the 70s, it isn’t like that means the climate isn’t warmer on average than it was in 1900. Even if humanity didn’t exist, the climate would be changing. That’s it’s natural operating pattern. There are some who doubt that the various influences ever reach a “balance point” where it would be stable if nothing changed.
What we have done is cause some effect to that system. By IPCC estimates between 30 and 50% of the current era change is likely caused by human activity (including an extended activity map, e.g. CO2 warms, causing methane to be released, methane warms, etc). We do have some issues in how the entire system interacts together, but it’s not like the underlying fact isn’t true. For instance, if we were to enter 40 years of a cooling on average world, right now we don’t have a tested hypothesis of why or how that would happen. We have a couple of them that have been advanced, but we are still in discovery mode for why the average change has flattened out.
But, as **Gigo **will come in and tell me ( 
) that doesn’t mean that pausing for some length of time at +1C of change or even sliding back down that scale to -1C doesn’t mean that we aren’t having an effect. But, we should have as little effect as possible. I’m not saying regulating everyone into huts or something, but I would love to both live my current life AND have nuclear power replaces 100% of the coal, natural gas, and ICE power generation capacity we currently have. (Hopefully not nuclear in every vehicles. I love the little Farins too much to do that to them.)
I do agree with you, FX, on one aspect: that the catastrophe theories of how the next 100 years will play out are educated guesses based on extrapolations of extrapolations. But we should be cleaning up our mess, regardless. And that cleanup cost should be built into the cost of getting that electricity in the first place. By using the market’s economies of scale and actively processing the output to (hopefully) inert materials we will make this economical and make it so that we barely feel the pinch.
All of this hemming and hawing about whether the trend in the last 15 years is flat, declining, or positive is pointless. Let’s say for the sake of argument, that every single climate scientist in the world read your posts in this thread and went HE’S RIGHT! What now, outside of your cushy new job counting stacks of cash? Should we just continue pumping things into the air, ground, and water with no regard? Shouldn’t we require that if you are going to stuff mercury into felt caps to make them soft that the mercury should not be flushed into any kind of water source? Why would we not want to use our preternatural disposition for intelligence to stop abusing what we have and instead respect it?
What are the ramifications of your argument, FX? Where does it take us? What would be your ideal world in regard to climate science and what it’s effect on policy would be?
ETA: Sorry, Kimstu. I abused your statement for my own purposes.
So do I. And in fact, AFAICT there is no mainstream climate science researcher who would disagree with it.
But just because some aspects of understanding and predicting climate change are admittedly very uncertain doesn’t mean that nobody understands anything at all and one guess is as good as another.
No problem, it’ll boost my citation index count. 
To be honest, I don’t know. When I first noticed some of these things discussed in the OP, it was almost exactly four years ago, and at the time I was more like GIGO than anybody else here, in regards to my views of climate change. Except I considered anyone arguing against catastrophic consequences of CO2 levels increasing, either a fool or some sort of shill or even worse, some kind of Republican. So I just didn’t even read global warming topics, much less argue about it.
It’s why you don’t see any threads or posts from me about climate at that time. Anywhere online. Trapped by snow and cold, and because of the climategate emails, I went digging into the data, and I was shocked when I looked at the data, and discovered the winters, for some areas, actually showed a cooling trend.
Meanwhile, I can link you directly to another forum, to a topic, where I actually posted in defense of global warming at this time, where I said, and I can prove this of course, I said pretty much “heavy snowfall is a prediction of global warming, more moisture in the warm air meeting the cold front will result in more snowfall, but it doesn’t mean global warming isn’t happening”. This was during possibly the worst blizzard to ever hit the DC area.
Even in the midst of these back to back completely over the top blizzards, and the unusual cold that followed, I was unsure what it meant. I knew that the data showed something that didn’t fit with the official story. But then what?
It seemed to place me firmly in the “denier” camp, if I even mentioned it. People turned like rabid dogs, if they suspected you were even hinting that it wasn’t warming, that we were not in grave danger, and right soon.
And that is about all I can type at the moment. I apologize if I can’t answer the decent and reasonable questions at the moment. Circumstances beyond my control, and a string of most unfortunate events.
OK trying once more. I do not know. I could go on and on but at this point it would all be musings, thoughts and theorizing, none of which I am qualified to actually comment on. I simply do not know yet.
The only thing I can say with confidence on this, is that the data, the measurements and the raw data and the analysis and the code and the methods of every last bit of climate science, weather records and all satellite readings should be open to everyone. And we should use computers and the internet to connect everybody to everything, so that nothing can be hidden, destroyed, changed with out a trail of what and why. And it should be asy to find, use and share. For example
Thye records for Toronot, all of them should be a click away, and the data should be displayed so there is simply no doubt about it. Click. Is it really that bad in Toronto? Is it a trend? No questions, no “we can’t show you” involved. This would stop so much of the pernicious bullshit involving climate. Instead we get
Oh yeah? Well if it’s so important to understand, make the damn data available. People can understand temperatures, snowfall and sunshine. It’s not an esoteric science. Instead we get
which I debunked in a matter of seconds when I first saw it. And I fucking love xkcd, but he is wrong. And I can prove it of course.
There is so much that is just wrong in the way climate and weather is used as weapons in some ill defined war.
Seriously.
**Kimstu **linked to a data set than can be reviewed back to 1937.
So, another “sweeping pronouncement” that was wrong.
No, you failed last time as you used only cherry picks omitting the big picture that the maker of xkcd pointed at, so here we have another sweeping pronouncement from you that is wrong.
As pointed in this thread, you where wrong by comparing the number of sun spots with the total solar irridance. To continue to do cherry picks, to dismiss the experts at NASA, GISS and others. And then claiming that “at present, CO2 isn’t causing the world to warm.”
Not only seriously wrong, but certifiably wrong.
Honestly, FXMastermind, that was a truly breathtaking display of lack of reading comprehension on your part.
Esco posts a random musing about this year’s winter in Toronto;
I respond pointing out the greater significance of long-term temperature trends, and in the process quoting winter temperature data for Toronto over the past 50 years, with a cite and link to the source of the data;
and you respond with a post complaining that I should “make the data available”.
Making the data available is exactly what I did. It’s just that you seem to have completely missed it in reading my post.
Very interesting. Let’s see your proof, then.
The only one who’s really misusing data and arguments about climate and weather in an “ill defined war” around here is you. Every time somebody shows how you got something wrong or misinterpreted or misread a source, you retreat into general tut-tutting about how other people should be arguing more rigorously. First take the plank out of your own eye, pal.
Well I’m still going so one last quick response.
“The official story has been that CO2 dominates everything else. Everything.”
It is, and you don’t need a cite, you can find that everywhere. Even in this topic.
Probably, but that isn’t what I am saying, not at all. After four years of research, and a lot of effort and time, I know a little bit about the greenhouse gas theory, and the chemistry of the atmosphere. There are some big unknowns, especially in regards to the CO2 forcing, and the feedback effects. And the oceans. It’s not simple, it can’t even be made simple.
No, it can’t be made simple, and while I understand your intent, that isn’t even close to what we are discussing.
If it involved the entire continent of Australia, then it might work.
It’s tempting to use simplistic examples, but it doesn’t work. I found myself wanting to walk down that garden path, but no.
The only thing that would be good about that example, might be this, if while the food supply was disappearing at an increased pace, you were not getting any more rabbits. You keep having to add more food, but you see fewer rabbits as time goes by.
Where is the food going? Where are the rabbits going? How can we measure the energy in and out, and see more energy being “kept” by the planet, but not record where it is being kept? Now that is a good question.
Because it is one we can actually answer. It is a hypothetical answer, but a real one, from real science and research, and while it uses models, sometimes models are useful.
And if I can get one more post done, I will explain.
OK rather than the example, I must respond.
No, I actually know how much trouble you went to, when it should be a few clicks and a link to a data source instead.
I fully support what you did.
I want everyone to be able to do it. Easily.
I’m sure it seems that way, and I apologize. I have to struggle to type at the moment, and that was not my intent at all. That site you used is just terrible for showing trends.
Here is what I am talking about, and an example of what I wish for, in regards to all the data.
He used St Louis temperature, so look at the trends
January
February
December
I can’t link you to selected trends, but you can do that yourself.
It’s why I know xkcd is wrong. The data, it’s always the data.
See for yourself.
Then show me Toronto in the same way.
Now look at St Louis on the GISS map
What they always show you, to say it’s warming, is something like this
It’s deceptive, and it’s just one more reason I am so skeptical. Even xkcd was fooled.
Well that was a sidetrack. One last look at St Louis, the 40 years before 1970
That’s what they leave out, it’s how to fool people. You start a trend at the coldest part of a time period, and ignore the reality of the last 25 years.
How do you think somebody will feel when they are ridiculed and mocked for saying the winter is cold, and “science” tells them they don’t know shit about science? Then they find out what I just easily showed you? And realize the winters are getting colder, and the data shows it?
I doubt any of this will get through, but hey, it’s what the actual data shows.
Well, it wasn’t that hard. I read Esco’s comment about winter in Toronto, I spent about 5 minutes googling around for “historical winter temperatures Toronto” and another 5 minutes reading about the data at the Government of Canada Historical Climate Data site I linked to, and then I took about 4 minutes cutting and pasting 49 temperature records for historical February average minimum temperatures.
Yeah, it would be somewhat more convenient to have a single online Universal Global Historical Climate Records database where you could just type in “winter temperature trends Toronto 1965-present” and it would spit the desired information right out. But working with more cumbersome data sources is not that big a deal, IMHO.
The fact is that most online science resources are not designed for the pursuit of any kind of “citizen science” in the first place. I hope that will change over time, but in the meantime I don’t think nonspecialists who are interested in a particular scientific subject should be scared away by the prospect of having to work a little harder to understand and present the available information.