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Earth Stats Science

NOAA: Global Warming 'Pause' Never Happened 639

Taco Cowboy writes: The whole global warming debate is as confusing as ever. Researchers from the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have published a new study in Science saying there was no "pause" in global warming. Dr. Thomas Karl points out that the warming rate over the past 15 years is "virtually identical" to warming over the last century, and updated observations show temperatures did not plateau.

"The idea of a global warming 'hiatus' arose from questions over why the trend of warming temperatures appeared to be stalling recently compared to the later part of the 20th century. ... The new analysis corrects for ocean observations made using different methods as well as including new data on surface temperatures."

"According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global average temperatures have increased by around 0.05C per decade in the period between 1998 and 2012. This compares with an average of 0.12 per decade between 1951 and 2012. The new analysis suggests a figure of 0.116 per decade for 2000-2014, compared with 0.113 for 1950-1999."
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NOAA: Global Warming 'Pause' Never Happened

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  • We'll talk when (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ihtoit ( 3393327 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @08:42AM (#49847577)

    Orkney exports a good wine.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by beelsebob ( 529313 )

      You mean when the average temperature at orkney has risen by 15C?

      That seems like a pretty steep requirement given that we'd expect the major global issues to have happened already with a rise of only 2 or 3C.

    • by plopez ( 54068 )

      BY which time it may be submerged. Plankton wine anyone?

    • by necro81 ( 917438 )
      Why wish for a good wine from Orkney when you can drown your sorrows in some of the best scotch in the world? Each location has its agronomic strengths.

      Much as I would like to, I don't live in a climate that can support avocado trees. On the other hand, I don't think there are many sugar maples in Mexico and California, but we have them on every hillside 'round here.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05, 2015 @08:45AM (#49847605)

    A member of Congress throwing a snowball is so much better an argument than any science.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    we will take out what we don't like and put it what fits our agenda.

    • by plopez ( 54068 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @09:05AM (#49847779) Journal

      No, Scientists are not Politicians. As new data and peer review move forward things are revised. Otherwise out model of the solar system would still have Earth in the center of it.

      • by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @09:24AM (#49847945)

        No, Scientists are not Politicians. As new data and peer review move forward things are revised. Otherwise out model of the solar system would still have Earth in the center of it.

        Oh really how do you feel about that report from the EPA on fracking ? Seems a whole lot of environmentalists only like science when it agrees with their prejudices.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          And it seems a whole lot of anti-environmentalists (or whatever term you care to use) start to like science when it agrees with their prejudices.

          That sword cuts both ways.

          • by tmosley ( 996283 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @10:06AM (#49848303)
            Science is a method, not a result, nor a being. "Science" doesn't say anything. With highly politicised topics like this, it is not the data that tells the tale, but rather those flawed humans who may or may not appropriately report the data that tells the tale. There has been enough fraud discovered in academia alone, without systemic bias toward a given result, that to fail to question these results is a major failing on the part of anyone who takes them at face value.
        • by dywolf ( 2673597 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @12:31PM (#49849691)

          you mean the one that's being misreported on by Fox and other "news" sources in bed with the industry?
          let me guess what you think the report says....your tone is a large enough indicator on that score.

          in fact, i'll bet you only read the initial headlines, since retracted, that stated "EPA says fracking is safe" and variations on that theme. you definitely never bothered to read the whole article, or to find the report itself and peruse it.

          so let me help you out.
          the report that states, and I quote:

          From our assessment, we conclude there are above and below ground mechanisms by which hydraulic fracturing activities have the potential to impact drinking water resources. These mechanisms include water withdrawals in times of, or in areas with, low water availability; spills of hydraulic fracturing fluids and produced water; fracturing directly into underground drinking water resources; below ground migration of liquids and gases; and inadequate treatment and discharge of wastewater.

          We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States. Of the potential mechanisms identified in this report, we found specific instances where one or more mechanisms led to impacts on drinking water resources, including contamination of drinking water wells. The number of identified cases, however, was small compared to the number of hydraulically fractured wells.

          They cut a fine line between saying it has "no effect" and it "always has an effect".
          they say it can have an effect, and be harmful, but it mostly localized right now, rather systemic (ie, inherent) to the activity.

          you are now about twice as informed and intelligent as you were previously.

    • by holmstar ( 1388267 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @10:02AM (#49848267)
      Instruments on ocean buoys for some reason are reading a lower temperature than research ships. Many buoys were deployed during the time period of the "pause", which pushed down the average temperature reading as compared to past measurements. They've now taken this disparity into account and the "pause" disappears. They were looking for an explanation for the "pause" and found it to be an error in the way the data was collected, so they corrected for the error.
      • by john.r.strohm ( 586791 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @10:29AM (#49848521)

        The word you are looking for is "calibration".

        The phenomenon you are describing is called "system-wide consistent calibration error".

        The problem with claiming that you have corrected a system-wide consistent calibration error is that you really need to explain how you managed to screw up the sensor calibration in the first place, on all of the ocean buoys, in such a way that they all had the SAME wrong readings.

        • by dywolf ( 2673597 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @12:41PM (#49849793)

          its not calibration like you are thinking (I am a calibration technician), ie, metrology (NOT meteorology!).

          the buoys weren't "wrong".

          its not that the buoys were miscalibrated as to the accuracy of the instruments (metrology).

          its that the dataset as a whole was "miscalibrated" as relates to the inherent differences in results from different methodologies of measurement. it's a statistical error, not a metrological one.

          you can measure the same location in one of 3 typical ways:
          -buoys
          -engine intake
          -bucket (ie, drop a bucket, haul it up, and measure the water inside)

          Each has its own inherent (built in) factors that cause the same readings from the same place at the same time, but taken with different methods, to measure slightly differently. The corrections to the dataset seek to remove and cancel out these differences.

          and when the measurement is taken they don't JUST write down the reading taken, but the local conditions at the time (sunny? cloudy? windy?), the type of measurement taken and method used, the instrument used, the location of the instrument (on a hill? in the shade?), etc. and all of that additional information is recorded PRECISELY BECAUSE of the desire to eliminate inherent differences so that every measurement conforms to the same baseline.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Overzeetop ( 214511 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @08:52AM (#49847661) Journal

    I worked with the group who built and operated the optical sensor which discovered the hole in the ozone. Except that they didn't know they had. Every time the sensor took optical data over the poles there was an "anomaly" in the data and they got uncharacteristically low numbers. For three years, this was written off as an unexplained anomaly when viewing down towards the polar ice. Until they looked up from below and found out that there really was no ozone there. Going back to the old data resulted in a fairly large change to the interpretation of the existing data which had been thrown out as unexplained.

    Science learns as it goes.

    • by Dr. Tom ( 23206 )

      Wow.

  • Enjoy The Ride (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dr. Tom ( 23206 ) <tomh@nih.gov> on Friday June 05, 2015 @08:53AM (#49847675) Homepage

    Yawn. It's too late to do anything about it anyway. You might as well sit back and enjoy it. Unless we start a geoengineering project to remove CO2 from the atmosphere (and who's going to pay for that?) it'll be a thousand years before levels return to normal, *assuming* we cut emissions to zero right now, which will never happen. We could put giant mirrors in space to cool the Earth, but who wants to do that? I like the heat, and since we were due for another ice age, I personally would rather not have New York State under a kilometer of ice.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      "I like the heat,"

      Do you? In that case you might want to consider moving to india where they've had a fairly unprecedented hot spell recently with temperatures hitting 48C. Unfortunately unlike priviledged fat yanks like yourself, the majority don't have comfy air condition homes - if they have homes rather than a shack - to cool themselves with.

    • Re:Enjoy The Ride (Score:5, Interesting)

      by taiwanjohn ( 103839 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @09:31AM (#49847987)

      Actually, there is a fairly simple solution that can be done in a couple of decades, and has the bonus side effect of producing megatons of food in some of the more impoverished regions of the world. The trick is to convert semi-arid and arid grasslands into productive grazing lands for herbivores by using Managed Intensive Rotational Grazing [wikipedia.org] which is described in detail (with stunning before/after photos) by Allan Savory in this TED Talk. [youtube.com]

      In a nutshell: MIRG simulates the "mobbing, mowing, and moving" behavior of large herds of herbivores in nature, where herds "mob together" for protection from predators, and move constantly to find fresh pasture. Following in their wake is a swath of "disturbed" pasture, which has just been aerated by hoof prints and fed with a rich load of fertilizer. This spurs a blaze of regrowth in the grasses, which replaces root mass which had earlier been shed (many plants shed root mass when cropped, to preserve the root-shoot ratio). [encyclopedia.com] Thus, every time herbivores graze a piece of land, they sequester a large amount of carbon into the soil, and actually increase the health and the depth of the topsoil.

      Obviously, there's quite a bit more to this story, including earthworks to harvest and retain water, permaculture design to optimize ecosystem health and productivity, etc. But hopefully this will be enough to get the gears turning...

      • I really want to believe that Ted Talk. I've watched it a couple times. But when I did a little background research, I found out that Savory's work was received very well in the mainstream academic circles. There was a lot of criticism that he was cherry picking his success stories from a set of many failures, and that he is basically claiming success based on a lot of correlations, not proving causations.

        Maybe I just google'd poorly at the time. Not sure. Do you think he's more mainstream (has good e

  • In other words.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The new analysis corrects for ocean observations made using different methods as well as including new data on surface temperatures.

    "We're still massaging the data to make it look the way that fits our pre-conceived notions. STATISTICS!!"

    • by Dr. Tom ( 23206 )

      "We're still massaging the data to make it look the way that fits our pre-conceived notions. STATISTICS!!"

      "We're still yammering on about the way we believe the world is and has always been. IGNORANCE!!"

  • TGIF (Score:5, Funny)

    by Guy From V ( 1453391 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @08:53AM (#49847687) Homepage

    Climate change story is a sign the weekend is finally here.

    • by Dr. Tom ( 23206 )

      It's been cold and rainy here all week. Looks like we might finally be in for some warmer weather this weekend. Still gonna rain, though. The East Coast Monsoon. Seems like we'll be seeing more of it this year.

  • Data tampering (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05, 2015 @08:57AM (#49847701)

    The new "analysis" [dailycaller.com] deliberately tampered with data for this very purpose:

    New climate data by NOAA scientists doubles the warming trend since the late 1990s by adjusting pre-hiatus temperatures downward and inflating temperatures in more recent years.

    • by dywolf ( 2673597 )

      the daily caller is unaware that different measurement methods result in different readings.
      but then, this is old news.

      every time they talk about this, they (as well as most other unscientifically educated deniers) are reminded that a sensor in the sun an inch away from a sensor in the shade will read a higher temperature, yet neither reading is "wrong".

      and therefore corrections are made to align each reading to the same baseline based on the local conditions, sensor type, methodology, and every other facto

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05, 2015 @08:58AM (#49847711)

    When the data ceases to match the model, why is it that global warming agenda pushers always say that it is the model that is wrong and change the model? Instead of questioning at their underlying assumptions, as the scientific method dictates? Oh, because then they don't get to push their agenda to get more money. CAPTCHA: Idealism

    • by plopez ( 54068 )

      BOth can happen. BUt the model has been pretty good to date and in reviewing it they found some things in those data which were not consistent and so was normalized and they also had new data which supported the model. Hence there is no evidence to which shows the fundamental facts and assumptions are wrong. There is no evidence to discard underlying assumptions such as Thermodynamics works as expected when investigating the climate.

    • Could it because those underlying assumptions are the most basic laws of physics and chemistry ?
      If global warming by human activity is WRONG - then the question is moot since our understanding of thermodynamics is ENTIRELY FALSE and cars and power plants don't exist to emit CO2 in the first place.

  • by cirby ( 2599 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @09:01AM (#49847741)

    1) Notice that a lot of the ocean temperatures are now collected by buoys
    2) Notice that older temperatures were mostly collected by ships, and trended slightly warmer than the buoy measurements
    3) Assume that the actual temperature is somewhere in between (instead of using the more-accurate buoy numbers)
    4) Adjust the ship temperature numbers down (cooling the past record by a fraction of a degree)
    5) Adjust the buoy temperature numbers up (warming the current temps by a fraction of a degree)
    6) Voila! The pause disappeared!

    (In ocean temps. If you ignore all of the other things like satellite measurements that don't agree.)

    • Not too hot on that "reading" concept are you?

      No, that is not what they did,

  • Oh and btw when you say corrects for ocean data from different sources, you mean adjusts sea buoy data upward to agree ship based sensor data.

  • by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @09:03AM (#49847761) Journal

    There have been some accusations that the data is being 'massaged' to get to a specific result:
    https://stevengoddard.wordpres... [wordpress.com]

  • by Hrrrg ( 565259 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @09:04AM (#49847769)

    While I personally believe in man-made global warming, this sort of thing makes it hard to argue with someone who claims the researchers are just massaging the data until it shows what they think it should show.
     

    • by FlyHelicopters ( 1540845 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @09:41AM (#49848111)

      While I personally believe in man-made global warming, this sort of thing makes it hard to argue with someone who claims the researchers are just massaging the data until it shows what they think it should show.

      Your words speak the truth...

      You "personally believe" in man-made global warming... just like Christians "personally believe" in God.

      I know a few Christians who think the matter is "settled" as well.

      ---

      To the point, I have no idea if we even have global warming, that point can be debated. Then the question is, if we have it, how much, if any, is man-made?

  • by Chris Reeve ( 2962081 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @09:09AM (#49847819)
    There has been a debate over how to model cosmic plasmas (such as the solar wind) for more than half a century between the Astrophysical Journal and IEEE's Transactions on Plasma Science.

    Conventional theory models this flow of charged particles fundamentally as a fluid, but these models have been in dispute since their inception.

    Electric joule heating stems from the idea that these moving charges are an electric current, and advocates point to the fact that the solar wind is oftentimes guided by planetary magnetic fields into the poles.

    The presence of hot spots at the poles of Enceladus, Neptune and Venus, in particular, are suggestive of the simple idea that these moving charged particles can heat up the planets.

    It was noted in 2005 by NASA that Mars' ice caps had also been diminishing for three summers in a row.

    Pluto has continued to warm up even as it moves away from the Sun.

    Many atmospheric circulation models are unable to reproduce the observed polar stratospheric winds (aka the polar vortex).

    The observed splitting of the polar vortex on both Earth and Venus is an expected feature of laboratory plasmas when they are conducting electrical currents, yet climate and planetary scientists claim to not understand either observation.

    The solar wind intensity correlates with lightning strikes, raising questions about lightning's underlying cause, and suggesting that the Earth is part of a larger electrical circuit.

    Sunspot numbers appear to correlate with lower stratosphere temperature anomalies, minus the temporal effects of volcanic eruptions -- suggesting that the sunspots are related to these electrical flows. Laboratory plasma terrella experiments appear to confirm this suspicion.

    Electric field variability can significantly increase the amount of Joule heating, yet existing general circulation models assume a smooth field in both space and time. In other words, the current climate models do not take electric joule heating into account.

    The primitive equations which are used to model atmospheric flows basically ignore charge change phenomena.

    This will likely turn out to be a mistake.

    For a more graphical presentation w/ the sources for these claims, see https://plus.google.com/108466... [google.com]
    • by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05, 2015 @09:52AM (#49848193)

      The primitive equations which are used to model atmospheric flows basically ignore charge change phenomena.

      Lol, this is crank science ... do me a favor 1) write navier stokes equations in energy form 2) add joule heating term 3) do order of mangitude analysis under liberal and conservative assumptions. 4) discard joule heating after realizing its negligible by about by 5 orders of magnitude. Or look up all the papers in the 1950s and 1960s that published on this. Yeah thanks for playing, you idiot clown.

  • If the planet was emerging from an ice age, meaning there would be variations in temperature, CO2, and dust from the Vostok ice core over the last 400,000 years, couldn't global warming be a natural occurrence, having nothing to do with mankind's addition to CO2 gases from carbon fuels?
  • by Atrox Canis ( 1266568 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @09:39AM (#49848089)

    Q: Should we be actively engaged in protecting our environment
    A: Yes

    Q: Has mankind contributed to the degradation of our environment
    A: Yes

    Q: Are we the largest cause of Global Warming
    A: Not really certain, possibly

    Q: Can we do anything to halt or slow down the damage we are doing
    A: Yes

    Q: Should we
    A: Yes

    Well, what should we do vs what can we do becomes the biggest question. There are a number of things that reasonable people can agree upon that will have an impact. Everything from the individual effort to not deliberately contribute to polluting our environment to providing incentive's to corporations and governments to reduce and regulate appropriately. It does no long term good to punish business out of existence simply to appease one group or another. It does no good to exclaim that there is no such thing as global warming or to claim that humans have nothing to do with it or to say that there is nothing we can do about it.

    But calling childish names of those that don't agree with you is even less helpful. Is it your goal to convince the opposition to change their mind and start seeing things from your point of view? If so, your efforts are woefully inadequate, assuming you would rather go with your heart and call people names. If you can't be bothered to make an effort to convince people to reconsider, then you should stop polluting the environment with your invective. I was once a very committed "denier" but I didn't stop researching and I deliberately avoid participating in the echo chambers that exist on both sides of the argument. Some very reasonable debate from considerate and passionate and knowledgeable people have contributed my change of position.

    Yes, I believe there is enough evidence to conclude that the planet is warmer on average now than it has been in the last several hundred years. Yes, I believe that humans have contributed in exacerbating an natural process of warming that would have occurred without our involvement. We have made it worse by a measurable percentage. Yes I think there are things we should do to reduce the damage we are doing. No, I don't believe success will come from cap and trade, making carbon based fuel illegal or forcing our industry to move all their operations out of the country by draconian levels of regulation. I also am convinced that if we were to, today, stop all production of CO2 worldwide we wouldn't get back to "normal" levels for several decades. We need reasonable solutions that don't crush the life out of the lives we are trying to save.

    We should be expending our efforts in trying to convince the opposition rather than shutting them down. We should be expending our efforts in researching and implementing reasonable solutions rather than lining the pockets of our "evangelists" and "prophets". I'm an example of the success that can be had by being reasonable, fair and adult in our efforts. It does work. Don't believe it, go back and read some of my previous posts.

  • by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @11:11AM (#49848889) Homepage

    There are three problems with this article:

    First and foremost, this result is achieved with "corrected commercial ship temperature data", " corrected ship-to-buoy calibrations", and other adjustments. However, I don't see any information on where we can go to examine their adjustment techniques.

    Second, the statements at the end of the article make it plain that the goal of the authors is to show even more warming. This is not a neutral investigation, but an investigation with a desired outcome.

    Finally, with their new adjustments, they claim to have established a warming rate of around 0.1 degree/decade, and they also say that this is what the warming was from 1950 to 1999. Oddly, they then claim that this is "more than twice the IPCC's estimate". Now that's just weird. The IPCC never predicted so little warming. The IPCC originally predicted ten times that amount, or around 4 to 5 degrees per century (See page xxii, figure 8 in the IPCC report [www.ipcc.ch]); later reports did revise that down, but never by an order of magnitude.

    So: we have people massaging data again, but they are also apparently trying to massage history. Credibility? Somewhere around zero.

    • First: There is additional supplemental material linked from the article, e.g. http://www.sciencemag.org/cont... [sciencemag.org]

      Second: Can you point these out specifically and what indicates this is the authors' "goal" ? Their stated goal is to review the temperature data set. They're reporting what they found. And the data is there to see.

      Finally: You're confusing the estimate of the warming in the 20th century with the IPCC's forward estimate of warming in the 21st century. The authors of the paper are stating that t

    • First and foremost, this result is achieved with "corrected commercial ship temperature data", " corrected ship-to-buoy calibrations", and other adjustments. However, I don't see any information on where we can go to examine their adjustment techniques.

      As mixed_signal point out that sort of stuff is detailed in the supplemental material [sciencemag.org] that accompanies most published scientific papers.

  • by jimmydigital ( 267697 ) on Friday June 05, 2015 @12:15PM (#49849527) Homepage Journal

    This paper is a real breakthrough. It's the clearest evidence yet of global warming that's directly attributable to the actions of man. This is a time of great celebrations!

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