Claims global warming stopped 15 years ago are based on "cherry-picked" data and don't account for natural fluctuations in climate, according to climate scientists responding to an article that appeared Saturday (Oct. 13) in the British newspaper, The Daily Mail. The article cites combined global land and sea-temperature data compiled by British climate researchers, claiming that between August 1997 and August 2012, "there was no discernable rise in aggregate global temperatures." The implication, writes the article's author David Rose, is that computer models, including those used by UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, are flawed and have made overly dire predictions. The article appears to be based on an update to a global temperature dataset called HadCRUT4, which is compiled by the U.K.'s national weather service, known as The Met Office, and the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit. The Met Office has issued a response to the article. It does not dispute the trend Rose identifies, but says Rose's article contains "some misleading information." Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, called the latest story "just more dishonest cherry-picking and sleight of hand by Rose" and his go-to sources. "This is just one in a continuing series of hit pieces by David Rose in The Daily Mail that completely misrepresents climate science and climate scientists. Global warming hasn't stopped by any objective measure; it is proceeding right on schedule. In many respects (e.g. the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice this summer), it is well ahead of schedule," Mann told LiveScience in an email. [8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World] In the Met's response to the article, they state the answers they provided to Rose's questions before he wrote the article.In them, The Met states that the data show an increase in global temperatures of 0.09 degrees Fahrenheit (0.05 degrees Celsius) between August 1997 and August 2012, adding that calculating the trend beginning in 1999 would show a more substantial warming. In other words, the trend you see will vary depending on the start and end dates chosen. "Climate change can only be detected from multi-decadal timescales due to the inherent variability in the climate system," reads The Met's response. At the core of the debate are natural fluctuations in climate and the role they play in climate change. Natural patterns â such as cycles in ocean surface temperatures â can play out over multiple decades, augmenting or counteracting the effects of man-made changes. As a result, only over longer time periods do the effects of human-caused climate change become clear. "Over the last 140 years global [sea] surface temperatures have risen by about 0.8 degrees C [1.44 degrees Fahrenheit]," responds The Met. "However, within this record there have been several periods lasting a decade or more during which temperatures have risen very slowly or cooled. The current period of reduced warming is not unprecedented and 15 year long periods are not unusual." An earlier article Rose wrote for The Daily Mail invoked the global temperature plateau to question man-made global warming and pointed to cycles in the sun's activity as having an important influence in climate. Recent research suggests that while the sun's lulls and flare-ups may impact Earth's temperature, man-made greenhouse gases are the main drivers of global warming. A spokesman for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declined to comment, but noted that NOAA's monthly climate report, released on Monday (Oct. 15) showed September 2012 as one of a long line of consecutive months with global temperatures above the 20th-century average. Last month tied with September 2005 for the warmest September on record globally, the report stated. This David Rose guy should be shot.
I guess that wouldn't count as 'inbreeding' unless we have FC's gender wrong. BTW, does anyone else have a problem with the new jumbo ads at the top of every page?
Thank you for a comment that isn't name calling. I've heard this argument before and frankly I was not sure about it, so I did some research...... "Heat waves and cold winter weather killed roughly equal numbers of people in the U.S. between 1970 and 2004, according to a December 2008 article published by Kevin Bordenand Susan Cutter of the University of South Carolina. The authors used Spatial Hazard Event and Loss Database for the United States (SHELDUS)(available at http://www.sheldus.org)." "If the globe continues to warm up this century, as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), heat-related deaths will increase and cold-related deaths will decrease. Unfortunately, that's about the most intelligent thing one can say about the matter. The 2007 IPCC report (section 8.4.1.3, Heat- and cold-related mortality), does not attempt to estimate the numbers, saying, "Additional research is needed to understand how the balance of heat-related and cold-related mortality could change under different socio-economic scenarios and climate projections." This high uncertainty in future heat- and cold-related deaths does not stop advocates on either side of the global warming issue from cherry picking results from selected studies to support a particular point of view. For example, opinion columnist George Will stated in a recent Newsweek column: "In Europe, cold kills more than seven times as many as heat does. Worldwide, moderate warming will, on balance, save more lives than it will cost--by a 9-to-1 ratio in China and India. So, if substantially cutting carbon dioxide reverses warming, that will mean a large net loss of life globally." Will bases his arguments on Danish statistician Bjørn Lomborg's controversial 2007 book, "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming." However, as pointed out by Danish biologist Kåre Fog, who has assembled a large web site dedicated to pointing out the errors in Lomborg's books, the huge number of excess deaths attributed to cold by Will and Lomborg are in large part because the death rate naturally rises in the winter: "Old and seriously sick people have less vitality in the dark season. It is too bold to say that the excess deaths during the dark part of the year are `deaths due to excess cold?. There is no evidence that a warmer climate will alter the seasonal variation. These people would soon die in any case, even if winters became warmer. Indeed, cold and warm climates, like Finland and Greece, have approximately the same seasonal variation in mortality." The IPCC underscores this problem, stating: "projections of cold-related deaths, and the potential for decreasing their numbers due to warmer winters, can be overestimated unless they take into account the effects of influenza and season"." http://www.wunderground.com/climate/heatmortality.asp The problems and deaths from GW is not the heat per se, it's from the associated increase in flooding, droughts and extreme weather events like Sandy. Acidification of the oceans is another result, independent of temperature.
According to Dick Morris... Odumbo wants to initiate a "carbon tax"... to be paid to the UN and distributed to other countries... most of which will end up in the pocket of 3rd world dictators. IOW... each time you renew your vehicle registration or fill up with gas or pay your utility bill, included will be a "carbon tax" for the energy you used. What will the hoi polloi Odumbo voters think of that when reality sinks in?