It’s Official: No Global Warming Since 1997
By David J. Theroux • Saturday October 27, 2012 1:47 PM PDT • 14 Comments
The Daily Mail of London has reported that despite its support for global warming alarmism, Britain’s National Weather Service (U.K. Met Office) has quietly unveiled a report admitting that there has been no warming from January 1997 through August 2012. (Here also are the data sets for the report as well as an analysis from the Global Policy Warming Foundation of the findings.)
The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week.
The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.
This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.
The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported.
Meanwhile, the U.K. Met Office then tried to play down the report with global warming scientist Phil Jones (of Climategate fame) dismissing the results. However renowned Georgia Tech climate scientist Judith Curry has pointed out why the results are correct and that the computer models used to predict future warming are “deeply flawed”:
Some climate scientists, such as Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, last week dismissed the significance of the plateau, saying that 15 or 16 years is too short a period from which to draw conclusions.
Others disagreed. Professor Judith Curry, who is the head of the climate science department at America’s prestigious Georgia Tech university, told The Mail on Sunday that it was clear that the computer models used to predict future warming were ‘deeply flawed’.
Even Prof Jones admitted that he and his colleagues did not understand the impact of ‘natural variability’ – factors such as long-term ocean temperature cycles and changes in the output of the sun. However, he said he was still convinced that the current decade would end up significantly warmer than the previous two.
Professor Curry further notes that:
Climate models are very complex, but they are imperfect and incomplete. Natural variability [the impact of factors such as long-term temperature cycles in the oceans and the output of the sun] has been shown over the past two decades to have a magnitude that dominates the greenhouse warming effect. It is becoming increasingly apparent that our attribution of warming since 1980 and future projections of climate change needs to consider natural internal variability as a factor of fundamental importance.
And even Professor Jones has admitted the following:
We don’t fully understand how to input things like changes in the oceans, and because we don’t fully understand it you could say that natural variability is now working to suppress the warming. We don’t know what natural variability is doing.
As the Daily Mail has noted:
Yet it has steadily become apparent since the 2008 crash that both the statistics and the modelling are extremely unreliable. To plan the future around them makes about as much sense as choosing a wedding date three months’ hence on the basis of a long-term weather forecast.
Few people would be so foolish. But decisions of far deeper and more costly significance than those derived from output figures have been and are still being made on the basis of climate predictions, not of the next three months but of the coming century – and this despite the fact that Phil Jones and his colleagues now admit they do not understand the role of ‘natural variability’.
The most depressing feature of this debate is that anyone who questions the alarmist, doomsday scenario will automatically be labelled a climate change ‘denier’, and accused of jeopardising the future of humanity.
So let’s be clear. Yes: global warming is real, and some of it at least has been caused by the CO2 emitted by fossil fuels. But the evidence is beginning to suggest that it may be happening much slower than the catastrophists have claimed – a conclusion with enormous policy implications.
Also see the following:
Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate, by S. Fred Singer, Foreword by Frederick Seitz
New Perspectives in Climate Change: What the EPA Isn’t Telling Us, by S. Fred Singer, John R. Christy, Robert E. Davis, David R. Legates, and Wendy M. Novicoff
“Is There a Basis for Global Warming Alarm?”, by Richard S. Lindzen (Yale Center for the Study of Globalization)
“Should We Have Acted Thirty Years Ago to Prevent Climate Change?”, by Randall G. Holcombe (The Independent Review)
“After Kyoto: A Global Scramble for Advantage,” by Bruce Yandle (The Independent Review)
Tags: Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Natural Resources, Power, Progressivism, Propaganda, Science, Taxation, Technology, Transparency, United Nations 
In reality we all know that global warming hasn’t even slowed down.
icarus62 | Oct 27, 2012 | Reply
icarus62, The chart you use here is erroneous because if it were true, surface temperatures during this period would have increased, but they have not. Indeed and has been discussed elsewhere:
David J. Theroux | Oct 27, 2012 | Reply
If you focus on short term variability then you miss the wood for the trees. 30-year trends allow us to reduce the impact of the solar cycle, ENSO, volcanic eruptions etc., and see the underlying warming trend – that remains unchanged at around 0.18°C per decade (e.g. Foster and Rahmstorf 2011). Undiminished warming is confirmed by the fact that the oceans, which hold over 97.5% of the climate system’s heat content, are warming faster in the last decade than in the previous two decades (Levitus 2012) and that Arctic sea ice is in dramatic and accelerating decline, along with the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and mountain glaciers worldwide. The continuing rise in global sea level also confirms the continuation of unabated global warming. There really is no evidence *at all* of a decline in the warming rate, which is to be expected as the TOA energy imbalance is still substantial at around 0.6W/m². We would need to reduce atmospheric CO₂ by 50ppm to eliminate this energy imbalance and halt global warming.
icarus62 | Oct 28, 2012 | Reply
So icarus62, write a paper and get it published. Easy enough.
Richie | Oct 28, 2012 | Reply
icarus62, You continue to believe that C02 is the driving force of climate change, but the failure of the models to predict temperatures indicates that CO2 is not determinant. Solar and celestial factors appear to dominate. And the evidence is not just that from Earth-based data but that found on other planets, such as climate variations on Mars, Jupiter, etc.:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
http://www.livescience.com/1349-sun-blamed-warming-earth-worlds.html
http://anhonestclimatedebate.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/solar-cycles-cause-global-warming-cooling/
As for ocean warming, the temperature lag is roughly a thousand years, hardly relevant to any correlation to the industrial age an d increases in CO2.
In addition, any correlations between temperature changes and C02 levels shows that CO2 lags not leads temperature change.
You assertion that there is “no evidence *at all* of a decline in the warming rate” is completely false, based on the actual readings.
David J. Theroux | Oct 28, 2012 | Reply
David: Hansen’s models correctly predicted the course of global warming right back in 1981 before the modern global warming trend was detectable, so we know that the basic physics was right even then. The fact that CO2 rise preceded the current warming should also tell you that AGW is the correct explanation for it.
Icarus62 | Oct 28, 2012 | Reply
Icarus62, James Hansen’s models do not correctly predict climate change and this is the real point. Hansen’s theory has become a dogma for climate alarmists just as the Michael Mann’s “Hockey Stick” became the rallying point for IPCC and other alarmists until Mann’s own work was subjected to independent examination and found to be totally erroneous and indeed fraudulent. The “Stick” was used as the basis for gaming government funding for the mega-billions that have been spent on climate junk science. However, after the “Stick” was exposed by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKittirick, the IPCC quietly then removed the “Stick” from its next report.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2005/03/03/hockey-stick-1998-2005-rip/
http://blog.independent.org/2012/02/21/climate-science-is-not-settled-despite-arrogance-and-smears/
The uber-scare-mongering Hansen has become an embarrassment, now claiming short-term heat waves, fires, etc., are caused by global warming, exactly what no reputable scientist would claim. Indeed, NASA’s John Christy has shown repeatedly that Hansen’s claims are unfounded, wild assertions which appear more designed to scare up continued and expanded government funding.
http://www.globalwarming.org/2012/08/20/john-christy-on-summer-heat-and-james-hansens-pnas-study/
Regarding Hansen’s flawed models and other work, here are other discussions:
http://notrickszone.com/2011/08/09/james-e-hansen-worshipper-gets-debunked/
http://ftp.fsl.orst.edu/pub/neilson/class-climate/tea%20kettle/Zhang07DecadalVarGlobalEnergyOceanHeat.pdf
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/10/tisdale-on-sst-correlation-with-agw/
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/climatechange/well-known-skeptic-says-climat-1/68474
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/new-paper-on-the-misdiagnosis-of-surface-temperature-feedbacks-from-variations-in-earth%E2%80%99s-radiant-energy-balance-by-spencer-and-braswell-2011/
Once again, the Sun is the driver of climate change (as the latest revelations from CERN over its landmark CLOUD experiment show) which makes CO2 levels and changes of little or no detectable influence.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/15jul_thermosphere/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100102296/sun-causes-climate-change-shock/
Finally, global warming has become an intolerant, secular religion for many Western elites seeking to impose a “green” secular theocracy:
http://blog.independent.org/2012/05/07/gaia-guru-admits-global-warming-alarmism-is-wrong/
http://blog.independent.org/2012/10/26/modeling-disasters/
http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=887
David J. Theroux | Oct 28, 2012 | Reply
Has there ever been a time when there were NOT annual temperature fluctuations? Of course not. The weather has always varied over decades, centuries, and millenia.
Dewaine | Oct 29, 2012 | Reply
I agree, Dewaine. Now that that is settled, the global warming alarmists can find something productive to do; like a working model of cold fusion...
Tom | Oct 29, 2012 | Reply
Their explanations continue to change to conceal their prior bogus predictions. I don’t trust their measurements nor their pronouncements, but.... Now it’s “unexpected natural variability suppressing global warming” to explain the absence of global warming? When their own human-observed, human-chosen surface thermometers show cooling, what will they say then?
As long as they’re stuck on the CO2-driver model, nothing will penetrate their closed minds.
Paul Hoffmann | Oct 29, 2012 | Reply
I am agreed with Prof. Judith Curry that modeling is complex task because there are many factors which very sensitive for verification. However, climate changes are continuing with conducting drought and storm rainfall happening during short time period. These events have proving that exogenous factors have key impact.
ibrahim mammadzadeh | Oct 30, 2012 | Reply
icarus62, one of the red flags here is, “we all know”.
Well, there’s David and me and possibly one or two others that have another opinion.
If your wrong on that it leaves the rest of your arguments in question.............
cam | Oct 30, 2012 | Reply
ibrahim, As renowned climate scientist William Gray (Colorado State U.) has shown, climate change is driven by the oceans which are in turn driven by the Sun.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/gross_errors_ipcc_ar4.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZVE8JHxRAc
David J. Theroux | Oct 30, 2012 | Reply
“Climate change” is a natural, fluctuating phenomenon which we do not have the ability to fully predict. To make expensive policy changes which will cripple the economy based on the current weather trend is absolutely ridiculous. But come on, we know that’s not what cap & trade legislation is really about. It’s about a 10 billion dollar carbon trading market, created out of thin air by the phony crisis that was “global warming” that will make some people very rich and powerful.
Mary Larkin | Oct 31, 2012 | Reply