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More than 100 comments found. Only the most recent 100 have been displayed.

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

Bob Loblaw at 04:38 AM on 1 April, 2024

It's also worth noting that the trend values OPOF is providing from the SkS Trend Calculator use 2σ ranges for the uncertainties.

...and if you look closely, none of the trends OPOF mentions are significantly different from 0. So, the "cooling from 1940 to 1970" is really "no significant warming [or cooling] from 1940 to 1970". To argue "cooling", you need to

ignore the statistical significance of the linear fit

choose your starting point carefully.

In comment 41, Two Dog makes the point "...then only a few years "blip" in warming must presumably call the theory into question? ". That depends on "the theory" being that CO2 is the only factor causing warming on an annual or several-year basis. As we've been pointing out, this is not "the theory" that climate science is working with.

Two Dog is making the classical logic failure that is discussed in the SkS Escalator.

The Escalator

In fact, Two Dog is also arguing with himself. On the one hand, he is arguing that climate science can't possibly know all factors that might be affecting global temperature, no matter how many factors they have already considered in the relevant scientific literature. And then on the other hand, he is criticizing climate science because any blip in temperature that is not explained solely using CO2 as the only factor "...must presumably call the theory into question?". The two positions he argues are mutually contradictory.

Unfortunately this is a common thing in "skeptical" arguments against well-supported climate science - mutually-contradictory (and often impossible) positions on the subject. It's like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland:

I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

It's cooling

Rob Honeycutt at 06:54 AM on 5 September, 2023

CORK... "But this is not incompatible with a cooling at geological time scales."

What's important to understand is that warming or cooling, on whatever scale, is due to physical processes, most of which are at least fairly well understood by researchers.

The Escalator graphic is demonstrating there are inherent variations in the surface temperature trend. This makes sense when you understand that short term changes surface temperature is a function of energy going into and coming out of the earth's oceans.

The Escalator graphic is presented to explain how "skeptics" will use very short trends in global temperature to claim the "globe" has stopped warming, when nothing could be further from the truth.

The earth, on the whole, is rapidly warming primarily due to increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. That fact is true regadless the short term rate of warming at the surface.

It's cooling

CORK at 04:27 AM on 5 September, 2023

Climate's changed beforeWhat bothers me in the "Escalator" is the time scale. From 1970 to 2022 the temperatures rise, yes.

But this is not incompatible with a cooling at geological time scales. We may be in a rising part of the curve which will go down and over several 1000s of years the average will show a cooling trend.

The scale of time can be used and the curves can defend both arguments. Therefore the "escalator" is of no use.

The only pure fact in all the climate change saga is that humans are producing greenhouse gasses.

From that fact a whole theory of climate has been built. It is very difficult to say things like that without being insulted today.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

michael sweet at 00:36 AM on 19 August, 2023

Don Williams:

The "hiatus" papers do not show what you are claiming. Yes, Mann et al claimed that the "pause" was statistically significant. You can quote that paper. But in science it is not individual papers that count, it is the conclusions that count.

Foster and Ramsdorf replied to the Mann et al paper and claimed that the Mann et al paper had made calculation errors that invalidated their result. Foster et al claimed that there was no statistical significance. The scientific method is to exchange peer reviewed papers to debate facts. After several papers were exchanged, Mann et al conceded that they had made a mistake in their calculations and the "pause" was not statistically significant. It was magnificent to watch top scientists debate a fact and reach a consensus on what the true result was.

The scientific consensus is that the "pause" was simply random variation and not a change in the warmng pattern. Data collected since then have conclusively confirmed that the climate did not stop warming as demonstrated by the escalator. The Mann et al scientists agree with the consensus.

Mann and his collaborators are great scientists. Sometimes everyone makes mistakes. The difference between scientists and deniers is that when data shows that a scientist made a mistake they learn from the experience and move on. Deniers just regurgitate the same old debunked "pause" claims after everyone informed has moved on.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Rob Honeycutt at 00:10 AM on 19 August, 2023

"The 'warming' was taking place where there's little to no measuring devices?

Is that sound science?"

Don... If heat energy is moving into realms that have little or no measuring devices, it's absolutely science. Researchers don't get to pick and choose how the physics operate. They can only devise methods to better account for the physics. This is precisely what science is about.

If you look at the animated escalator graphic, this is exactly what it's telling you. Heat energy is moving into and out of other systems which are coupled to the atmosphere. This has been understood for many decades, regardless of whether you're just catching on. Your only mistake would be to become so ideologically entrenched so as to be unable to grasp such a simple concept.

It's honestly okay to just say, "Hm, I hadn't thought about that."

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Bob Loblaw at 00:01 AM on 19 August, 2023

As a further part of the challenge to Don:

You have referred to "the hiatus". I will repeat the graphic of the Escalator:

The Escalator

Since the topic of the OP here is "cooling in the 1970s", and The Escalator shows seven periods of "no warming", please be specific as to which of those seven periods represents "the hiatus" you are talking about. Or a different period, if you have found an eighth.

Ice age predicted in the 70s

Bob Loblaw at 22:57 PM on 17 August, 2023

Frankly, Don, you are now reaching the point where you are just spouting bull$#!^.

I challenged you in comment #113 to provide two things:

State clearly what you think the "both sides" are.

State clearly who you think was a well-known climate scientist that was on "both sides".

You have not done this. You have just engaged in a game of "Look! Squirrel!" to jump to some other rhetorical talking point. You are playing games of "maybe this, maybe that" with no actual demonstration of understanding the physics of climate and what is likely or even reasonable possible. You have done selective quoting, and taking those quotes out of context, in order to try to show some grand disagreement or lack of understanding that does not exist.

The "abrupt about-face/reversal of opinion" that you are hanging your hat on is only "abrupt" if you refuse to look at the actual history of climate science and refuse to learn about the well-understood physics that explains the different observed trends and supports our understanding/interpretation. There is a term for that sort of refusal to look at the information available.

As Rob Honeycutt explains in #122, there has been no "reversal" in our understanding of orbital mechanics and long-term trends related to glacial/interglacial cycles. There has been no "reversal" in our understanding that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that greenhouse gases have a significant effect on global temperatures. There has been no "reversal" in our understanding that atmospheric aerosols (dust, soot, etc.) cause reductions in global surface temperatures.

What has changed is which of these factors is playing a dominant role in current temperature trends. CO2 is "winning", and it is winning rapidly.

You will probably come back with some sort of quip about "Oreskes said this". Well, the anti-evolution crowd is fond of claiming that Darwin said that evolution could not produce the eye. No, he didn't, and you are using the same rhetorical ploy in quoting Oreskes out of context.

You have now switched to shouting "hiatus!" from the treetops. Guess what? Climate science is interested in what factors affect these short-term variations in global temperatures. So, they study them in greater and greater detail (because instrumentation improves) each time they happen. And they happen on fairly regular intervals. So regular that you can track them by how often the contrarians need to update their "no warming since..." myths. Pretty soon, we're going to have to start to rebut "no warming since 2023", since 1998 2016 won't work any more:

Search/replace 1998

We even have a term for these "hiatus" events: we call it The Escalator. The graphic is in the right-hand margin of every SkS page, but here it is in full glory:

The Escalator

You keep saying "isn't this interesting?". No it is not interesting, it is tiresome. This site exists because some people refuse to learn the science and understand it. The "hiatus" was yet another temporary pause in one metric of global climate, and does nothing to reverse our expectations of future warming as CO2 continues to increase.

Your continued use of ":)" at the end of your comments suggests that you are now just trolling. (Gee. Isn't speculation without evidence just so much fun?)

2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

Bob Loblaw at 11:40 AM on 13 June, 2023

...and continuing with likeitwarm's third link on comment 1550:

The web site, temperature.global, has been discussed previously here. Read this comment.

I agree with what Eclectic says in that comment, and with what Rob says in comment 1554. With no idea what their methodology is, there is no way of knowing how many basic errors they are making.

To properly process weather station temperature data, you need to account for station location density and coverage. You can't take 10 stations in one small area that all record 15C, and one station in another small area some distance away that records 25C, and say that the average temperature across all the area is 15.9C. It is probably closer to 20C.

Trend analysis also requires accounting for changes in station locations, and measurement methods.

You also linked to that site in a comment last August. Attempts were made to correct your errors at that time, including pointing you to The Escalator. Please re-read the responses you got on that thread.

You can read additional details on how to properly assess global temperatures in a four part series of posts here at SkS that starts with this one.

2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

Bob Loblaw at 11:19 AM on 13 June, 2023

Continuing to look at likeitwarm's links.

As Rob Honeycutt points out, looking at peaks is not good practice. The second link provided in comment 1550 actually provides linear trends for all three datasets they display, and all are within agreement of climate model predictions. The temperature series with the greatest amount of short-term variation is the UAH one - which is not surface temperature. It is satellite-derived tropospheric temperature.

Looking at the peaks and seeing "flat spots" is a classic error. So classic that Skeptical Science produced a graph call The Escalator. It has recently been updated. You can read about that update on this blog post.

For convenience, here is the graphic in that post (and you can always see it in the right margin of each web page here.) The Escalator

It's cooling

Steve L at 08:07 AM on 24 May, 2023

I kind of feel like the global temperature escalator should be featured on rebuttals for every debunked argument against the increasing temperature trend.

Arctic sea ice has recovered

Bob Loblaw at 05:12 AM on 19 April, 2023

Albert @ 120 is doing an Arctic sea ice volume analysis using the standard "skeptic" analysis techniques that go into The Escalator:

The Escalator

Antarctica is gaining ice

Bob Loblaw at 12:09 PM on 13 March, 2023

Bart @ 552:

The point in my comment at 534, responding to your first comment, was that it is a huge mistake to try to make extrapolations into the future from a short time period. We see it all the time: temperature (The Escalator), sea ice coverage, etc. People that want to believe a particular thing, and ignore the long-term trend by saying "look at this!" from a short period of data at the end of a noisy data set.

If you had followed the link to The Escalator, you would have seen that the very first sentence says:

One of the most common misunderstandings amongst climate contrarians is the difference between short-term noise and long-term signal.

That you choose to call it "a stupid graph" indicates that you still don't understand the error in drawing grandiose claims from short periods of data.

Now, you are saying "The result is interesting: there don't seem to be much correlation between SMB and discharge. Strange enough, in the last year with little sea ice the discharge was even less then normal."

No, this is not at all interesting. As has been said to you previously, relationships between precipitation, accumulation, glacier flow, discharge, and sea ice are not simple. Rob Honeycutt has posed a number of questions to you in comment 554 that are germane to the point. Unless you understand why those questions are important, and can begin to think of answers to them, you are not looking at the topic seriously.

The very first response I gave to you - the first paragraph - was:

What exactly is your point? The links between sea ice area and land ice mass are not simple, and have been discussed in the detailed sections of the blog post and earlier comments.

I suggest that you actually try doing some reading, starting with the blog post (both the basic and intermediate sections) and then through the numerous comments, and maybe then you'll have enough understanding to be able to engage in a "serious discussion".

The simple answer is that you seem to be expecting a simply answer and a simple relationship for a complex system, and you are simply wrong.

Antarctica is gaining ice

Bob Loblaw at 00:33 AM on 10 March, 2023

Bart Vreeken @533:

What exactly is your point? The links between sea ice area and land ice mass are not simple, and have been discussed in the detailed sections of the blog post and earlier comments.

In your graphic, it is obvious that the two major years of land ice gain (2016, 2022) follow several years of strong mass ice loss. This is easily explained as a rebound effect.

This web page on Grace data has an embedded video with data to 2020. Rather than portraying the annual changes it shows the overall trend in the absolute value from year to year. Clearly, Antarctic land ice is losing mass in the long term - with short terms ups and downs.

Are you perhaps over-analyzing the significance of short-term changes, as is often done with temperature changes? (As seen in The Escalator).

The Escalator

The escalator rises again

Bob Loblaw at 01:44 AM on 10 February, 2023

I don't have the stomach to go over to WUWT, but the author of this blog post has also reposted it on his own blog, and here have been some interesting comments over there.

Willis Eschenbach, of WUWT fame, has commented, and posted a graphic of what he calls "an actual structural breakpoint analysis" for the period 1969 to now. He draws attention to the steps, claiming "this is not done by 'cherry picking' but by mathematical analysis, this brings up the interesting question … what is causing the jumps?".

Spolier alert: the "jumps" are an artifact of an inappropriate statistical analysis, and Willis has no explanation of any physical process to explain them, other than a brief hand-waving about El Nino events. But let's entertain the possibility for a bit.

I pointed out in the comments over at ATTP's that the month-to-month change in the anomalies (i.e., this month's anomaly minus last month's) shows absolutely nothing to suggest that the anomaly goes through any sort of slow change (as suggested by the linear segments) interspersed with sudden jumps. If you take the entire BEST record, this is what you see for the month-to-month change in the anomalies:

Month-to-month change in BEST anomalies

The month-to-month change in anomaly looks pretty much like random noise to me. If Willis' hypothesis of meaningful "jumps" existed, I'd expect to see periods of fairly steady (i.e., unchanging) anomalies, with periodic short episodes of large changes representing "jumps" No such structures appear in the data.

I also took the information from the graphic Willis posted of his "structural breakpoint analysis" and added the six line segments he created to a graph of the 1969-present BEST anomalies. This is a reproduction of that information from Willis' graph:

BEST temperature anomalies, 1969-2022

The point I made over at ATTP's is that Willis six-segment linear fit to the data provides virtually no additional statistical explanation of the overall data. The equation on the above graphic is the basic linear fit for the entire data set. Note that the r² value is 0.81. The regression standard error is 0.145 C - indicating the remaining "unexplained" variation in the residuals from the regression.

How much better does Willis do with six line segments (and five breakpoints)? Not much. The accumulated standard error from the six regression lines is 0.133C - just over 0.01C better than the simple fit.

If we look at some statistics for the six segments, we get:

End Year	Standard error	P-value	R^2
1976.8	0.131	0.07	0.0353
1986.9	0.141	0.764	0.0008
1994.7	0.141	0.25	0.0143
2001.8	0.137	0.376	0.0095
2014.9	0.119	0.005	0.0504
2022.9	0.137	0.126	0.0001

The P-values do not account for auto-correlation (there is lots), so take them with a grain of salt. But only one of Willis' line segments looks remotely significant, and the r² values are very low.

The fact is that nearly all of the statistical explanation in Willis' analysis is in the jumps, but there is no reason (looking at the month-to-month changes) to expect this analysis to come up with anything that is not just a misrepresentation of the noise.

A basic linear regression does almost as well, with only two parameters (slope and intercept). In Willis' analysis, he needs 17 parameters: six lines (slope and intercept = 12 parameters) and five break-point years. This is not particularly parsimonious.

Splitting a gradual increase in the data into a bunch of "jumps" that are a function of noise may be entertaining, but it's not particularly scientific.

Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1

Steve L at 03:19 AM on 1 March, 2022

I still find the "Going down the up escalator" graph to be very useful. In a way, I prefer it to the rebuttal to "It's cooling" climate myth rebuttal. I wish there was a more up-to-date version. In fact, it would be nice to do this and even add citations to the escalator figure (like Svensmark — I had to click his linked name in the rebuttal article to go to the archived WUWT to see that he made the claim of cooling 12 years ago). Is anyone interested in building an automatically updated version? (Out of my league on a technical level, I'm afraid.)

Do COP26 promises keep global warming below 2C?

Wol at 12:02 PM on 18 November, 2021

nigelj >>Agree that there is no answer to the population problem, at least in the short to medium term.<<

I agree with you. However that's not a valid reason for not bringing it up - it's THE problem.

Per capita consumption being addressed - and how's THAT going? - is all very well but running up the "down" escalator slower than it's travelling will never get you anywhere.

Individual decisions to cut consumption won't do much: government laws will result in them being voted out - and it's all the result of overpopulation. (Edited - I initially typed "overCopulation" although that's possibly more relevant...)

I really think the next generation is screwed. I wish it wasn't, but there.

SkS Analogy 22 - Energy SeaSaw

Bob Loblaw at 04:38 AM on 7 May, 2021

Evan:

"Is the record long enough?" is a characteristic of the data, not so much the method. A rule of thumb for global surface air temperature is that you need to have somewhere around 15-20 years of data to determine a trend - but that is deterimed from the noise characteristics of surface air temperature. It is not generally applicable to other data sets.

In addition to statistical significance, you also need to look at the power of the test. For a small trend, you need more data than for a large trend. With low power, a non-significant result may just be a lack of data, whereas if you have high power, no significant result is more likely to mean no relationship. Dikran Marsupial did a good post on this four years ago:

https://skepticalscience.com/statisticalsignificance.html

In addition to this, we are no longer in a position where the significance of our temperature trend is in question. We are clearly in a warming trend. When we encounter someone claiming "the warming has stopped!" or "No warming since 1998 2006 2010" (or whatever year they pick), asking if the trend is significantly different from zero is the wrong statistical test.

A statistical test involves evaluating the significance of the difference between "observed" and "expected". When testing if the trend is non-zero, the "expected" is zero. When testing if the existing trend has stopped, the "expected" value is the previous trend, not zero. So that is the comparison you need to make when determining something like a t-statistic.

So, to try to directly answer your question, any 10-year period should be looked at in the context of what preceded it. For the "warming stopped in..." argument, the easiest statement to make would be to say "the last 10 years shows the trend continuing".

The Foster and Rahmstorf paper that KR mentions is very good. Foster is the person that writes https://tamino.wordpress.com/, where you will find lots of excellent posts on statistics and climate (He's been on hiatus for while now, but the archives are a treasure-trove of good stuff.)

The approach taken in the Foster and Rahmstorf paper is to quantify known sources of variation and remove them from the data, leaving the long-term trend showing clearly. If you leave that variation in, it is treated as unidentified noise in a regression, which makes the trend harder to see. (It would be wrong to reduce the noise by averaging - that just deceives the regression test. You need to be able to independently say "yes this causes variation and I know how much".)

...and we always can make use of the SkS Escalator image:

The Escalator

It hasn't warmed since 1998

sailingfree at 08:45 AM on 12 September, 2020

to Philippe at 405:

Thank you so much for the updated temperature plot. It is the best "Hiatus Killer" I've seen.

For years I have been waiting to see the SKS escalator brought up to date, showing 2019.

How I try to break climate silence

Jonas at 10:42 AM on 8 March, 2020

I speak a lot about climate change. So hearing these statistics about people not talking about climate change is a little weird for me: climate change is one of the main topics of my live ..

I like best personal situations, where I can adapt to the situation and try to connect. I use whatever situation I can grasp, but I try not to overdo or overload a person: too much does not help. But online posting and mailing to friends (not too often) also is part of the picture. I operate a small garden forum for local gardeners and these people get a good dose of climate information (links to reports, articles, sks, ..), always with a little link to the garden, which is not hard to find: 2016 etc. were so exceptional that nobody doing garden work can ignore it: I try to help connect the dots.

What helps is if there is authentic action: I do not fly, have no car, eat no meat, little milk, mostly regional organic food, grow food myself, heat little (starting at 10C inside, but fortunately my current one room appartement does not get that cold: min 13 (I always live in the roof, so taking away little from other people in the house)), use no refrigerator (but I have computer, smartphone, books, an appartement for myself, an inline kitchen and a small bathroom for myself, a laundry washing machine, .. so far from being an eco angel). Authentic action already helped to impress even (and especially) very conservative people, because it partly fits their mindset, only the reason why I do it does not. Some started to think about it, I guess (I do not ask directly).

What also helps a lot is knowledge about climate change itself and about climate communication and climate fear. It helps to stay calm, even if you happen to encounter a denier argument you did not yet hear of and cannot answer by yourself: you know you can easily look it up (e.g. here at SkS), read about the flaw/fallacy and next time have the answer ready. I also use inoculation, in the form I learned in the SkS MOOC, but also differently: I prepare people that they will be fooled, present a denier argument (preferrably cherry picking, e.g. glaciers are growing or short periods of intermittent cooling after some local maximum), tell them it's true (leaving them stunned and searching for an explanation) and then reveal the whole picture (like in the escalator). I do this, because even ecologically minded people get trapped: they have some taken over opinion (like I do for some topics too) and the denier mechanics is to break trust/confidence. So I try to build resilience to seemingly well founded denier arguments by suggesting to postpone the evaluation until comprehensive valid data (e.g. SkS) is available.

I also regularly promote CO2 and footprint calculators if it fits the course of the conversation, because it helps to get the big picture and the extent of what is necessary. Especially ecologically minded people are often shocked to hear that they too have a long way to go (see https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/publikationen/repraesentative-erhebung-von-pro-kopf-verbraeuchen ). Others have even longer ways to go, but some do not even care (yet, until they meet me ;-) ..).

Recently, I also joined Fridays demonstrations (38 weeks ..): this is also a good opportunity for talking about climate change and networking.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #48, 2019

icowrich at 05:16 AM on 21 February, 2020

The escalator gif needs a 2020 update.

Australia's wildfires: Is this the 'new normal'?

scaddenp at 12:12 PM on 19 February, 2020

duncan61 - well that is kind of trivial to find (maybe even the "escalator" graphic on the right this page. Maybe more relevant is Australian summer temperatures.

Or for all season, all of Australia.

In-depth Q&A: How ‘Article 6’ carbon markets could ‘make or break’ the Paris Agreement

nigelj at 11:39 AM on 16 December, 2019

Wol @11

"I note the replies. They seem to put the emphasis on exactly the target that the deniers' aim at - being sustainable means living at a much lower standard of living."

I made no reference to adopting a much lower standard of living. In fact I've argued the opposite on this website, namely that expecting people to make large reductions in the use of technology and energy look completely unrealistic to me, so I do agree with you to a point.

The solutions to the climate problem that seem most plausible to me are zero carbon energy and negative emissions technologies, notwithstanding the political challenges. Lifestyle changes will help as a minor wedge measure. There are some things that can be done that would not hugely lower standards of living, like flying less and eating less meat, and both reduce expenditure so have a positive side.

I see population policies helping a bit as well, but you need to be realistic about what can be achieved, and they are also a wedge issue.

"Look at it from the other end: most authorities - and I have no reference here - would probably not argue that a population of a couple of a billion would be long-term sustainable even if all had our own standard of living. "

Agreed. I've argued for a global population of 2 billion people myself over at realclimate.org, but this is a long term plan. Business as usual population policies are a fertility rate of 2.2, taking us from 7.6 billion now to 11 billion by 2100, then stability. If we were to get fertility rates down to about 1.5 over the next couple of decades we would hit about 9 billion by 2100 and 2 billion by year 2300. I worked it out with a population calculator, you can google these.

But achieving a fertility rate of 1.5 globally over the next few decades is about as realistic as making "huge lifestyle changes". Ie not very realistic. A few countries in Europe have this number, but it took a lot of policies to get there and a lot of wealth and economic security, and they are already worried it is causing too many elderly people in proportion to young people.

Africa has scope to reduce population growth but I repeat they are not a big source of emissions and what is it you propose to do? We can lead a horse to water but cannot make it drink. You can't force them. Their population growth will still fall over a longer time frame anyway, as they become weathier and have better primary healthcare and access to contraceptives as has happened elsewhere. This will help keep temperatures from climbing to ridiculous numbers, but has little bearing on immediate goals and problems.

Even if by some miracle we got global population down faster, it won't change much by 2050, because of the demographics, so clearly won't do much to stop temperatures getting over 2 degrees! At most it will help stop temperatures getting over 4 degrees.

It is important to encourage slower population growth, and for both the climate and other reasons, but I'm just saying the world mostly already is doing this, and you have to be realistic on time frames and what can be achieved. We can talk a whole lot about it, but it distracts from the key issues of zero carbon energy etc and short to medium term Paris Accord goals.

"However we are at present in the 7 1/2 Bn regime and growing daily - clearly long-term unsustainable even without bringing the third world up to Western consumption. That statement has nothing to do with attitudes of superiority or whatever,'

Agree totally.

"Trying to contain emissions without addressing the fundamental issue - numbers - is the equivalent of running up the down escalator. A down escalator which is constantly speeding up, moreover."

The fundamental issue in terms of the climate is not population. It's the type of energy we use.

"My point is that the world is unlikely to accept the restrictions that are being debated at the moment "

The world is just as unlikely to accept radical population policies. We have to just work away at all the issues so zero carbon energy, population, and lifestyle.

"Look through a thousand random articles and papers on climate change and see how many references you can see to population numbers - hardly any."

True. I suggest there are obvious reasons. The IPCC and other authorities probably don't want yet more distractions from renewable energy goals, and they dont want to be accused of social engineering or blaming Africa for the climate problem etc.

In-depth Q&A: How ‘Article 6’ carbon markets could ‘make or break’ the Paris Agreement

Wol at 10:23 AM on 16 December, 2019

I note the replies.

They seem to put the emphasis on exactly the target that the deniers' aim at - being sustainable means living at a much lower standard of living.

Look at it from the other end: most authorities - and I have no reference here - would probably not argue that a population of a couple of a billion would be long-term sustainable even if all had our own standard of living. (Whether such a number would be workable with capitalism as we know it needing constant growth is another argument.)

However we are at present in the 7 1/2 Bn regime and growing daily - clearly long-term unsustainable even without bringing the third world up to Western consumption. That statement has nothing to do with attitudes of superiority or whatever,

Trying to contain emissions without addressing the fundamental issue - numbers - is the equivalent of running up the down escalator. A down escalator which is constantly speeding up, moreover.

My point is that the world is unlikely to accept the restrictions that are being debated at the moment and even less likely to begin talking about overall numbers - the heart of the sustainability problem.

Look through a thousand random articles and papers on climate change and see how many references you can see to population numbers - hardly any. Plenty about holidaying in Scunthorpe instead of Magaluf, and eating crickets instead of steak yet the fact that twice the number equals twice the emissions (all else being equal) seems unable to be discussed.

Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

One Planet Only Forever at 09:19 AM on 1 December, 2019

nyood @20,

Others have already provided accurate responses.

I wish to add my own 'improvement of the awareness and understanding' to help you appreciate the accurate context and perspective.

You claim I missed the point of your comment because your "... concern was that the hiatus is considered to be something bad by some authors of the emails. It does not need any skeptic here, it is the authors themselfs, hence the terms pschology and political thinking. ... It is about considering good news (less warming) as bad news. Despite of all poralization one would hope that these scientists still want the best for humanity and not see cooling as a problem."

The reason for concerns by climate scientists regarding short-term less rapid temperature rise (hiatus) or short-term cooling is that the they are only short-term events in the temperature data. However, each one is claimed by the worst of the skeptics to be proof that the warming has ended and the science is wrong.

It is almost as bad to try to claim that concerns about any of the many short-term reductions in the rate of temperature rise due to added CO2 in the atmosphere are wrong because 'cooling is Good'.

The Escalator I pointed you to in my earlier comment should have made that clear. Either it was not obvious to you, or you never checked it out. To be clearer, in the escalator it can be seen that at the end of each 'hiatus or cooling event that you claim everyone should be thrilled to see', there is a dramatic step up to the start of the next 'hiatus or cooling event that you claim everyone should be thrilled to see'. Can you see how anyone more aware and understanding of what is really going on would not be Thrilled?

Sustainable Cooling would indeed be Good. But the science is clear that that will only happen if the levels of CO2, and other human generated ghgs, in the atmosphere are reduced. And the reduction of CO2 is almost certain to only happen when the use of fossil fuels is ended.

And until the use of fossil fuels is ended the CO2 and other ghgs will continue to increase. And the science is clear that a 1.5 C total warming is the point beyond which the climate impacts can be very severe. Even a 2.0 C warming is likely to be very hard on the future generations.

And as michael sweet has pointed out there has already been more than 1.0 C of warming with the CO2 only at 410 ppm (a 140 ppm increase from pre-industrial) but is currently rising at more than 20 ppm per decade.

Any claim to see "A cooling trend in the temperature data" without a reduction of CO2 is "Claiming False Hope" (now and in the past), and deserves the be corrected. And promoters of the harmful fictional claims deserve to be ridiculed if they persist in unethically resisting becoming more aware and better understanding.

Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

One Planet Only Forever at 12:29 PM on 30 November, 2019

nyood @10,

It is very polarizing indeed to still see people still make claims like: "And other sentences make you wonder why a cooling or hiatus is considered to be a problem, instead of a relief when it comes towards warming as a threat."

The trend of the temperature record is undeniable. The existence of variations in the short-term rate of warming is abundantly clear. The skeptics harmfully abusing any period of slower temperature change to reduce popular support for the required Responsible Leadership Actions are definitely deserving of derision (not praise for relieving concern).

Refer to the SkS Escalator.

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27

michael sweet at 22:17 PM on 24 July, 2019

Billev,

At 21 you ask about " the periods of pause in temperature rise". In the upper right of the page on every page on SkS is the graph of the Escalator. The Escalator shows that there are natural periods of lower rise interspersed in the overall rise in temperature. (I do not know how to attach the graph here).

IPCC is alarmist

Estoma at 23:27 PM on 24 June, 2019

Hope this thread is appropriate.

Over the years I've used the SKS escaltor in my blog posts from time to time. Recently I recieved a reply "it is a great example of cherry picking noisy high/low points along a period when first the PDO and then the AMO moved into their positive phases. If you remove the noise then the escalator magically disappears. What's left is two step rises. The first from 1976-1980 was the PDO going positive. The 2nd from 1993-1995 was due to the AMO going positive.

The temperature evolution after 2016 suggests hotter future

One Planet Only Forever at 12:25 PM on 13 March, 2019

Making a claim that takes 'time to be proven to be incorrect' is a common tactic of the climate science deniers. They are not being skeptical of the science. They are politically trying to delay the improvement of awareness and understanding among the general population regarding how incorrect and harmful the people they are voting to support actually are.

A similar tactic will be used when the most recent decade of data is added to the global surface temperature escalator. The claim will be made that the economic harm of the correction is now so big (because the economy was incorrectly increased in the wrong direction and the needed correction is more significant and needed in a shorter time frame). Surely it would be prudent and pragmatic to wait until one more decade of temperature data is actually gathered. We really need to be very sure about this - don't we?

The people who have developed undeserved perceptions of superiority (wealth or power) by benefiting from the burning of fossil fuels, particularly through the past 30 years when it was undeniable that the activity needed to be globally curtailed, fear the coming correction will actually negatively affect them and their 'status relative to others' (as it should - they should particularly lose any increased perceptions of status obtained through the past 30 years).

The temperature evolution after 2016 suggests hotter future

nigelj at 05:15 AM on 12 March, 2019

Yeah good article. However the link to the bigger graph is not much of a bigger graph, and is hard to read (unless my browser is playing up).

The denialists are wrong to argue we are back to alleged pause temperatures as can be seen in the global temeprature record here.

I wouldn't worry too much about the denialists. I would suggest most people looking at that NASA graph (or Hadcrut) can see the pause was inconsequential and about 6 - 8 years long in terms of surface warming, and the trend in the latest graph is towards continued warming especially when you look at the lowess smoothing line. People do basic graphs in maths at school and would understand things can be bumpy but its the longer term trend we look at. The only people who won't get this are extremely poorly educated people, and those determined not to grasp it, because of ideological or other reasons that make them sceptical of the science. Of course they should still be refuted.

There was a problem when warming did look flat after 1998 that required complicated but correct explanations about natural variability, but that period is obviously over looking at the NASA graph. It also has to be said the so called pause was never long enough or strong enough to suggest the underlying greenhouse gas warming process had somehow stopped, or that some unexpected natural process had taken over the climate. It's just that because of el nino / la nina we end up with a bumpy graph that looks like an escalator.

The point I'm making is while the article is excellent and of interest to enquiring minds, things have to also be kept simple from the general publics perspective, and a simple graph says a lot to me. I think most educated people looking at the latest NASA graph would see an obvious continuing warming trend.

Next self-paced run of Denial101x starts on March 5

Prometheus at 07:30 AM on 7 March, 2019

Look, I'm really trying to keep this discussion in the context of the post. We are all over the place here. You really want me to defend my views on the government, bias, and appropriate research in this post? They are techically off-topic. I may have been part of the problem, because in my second post, I only intended to answer questions. Now there is just too much to talk about. So I apologize. I never intend to dodge an issue or purposefully mislead.

My main point is to stop with the politics unless you want to be in the politics. Science is about understanding and learning. I liked this site because it was engaging with skeptics on a scientific level and that I can learn about the scientific arguments.

There are many people out there that have a clear head and dig deep into the science and become skeptical of certain things they see. If you think that every skeptic deserves this, then I will become even less supportive of this site.

There are also, as many you point out, people of political discourse. I believe that this post unfairly puts good skeptics and political discourse all in the same boat. This post wants to go further puts them in the context of psychological denial, and encourages people not to listen to them, but just to argue with them. Its demeaning to do this. This is wrong. This site shouldn't promote it.

It should continue to promote dialogue between scientifically knowleged skeptics and non-skeptics. Unless this site intends to be a political site, then maybe I'm wrong about this site.

If you want some some examples of good argements I've seen. Heres a list:

Escalator vs peicwise regression
Warming on northern latitudes vs median.
The real causes of correl reef reduction (El Nino and climate influence)
Circular resoning in radiative forcing
Mistakes in satellite data processing

and many more. I'm sure there is a "Myth" post dedicated to these discussions, but they are indeed good scientific discussions.

A personal experience. I wanted to understand the physics behind forcing, read the IPCC papers, read papers from the 1980's, read about radiative scattering models in the atmosphere and the like. I found the equations for radiative forcing. Learned how radiative forcing is used to study climate balance. I'm thinking, that's neat, so I go further. I noticed that the forcing was of the form F=a*ln(C/C0) and deltaT=alpha*DeltaF where zero forcing was defined to be in the 1970 (or 1998). A red flag goes up and I ask myself, why would they do that? It doesn't make sense. There is nothing special about 1970 (other than its considered to be the "Pre-industrial period"), and the story goes on from there. Please don't ask me to go on about this because its just an anicodotal story of a skeptical inclination from a knowleged person. But I study more. Maybe the skepticism goes away, maybe it doesn't. This is what science is about. If someone has studied it and gives a good critical thinking arguement on the issue, then I want to hear it. I don't want some person out there saying "Oh, you are not a climate scientist, you just wouldn't understand" or "stop spreading your denial of the science because of your issue with this equation". I want to have a discussion or even an arguement about the science.

The point of my comments to promote the idea to listen to a skeptic (not a political skeptic, a real scientifically knowleged one). Not point your finger at anyone other out there skeptical oppinion and tell them they have a psychological 'denial' issues. I think this site is doing itself a disservice by being unwelcoming to skeptics. This post is another good example. This is my first post ever on this site, and I'm already been called a bias ideologue. This is not good.

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #9

Philippe Chantreau at 10:14 AM on 3 March, 2019

I'm writing this request here because it's the latest thread: is it possible to update the escalator so that it shows all the data up to 2018?

Record high snow cover was set in winter 2008/2009

scaddenp at 11:41 AM on 25 January, 2019

I think Molsen is wanting to pick a shorter time period to make his point (ie cherry pick). When you have a noisy time series (like this one), you dont get to pick arbitary periods (see "the escalator" in right hand column). The amount of variance in the data determines how many points in the time series are needed to determine a significant trend. Climate is defined as 30 year average of weather for a good reason.

Arctic sea ice has recovered

Philippe Chantreau at 11:23 AM on 4 January, 2019

My remarks are entirely warranted. What's in your eyes is irrelevant, and most likely what you want to see. Proper statistical analysis is what allows to determine whether there is a stabilization, a recovery or a continued trend. There is no stabilization in the PIOMAS data, the period you are considering is too short to yield any trend without a margin of error so large that no information can be extracted. There are multiple periods in the data where there appears to be a stabilization, and even increases, but the trend remains, as it does in the temperature escalator. There is no sign of stabilization in the sea ice extent either. Having an open mind does not equate to fooling oneself with wishful thinking.

Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die

michael sweet at 21:28 PM on 27 December, 2018

Nigelj,

You said " I think the problem is some scientists have denied there was a pause" which is completely false. It cannot be twisted into a correct statement. there was never a pause in the increase of global surface temperature.

I think it is better to explain the escalator (available in the sidebar):

escalator

In person describe the escalator. I thnk most people over the age of five recognize that there is variation in temperature from day to day. From today until August 15 in the USA everyone expects it to get hotter (in New Zealand it will get colder). There will be periods of cold during the warming. This week happens to be warm at my house. The warm period does not prove winter has ended.

There was never a period of "slowdown, haitus or pause" in atmospheric warming. Your verbal gymnastics confuse the situation. Deniers deliberately lie about the existance of the "pause". Scientists should be vigorous in confronting those lies.

It hasn't warmed since 1998

MA Rodger at 22:38 PM on 1 June, 2018

guym @400,

I have long pondered the "hiatus" nonsense from contrarians. My take on it is perhaps more clinical than Eclectic @401, and a smidgen shorter.

One of the difficulties we face addessing the "hiatus" is that contrarians define the "hiatus" to mean vastly different things, from silly nonsense from Rose of the Daily Rail (Temp(Jan1996)=Temp(Aug2012) => global warming stopped 16 years ago) to more allegedly-grown-up versions comparing modeled & measured temperatures. Which ever version is used, their take-away is "Global Warming has stopped" or "Models are badly wrong". And any attempt to sensibly address the issue like in the AR5 Box 9.2 or for instance Hansen et al discussing the 'Global Warming Standstill' in 2012 results in a contrarian 'we told you so!!' response which is then grafted onto nonsense by even the more respected of contrarians to beat the "Global Warming Has Stopped!!!" drum (eg ex-clomatologist Judith Curry).

So you really do have to be careful when addressing the issue of the "hiatus" and that means more than using a title that calls it the "Hiatus in Global Mean Surface Warming of the Past 15 Years" as per AR5 Box9.2.

I think the AR5 Box9.2 use of OLS analysis over the period 1998-2012 was poorly contrived. (For the record, the resulting SAT trend roughly doubles if you use 1999-2012, to +0.09ºC/decade, instead of 1975-1996.) What was poor was firstly comparison of 1998-2012 with 1951-2012. The start period should have been roughly 1975, the start of the recent strong AGW. Contrarians who exaggerate the significance of the "hiatus" would be surprised to hear that if you compare 1975-1996 with 1975-2012 you get almost identical trends. The reason for 1998-2012 being so different from the longer-term SAT trend is because the 1998-2012 SAT trend relies on one of those reality-busting steps as in the SKS Escalator. So a second criticism of AR5 Box9.2 is giving credance to the 1998-2012 reality-busting OLS analysis.

SKS Escalator

Simply-put, anybody who (a) supports a "hiatus" 16-years long or (b) uses the "flatness" in surface temperature record to create a 16-year long "hiatus" by for instance saying "I predict we will see continuation of the ‘standstill’ in global average temperature for the next decade" (and good old Judy Curry manages both a & b) show they have departed from truthful analysis of AGW.

I myself feel the way to take command of the "hiatus" is by setting its true length. This analysis of HadCRUT data (usually 2 clicks to 'download your attachment') finds it was just 32 months long. And a message that must always be included in "hiatus" talk - thoroughout these years, AGW did not show any signs of faltering as the Ocean Heat Content data surely demonstrates.

Sea level rise is exaggerated

michael sweet at 22:00 PM on 27 January, 2018

George,

While there is no rise since 2010, there is a large rise since 2008. The long term rise is clear. Do you have a reason for selecting 2010 or was it just to cherry pick your claim?

Have you ever seen the escalator?

escalator

Do you think you could make a similar graph from the tide guage in New York?

It hasn't warmed since 1998

sailingfree at 01:17 AM on 16 November, 2017

Good discussion. It would be helpfull to see here the data for 2014,2015, 2016, and 2017, to cinch the warming argument. An updated "escalator" would be dramatic.

Thanks.

Tracking the 2°C Limit - March 2016

uncletimrob at 10:40 AM on 30 April, 2016

It's interesting that we no loger hear about the "hiatus" - not even from politicians. Perhaps its proponents are waiting for the upcoming La Nina to give them another one? The escalator is more and more scary each time I look at it.

Models are unreliable

FrankShann at 10:47 AM on 25 February, 2016

KR and scaddenp: I understand the role of the RCP scenarios, and that controlling emissions is key - I am not suggesting that either be abandoned.

However, many people don't distinguish between uncertainty in the climate models and uncertainty in the forecasts of forcings - and this is exploited by deniers ("the IPCC forecasts are flawed/too vague/too complex"). In addition, because cycles in some forcings cause a stepwise rise in temperature, deniers are able to pretend that temperature has stopped rising (a pause, or even a permanent pause). Climate scientists explain all this in advance and at the time (and produce The Escalator graph), but many of the public are not convinced (or are misled), and this delays reduction in emissions.

I merely proposed (@974) an extra tool (that complements The Escalator) to remove variations in the forcings from forecasts of temperature, and enable climate scientists to say that the models they produced 10 or 20 or 30 years ago have accurately forecast temperatures in advance given the forcings that subsequently actually occurred.

Would it be possible to go further and calculate what temperatures the FAR model predicted for 1990-2016 given the forcings that actually occurred each year, and the SAR model for 1995-2016, the TAR model for 2001-2016, AR4 for 2007-2016, and AR5 for 2013-2016? Perhaps it's not possible do this - but if it were, it would contribute greatly to answering the question posed by the title of this thread - "How reliable are climate models?" (It might be a good student research project.) And doing it again each year in the future would keep on showing that the models are accurate. Would it be possible to do this?

Betting against global warming is a sure way to lose money

MarkR at 01:47 AM on 11 December, 2015

ryland @8,

I'd be surprised if UAH v6.0 shows a statistically significant decrease in trend although its best estimate is indeed lower. However, in order to get these "slowdown" trends you have to allow for magical "jumps" in termperature just before the proposed slowdown. This is a result of the long-term global warming trend and the Escalator shows the principle behind it. Tamino has also posted about this, showing that claims of a slowdown require magical non-physical temperature jumps just before your desired slowdown.

So even if you pick some of the data to make the trend look smaller, your period is going to be warmer than the previous one because you've still stepped up in temperatures.

Of course, this is not obvious in most presentations that claim a slowdown because the presenters typically choose to hide the earlier data.

The Daily Mail and Telegraph get it wrong on Arctic sea ice, again

LarryM at 07:57 AM on 29 July, 2015

Two of my favorite SkS climate graphics nicely illustrate the absurdity of cherry picking short-term time periods to obscure obvious long-term trends, and they deserve to be highlighted here. I think both were created by Dana.

First, the Arctic Sea Ice Escalator animated gif combines humor, sarcasm, and cold hard data to illustrate the accelerating decline of Arctic sea ice:

And of course there's the wildly popular original Escalator showing the surface temperature record:

The Escalator

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

One Planet Only Forever at 14:56 PM on 17 June, 2015

mancan18,

I agree that a 30 year period is a more valid way of monitoring climate change. However, it is not necessary to compare a 30 year period with the previous 30 year period. The contrarians would have a field day with that. They would say we should wait for another 30 years of data to be sure. And 30 years from now they would say they are starting to be convinced but want to see another 30 years of data just to be sure.

A better application of the 30-year principle would be to report the trend of the 30-year average. A new 30-year average value can be calculated when every new month of data is available. And the 30 year average of global average surface temperature has not leveled off or shifted to a hiatus. And the 30 year average of arctic sea ice has not recently 'recovered' either.

Using the SkS Temperature Trend Calculator with the Moving Average value at 360 months shows a nice continuing to rise line. And the 30-year average is currently rising at about 0.17 C per decade.

Of course I anticipate there would be criticisms from the usual suspects that this is just a trick to try to hide the decline. But it may help others better understand what is going on.

The Decadal comparison (1981-1990; 1991-2000; 2001-2010) has also helped show that warming has continued but it still leads to a claim that we need to wait until 2020 to know if the hiatus was just another of the many temporary leveling off steps on the stair/escalator, then 2030 just to be more certain, then 2040 to really be sure ...

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

mancan18 at 08:18 AM on 17 June, 2015

The comments that accompany this article just demonstrate the frustration with the AGW CC debate of contrarians versus advocates. There has been an esoteric distracting discussion about, is warming an escalator or a staircase when it is the trend line that is important, as KR@32 highlights with the Arctic Ice record. It is the signal in the noise that is important. Also, it is the 30 years that WMO uses to define a climate period that is important. Not some year to year and decadal length analysis. Not has it slowed down because some peak year is compared against some trough year during the past decade. It is the regression analysis over the last 30 years compared to the previous 30 years, comared to the previous 30 years before that, and so on and so on that is important. This is after all a discussion about climate, not about extreme weather events. There has been nothing that a contarian has said that changes the basic fundamental scientific tenet that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that CO2 is increasing and because it is there will be warming. Also, there are many lines of evidence that indicate that this basic scientific fact is in fact is true and is actually happening. So where is the surprise in this article. There should be warming and there is. What would be a surprise is that there is no longer warming and it is reversing as the contrarians are trying to argue. To imply that the planet will somehow cool down while greenhouse gases are increasing at the rates they are, is a bit like saying that the Earth will magically reverse the direction of it's orbital motion or direction of rotation at the behest of the hand of God. The only argument relevant is about how much warming will occur due to this and the predicted rise in greenhouse gases, and on the evidence so far over the last century, it would seem that Tindale got it about right.

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

KR at 02:18 AM on 17 June, 2015

Nah, I think the Escalator graphic is clear enough - folks like Sean are just trying rhetorical nonsense in an attempt to discredit the graphics very clear communication. Because it is so very effective.

If you want an example with denial claims highlighed at each step, though, look at the Arctic Ice Escalator graphic:

Arctic Ice Escalator

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

dcpetterson at 02:08 AM on 17 June, 2015

Leto,

I like your suggestion that the escalator gif can perhaps be improved by making each of the "skeptic" steps in turn cause the previous one(s) to vanish--perhaps accompanied by a tag at each new step that says, "See? No warming HERE!" while each recently-vanished one is labelled, "That earlier step wasn't lower!"

The essence, of course, as this thread underlines, is that we're at record high temperatures, as part of a well-documented upward trend, despite denialist noise.

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

dcpetterson at 01:21 AM on 17 June, 2015

Sean's rhetorical argument misuses three important details. I think these are important in a general sense for considering the techniques of denialism, even in the face of record-setting global temperatures (whcih is the toic of this thread).

1) The difference between the denialist view and the staricase/escalator view is that denialists refuse to acknowledge one step is connected to the next. Each step is seen in isolation. Joe Romm et al would draw connecting lines from one step to the next. Denialists do not, and instead use each step as "proof" that nothing is happening (or even that the Earth is cooling). This matters in a general sense, as denialists argue in part by taking short-term data in isolation. 2) Sean is attempting to argue that denialists and Joe Romm actually agree on what's happening, i.e., that there are "steps". Yet, as has been pointed out, no denialist has argued that the Earth is warming in steps. This matters in a general sense as an example of dishonest argument; Sean is implying (though refsues to state, since it is so absurdly and obviously not true) that Joe Romm agrees with and supports the denialist argument.

3) Sean is arguing about the analogy as a way to distract from the actuality. Analogies are a useful pedigogical tool in teaching complex concepts. Their danger is that all analogies have limits. Denialist can seize on the limits of any analogy, and use it to argue that the underlying concepts are themselves false. Ex: since the atmosphere isn't made of wool or any other woven fabric, carbon dioxide cannot really "act as a blanket". Same here; by engaging in argument about the escalator/staircase analogy, Sean is attempting to cast aspersions on the whole science of climatology.

It's useful to be aware of the techniques being used, so as to not get caught in the content-free traps being set by denialists. Sean should simply be asked if he prefers to say the Earth's temperatures are rising in the form of a staircase or an escalator, or if he prefers to conentrate on the even longer-term trendlines that smooth the shrot noise into insignificance. In all cases, the overall trend is upward. Right, Sean?

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

Tom Curtis at 23:41 PM on 16 June, 2015

Stephen, the mistake is assuming Sean does not know that already. He is clearly being disengenuous in order to make a vacuous rhetorical point. Anybody who doubts that need only follow "The Escalator" link on the right sidebar, and from their to the first article, "Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1", posted 5th Nov, 2011 where they will read:

"As Figure 1 shows, over the last 37 years one can identify overlapping short windows of time when climate "skeptics" could have argued (and often did, i.e. here and here and here) that global warming had stopped. And yet over the entire period question containing these six cooling trends, the underlying trend is one of rapid global warming (0.27°C per decade, according to the new Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature [BEST] dataset). And while the global warming trend spans many decades, the longest cooling trend over this period is 10 years, which proves that each was caused by short-term noise dampening the long-term trend.
In short, those arguing that global warming has stopped are missing the forest for the trees, focusing on short-term noise while ignoring the long-term global warming signal. Since the release of the BEST data which confirmed the global warming observed by all other global temperature measurements, climate "skeptics" have been scrambling for a way to continue denying that global warming is a problem, and focusing on the short-term noise has become their preferred go-to excuse."

In other words, from the first introduction of the escalator, the point very clearly being made was that pseudo -skeptics focus on short term trends to argue that AGW has stopped (and ergo that the next "tread" of the global temperature series will be no higher than the one from which they draw their inference); whereas history shows that there are many such treads, each of which has been successively higher generationg a long term rising trend in temperature; and that ergo it is foolish to argue from the existence of the latest tread that AGW has stopped.

This point has been explained very clearly to Sean, several times. If he was at all honest in his rhetoric, his response to jgnfld @7 would have been to acknowledge his misunderstanding of the escalotor rhetoric, and to acknowledge further that properly understood he had no point.

Instead he doubles down.

Nobody is that stupid. He is deliberately indulging in dishonest rhetoric. Possibly he is doing that just to generate noise in the discussion, or because he gets a kick out of generating responses to ridiculous claims (ie, he is trolling), or maybe he just wants to get a rise. Whatever his motivation, treating his comments as serious is a mistake. He is making an absurd, empty point and the only thing he proves thereby is his dishonesty or his atonishing stupidity. End of story.

That has been duly noted and the only response he should now recieve is to be ignored until the moderators undertake the tedious task of cleaning up yet another denier vomitus utterings.

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

Sean OConnor at 23:27 PM on 16 June, 2015

No, the title of the graph is "The Escalator". Escalators don't just have 'flat periods'.

It's clear from that title that the point of the graph is to deride contrarians for thinking that the temperature has gone up like an escalator.

If not, then I'd advise updating the animated gif so when it shows how realists view global warming it shows the flat periods and the steps up. In other words exactly how Joe Romm has described it: as a "staircase".

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

Stephen Baines at 23:26 PM on 16 June, 2015

Sean,

You are misinterpreting the figure Sean and that is why you are talking past people. This figure is not deriding contrarians for saying that temperatures have risen like an escalator. We wish that climate contrarians would see the temperature graph as an esacalator. That would be a step forward...or upward! Instead, we get repeated claims that climate has stopped warming in recent years, that climate is a flat runway, or a cycle that will return to some long term mean.

Th animation points out that these claims of stasis in global temps are just a form of cherry picking...if you pick a short enough interval, you can depict virtually the entire tempreature record as a series of pauses in warming. Adopting this approach since the 70s would have lead you to the conclusion that the climate had "stopped warming" for 40 years!

But of course that isn't the case, because each of these supposed flat periods are each higher than the next, forming an escalator or staircase. The repeated periods of stasis are a statistical artifact, a result of short-term natural variability in the climate system superimposed on the longer-term upward trend.

After this El Nino they will probably start doing it again, using 2015-2016 as a starting point for their trends showing no warming.

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

CBDunkerson at 23:12 PM on 16 June, 2015

Sean, where you are going wrong is in the belief that, "Skeptical Science [is] deriding contrarians for saying the warming is an escalator".

The 'escalator' terminology for that graph was created by SkS... not 'contrarians'. The derision comes in reference to their insistence on looking only at the 'flat' periods and not the overall trend.

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

Sean OConnor at 22:48 PM on 16 June, 2015

> Who has derided anyone for saying warming is an escalator?

Just go scroll up on this very page until you see the animated gif called "The Escalator"

Part of the time it is labelled "How Contrarians View Global Warming".

It could equally well be labelled "How Joe Romm Views Global Warming".

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

Yail Bloor III at 22:42 PM on 16 June, 2015

Sean, think of it this way: stairs consist of a rise and a run. Contrarians stubbornly focus on the "run" while ignoring the "rise." On a real set of stairs, a head injury is usually in the offing. Whether you use a "stairs" or "escalator" analogy is unimportant. Both inevitably step up and not down. In order to reduce the size of the rise on those steps, we need to reduce the amount of carbon we're pumping into the atmosphere. There's no other way...as yet.

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

jgnfld at 22:41 PM on 16 June, 2015

Who has derided anyone for saying warming is an escalator?

Q: How is warming like an escalator?

A: a. No matter what you do scampering around like a child, you generally get carried upwards.

b. If you track the line of the stairs as they go by through a slit on the side they wiggle in a saw tooth way.

c. So long as the power stays on, you will continue to climb.

Methinks you are strugging mightily to no particular purpose.

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

Sean OConnor at 22:23 PM on 16 June, 2015

> either staircase or escalator is a reasonable analogy.

OK, then why have an animated gif on the front page of Skeptical Science deriding contrarians for saying the warming is an escalator?

Is it? Or isn't it?

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

Yail Bloor III at 22:18 PM on 16 June, 2015

Sean O'Connor, either staircase or escalator is a reasonable analogy. The reason "escalator" fits slightly better is that it illustrates very nicely that "Time's Arrow" is pushing us up those steps whether we like it or not. It's been 17 years since we've had a really powerful El Nino and this year looks like it's building to a record-breaking size. This year's "step up" may be twice (or more) the size of 1998. Time will tell. The hideous stripe of red stretching across the the Pacific to the Indian Ocean may signs that a fair amount of that so-called "hiatus" heat is being kicked out into our faces. IMHO, this year will convince a lot of genuinely skeptical folks that AGW is very real. The ideologues...probably not.

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

Sean OConnor at 21:18 PM on 16 June, 2015

> where I a moderator I would delete your posts as off topic sloganeering

That's a strange thing to say as I'm only pointing out that the final piece of text in the actual article itself seems to contradict how Skeptical Science has been telling us *NOT* to view rising temperatures as.

Either you should view the rising temperature as a staircase/escalator or you shouldn't. I can't see how you can be of the point of view that climate scientsist can say it's a staircase but then berate contrarians for saying it's an escalator.

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

Tom Curtis at 20:59 PM on 16 June, 2015

Sean, where I a moderator I would delete your posts as off topic sloganeering, ie, for deliberate violation of two requirements of the comments policy. As you well know, the pseudo-skeptics repeatedly argue during any interval of flat or negative short term trends that those flat or negative short term trends "show global warming has stopped" or "falsify the models". They do not project continuing long term warming at the long term trend. Rather they project it at the short term trend, or less. The escalator comes about solely because every few years the lumpy progress results in a new record high temperature, and a new "pause" that "shows global warming has stopped" or "falsifies the models", at least according to those pseudo-skeptics.

That contrasts sharply with Joe Romm who projects long term trends at or above the current levels but merely points out that the long term temperature evolution, while consistent with the long term trend, will show a series of flatter short term trends, each followed by a short term rapid rise in temperature.

But, of course, as jgnfld has noted, you already know this. You are in fact deliberately ignoring that which you know in order to make an empty rhetorical point (hence off topic and sloganeering). That you resort to such underhanded tactics shows the bankruptcy of your intellectual position.

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

michael sweet at 20:46 PM on 16 June, 2015

Sean,

The contrarians are not calling the increase a staircase. They are claiming the temperature is going down by selecting short periods. Either a staircase or an escalator is fine, as long as you acknowledge that you are always going up.

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

jgnfld at 20:44 PM on 16 June, 2015

Depends on how you like your metaphors. Given how greenhouse gas warming works, "escalator" works fine for me. We are indeed being carried upward. I suspect it works fine for most people who understand the science.

Maybe you should ask the authors.

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

Sean OConnor at 20:02 PM on 16 June, 2015

OK, so it's correct to call it a "staircase" but completely incorrect to call it an "escalator"?

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

jgnfld at 19:40 PM on 16 June, 2015

The escalator shows that deniers can always say the temps are decreasing if you intentionally misinterpret noise hard enough. The ramp shows that if you look at appropriate lengths you get a linear rise.

The escalator does not show, though such a graphic could be made, that at short intervals the temp gain is not smooth. But that was not it's purpose. No one understanding the science ever expected a smooth, monotonically precise increase month over month year after year. As such, "pauses" and "jumps" have to occur over short runs when the trend is an order of magnitude less than the noise.

Of course you know this.

The latest global temperature data are breaking records

Sean OConnor at 19:25 PM on 16 June, 2015

Your article states:

"I asked climate expert Dr. Joe Romm, Founding Editor of Climate Progress for his thoughts. He reminds us,

Historically, the global temperature trend-line is more like a staircase than a ramp. It now appears we are headed for a step-jump in global temperatures that scientists have been expecting."

But on your home page you have an animated gif titled The Escalator which shows "How Contrarians View Global Warming" as a staircase then shows "How Realists View Global Warming" as a ramp.

Does this mean that Joe Romm is a contrarian?

The History of Climate Science

Tom Dayton at 01:38 AM on 1 June, 2015

Dan Sage, regarding the wrongly named "pause" in warming, see the most recent post by Kevin Cowtan, and then the post by Matthew England. Regarding models specifically, in addition to the posts that other people have pointed you to, see the post by Roz Pidcock.

For one of many good demonstrations that the recent slowdown (which, importantly, is "slow" only relative to immediately preceding "fast" warming--that's a hint for you) in no way is evidence against the continuing long term trend, see climate statistician Tamino's recent post "Slowdown Skeptic," and "It's the Trend, Stupid," and "Is Earth's Temperature About to Soar?" Regarding trends in satellite data, see Tamino's "Stupid Is As Ted Cruz Does." For an easy to understand picture, see the Skeptical Science escalator.

Your repeat of the myth that increased CO2 always must cause a corresponding increase in temperature, see "CO2 Is Not The Only Driver of Climate," where you should read first the Basic tabbed pane and then the Intermediate one.

Making sense of the slowdown in global surface warming

mdenison at 05:38 AM on 27 May, 2015

1. You make no mention of the change in forcing due to the reduction in CFC emissions. The impact of this on the rate of increase in anthropogenic forcings can be seen in the GISS forcing data. I would have expected an effect on the warming rate as large as those you report. Were you unable to find relevant literature that considered CFC's as a cause.

2. I also think that in making sense of the slowdown it is important to consider views like Taminos. I view from his pieces is that there is no slowdown unless you compare the trend using short time periods (15 years) instead of decent intervals of 30 years. With short intervals the apparant differences are meaningless due to inherent uncertainty and we must conclude that warming continues at the same pace.

A key point in making sense of the slowdown is that it is an illusion we inflict on ourselves by trying to see a pattern in short term data. If there has been a slowdown since 2000 we need to wait another 15 years to have a reasonable chance of detecting it. Past experience should warn us that the most likely explanation is that we seeing just another step of the down escalator. The explanations given above being reasons these steps can appear but they are not explanations of a real slowdown.

The climate 'hiatus' doesn’t take the heat off global warming

MA Rodger at 22:55 PM on 24 May, 2015

dcpetterson @33.

You ask for comment on your blog post.

You are correct that a regression for the full period covered in all three of Mad Monckton of Brentchley analyses would provide a positive trend but it would be very very small (I make it +0.05ºC/century) and statistically insignificant.
His Lordship's delicate adjustments of the period being examined are purely so he can get a big fat zero in trend. Different choices of start & end points during this short period allow him to achieve this as the wobbles in RSS data (which are larger than the wobbles in surface temperature records) continue to bounce along just over and occasioanally under zero. Your primary finding and your accusation of cherry-picking his time-intervals as presented in your blog post is thus no great revelation.

You are correct in pointing to Monckton's dodgy choice of temperature record. RSS TLT attempts to measure a weighted temperature from surface to stratosphere. The weightings of the TLT measurements does give a lower average altittude than TMT but the descriptor "lower" is otherwise less than accurate and RSS TLT is certainly no substitute for surface measurements.

And your criticism that the period chosen by Mad Monckton is too short is also correct. He effectively is arguing using the contrarian 'escalator'.
As this woodfortrees plot demonstrates, the Viscount has managed to magic away most of the temperature increase shown in the RSS data.

My own analysis for the length of the 'pause' using RSS data show that the accumulating RSS data gives a steepening rate of warming up to mid-2004. (For surface temperature records the steepening continues into 2007.) That means RSS TLT temperatures were accelerating up to 2004 which is entirely incompatable with a 'pause' in temperature rise starting in 1996. And plotting the trend of surface temperature measurements and including more recent data demonstrates that since last autumn surface temperature records are again showing a steepening trend in global temperature rise. That surely means the 'pause' (if we were to call it that) has at the least 'paused'.

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #16B

chriskoz at 20:45 PM on 19 April, 2015

About the new research by Marco Tedesco - "Darkening ice speeds up Greenland melt" on CB.

I don't have access to the actual article refered only as Tedesco et al. 2015 - apparently only submitted, not accepted yet.

But the albedo timeline graph, as presented by CB, suffers from cherry-picked point (1996) to show the apparent trendline change in albedo so that it looks more "alarming". That's the same type of deception science deniers use to point out that "it hasn't warmed since 19xx" and debunked by the escalator.

The main fallacy the deniers' method is that when you want to show the change of trends in a signal, you have to draw the trend lines so that the lines are continuous - the are not "steps" between their ends. Otherwise your trend changes are escalator-like bunkum. For that reason, I would not accept Tedesco et al. 2015 if I was reviewing it. Hopefully reviewers will be helpful there and let Marco fix this mistake in this article on an interesting subject.

It hasn't warmed since 1998

DSL at 13:41 PM on 5 April, 2015

Correction: elevator > escalator. Also, ocean heat content: http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000m.png

And sea level rise (supporting OHC measures): http://sealevel.colorado.edu/

Fiddling with global warming conspiracy theories while Rome burns

Muzz at 09:53 AM on 13 February, 2015

To JH moderator response to 8. I cannot readily recall where I read 0.8C over 114 years but I do note that the temp escalator graph on this site shows an increase of 0.16C per decade which gives a result of 0.0056%. Yes, that is significantly greater than 0.0024% but is still miniscule.

Kevin Cowtan Debunks Christopher Booker's Temperature Conspiracy Theory

Tom Dayton at 11:05 AM on 6 February, 2015

Dave Burton, you are incorrect that the temperature anomalies do not exhibit much short-term variability. For example, see the escalator graph.

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #3B

michael sweet at 22:24 PM on 19 January, 2015

Wiliam,

This topic has already been discussed here at SkS. In short, the satelite record does not measure the surface teperature. It estimates the temperature about 3,000 meters up in the atmosphere (satelites cannot directly measure the temperature of the surface). This is approximate as it is actually an average of the temperature at many levels of the atmosphere.

Since we actually live on the surface of the Earth, most people care more about the surface temperature. 2014 is the hottest year on the surface.

Arguing about statistics while the temperature continues to go up will not win any arguments here. Watch the escalator graph for a while and see how you feel.

2014 will be the hottest year on record

michael sweet at 08:06 AM on 18 December, 2014

John,

Excellent post. Would it be possible for you to update your daily average once or twice more before the official records are released for the year (perhaps on this thread)?

As I understand it, the strongest effect of El Nino on global temperatures is about 6 months after the El Nino starts. That will be a couple of months from now. If that holds for this El Nino, next year will also be a new, hotter, record. How long will we have to go to get a negative slope for the escalator graph after two record years in a row?

Mercury Rising: 2014 Likely to Surpass 2010 as Warmest Year on Record

shoyemore at 00:20 AM on 29 November, 2014

Make a note to update the "Escalator" graph as soon as you can in 2015.

New study questions the accuracy of satellite atmospheric temperature estimates

WRyan at 20:23 PM on 10 November, 2014

The long term trends of the RSS and UAH global temperature records for the TLT altitude is basically the same as the long-term trend in the NOAA and GISS surface temperature records since the mid-1970s.

The 21-year running averages of all 4 data sets give pretty much identical warming trends of 0.14-0.15 C degrees per decade up until 2004. If that trend has continued over the past decade, then all 4 data sets are showing that the 2014 global temperature value will be pretty much on the trend line, which is what you would expect for an ENSO-neutral year.

The only real difference in the data sets is that the satellite monthly temperature data shows an exaggerated escalator effect. This results from the satellite measurements have a much larger (by about a factor of 2) response to El Nino and La Nina variations than the surface temperature data sets.

Global warming: a battle for evangelical Christian hearts and minds

ubrew12 at 03:10 AM on 4 October, 2014

paul@14: "Its been several years and predictions that the polar ice caps would be melted by now has not come true" So is that where you set the bar? If Arctic summer sea ice disappears you'll be convinced? Why are you not satisfied with the dramatic reductions in that ice of the last 30 years? I get it: you're suspicious. Permit me the same skepticism: I rather think that when (not if) the Arctic summer sea ice disappears, you'll have another hurdle all set up before you can possibly drop your objection.

paul@12 said "I am a Christian". So is the founder of this web site. A quote: "The second reason is my faith. I'm a Christian and find myself strongly challenged by passages in the Bible like Amos 5 and Matthew 25. I believe in a God who has a heart for the poor and expects Christians to feel the same way... the poorest, most vulnerable countries will be... those hardest hit... Drought will devastate low-latitude countries. Rising sea levels will create havoc on low lying countries..."

Sen Whitehouse Schools Sen Inhofe about Global Warming on the Senate Floor

chriskoz at 19:38 PM on 1 August, 2014

The escalator was first used by Sen Whitehouse on the Sanete floor in December 2012 also reported by SKS. So, it's been his debunking tool of choice for over 2 years now.

Sen Whitehouse Schools Sen Inhofe about Global Warming on the Senate Floor

Chris G at 14:47 PM on 1 August, 2014

You've done most excellent work here, and you should be proud, but you were not the only one to look and the oscillations on the temperature graph and ask why anyone thinks this latest one is the last one. Although, the escalator analogy is the best I've seen; waves on the incoming tide is another good one, but not sure how many people relate as well to waves and tides.

I particularly liked the 'alternate reality' phrase. Had a chance to hear him speak once; he is a good motivator. Not sure how he manages to put emotion and technical content into the same words.

A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 4

StBarnabas at 05:06 AM on 7 March, 2014

John Cook
thanks again for all your endeavors. SKS has a different feel from the other fora I follow and I was aware of his tremendous work in debunking the usual pathetic "skeptical" arguments but was unaware of quite how much technical effort John has put into this. Indeed I used some of SKS's graphics yesterday at an outreach event. The "escalator" in particular seemed to hit the mark. I am intrigued as to how the hack was done.
SeanD

Debunking climate myths: two contrasting case studies

ajki at 17:45 PM on 8 February, 2014

I do not like the bomb thing (rotting apples vs. contaminated dead or starving oranges). But I do like the underlying message. In showing how absurd and blatantly false this "it stopped warming since [whenever]" gibberish really is, tamino has found a visually appealing answer recently (I think).

Hypothesis: "Warming has stopped in 1998":

Hypothesis

Measured data:

Measured data

Putting this into a nicer graphic and you should have another "Escalator".

2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #4A

Wol at 14:51 PM on 24 January, 2014

>>The only sustainable future for humanity or an economy...........<<

The fundamental problem for climate change, resources, biodiversity etc etc is overpopulation. That is the ONLY thing that matters.

Some are keen to say that population is forecast to stabilise at 9Bn plus, but nobody seems to address the question of whether even *that* number is remotely sustainable. Bear in mind that everyone would like to see the developing countries attaining a high standard of living.

Various estimates of sustainable population have come up with hugely differing results, but almost all put the number way below 9Bn IF a more equal standard of living is taken as read.

Taking action on carbon without addressing the real problem is like running up the down escalator without first pushing the "Stop" button.

Heat widget viewed more than one million times at over 60 blogs

Doug Hutcheson at 09:44 AM on 16 January, 2014

Another excellent piece of science communication by SkS. This widget, together with the escalator graphic, tells a huge part of the AGW story. Well done.

Still Going Down the Up Escalator

hank at 07:14 AM on 3 January, 2014

Is there a version of the escalator animated GIF that lays the uncertainty over the trend lines? (The uncertainty, or confidence limits, or probability, however you call it, the 'gray cloud' that the trend line represents overly precisely in the graph.

That would be a fat fuzzy line for the 7-year trend, with fewer data points (fewer data points; maybe different variability in each 7-year sample?) compared to a svelte fuzzy line for the long time trend, calculated with more data points and the overall variability).

Global warming is unpaused and stuck on fast forward, new research shows

Ken in Oz at 07:27 AM on 11 December, 2013

It's been unfortunate that surface air temperatures are seen as the definitive measure of change to our climate; global heat content seems to be measuring more direct, actual change to the climate system. Keep at it Dana; like some metaphorical version of Ekman pumping, the understanding that the oceans are where most of the heat is (still) going and that there has been no 'pause' is gradually being carried deeper into the ocean of conscious and unconscious thinking and discussion of climate change.

As for surface air temperatures, I though Foster and Rahmstorf did very well at showing that the 'pause' is an artifact of natural variation over an ongoing warming trend. Seems like even one or two more la Nina years than el Nino during a period of 15 years can and would create the illusion of warming speeding up, slowing down or pausing.

I'd like to point out that the 'pause' is evidence of ongoing global warming; up (more el Nino) and level off (more la Nina) is clearly indicative of warming. It would need to be up (el Ninos) and down (la Ninas) for warming to have 'stopped' or 'paused'. Up, level off, up level off, in staircase/Escalator style is warming.

Temp record is unreliable

Tom Curtis at 06:22 AM on 18 October, 2013

dvaytw, in response to the statement that:

"... if anyone wants to claim that CO2 levels in the upper atmosphere are causing ground level increases in temperature, there would need to be much greater warming there, which is demonstrably not happening"

I would point out that, first, "skeptics" greatly exagerate the expected amount of warming due to CO2 (and other anthropogenic factors); second, scientists have always expected that other short term factors will cause fluctuations in the increase of temperature so that, over short periods it may be much less than is expected over the long term, or even negative; and that third, a very powerfull short term factor is known to be depressing the rate of temperature decrease, and in fact accounts for nearly all of the discrepancy between the actual temperature increase and that predicted by the models.

With regard to the exageration of the expected rate of warming, this is typically done with graphs such as this one by Murry Salby:

Such graphs may be created in ignorance, by simply scaling the (smoothed) CO2 and Temperature graphs to have a common standard deviation. Such a scaling ignores the fact that annual fluctations in CO2 concentration are too small to significantly effect global temperature, and so on short times variations in CO2 are not expected to match variations in temperature. As a result the scaling does not reproduced the expected temperature increase. That mismatch is exagerated if the match is done between annual (or worse, monthly) temperature variations and a smoothed CO2 curve as done above.

In some instances, however, including that of Salby, the exageration must be deliberate. That is because the same authors show graphs of the expected temperature increase as a function of CO2 concentration over the coming century. As a result, when they show the short term "prediction", they must know that they have changed the relative scales of CO2 concentration and temperature, thereby mistating the predicted increase in temperature from the increase in CO2. This can be seen by comparing the prediction at the scale used for centenial predictions with that used over the last few decades:

As can be seen, with an honest scaling, recent temperature increases have closely matched those predicted by the IPCC Assessement Report 4 (AR4). To avoid any misunderstanding, however, it should be clear that the "prediction" above is produced by simply using the same scale ratio between CO2 and temperature as is used in Salby's centenial comparison, and slightly understates the actual AR4 short term prediction, which was for 0.2 C per decade. Salby's graphic manipulations are discussed in more detail here.

With regard to the expected short term fluctuations, that can be seen in the temperature record up to 2005 (when the short term temperature trend met or exceeded IPCC predictions). During that period, however, there are many short term periods with zero, or slightly negative growth:

Climate scientists are not utter fools. They can read temperature graphs as easilly as anyone else; and could see, therefore, that a prediction of temperature increases without faltering (ie, monotonic increase) was already falsified, and would not be so foolish to frame their predictions in a fashion that was already falsified. The assumption that a short term low trend in temperature increase somehow falsifies AGW, however, tacitly assumes that they were such fools, for it assumes a "hiatus"not greatly different from "hiatuses" that occured before the predictions will falsify AGW.

Nor do climate scientists predict short term fluctuations merely to save appearances. In the CMIP5 model intercomparison for IPCC Assessment Report 5, using the scenario with the strongest warming (RCP 8.5), over 8% of 15 year trends with a start year of 1970 or later, and and end year of 2015 or earlier are smaller than the HadCRUT4 trend since 1998. Indeed, 4.48% are negative and there is one 15 year trend of negative 0.15 C per decade. The prediction of short term fluctuations and hiatuses comes from the models themselves. They are not ad hoc afterthougths. They do not typically show up in statements about predictions because they represent short term chaotic factors that have no influence on the long term trend. Consequently they do not coordinate in position across all models in the ensemble, and do not appear in the ensemble mean. Indeed, the lowest 15 year trend in the ensemble mean over that period is more than twice the HadCRUT4 trend since 1998; but that is because the ensemble mean has eliminated short term non-forced fluctuations while the real world has not. Climate scientists know this, indeed insist upon it. So-called "skeptics", however, blur the distinction whenever possible.

In this regard, it is worthwhile noting that the peak temperature of the 1997/98 El Nino was 0.6 C warmer than the La Nina years on either side of it (see first graph). That is the equivalent of three decades global warming. With ENSO introducing such large fluctuations into short term temperature trends, it is impossible that trends of less than thirty years should consistently show trends near to the long term trend.

Finally, there is, in fact, a known short term non-forced factor that accounts for nearly all of the discrepancy between predicted and observed short term trends. Given the comment in my last paragraph, it will come as no surprise that it is ENSO:

Very clearly, ENSO has had a strong negative influence on the temperature trend since 2006, and arguably since 1998. That ENSO is the major driver of the recent temperature "hiatus". In fact, three very clear lines of evidence demonstrate that beyone reasonable doubt IMO. They are the fact that if you only examine the trends in ENSO equivalent years, all trends are nearly the same and close to that predicted by the models; that if you adjust temperatures for known ENSO states,the result is a trend close to that predicted by the models, and finally, if you constrain a model to match the historical ENSO pattern, it reproduces the historical temperature record. I discuss these points in detail here.

It should be noted that ENSO is not the only known factor that helps explain the reduces recent trends. Tropical volcanism is known to have increased the aerosol load, a factor that should induce cooling if not for a countervailing warming trend. We are also experiencing unusually weak solar activity, which should also have the same effect. Other factors may also have influence, and scientists are examining these factors, and others to determine the relative importance of different factors. But ENSO is the main factor, without doubt. It is sufficiently strong a factor that, if CO2 forcing did not have a significant warming effect, we should be experiencing a significantly negative short term trend in global temperatures, not the weakly positive trend we are currently experiencing.

Nuccitelli et al. (2013) Debunks Akasofu’s Magical Thinking

DSL at 03:19 AM on 27 September, 2013

Elevator > escalator (see graph in right-hand column)

How to use short timeframes to distort reality: a guide to cherrypicking

Smith at 03:25 AM on 26 September, 2013

Is there a reason why a linear trend is shown for the NH sea ice extent, where a second order polynomial fit trend is shown on the Arctic Sea Ice Escalator graphic?

Is there scientific evidence that either of the trends can be extrapolated for future predictions?

Nuccitelli et al. (2013) Debunks Akasofu’s Magical Thinking

william at 06:26 AM on 25 September, 2013

Gaia has many negative feedback mechanism to keep temperatures reverting to the mean. We have seen one of them this summer as more heat from the Arctic Ocean gave rise to low pressure systems which shaded the ocean and decreased ice melt. What is disturbing is the concept of the light switch phenomenon. The thought that when we push the system beyond some point some of the negative feed back mechanisms will no longer be enough to hold the line and we will flip into a new regime. If the slow creep we see now is disturbing, a sudden change would be far more serious. The "up the down escalator" graph suggests we may be close to another lurch upwards. Let's hope it is no more severe than the previous ones.

Arctic sea ice "recovers" to its 6th-lowest extent in millennia

BojanD at 21:38 PM on 19 September, 2013

I've had an argument the other day with some die-hard contrarians. They were claiming SkS is not credible. After asking for an example of 'deception', Arctic escalator was chosen. So called deception was a missing data point for a 2013 minimum. I kid you not!

So I pointed out that Arctic sea ice extent minimum was yet to be reached and promised them not to link any of your articles until you update the escalator by the middle of October. Looks like you beat my deadline by almost one month. :)

What's causing global warming? Look for the fingerprints

KR at 02:15 AM on 18 September, 2013

hank_ - Indeed, that's hilarious. They posted something attempting to diss the SkS Escalator emphasizing year-to-year variations (strawman, nobody seriously discusses trends from yearly varations) and portray a 12 year time-span for their "rational observers" (which is a prime example of the 'too short for significance' timespans shown in the SkS Escalator, uncertainties of about ±0.168 °C/decade 2σ).

Quite frankly an "own goal" for ACM, it makes them look quite the fools.

What's causing global warming? Look for the fingerprints

hank_ at 01:50 AM on 18 September, 2013

Just a heads-up for all SkS readers. The Skeptical Science 'escalator' gets a mention on this Aussi blog. Well worth a look for a few laughs;

australianclimatemadness.com/2013/09/16/the-skeptical-science-escalator-of-alarmism/

Click the graph.

Global warming, Arctic ice loss, and armchair scientists

funglestrumpet at 01:37 AM on 14 August, 2013

DSL @ 7

Any chance of getting those two ice concentration images put into one of those clever graphics that flips between the two conditions - in the same way the 'escalator' one does? It does rather spell out just how much the Arctic is changing.

Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming

KR at 01:32 AM on 24 July, 2013

Matthew L - Atmospheric temperatures have a much higher variability than the oceans; not surprising since there is far more thermal mass in water. Attempting (as you have) to draw significance from 10-12 year air temperature trends is just the Escalator fallacy all over again.

Compare and contrast ocean and atmospheric data - while air temperatures vary a lot, they cycle around the changes in ocean energy:

As to oscillations - beyond short term variability (5-20 years or so) the climate tracks forcings, as in:

The climate just doesn't change willy-nilly, and sheer energy constraints rule out 200 year oscillations such as you seem to advocate. Understood forcing changes (including anthropogenic greenhouse gases) appear more than sufficient explanation.

Quite frankly, your post appears to consist primarily of armwaving about possibilities while ignoring evidence. Oh, and claiming models are incomplete, which while unsupportable should be discussed here.

Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming

Philippe Chantreau at 01:23 AM on 23 July, 2013

And the same could be said of numerous 10 years periods in the historical record, even the trend is what it is. Matthew is going down the up escalator, and ignoring that there is a very clear and inescapable physical mechanism for warming from increased atmospheric CO2. Same old...

Debunking New Myths about the 97% Expert Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming

chriskoz at 09:03 AM on 18 July, 2013

It's amazing how many times in this interview Ed points out in the simple words that climate sicence is not only about land temperatures but Andrew goes back to his imaginary "plateau" in XXI century because it's very "intriguing". Every time, he denies every point he hears.

Ed would heve done better job saying that we know the physical mechanisms behind the "plateaus" such as the XXi century's one (recal the SkS's escalator to prove there were many of those) with ElNino/LaNina episodes acting as heat exchangers between Ocean (the main heat energy reservoir - 90%) and Athmosphere (which holds only small fraction of heat enrgy - therefore the exchange resulting in wider swings of temperature). But I don't think that argument would make any impression on Andrew: like all other arguments, he would simply ignore it.

4 Hiroshima bombs worth of heat per second

EvilDoctorDaddy at 20:26 PM on 2 July, 2013

Going back to the original point of the the post i.e. “sticky ideas”. When our local vicar wrote a mildly denial article in the parish magazine I invited him around for a solar powered coffee and an explanation of the science of global warming. We finished our session with a look at some of the graphics from here, starting with the escalator and ending with the change in total heat content.

He asked “how much energy is that?”.

I said “four Hiroshima size bombs”.

He said “every year?”.

I said “every second”.

His jaw dropped...

As an idea it’s brilliantly effective.

BTW, Evil Doctor Daddy is what my kids (3 & 5) call me when I case them around the house...

Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming

Ken in Oz at 13:31 PM on 26 June, 2013

Dana, I think you are pushing in the right direction with this; heat content is a much more direct measure of the underlying changes to the climate system than average air temperatures and climate science communicators should make heat content their first response to the suggestion that global warming is something that waxes and (allegedly, recently) wanes.

I think examining the scientific consensus and other efforts by contributors at this site all help. The Escalator is great. Foster and Rahmstorf style adjusted temperatures, that look at the known natural influences help.

I don't know where the best value for effort in communicating the seriousness and urgency of the climate problem lies but one thing that I would like to see is National Academies and the like increasing their role. Not that they've failed to step up, but the idea that they could (again) provide an independent assessment of the science comes to mind. It needs to be done with maximum publicity and video documentation (prime time Television in mind), demonstrating how they select the experts for the right combination of knowhow, independence and integrity. Not that I'm criticising what everyone has done to date but clearly the message is still not being communicated well enough in the face of ongoing, organised, deliberate and well communicated dis- and mis- information.

A Looming Climate Shift: Will Ocean Heat Come Back to Haunt us?

Ger at 02:23 AM on 26 June, 2013

Isn't the escalator graph not showing this phenomena in a perfect way?

The Consensus Project data visualisation - a history

Deco79 at 07:55 AM on 24 June, 2013

Great work on the app! This will be another success similar to "The Escalator" as it shows data quickly, visually and succinctly which is very important in communicating unwieldy information to lay audiences. Very "Hans Rosling" too which is cool!

Hans Rosling - TED Talks

Lu Blames Global Warming on CFCs (Curve Fitting Correlations)

dana1981 at 01:54 AM on 6 June, 2013

John H @9 - thanks for that link, yes, Gilkson does a nice job debunking this myth as well. I notice he has an Escalator link in there :-)

Cherrypicking to Deny Continued Ocean and Global Warming

matzdj at 23:46 PM on 27 May, 2013

Every time I try to review information on this site, I always come away with the sad feeling that 100% of the data interpretations that might lead to some conclusion other than anthropogenic CO2 caused Global warming are wrong. That can't be.

Both sides do have legitimate scientists on them (more on the CO2-is-the-ogre side), but there is no legitimate way that every statement that either side makes can be wrong. (-snip-).

When it comes to the escalator effect, different data sets show somewhat different effect. The GISS data that I have seen seems to show a steady average Global T from 1970 to the early 1990's, a substantial step from the early 90's to the early 2000's and a relatively steady average from then until now.

No question we are hotter now than in the 1970's (when climatologists were predicting a coming ice age), but the monotonic correlation with CO2 does not correlate, except over a long term.

If we assume that the CO2 driver is the main driver in the background, where is the analysis of all other factors that cause no net temperature climb over these relatively flat periods with step changes when the sub-drivers stop neutralizing the CO2 effect. (-snip-).

Have any of the models predicted this stair-step climb of temperature? If none do, then maybe they are missing a driver or incorrectly including it.

Is there any Experimernt, or any observation, that could occur that might lead the "settled science" folks to say, "We should look at that. We might be wrong". If there is nothing that can ever prove that your theory is wrong, than it is not a scientific theory. it is just a belief.

Some day I would like to see a fair and balanced discussion on data linking CO2 to warming and on alternative potential drivers to global warming, rather than this constant barrage of why the other guys are 100% wrong?

David J Matz, PH.D

Guemas et al. Attribute Slowed Surface Warming to the Oceans

william at 06:00 AM on 17 April, 2013

Esop, That situation may end in a rather large speed bump. If you look at the NSIDC web site for October, they report about half way down, warm air over open water and winds from the south (SW with Coriolis). That sounds very much like a short, autumn reversal of the Polar Hadley cell. With more open water each year, this situation should occur, on average, earlier and earlier each year. Instead of climate zones creeping northward at about 4km pa, we should have a lurch northward as you no longer have surface air pouring southward compressing the climate zones. This should raise the temperature averages rather sharply. It will be interesting to see the escalator graph ten years from now.

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