Here’s Madsen Pirie of the Adam Smith Institute:
Prof Bob Carter, a geologist at James Cook University, Queensland, engaged in paleoclimate research, writes a robustly skeptical piece in the Telegraph about the currently fashionable consensus on human induced global warming. He points out that the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia show that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase.
Scott Burgess also parrots Carter’s ‘finding’ that “there’s been exactly zero global temperature rise since 1998″.
Gee, I wonder why the focus on 1998? Well, if you actually go to the website of the Climate Research Unit this is what you find:
The 1990s were the warmest decade in the series. The warmest year of the entire series has been 1998, with a temperature of 0.58°C above the 1961-90 mean. Nine of the ten warmest years in the series have now occurred in the past ten years (1995-2004) … Analyses of over 400 proxy climate series (from trees, corals, ice cores and historical records) show that the 1990s is the warmest decade of the millennium and the 20th century the warmest century. The warmest year of the millennium was 1998 …
So it appears Pirie and Burgess would have us believe that because the last couple of years were only slightly cooler than the warmest year of the millennium, anthropogenic global warming is a non-issue. Of course, it’s also possible that they’re not being deliberately misleading but instead are dim or incurious enough to be unaware of the real facts on the issue. Either way, the disconnection of these pseudo-scientific and self-appointed experts from the actual evidence is startling. In a fine example of either a remarkable brass neck or extreme self-delusion, Burgess even attacks the Guardian and Independent newspapers for not “providing multifacted information to their readers, who might then be able to distill a considered position on the matter”.
Hat-tip to Tim Lambert for the link.
This entry was posted on Saturday, April 15th, 2006 at 11:38 PM and filed in Environment. Bookmark this entry. Follow the comments here with the RSS 2.0 feed. Apologies. Comments and trackbacks are both currently closed.
Gullible skeptics
Bob Carter’s fraudulent claim that global warming ended in 1998 seems to have been swallowed uncritically by lots of gullible global warming skeptics. Jim at Our Word is our Weapon plays whack a mole with a couple of them, Madsen…
Posted on 16-Apr-06 at 6:01 pm | PermalinkWhile I disagree with Bob Carter’s conclusion, you did not and have not provided a refutation to his argument — instead you’re just saying it’s prima facie false. That’s not good enough — what’s your argument? How do you know we did not enter a new cooling phase in 1998?
Posted on 16-Apr-06 at 7:31 pm | PermalinkThanks for the comment, Rufus.
“How do you know we did not enter a new cooling phase in 1998?”
That would be a funny-looking cooling trend, since the last four years have been hotter than 1999 or 2000. And 1998 really only stands out because it featured “the strongest El Niño of the past century”.
But it’s really too early to say for sure whether 1998 marks some kind of long term turning point. What is pretty clear is that there’s been a general upward trend in global temperature in recent decades. There’s no evidence that the primary cause of this upward trend is not human production of greenhouse gases, and Carter notably doesn’t seem to feel the need to provide any himself.
Posted on 16-Apr-06 at 11:01 pm | Permalink[…] Our World is Our Weapon […]
Posted on 18-Apr-06 at 4:28 pm | PermalinkRufus, look at the graph. By eye, it looks like if you start your analysis in 1997 or 1999 you’ll end up with a completely different conclusion. Inference: the ststement “we are now cooling” is not very robust.
Posted on 18-Apr-06 at 5:42 pm | Permalinkwhat we fail to realise is that what is in front of us is allready behind us,but this time it will be greater,the signs are there to see,thats if u r not blinded by untruths,the coast of ireland is being eroded day by day,three years ago people left an island off new zealand,within the last month or so people left an island off hawaii,the salt beds in australia will become an ocean once more,will the people listen to the words of the bible telling us that the end of the world will come when the world returns to the days of noah,or will they listen to al gore,or will they need something great to see that will scare them into listening,derek
Posted on 28-Sep-06 at 3:39 pm | PermalinkMean global surface temperatures have not increased since 1998. Australian hydrology can demonstrate an underlying process that influences global temperatures over periods of two to three decades.
Every two or three decades sea surface temperatures in the Pacific warm or cool. The changing sea surface temperatures influence atmospheric movements in the Tropical Convergence Zone resulting in periods of more frequent and intense El Nino and, alternatively, periods of more frequent and intense La Nina. This is seen in statistical analysis of Australian flooding. A period of more frequent and intense La Nina is seen in more rainfall in Australia in the period between 1946 and 1976. This is also a period of cooler Pacific temperatures and a global cooling trend. A period of declining Australian rainfall associated with more frequent and intense El Nino is seen between 1977 and 1998.
The episodic and multi decadal phenomenon seems related to solar variability - although this implies greater climate sensitivity to solar variability in ways that people are just starting to explore.
What seems certain is that cooler Pacific sea surface temperatures bring more rainfall to Australia and moderate global temperature. A ‘cool phase’ of Pacific sea surface temperatures may have commenced in 1998.
Posted on 07-Nov-06 at 12:26 am | Permalink