Why are some people so convinced that global warming climate change has ended and we're in a cooling period?

Question

There are people who make this bold claim, but never show real evidence of it.

To do that, you would first have to prove that the global mean temperature of the planet is dropping steadily over a number of years (unlike global warming which does the opposite).  And you would have to prove every major institution that studies climate wrong.

You're living in the US or somewhere where it is the middle of winter and there is high elevation, you've gotten a lot of snow perhaps... so that must mean global warming has gone away... the temperature of the oceans clearly must have cooled and CO2 levels have declined, and the glaciers all all coming back...

Really?

How can you come to that conclusion?  Because someone politically motivated told you on their talk radio show?  Or because it snowed where you are?

How can you or someone else take the position that global warming has ended, despited there still being NO major scientific organization in the WORLD that agrees?? 

"No remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#Statements_by_dissenting_organizations

Despite recent cooling in America and in the Alps, etc... According to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center as well as NASA, GLOBAL temps are still on the rise.

The average global land temperature last March was the warmest on record and ocean surface temperatures were the 13th warmest. Combining the land and the ocean temperatures, the 'overall' 'global' temperature ranked the SECOND WARMEST for the month of March.  Global temperature averages have been recorded since 1880.

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080417_marchstats.html


The year 2007 tied for SECOND WARMEST in the period of instrumental data, behind the record warmth of 2005, in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis. 2007 tied 1998, which had leapt a remarkable 0.2°C above the prior record with the help of the El Nino of the century. 

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2008/01/15/did-global-warming-stop-in-1998-jim-hansen-says-no.aspx

MTGAP · Accepted Answer

Some people argue that since it was warmer in 1998, global warming must be a hoax. These people are usually misled with skewed data based on using 1998 as a starting point.

antarcticice · Answer

The current claim (there are so many it's hard to keep up) is that it has cooled over the last 5 years. Like their other claims the real evidence doesn't backup the claim.

With the exception of 1998 most of the ten warmest years in the 150 year climate record are in the 2000s what is the trend for this year 

2008 - (based on the 11 months so far) 0.48°C (+0.86°F) above
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2008/ann/ann08.html

2007 - 0.55°C (+0.99°F) above average (Ranked 5th warmest)
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2007/ann/global.html

2006 - 0.54°C (+0.97°F) above average (Ranked 5th warmest)
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2006/ann/global.html

2005 - 0.58°C (1.04°F) above average (Ranked 2nd warmest)
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2005/ann/global.html

2004 - 0.54°C (0.97°F) above long term trend (Ranked 4th warmest)
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2004/ann/global.html

2003 - 0.56°C (1.01°F) above average (Ranked 2nd warmest)

While the estimate for 2008 is done slightly the temps 2003, 2005 and 2007 dismiss the myth that temps have been dropping for five years.

Sagebrush · Answer

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! You are so full of it your eyes must be brown. Let us analyze your rebuttals: You use Wikipedia as your authoritative scientific source. You have to be completely NUTZ! Ha! Ha! Then you go on and use NASA as your authority and we all now know that NOAA and NASA are shills for the false science of Global Warming. Those are three sources that are scientifically unreliable and you use them. I see you also use GISS. Jimmy Hansen, who is now a full time Communist agitator, used to be the head of that organization. Back in the 70s he was advocating an impending Ice Age while working for H. H. Lamb. Here is what that crooked little data manipulating pseudo-scientist has done.

http://www.c3headlines.com/fabricating-fake-temperatures.html

In your rebuttal to Jim Z you said, "the climate is sensative now to runaway feedback loops (i.e. frozen methane released from permafrost and oceanic methane hydrate deposits... the actual doomsday event that will accelerate global warming beyone even our most aggressive models and kill most of life on the planet as it did during the PETM)" MOST AGGRESSIVE MODELS!? You are thinking that models are actually worth something? Really? Where have you seen any accuracy in climate modeling? Jimmy Hansen couldn't accurately program for an imminent Ice Age back in the 70 and he couldn't accurately program for Global Warming in recent years. Climate models have proven to be zero percent accurate and yet you treat them as gospel. In fact, here is what one expert says about climate models:

Quote by David Frame, climate modeler, Oxford University: “Rather than seeing models as describing literal truth, we ought to see them as convenient fictions which try to provide something useful.”

So you have to admit, you get your scientific information from dubious sources. Well, real scientists deal with REAL science, not highly speculative sources like climate modeling, Wikipedia, NOAA and NASA, as you definitely do.

It would be my suggestion that you go back to school and learn some REAL science and quit cluttering your mind up with proven garbage.

Now as directly to your question: 'Global Warming' as a scientific term has never been started.

Quote by Steven Guilbeault, Canadian environemental journalist and Greenpeace member: "Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter."

So you as a claimed scientist, what do you say about that definition of Global Warming? If you really were a scientist, you would know that the first thing you do is to define your subject in a scientific method. That has never been done, to the best of my knowledge. But I suggest that in your scientifically perverted mind that just saying Global Warming is enough. Never mind the definitions of 'Anthropogenic global Warming' or  'Caqtastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming'. Just saying Global Warming scares the bejesus out of simple minded folks that take you for a scientific genius when you utter those scary words. And I might add, that only a sick perverted mind would take advantage of that situation. Just like Al Gore, who has made millions from his corrupt utterances.

So let me be clear, Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, Anthropogenic Global Warming, or even capitalized Global Warming has NEVER  been scientifically defined. So in effect, it never was started and so could never have ended. The same goes for Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change, Anthropogenic Climate Change, and capitalized Climate Change. Is that clear enough?

Greshnab · Answer

try looking at the CURRENT goddard maps... 
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/

they are saying it is cooler but getting warmer overall because they don't want to say we might be in a cooling period..

there are several issues with the current temp maps...
1) in 2007 across all of Russia and china they didn't have either the manpower or desire to gather temperature for September.. so they just entered August's temps again.. (yes they entered the hottest months temperatures TWICE... that is why despite everyone setting record lows across the globe it was reported as the second hottest year ever... after the data was studied the error was discovered....

Goddards answer was they didn't have the manpower to do QA on all the data.. .so billions of dollars worth of investments are being driven by temps taken on faith....
____________________________________


problem 2)  in the early 2k's noaa started a program to replace the thermostats with newer digital thermometers instead of the old mercury ones... unfortunatly the design they use has insufficient insulation and if exposed to long durations of direct sunlight can read anywhere from .2 to 1.0 degrees to high...

so when global warming is it's worst you have a thermometer that is unreliable in the summer?? 


i could go on and on and on... from choosing the coldest year on record for a 200 year period to start your graph and the hottest to end it etc etc etc.. but the bottom line is that until the GW people stop fudging the numbers to make it look worse then it is they are not going to be believable...

Incipient_planck · Answer

I think you can find data to support just about any position on this topic.   I think man made global warming is a trend and fashionable,  because as a meteorologist,  I find it disturbing that non weather and climate types buy so easily into the mythologies espoused by Al Gore.     I feel weather and weather patterns dictate a lot of what we experience and do know that a volcano can affect the surrounding environment for 20 or so years,  but the compensating factors outside that area will  be of an equal and corresponding amount of change in reverse of the affected area.

well for you all thumbers down.. go for it. it doesn't change reality, so go ahead and feel free to do as yo wish

aceking52 · Answer

For the past decade the world has not warmed. Global warming has stopped. It’s not a viewpoint or a sceptic’s inaccuracy. It’s an observational fact. Clearly the world of the past 30 years is warmer than the previous decades and there is abundant evidence (in the northern hemisphere at least) that the world is responding to those elevated temperatures. But the evidence shows that global warming as such has ceased. And you label others as "deniers"?

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.lrg.gif

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadat/hadat2/hadat2_monthly_global_mean.txt

Edit:

Well, I have provided the evidence to back it up! I suppose you do fit the definition for denial, or at least ignorant, uninformed and incapable of doing your own unbiased research. My claim is not as "bold" as you believe, if you look at available data--- All four major data sets say the same thing. The planet stopped warming about ten years ago and a slight cooling trend is present in all of the observed data. Take issue with me all you want, but I suggest that you should focus more on your own flawed and obvious poor research skills!  You seem to be confused about the fact that anomalies, like 2006, have NOTHING to do with warming or cooling trends.

Kevin Beckman · Answer

Mostly because I watch the Thermohaline Circulation for clues about climate change not CO2 levels. Although both are linked.

Anonymous · Answer

Well if you had studied History, geology and oceanography you would understand something about cycles. well 3 cycles came together in 1998 and brought a very hot years and now those cycles are on the down side heading towards the cool side. the 11 year sun cycle is stuck at the bottom and solar scientists are getting very worried if it does not start up again soon. the general feeling is if it goes more than 36 months we could be in for a solar minimum because the 35 and 100 year cycles are also on their down cycle. this kind of cycle interaction is what caused the  little ice age and the dark ages when millions died of starvation because of failed crops.

? · Answer

I would suggest that you stop looking for consensus.  Science isn't about concensus but politics is.  Trying to insert concensus into science deminishes science. 

300 years ago, we began to come out of the Maunder Minimum (aka the Little Ice Age).  Since then we have warmed about a degree a century.  

We have entered a colder period that is probably related to the PDO and the cooler period expected in the portion of the 11 year solar cycle with fewer sunspots.  It has cooled recently.  

Does this mean the general warming trend for the last 300 years has ended? No.  

The Little Ice Age isn't a positive name given to a period of time.  It was a cold period that resulted in more famines and crop failure.  Alarmists fretting that we have warmed should be careful what they wish for.  

Just because we have generally warmed doesn't mean that it will continue forever.  Do yourself a favor and study the chart from the Sargasso Sea.  It is one of many climate proxies but it may very well accurately depict the relative climate in the last few thousand years.  It doesn't indicate anything alarming to me except that we may very well warm much more than we have without moving out of normal natural fluctuations.

Anonymous · Answer

The missing hot spot in the troposphere that is supposed to happen to show the balance has tipped and disaster is upon us has not happened because Co2 released from the warming oceans has dehydrated that level and cooled it instead. But because the warmers do not read or study real research they are not aware of the new findings that prove Co2 is beneficial in the fight against warming instead of harmful. The increase in Co2 could very well be the exact reason we did not get the amount of warming predicted by them because the Co2 cooled the troposphere instead of warming it like they thought it would. I still think the consensus thing and peer review comes from people who were basically educated as lawyers but failed the bar exam and then shifted to science careers that had less challenging entry requirements. Because the majority of the pro AGW people just do not make sense logically let alone mathematically or scientifically.

http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm#
http://www.indiana.edu/~geol105/
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html#anchor2108263
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/The_Saturated_Greenhouse_Effect.htm
http://landshape.org/enm/greenhouse-thermodynamics-and-water-vapor/

Along with several hundred other potential drivers of which sunspot activity is the major item. I think most are confused by the fact that yes in the last 150 years the global average temperature has gone up by .7c. The point seen by skeptics is that 1850 was at the bottom of the Dalton solar minimum and so unnaturally cold. The real question is the basic claims made by the AGW fraternity as a priest uses the mantras and dogma of his church.

First is that it has never been this hot (1998) in all of human history. 
Well any decent historian or geologist knows that it has been considerably hotter at least 5 times previously in the last 8,000 years and one of those was only 600 years ago and another only 1,000 years ago. Both of these warm periods are exceedingly well documented historically and scientifically.

Second is that it has never gotten so hot so fast in all of human history. Well in that incident just 600 years ago it went in about 100 years from about 1.5c colder than present to 1c hotter than present (1998) and back to 1.5c colder. Historians dealing with the period and geologists worldwide document this 1400 event. Knowing these basic facts since my school days when they were covered as part of the basic education leaves me highly suspicious of the quality of the education children are getting these days.

Well the discussion still comes down to facts against opinion and all the facts still show that the current climate optimum is the coolest in 8,000 years. In fact of the 4 climate optimums in the last 1,000 years it is still the coolest and from onset to peak has been twice as long as the preceding ones. All the evidence proves our current climate is perfectly natural and that the alarmists are at war with harmless plant food that actually helps keep the planet from overheating at one end of the spectrum and getting to cold at the other. It is a climate moderator not a driver. All the listed factors of AGW still lack any even basic studies that warrant calling it a theory and in fact scientifically it does not even warrant being called a hypotheses. So far the best it can be termed is a political talking point, nothing more.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.lrg.gif

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Why are some people so convinced that global warming climate change has ended and we're in a cooling period?

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