Human-caused global warming continues as predicted

Thankfully, the influence of global warming deniers appears to be shrinking steadily. Reality has a way of weeding out those who fail to respect it.

Even though this can take a while, truthful facts win out in the end.

But fossil fuel industry-funded deniers, aided and abetted by anti-science media outlets like Fox News, continue to distort the disturbing truth of how humans are warming the Earth's climate much more rapidly than nature has ever done it on her/its own.

For example, when I briefly channel surf onto right-wing talk radio, fairly frequently I hear that "global warming has stopped."

That's bullshit, of course. Yet lies often have a modicum of truth sprinkled over the top of them to make the falsehood easier to swallow.

Climate Progress has a great graph that shows how the B.S. is promulgated in the post, "As Scientists Predicted, Global Warming Continues." (You'll probably need to click on the image below to see the animation; or click on the link and scroll down to the graph.)

Here's the explanation of how the "skeptics" are twisting the truth as known by reputable climate scientists. 

One often hears the statement in the media that global warming stopped in 1998, or that there has been no global warming for the past 16 years. Why pick 16 years? Why not some nice round number like 20 years? Or better yet, 30 years, since the climate is generally defined as the average weather experienced over a period of 30 years or longer?

Temperatures at Earth’s surface undergo natural, decades-long warming and cooling trends, related to the La Niña/El Niño cycle and the 11-year sunspot cycle. The reason one often hears the year 1998 used as a base year to measure global temperature trends is that this is a cherry-picked year.

An extraordinarily powerful El Niño event that was the strongest on record brought about a temporary increase in surface ocean temperatures over a vast area of the tropical Pacific that year, helping boost global surface temperatures to the highest levels on record (global temperatures were warmer in both 2005 and 2010, but not by much.) But in the years from 2005 – 2012, La Niña events have been present for at least a portion of every single year, helping keep Earth’s surface relatively cool.

Thus, if one draws a straight-line fit of global surface temperatures from 1998 to 2012, a climate trend showing little global warming results. If one picks any year prior to 1998, or almost any year after 1998, a global warming trend does result. The choice of 1998 is a deliberate abuse of statistics in an attempt to manipulate people into drawing a false conclusion on global temperature trends. One of my favorite examples of this manipulation of statistics is shown an animated graph called “The Escalator”, created by skepticalscience.com (Figure 1).

There's another highly informative bit of truth-telling in this post: a short video that shows clearly how human-caused global warming continues on unabated, once the transitory effects of volcanic activity and El Nino are taken out of the long term temperature trend.

 

Comments

[tucson]

Brian,

Since you have not, as yet, received any comments on this post I am providing one so you won't feel disappointed and start to fret and wring your hands. However, I have nothing to add on this topic to what I have said before.

Even though we disagree on many political topics to the point that I feel like shaking you until you wake up and you might feel like doing the same to me, I am wishing that you have a blast out there. Just don't vote! ;)

[klem]

"Thankfully, the influence of global warming deniers appears to be shrinking steadily."

Here's something from Huffpo "Recent polling conducted by the Pew Research Center suggests that a greater number of people in the U.S. are accepting the reality of climate change.... Yet only 42 percent say this warming is "mostly caused by human activity," according to Pew."

That means that 58% do not believe that human are responsible. I'd say the influence of global warming deniers is not shrinking steadily at all.

cheers

[Richard Windsor]

AS PREDICTED? The Non-Skeptical Science people should actually read The Economist article they pretend to refute. The inconvenient truth is not only aren’t global temperatures rising as predicted, they’ve already fallen below the 25-75 percent confidence interval that climate consensus models projected. Global temperatures are poised to fall below the 5-95 percent confidence range as well.

If global temperatures were rising as predicted, Non-Skeptical Science wouldn’t have to keep trotting out a defensive “escalator” animation year after year after year to distract from the failed climate consensus prediction of an elevator heading skyward.

[Joe Woods]

The Economist article clearly states that the flat warming trend of the last 15 years is a puzzle to be solved but does not mean human caused climate change is not real.

[Brian Hines]

Joe, the puzzle has pretty much been solved. See:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998-intermediate.htm

Global warming has continued in the oceans. Global warming caused by humans has continued -- obvious when other temporary natural factors like volcanic activity are factored out.

There doesn't seem to be any doubt: human caused global warming is happening; it hasn't slowed down; anyone who doubts this isn't paying attention to the facts.

[Joe Woods]

Brian,
Did you even bother to read the article in The Economist? "Over the past decade the long-term rise in surface seawater temperatures seems to have stalled (see chart 2), which suggests that the oceans are not absorbing as much heat from the atmosphere" from the NOAA pacific marine environmental laboratory chart in the article. More research is clearly needed to discover all of the "shades of grey" facts to the long term puzzle of Climate anomalies-being closed minded or cherry picking facts that suit your world view will only limit your understanding.

[Brian Hines]

Joe, did you even read the Skeptical Science link? Ocean temperatures are on a steady rise. If you don't believe that web site, believe the EPA:

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/oceans/sea-surface-temp.html

"Sea surface temperatures have been higher during the past three decades than at any other time since reliable observations began in 1880 (see Figure 1)."

"Sea surface temperature increased over the 20th century and continues to rise. From 1901 through 2011, temperatures rose at an average rate of 0.13°F per decade (see Figure 1)."

If you look at the chart on the EPA site, you'll see that temperature rises have apparently "stalled" repeatedly over the longterm rising period.

Global warming is long term. Looking at short term ups and down tells you little. Time to educate yourself about basic science, Joe.

[Joe Woods]

Time will certainly tell how severe the effects of G.W. will be; however I seriously doubt the "worst-case scenarios" will come to pass-Mother Earth possesses an innate ability to heal herself!