Poirot,

Interesting link. Thanks. I'd missed that one

It's actually even worse than it looks.

See this graphic:

http://skepticalscience.com/graphics/ENSO_Temps_500.gif

The last El Nino year was in 2005. 2009 was not the hottest year on record but it was the hottest La Nina year on record. Ditto 2010 was the hottest neutral year on record while 2012 was the second hottest La Nina year.

So even without the correction from the missing Arctic weather stations the "pause" was largely illusory.

The graphic I linked comes from Skeptical Science, an Australian website maintained by John Cook.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/

Skeptical Science is the site I recommend for people who seriously want to learn about the science of climate

LOL SPQR

I have some sad news for you.

I hope you're sitting down while you read this.

Here it comes ready or not.

The laws of physics don't care how many debating points you score with Poirot or anybody else.

In fact the laws of physics are supremely indifferent to SPQR.

Unfortunately it's the laws of physics, not your skill as a debater, that determine whether adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes the Earth to heat up.

C'est la guerre.

Poirot, and others interested in climate science.

Ocean acidification may turn out to be a more intractable problem than global warming.

http://phys.org/news/2013-11-expert-ocean-acidification-percent-century.html

On the other hand most marine populations turn over quite quickly so there may be scope for evolutionary adaptations.

The bottom line that we're running an experiment in which the risks are unquantifiable.

Incidentally I wonder whether this is a CYOA piece by Melbourne's perpetually angry young man, Andrew Bolt.

Don’t think this warming pause is permanent

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/dont_think_this_warming_pause_is_permanent/

Lately our Andrew has taken to punting the line that global warming is happening but it's good for you. That's more interesting question than blanket global warming denialism.

Hi Stevenlmeyer,

You're missing the point.

My comment was not so much about the validity of AGW as the integrity of many who spruik it on OLO.

We had an incident a number of months back where Rajendra Pachauri was quoted in the media as saying that temperatures hadn't risen in 15 years [regardless of what has happened/been found since, that was the thinking at that time]

And at that time I and a few others sought clarification and answers from the true believers on OLO --principally Poirot. She dodged or denied it, it wasn't so.

Now, since she thinks she might have found a excuse she comes with something to the effect of: "Hey guys remember that hiatus we talked about, well this might explain it". It harks of dishonesty.

If it were about "the science " they ought to have been able to say "Yep, there is an unexplained hiatus but the researchers are doing a recheck". A scientist acknowledges inconvenient findings, a political hack hides them.

Incidentally, Poirot is somewhere left of Lee Rhiannon.

What a load of rubbish, SPQR.

You "skeptics" sure can spin it.

Here's an article which I routinely post when you lot raise Graham Lloyd's misrepresentation of Pachauri's view.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/australian-pachauri-global-warming.html

"So the reality is that global warming continues unabated. Despite this reality, an article by Graham Lloyd in The Australian (paywalled) claims that the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Rajendra Pachauri agreed that there has been a 17-year pause in global temperature rises. Unfortunately we don't know exactly what Pachauri said on the subject, because Lloyd did not quote him directly (which is a red flag).

The IPCC communications office tells Skeptical Science that The Australian has not provided a transcript or audio file of the interview for verification, but it does not accurately represent Pachauri's thoughts on the subject - namely that as discussed in this post, global surface temperatures have plateaued (though over the past decade, not 17 years), and that this in no way disproves global warming.

Despite the lack of useful verifiable content, the story headline has nevertheless gone viral. This is not the first time Lloyd has been caught misrepresenting climate science in The Australian - in January of this 2013 he wrongly claimed that a study had found no link between global warming and sea level rise. Oceanographer John Church, who was co-author on the misrepresented research in question and also Nuccitelli et al. (2012) from which Figure 1 above originated, set the record straight, and The Australian was forced to retract the article."

Note this:

"Again note that the story is paraphrasing Pachauri rather than quoting him directly. Had he said that global surface air temperatures have plateaued and that this doesn't disprove global warming, he would be 100% correct..."

So your little burst of lament is bunkum.

It's the "surface air temperature" that "appeared" to have plateaued.

Scientist maintained that the oceans were/are continuing to warm.

The above article: " Approximately 90% of global warming goes into heating the ocean...."

Have a good read - you might learn something.

Poirot the parrot witlessly links to the Kowtan and Way paper which has allegedly found a cooling bias in the HadCRUT 4 global temperature data. Poirot will never read or understand this paper, or any other paper she links to, which makes her a typical AGW groupie.

K&W employ the technique of kriging to interpolate missing data. Kriging is informed guessing used by geologists. Kriging is based on a spatial correlation between samples, in this case temperature. The technique for for kriging uses a variogram, which divides samples into pairs separated by increasing distances; in addition, the pairs at increasing distances are generated using relatively narrow directional windows around the three orthogonal planes [that's 3 dimensions Poirot you klutz]. After being plotted on paper and taped into a 3-d model, it is fairly easy to determine the spatial orientation of the oblate spheroid [the Earth's shape] of the sample correlation as well as the distance of the major, minor, and intermediate axes.

Typically the correlation degenerates with distance despite attempts by AGW believers to introduce the concept of teleconnection or similarity of climate anomalies over vast distances. But K&W haven't even used correlation points; their main point is that the cooling bias is because the Arctic is excluded from HadCRUT 4 and the Arctic is warming faster than any other place on the planet.

How they can say that when by their own admission the Arctic is devoid of surface temperature measurements is overcome by a myriad of interlocking statistical methods which are then compared on the basis of a hybrid union between UAH satellite and surface data in areas where the surface data exists.

They then extrapolate to the Arctic where UAH does have coverage. But UAH coverage of the Arctic is confounded by ice over water and significant temperature inversions which would give false warming biases!

Furthermore kriging cannot work over disparate surfaces such as land, water and ice.

Great work Poirot

Poirot

In this case I think cohenite MAY have a point.

I say "MAY" because I suspect he simply copied or paraphrased what he wrote from some website without acknowledgement. I've seen no evidence that he is capable of such a sophisticated analysis.

So I'll rephrase. The author(s) of whatever website cohenite copied or paraphrased has a point.

As it happens I am familiar with kriging. In fact I knew Danie Krige who invented the technique. I think this use of kriging is a bit of a reach. Cowtan and Way may be correct. In fact I think they probably are. But I don't think this proves it.

We have to live with the fact that there are both temporal and spatial gaps in our data. Over time these will be filled in and we'll have a more complete picture.

SPQR wrote:

>>If it were about "the science " they ought to have been able to say "Yep, there is an unexplained hiatus but the researchers are doing a recheck". >>

That is exactly what scientists have been doing. However when we adjust for El Nino La Nina cycles there does not seem to have been a pause at all.

There is also the Argo data which suggest the oceans are better at burying heat than we once thought.