Global Warming AND el Niño

Some people, especially climate deniers like David Rose, seem to have a hard time grasping the fact that more than one thing can affect global temperature at the same time. Some things, like man-made global warming, bring about a trend that keeps on giving. Others, like el Niño, cause temporary fluctuations that just don’t last.

How Much from el Niño?

Global temperature data, like most data, is a combination of trend and fluctuation. The trend is climate change, the fluctuations are noise.

Nominees for the “Proud to be Stupid” Club

Lamar Smith, chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives committee on science, space, and technology, allowed his committee to tweet this:

A Sordid Tale of Climate Denial

It started with David Rose in the U.K. Daily Mail, was followed by a variant from Ross Clark in the U.K. Spectator, and now another version has appeared by James Delingpole in Breitbart News. They’re textbook examples of how fact is twisted to mislead, then travels around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.

Prolonging a NON-slowdown in global warming

A great deal of discussion lately has centered around the idea of a recent “slowdown” in global temperature. With 2016 destined to break the hottest-year-ever record for the third time in a row, it would seem to be over now, even if it was real. I say “if” because scientists disagree about whether or not it ever was even a real thing — and I’m one of those who thinks it was not.

A new paper in Nature Communications investigates the likelihood of a “prolonged slowdown in global warming in the early 21st century.” But like most (if not all) papers that discuss the so-called “slowdown” it does nothing to establish that such a slowdown is real, that it was anything but random fluctuation that looks like a slowdown. Those who do statistics, and do it right, learned one of its most important lessons a long, long time ago: that “looks like” is a very bad way to draw conclusions.

Ross Clark Turns Crybaby in the U.K. Spectator

Ross Clark, in the U.K. Spectator, whines about “Global temperatures have fallen — so why isn’t it being reported?”

Because it’s not news, Ross.

How Stupid Does David Rose Think You Are?

Earth is heating up, fast. This year we’re destined to set a new record for hottest year globally … for the third year in a row. Sea level is now high enough that coastal cities are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to fight flooding they get even when there’s no rain or wind or storm … just high tide. Arctic temperatures lately have been crazy hot, not just hot, but crazy hot, while sea ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic is at all-time lows for this time of year. Greenland ice is disappearing before our eyes. Heat waves are on the rise, killing thousands. Persistent drought plagues the U.S. southwest, but in other areas, when rain does fall it’s heavier than it used to be, causing once-in-a-thousand-years flooding to become a lot more common that once in a thousand years. Climate has been changing, not for the better, and it still is.

Which Satellite Data?

There are five data sets of global average temperature in the troposphere (the part of the atmosphere where our weather occurs) based on satellite data, from the two main providers, RSS (Remote Sensing Systems) and UAH (University of Alabama at Huntsville). UAH provides two of them: TLT (temperature in the lower troposphere) and TMT (temperature in the mid-troposphere); while RSS provides three: TLT, TMT, and TTT (temperature in the total troposphere). They’re all different, and each has gone through a number of revisions since the satellites began collecting data in 1979.

Well worth watching

New Global Warming Video: Global Temperature Data

You can view it here, and you can view it below.