ricter I think you overstate the consensus... and the science is clearly far more confused than you pretend.
here is a small critique of Hansens recent paper on the interplay between forcing aerosols co2 and temps.
Note Hansen is one of the top agw nutters in the industry. He has never been afraid to spew crap and act like it is science.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/16/quote-of-the-week-hansen-concedes-the-age-of-flatness/
Dr. James Hansen and Reto Ruedy of NASA GISS have written a paper (non peer reviewed) with a remarkable admission in it. It is titled Global Temperature Update Through 2012.
Here is the money quote, which pretty much ends the caterwauling from naysayers about global temperature being stalled for the last decade.
The five-year mean global temperature has been flat for the last decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slow down in the growth rate of net climate forcing.
Gosh, I thought Hansen had claimed that âclimate forcingsâ had overwhelmed natural variability?
In 2003 Hansen wrote a widely distributed (but not peer reviewed) paper called Can We Defuse the Global Warming Time Bomb? in which he argues that human-caused forcings on the climate are now greater than the natural ones, and that this, over a long time period, can cause large climate changes.
As we shall see, the small forces that drove millennial climate changes are now overwhelmed by human forcings.
According to Hansenâs latest essay, apparently not. So much for âda bombâ.
Here are some other interesting excerpts from his recent essay, Bob Tisdale take note:
An update through 2012 of our global analysis reveals 2012 as having practically the same temperature as 2011, significantly lower than the maximum reached in 2010. These short-term global fluctuations are associated principally with natural oscillations of tropical Pacific sea surface temperatures summarized in the Nino index in the lower part of the figure. 2012 is nominally the 9th warmest year, but it is indistinguishable in rank with several other years, as shown by the error estimate for comparing nearby years. Note that the 10 warmest years in the record all occurred since 1998.
The current stand-still of the 5-year running mean global temperature may be largely a consequence of the facr [sic] that the first half of the past 10 years had predominantly El Nino conditions, and the second half had predominantly La Nina conditions.
The approximate stand-still of global temperature during 1940-1975 is generally attributed to an approximate balance of aerosol cooling and greenhouse gas warming during a period of rapid growth of fossil fuel use with little control on particulate air pollution, but quantitative interpretation has been impossible because of the absence of adequate aerosol measurements.
That last part about 1940-1975 is telling, given that we now have a cleaner atmosphere, and less aerosols to reflect sunlight, it goes without saying that more sunlight now reaches the surface. Since GISS is all about the surface temperature, that suggests (to rational thinkers at least) that some portion of the surface temperature rise post 1975 is due to pollution controls being enacted.
But, heâs still arguing for an imbalance, even though flatness abounds. Seems like equilibrium to meâ¦
Climate change expectations.
The continuing planetary imbalance and the rapid increase of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel assure that global warming will continue on decadal time scales. Moreover, our interpretation of the larger role of unforced variability in temperature change of the past decade suggests that global temperature will rise significantly in the next few years as the tropics moves inevitably to the next El Nino phase.
Except when natural forcings overwhelm the human component of course.
Quote from Ricter:
You're just trying to get futurecurrents going.
The chart indicates high temp anomalies are significantly exceeding low temp anomalies. It also shows there have been enough recent low temp anomalies to flatten the 5-year mean. The Met did not say warming has stopped, it has said the rate of warming increase has fallen.
"The scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth's climate system is unequivocally warming, and it is more than 90% certain that humans are causing most of it through activities that increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as deforestation and burning fossil fuels. In addition, it is likely that some potential further greenhouse gas warming has been offset by increased aerosols.[1][2][3][4] This scientific consensus is expressed in synthesis reports, by scientific bodies of national or international standing, and by surveys of opinion among climate scientists. Individual scientists, universities, and laboratories contribute to the overall scientific opinion via their peer-reviewed publications, and the areas of collective agreement and relative certainty are summarised in these high level reports and surveys.
"National and international science academies and scientific societies have assessed current scientific opinion on climate change. These assessments are generally consistent with the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), summarized below:
" Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as evidenced by increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, the widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.[5]
" Most of the global warming since the mid-20th century is very likely due to human activities.[6]
"Benefits and costs of climate change for [human] society will vary widely by location and scale.[7] Some of the effects in temperate and polar regions will be positive and others elsewhere will be negative.[7] Overall, net effects are more likely to be strongly negative with larger or more rapid warming."[7]
"[...] the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time"[8]
"The resilience of many ecosystems is likely to be exceeded this century by an unprecedented combination of climate change, associated disturbances (e.g. flooding, drought, wildfire, insects, ocean acidification) and other global change drivers (e.g. land-use change, pollution, fragmentation of natural systems, over-exploitation of resources)"[9]
"No scientific body of national or international standing maintains a formal opinion dissenting from any of these main points; the last was the American Association of Petroleum Geologists,[10] which in 2007[11] updated its 1999 statement rejecting the likelihood of human influence on recent climate with its current non-committal position.[12] Some other organizations, primarily those focusing on geology, also hold non-committal positions."
Finally, granting for the sake of argument that warming has stopped, the world's ice may continue to melt, because it's "warm enough". This would continue until a new equilibrium is reached at higher altitudes and higher latitudes.
