Skeptical Science on the “16 Years” nonsense
January 10, 2013
If you’ve been unfortunate enough recently to be in earshot of Fox News, talk radio, seen a tattered copy of the once great Wall Street Journal, or even if you had an uncomfortable holiday dinner with Aunt Teabag and Uncle Dittohead, you probably have seen/heard the meme du jour in climate denial circles.
“There’s been no warming in 16 years.”
uhh, Deniers, Australia called and they’d like some clarification. But never mind.
John Cook and the Skeptical Science team have come up with a brilliant, and short, video response that should bring this conversation to a quick conclusion. Be sure to bookmark the post at skepsci.
The video above perfectly complements the “escalator” diagram that also effectively illustrates the art of cherry picking – see below.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
January 10, 2013 at 1:15 am
[…] If you’ve been unfortunate enough recently to be in earshot of Fox News, talk radio, seen a tattered copy of the once great Wall Street Journal, or even if you had an uncomfortable holiday d… […]
January 10, 2013 at 1:16 am
China might like to know too.
Anyway this is a perfect example of what’s wrong with SkS’ warpath approach. Their argument is obviously flawed but they can’t won’t would die rather than listen anything or anybody who would explain it to them.
So we’re left with 16 years of no warmING, perhaps 20 if the Met Office is right for once, but much effort is put into pretend analysis trying to demonstrate the opposite.
January 10, 2013 at 1:47 am
Either you are a very clever satirist or you are suffering from a severe case of Dunning-Kruger Effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
I’m beginning to favor the former. Surely no one could be a dumb as you pretend to be. 🙂
January 10, 2013 at 2:26 am
Moron = moron
Renewable energy in the People’s Republic of China
BTW, where do you take your 20 years of no warming from? Your sauna? Maybe you should consider your electricity supplier then. Solar and wind are more sustainable 🙂
January 10, 2013 at 3:20 am
I didn’t watch the second video, but the first video is backed up by (or inspired by) a paper by Foster and Rahmstorf 2011:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022
January 10, 2013 at 4:25 am
How do you justify saying “16 years of no warming”?
And explain the flaws in SkS’ reasoning – you have an audience right here.
January 10, 2013 at 4:45 am
If the argument is so obviously flawed, it should be easy to point out what the flaw is. As this approach was taken by Foster and Rahmstorf 2011, to remove the natural fluctuations.
So is the obvious flaw in Foster’s and Rahmstorf’s approach, SkS’s application of the approach, or is it you just don’t like what the analysis reveals?
Saying something is flawed without being able to show where the flaw is, is not very convincing.
January 14, 2013 at 1:21 pm
John – if I posted about “John Silvester thinks cows can fly” without you ever having said so, my argument would look obviously flawed to you too.
Furthermore, once anybody states that 16 years are not long enough, any further discussion should start from “how long is long enough” and “how short is meaningful enough”, not a graph saying “look if I take it this long I can come up with a warming signal”.
IOW if not 16 why 160 and not 1600 or 16000/
January 16, 2013 at 1:27 pm
omnologos
Flying cows and pigs for that matter is not relevent to this discusion. However, if someone were to make that statment I think it would be quite easy to show the flaw in such a statement.
So please tell me what what the flaw is with the argument presented in this post.
The post argues that 16 years is too short to meet some statistical significance level. So what is the flaw with this argument.
As to how long is long enough, 30 yrs, as we are discussing climate, not weather.
January 16, 2013 at 1:51 pm
I shall repeat myself
1. Nobody I know has ever made what the SkS video says it’s the way skeptics see global warming. So the claim that the video shows the way skeptics see global warming, is a fake claim
2. Cook doesn’t make the case for 30 years. Why not? Because even 30 years might not mean much. Say, if temps baselined even for 50 years, still we could build a graph starting in the 1850s and clearly showing global warming.
I am afraid as long as the focus is on how to demonstrate global warming instead of how to falsify it, we will always run into baseless arguments that cannot be logically answered to, just as the arbitrary choices made by SkS for their graphs can’t. I
January 10, 2013 at 5:45 am
Yes, I can understand why omnologos would hate an approach that uses statistical analysis and simple language to explain why denier arguments are wrong.
So we’re left with 16 years of continued global warming, but much effort is put into denying reality and pretending the opposite.
January 10, 2013 at 7:38 am
The “how skeptics view” section is completely fabricated. I cannot remember any skeptic making such an argument, and in any case there is no organization of skeptics to whom to attribute views. The video, in this respect, is a lie, compounded by the simple truth that even the stones know by now graphs and their meanings depend on starting points and how data is averaged.
—-
There has been no statistically significant increase in world temps for 16 years. That’s a fact. The Met Office doesn’t expect any such increase for at least 4 years. That’s another fact.
You can always and very democratically argue that 16 years isn’t enough, or that warming will resume later, or that this stuff happens, or whatever else. But to change a fact into “nonsense”, that’s a denial outright.
January 10, 2013 at 9:30 am
There has never been a 16 year period of statistically significant warming since records began. There can’t be. Statistical significance cannot be achieved over such a time given the existence of short-term variables, mostly due to the influence of ocean currents. The value of the mantra which you repeat lies only in the fact that most people don’t know what it means – or, to be more precise, what it doesn’t mean.
January 10, 2013 at 9:35 am
Phil Jones of UEA is surely awaiting to her your insight.
In the meanwhile Tom Chivers comes out a reasonable man: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100197458/aussie-heatwaves-and-the-met-office-reveal-the-certainties-and-uncertainties-that-are-forgotten-in-the-climate-row/
January 10, 2013 at 9:36 pm
“There has been no statistically significant increase in world temps for 16 years. That’s a fact”
No, your statement is almost certainly complete and utter bullshit. There are at least two years within the past 16 years which show significant world-wide temperature increases from the previous year.
There are plenty more years which would show a statistically significant increase if one decided to cherry pick a LOW year (instead of a high year) as the baseline year.
Your statement is only true if you restate it as “There has been no statistically significant increase in world temperatures over a particular 16 year period – ie, the one starting in 1996 (or whatever is the high anomaly year that was used to generate such a deliberately deceptive statement).
You really need to state your deliberately disingenuous disinformational statements more carefully, omnologos. People will start to talk.
January 10, 2013 at 9:48 pm
Re: “the one starting in 1996 (or whatever is the high anomaly year that was used to generate such a deliberately deceptive statement).”
The highly anomalous year was 1998 which until 2012 was the warmest year in the record. This was doe to the strongest ENSO (El Nino) ever recorded.
Dr. Jeff Masters discusses 2012 versus 1998 here:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2324
January 10, 2013 at 11:36 pm
Roger – thanks for making my point. Choose your start and end point, and you can say what you want. The SkS video is rubbish. My statement is a fact, just as it’s a fact that global warming is evident from the mid XIX century to today.
January 11, 2013 at 12:38 pm
NS joins the nonsense crowd
http://www.newscientist.com/mobile/article/dn23060-has-global-warming-ground-to-a-halt.html
January 11, 2013 at 8:55 pm
No, omnologos. I did not make your point – I contradicted it. Your statement, as stated, is a lie. Please read more carefully.
January 10, 2013 at 4:19 pm
Sounds like the sort of thing an infallible Pope would say.
Funny, Phil Jones and the Met Office were “crooks and liars” during the “Climategate” faux-scandal debacle. Now they are the sole repository of absolute truth.
January 10, 2013 at 4:35 pm
For the record, and the ever-watchful British State, I have never said anything of the sort (‘crooks’, ‘liars’)
January 12, 2013 at 4:13 pm
This is a reply to your comment further down about New Scientist joining the nonsense crowd although you didn’t bother to explain what that meant.
Perhaps you didn’t read Fred Pearce’s Aug 2008 article “Climate Change: The Next Ten Years” – see alternate link below.
If you had, it would have been clear to you that scientific discussion on this have been going on for years – I’m speaking about practising, dedicated climate scientists arguing about what the impact of complex cycles might be.
climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2008/08/climate-change-next-ten-years-by-fred.html
January 10, 2013 at 1:18 am
Thanks for the repost, Peter.
Kevin C deserves the credit for this video – he conceived it, wrote it (with lots of SkS review feedback from the other SkS authors) and Daniel Bailey did a great job with the voice over.
January 10, 2013 at 2:15 am
Kevin is obviously some kind of genius. great stuff.
January 10, 2013 at 1:29 am
Democracy NOW! headline today:
“Australia on Fire: Record-Shattering Heat, Wildfires Engulf World’s Largest Exporter of Coal”
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/9/australia_on_fire_record_shattering_heat
January 10, 2013 at 4:30 am
Have you seen the photos Chris Hadfield took of the brush fires from the space station? Unbelievable.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/australian-brush-fires-photographed-from-space
January 10, 2013 at 5:11 am
Morin,
Thanks for the spacy view of wispy smoke. And let me share this set of photos from Jordan:
http://blogs.sacbee.com/photos/2013/01/winter-storm-brings-more-miser.html
As a newly certified Lord Monckton acolyte, I have to say to you that, on average, the weather in Australia and Jordan is perfect! See how much fun science can be? Whee!
January 10, 2013 at 5:16 am
I first saw those images of the Syrian refugee camp a few hours ago on TV.
War is Hell.
January 10, 2013 at 5:30 am
WAY OFF TOPIC
Re: “I first saw those images of the Syrian refugee camp a few hours ago on TV.”
Really? Which channel?
Re: “War is Hell.”
I take a more cynical view. War is a racket.
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
The Ba’ath Party of Syria was a reasonably benign answer to the disparate sects, cults, religions and other interests in Syria. Alas, the Ba’ath Party was one of the last parties on the Left that held itself apart from the neo-colonial aspirations of the elite planners in Wall Street, the City of London, Washington and Paris (the old colonial master of Syria). So the attack on Syria’s stability was inevitable as the capitalist juggernaut continues to roll across the planet replacing the old Orwellian vision of the future being a jackboot on the face of humanity with something far more sinister. Now the jackboot has been replaced with surrogate fundamentalist jihadi marauders working on behalf of their capitalist masters creating mayhem out of decent societies for sake of profit and power for the financial elite. Sacramento, Springfield and Surrey should take note. What the elites are doing to Syria is what the elites intend to do everywhere that any shred of decency and democracy remains.
January 10, 2013 at 4:15 pm
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January 16, 2013 at 2:00 pm
I have just learned from James Hansen that instead of “pause” we should use “standstill”. Can’t imagine the scrambling at SkS to show that the two words are really really dissimilar.