Global Temperature Falls, Again

Global Temperature Update: More Time, Please

The global temperature statistics are now out for May. They show that the month was the coolest in twenty-two years. The longer term graph previously published has now been updated. The satellite data—which of course reflects actual measurements, not computer model predictions—shows that over the past sixteen months, the change of temperature in the lower troposphere has been -0.774 degrees centigrade. This is equal in magnitude to the generally agreed “global warming signal” of the past one hundred years.

Click on graph to see in full.



In other words, the data show that since 1998 there has been a rapid and large cooling of the earth's temperatures reversing one hundred years of global warming.

It is around about now that the protagonists of the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) start to engage in caveats, qualifications, and denials. This is normal. It is the way science ordinarily proceeds in the minds of individuals and the scientific community at large. When you get some unexpected, rogue results, the first response is usually to go back and research harder and test some more.

One qualification put forward by AGW theorists is that one has to distinguish between weather and climate. Climate is long term, gradual (and often intergenerational) changes to the world's temperatures. Weather reflects shorter term impacts due to winds, ocean currents, and other cyclical influences. Thus, the caveat runs, the recent sharp decline in world temperatures reflects weather changes (shorter term cyclical influences) not climate change.

However, this begs a rather nasty question. If the decline in global temperature since 1998 is caused by weather, why would the rise in temperatures in the last quintile of the last century not also be caused by weather, rather than climate? Why would rises in temperature reflect climate influence, whereas falls reflect weather influences? At the very least, if a distinction between weather and climate is valid, far more thorough work now needs to be done to break out climate from weather influences in the data of the last fifty years. If that were done, it is likely the whole computer modeling college would need to be rebuilt.

The upshot is that the qualification distinguishing climate from weather has huge implications for AGW theories—which need to be rigorously worked through by those theorists. One hopes that the tide of strident demands for action on global warming in the face of the imminent doom of the planet would subside while that work is being done. We are not holding our breath, however.

Secondly, there are those who have argued that such recent variations and sharp drops in temperature are accommodated in the climate computer models. The models, it is argued, allow for and have factored in such variability, including such a drastic and rapid drop in temperature—where one entire century's warming is reversed by a mere sixteen months of cooling.

However, this also begs a rather nasty question. How many standard deviations from the predicted mean do the models tolerate? That is to say, how much variability is allowed? How long does the deviation from the predicted mean need to persist before the model is invalidated? Here we approach the heart of the problem. If AGW theories are to be taking seriously and accepted as having a scientific foundation (that is, be accepted as reflecting causality in the real natural world) they must be able to declare the terms and conditions under which such theories would be falsified. That is a necessary (although not sufficient) precondition of such theories being taken seriously and researched diligently.

The more temperature variability the models allow for and tolerate, the less open they are to falsification. The longer substantial deviations from the projected temperature mean can be tolerated, the more the models appear to be tautologies.

If we were to say that it is absolutely certain the sun will either rise tomorrow or it will not, no-one could challenge us. But clearly, by the same token, we can be dismissed as irrelevant, for we have not added one jot to human knowledge. The prediction, because it covers all possible permutations, is true by definition, but utterly useless. On the other hand, it matters a great deal whether the sun actually does rise tomorrow or it does not. There would be radically different effects and consequences. It is very important to know which is going to occur.

Similarly with climate change predictive models. If the models, say, have been constructed so as to accommodate fifty years of radically cooling global temperatures, we can confidently say that they will never be falsified; they would be true by definition—but utterly useless. Meanwhile, living conditions will alter radically if indeed we do get fifty years of global cooling.

It is important, therefore, to know whether the radical cooling of global temperatures in the last sixteen months, and the cooling trend evident from 1998, can be tolerated by the models—and for how long. Meanwhile our judgment on the models needs to be, at the very least, suspended—and all programmes based on them halted—immediately.

Meanwhile, we need to start thinking about the implications arising from global cooling. As has been pointed out, cooling is potentially far more devastating and threatening to human life than warming, just as starvation is far more threatening to humanity than running out of oil. (Not that we need big centralist government programmes and initiatives, mind. They, with all the best intent in the world, always end up either making the problem worse, or causing problems of far greater magnitude elsewhere. The wretched testimony of biofuel mania is sufficient evidence.)

It would be ironic, would it not, if the whole world were to run full tilt at counteracting the threat of imaginary global warming, while all the time cooling is the greater and real threat we face. The devastation arising from such folly would be catastrophic indeed. But not unexpected. It is a well declared principle of divine providence for the Lord to allow people, cultures, and nations to reap the fruits of their folly, hubris, and madness.

The upshot: APG protagonists and theorists have far more work to do testing and verifying their science before one more dollar is spent or one more programme initiated to combat global warming. Just as the UN has now called for a moratorium on all biofuel investment and a removal of all subsidies for biofuels (which will kill the pseudo business stone dead), we now need to see it call for a moratorium on all anti-global warming programmes, initiatives, institutions, and activity until further notice.

The threats and dangers humanity faces under potential significantly colder temperatures are too great to allow policies and programmes formulated upon such poorly constructed and inadequately established theories of global warming to continue. Robust, contestable scientific proof and substantiation is now required.

Fire the policy analysts. They have been terribly premature. Let the real scientific effort begin. Advocacy and alarmism need to give way to thoroughgoing research, testing and analysis.