Comments 1 to 6:

1. nigelj at 07:02 AM on 15 May, 2017

   I could never understand what all the fuss was about from the climate denialists over the so called pause. I'm not a climate scientist, but I'm well educated, and I recall the early IPCC reports said there would be occasional periods of about 10 years where temperatures slowed, or even declined, due to short term natural variation like el nino / la nina etc. This was in the general media as well, so nobody interested in climate can plead ignorance.

   We had about 10 years of flat temperatures, entirely in line with these predictions, so I could never understand what all the fuss was about from the climate denialists.

   The denialists claimed there was a 15 plus year pause, but this is a distorted, fake claim simply using the peak of the 1998 el nino as a starting point. You have to use a running trend line (or whatever the correct term is) in which case the so called pause was about 10 years or less.

   I do admit temperatures were getting close to the outer limit of error bars in climate models, and another few years would have raised serious questions of what was going on, but then we had high temperatures of the last few years, which ended the pause. So the pause was within expectations and climate theory.

   There may be more pauses as well, then the fools can start their chanting again, "global warming stopped in 2027 / 2047 / etc, etc.

   I have read various explanations that the pause never happened, it was statistically insignificant, and / or over estimated, etc. This is true scientifically, but from a public perception point of view its probably better to acknowledge that temperatures slowed for a few years from about 2002 - 2010 (depending on what data you look at) and this is obvious looking at any temperature graph. There was a slowdown, or whatever you want to call it.

   The climate denialists blew the whole thing out of proportion, probably deliberately to cause confusion and doubt. Well it's clear to me global warming has definitely not stopped. The longer term temperature trend from approx. 1900 is just looking relentless now.

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2. chriskoz at 13:11 PM on 15 May, 2017

   nigelj@1,

   The technique you're probably asking for, to determine and quanify the so called recent "slowdown" in AGW temp signal is called "change-point analysis", which does piece-wise linear function fitting to the data in order to get the optimal linear model. You obviously have to demonstrate that changes in your model be statistically significant to avoid overfitting.

   Stefan from RC has done it as described here and concluded there was no statistically signifficant change in temp signal derivative since ~1970, putting to bed any serious claims of "slowdown" or "hiatus". Also, Tamino nicely explained the statistics behind this method here.Note that Stefan's article comes from Dec 2014, which is before latest monster ElNino pushed surface temps higher. Tamino's blog comes from Apr 2015: so when ElNino in question just started.

   Of course, science deniers' claims have nothing to do with reality or statistical methods, so they'll continue to bang their silly "it's stopped warming..." talk no matter what.

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3. ubrew12 at 18:05 PM on 15 May, 2017

   Language matters, especially when you're trying to inform the public, who may not understand the physical underpinnings of Climate Change.  For example, when they hear "Did Global Warming 'pause' during the 2000s?"  they assume, even without reading further, that this was of some debate in the informed community.  So, the denier claim, that there was a 'pause', is validated even from just the title.  The uninformed public may not realize that any planet for whom 93% of the mass affected by Global Warming is ocean water, water that has shown only an acceleration of warming in the 2000s, cannot have sustained, in any way, a 'pause' in Global Warming.  Yes, there was a 'pause' in Atmospheric warming, and it is worthy of study and debate.  But there was never any indication of any 'pause' in Global Warming, at all.  We all know that, the author of the 'Atlantic' article knows that, and in the interest of brevity we go along with a nomenclature that has got to be making the deniers very happy.  The uninformed public doesn't know that the Atmosphere is just 1% of the 'globe' in 'global warming', and they are taking titles like that at face value, unfortunately.  How do you spend that much time and words battling over a 'pause' in Global Warming, for a decade during which Global Warming accelerated?  By misplacing the Earth, it would seem.

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4. chriskoz at 09:03 AM on 16 May, 2017

   'Fake but accurate' - an interesting analysis by WP of inner workings of current White House, that I'm citing after my local paper smh.

   While the analysis concerns the broader subject of WH's vulnerability to fake news and their subsequent delusional lives, the triggering fake news herein is the "impending ice age" of 1970s. That's why I'm commenting on it here.

   It turns out T-man surrounded himself with all-around "yes-people", e.g. security adviser McFarland (successor of disgraced Michael Flynn) and anonymoius "official" who defended the "impending ice age" bunkum as "fake but accurate", Kellyanne Conway who allegedly hates his boss secretely, all the way to Rex Tillerson, who has to "earn his [T-man;s] confidence every day". That's, taken at face value, simply a flattery for the purpose of ingratiating oneself at all cost by Tillerson, colloquially known as "brown nosing".

   Interesting to learn, that those people, who's advice and actions should bear dignity and pride and responsibility and alertness to dangers lurking upon the president and the nation, have lost all of such qualities, replaced by unqualified flattery. The actions of the flattery are as ridiculous as shown, because the boss who receives the flattery (T-man) has the intelligence and moral development of a 6th grader juvelile, colloquially he can be called a spoiled brat. Quite remarkable that poeple can fall into the pitfalls of flattery so badly, that even a spoiled brat on the other end does not bother them.

   At this point I want to draw a generalisation: the climate science denial by the GOP can be seen as its flattery towards their "bosses" who are fossil fuel magnates, just as the denial of reality by WH officials is a flattery towards T-man. GOP say only the things about climate science that FF industry wants to hear: it's plainly visible throughout.

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5. John Hartz at 10:18 AM on 16 May, 2017

   Links to the following articles have been or will be posted on the SkS Facebook page today:

   Under Trump, inconvenient data is being sidelined by Juliet Eilperin, Politics, Washington Post, May 14, 2017
   
   Trump Consults Fake-News Memes When Contemplating Climate-Change Policy by Eric Levitz, Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine, May 15, 2017
   
   No room for science in Trump administration, Opinion by Chrsitine Todd Whitman, CNN, May 15, 2017

   Their contents reinforce Chiskoz's commentary.

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6. chriskoz at 07:33 AM on 19 May, 2017

   Wait for old, immoral, their intelligence encumbered by the FF interests, science denying politicians to die out. The new generation of youmg leaders are already breaking up with the shameless tradition of their elders and demand better mitihation policies. In Australia, the movement start, unsurprisingly, in Natioanl Party, representing mainly farmers:

   Generational evolution forces Nationals to consider emissions

    because farmers are the ones who start feeling the climate chenge effects in this country. The movement is already overdue, the question is: is it broad enough (affecting other parties) and will it be quick enough.

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