Next decade may see no warming
A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming.
However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say.
Other climate scientists have welcomed the research, saying it may help societies plan better for the future.
The key to the new prediction is the natural cycle of ocean temperatures called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which is closely related to the warm currents that bring heat from the tropics to the shores of Europe.
The cause of the oscillation is not well understood, but the cycle appears to come round about every 60 to 70 years.
No doubt those of my readership who hold the belief that global warming is a scam will be dancing in the streets, particularly after my last post. I prefer to look at the coming decade as the end of the golden weather. I plan to savour every minute of it.
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:24 am
These scientists, eh. Whatever will they discover next?
Just so long as noone gets **too** serious about long-term predictions of the behavior of complex systems. Oh, wait….
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:49 am
If the “cooling will counter global warming”, then does that simply mean temperatures will only remain stable?
Will the cooling/stabilisation only be restricted to the Atlantic area of the world?
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:04 am
…and will stabilisation respond to taxation?
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:05 am
Damn it! I was looking forward at no longer needing to buy tickets to Queensland and Fiji to get decent weather.
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:27 am
The complexity of the models and uncertainty makes it easy for people to conclude “well we don’t know enough to be sure of anything”… which seemed to be BP’s point, however scientists have their snouts pressed closer to the problem than we do.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:36 am
It doesn’t matter which way the global warming debate goes, the Greens are all about sustainability. That’s a much more important issue.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:56 am
>>however scientists have their snouts pressed closer to the problem than we do
And their opinion is divided…..and the models they produce often don’t sync with emerging data….so, we’re left to assume that many scientists may not understand this issue quite as well as is being made out, which has been my position all along.
New article in New Scientists yesterday….
“”POLITICIANS seem to think that the science is a done deal,” says Tim Palmer. “I don’t want to undermine the IPCC, but the forecasts, especially for regional climate change, are immensely uncertain.”
Palmer is a leading climate modeller at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading, UK, and he does not doubt that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has done a good job alerting the world to the problem of global climate change. But he and his fellow climate scientists are acutely aware that the IPCC’s predictions of how the global change will affect local climates are little more than guesswork. They fear that if the IPCC’s predictions turn out to be wrong, it will provoke a crisis in confidence that undermines the whole climate change debate.
On top of this, some climate scientists believe that even the IPCC’s global forecasts leave much to be desired. …
“
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Whatever way you read that it means a warning light flashing, certainly not a green light as some will try to spin.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:25 pm
and bush and the oil and coal lobby want weak climate and environmental legislation and policy, and lazy people dont want to change their lifestyles, and groups like the buisness roundtable and so on want buisness as usual.
what is your point blue peter - vote national, act or united future if you want to support skeptic or GW denier positions.
talk to Dr. R.K. Pachauri when he is here for world environment day if you have questions about the IPPC, or go spam a climate skeptic forum, you aren’g going to drap people back to skeptic positions here.
we need to change, it is rather simple…eh?
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:26 pm
“green light”…was that some sort of very subtle double entendre on the Green party blog or am I reading too much into it
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:59 pm
>>what is your point blue peter
I would have thought that was obvious.
>>vote
It doesn’t matter which way we vote, nothing we do makes the slightest bit of difference in terms of AGW.
>>go spam a
I see. Warmist position = not spam. Gothcha….
>>we need to change, it is rather simple
It is, indeed, rather simple. Simplistic….
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:29 pm
I shall post on this soon, and RealClimate will have something up at the weekend, apparently.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Are you Gareth Renowden then?
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:46 pm
According to my mother, I am.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:57 pm
So BOSH is GR…I thought hot-topic’s popularity had extended to the aristocracy myself…
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:03 pm
The BOSH moniker is one I use elsewhere. A reference to Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, the meisterweerk of the late, great Vivian Stanshall. I used it the first time I commented here, long before the birth of Hot Topic, and my browser never forgets…
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:05 pm
I have a general question.
How does one become certified to produce and sell carbon credits?
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Easiest way in NZ is to plant some trees on land that was unforested in 1990, then register them with the govt’s forestry scheme. You’ll need to pay to have them monitored, but you’ll be earning credits.
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Last year, catastrophic global warming was predicted to take off in 2009, now it’s 2020?
Hmmmmm I suppose somewhere between 2017 and 2019 they’ll bump it back to 2030
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:02 pm
How about international? Could I buy up some cheap third world land somewhere and plant trees?
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Yes. But then you have to take responsibility for the trees staying there. Not trivial. That was what Coldplay got wrong (Google Coldplay carbon offsets mango).
May 3rd, 2008 at 1:46 am
Pop quiz
Who said this less than two months ago?
While many people now accept the consensus on climate change may be wrong, it is because evidence now seems to show change is happening faster than we thought.
May 3rd, 2008 at 8:23 am
Dunno who it was, but they’re right.
May 3rd, 2008 at 8:51 am
Some believe there is an external gravitational force (outside of our solar system) that is exerting more influence upon our system as it comes in on a polar orbit of our sun,that’s why the americans put that low powered radio telescope down at their base in antartica,
May 3rd, 2008 at 9:50 am
If it should be getting colder but it only stays the same, it’s sort of like watching the a stock price level off after going up, rather than going down. It means that there’s upward pressure and the next move is more likely to be to a new high.
Can’t imagine that this is unfamiliar to folks on the business as usual side of this discussion but stranger discontinuities of understanding have manifested themselves.
BJ
May 3rd, 2008 at 11:47 am
It was Frog
Doesn’t really stack up with this post, though does it?
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:01 pm
It does, if you realise what this study is actually about, and really saying. I’m working on a post about that now…
May 3rd, 2008 at 11:50 pm
This whole subject (climate change) highlights some interesting, and unfortunate (in my opinion) aspects of human psychology.
Basically, many (most?) people only listen to what they want to hear. Optomists see a rosy future, pessimists see the end of the world, and everyone believes they are a realist (viewing things as they really are).
I’m not sure why we bother to fund science; if scientists say something we don’t want to hear, we simply don’t listen. If they say something we want to hear, it means all other views must be wrong. Objectivity doesn’t come into the equation.
May 4th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Seems to me this heading is wrong. The report actually only predicts that warming in the North Atlantic will stall. It predicts that the world as a whole will keep getting warmer through that period. See http://hot-topic.co.nz/2008/05/04/cool-for-cats/#more-385
Because of the overwhelming number of books and periodicals coming from Europe and the east coast of North America, it’s quite common for people to make the mistake of assuming global patterns based on North Atlantic trends. For example, the Medieval warm period is oftem mistakenly thought of as a global warm period, but it was actually only a North Atlantic warm period. The world as a whole was cooler then than it is now - only the North Atlantic wasn’t
May 4th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Well, so why do the media reports about global warming mostly focus on a small in area of Greenland and the West Antarctic peninsula and not the whole world equally?
May 4th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
If I had to guess, I would say it is because those areas will have the most impact on sea level and water solubility etc? I don’t know if those *are* the areas with those characteristics, but if they aren’t, then the media should be reporting on the ones that *are*.
May 5th, 2008 at 8:25 am
I heard an opinion that all this global warming issue was a political thing from a beginning. Anyway in order to properly judge the climate changes, scientists should have meteorological data for at least 4 or 5 centuries, or even more. But they don’t have it, so in my opinion they plain and simple can not tell if this is a global warming or a mere ordinary fluctuation of weather.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:31 am
What about Paleoclimate data?
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter6.pdf
page 467, perhaps.