We have written many articles under the Climate category on this site that deal with the "global warming"; issue and climate temperature. The IPCC and AGW adherents have been confounded by the fact that temperatures have not risen since 1998 (their grudging admission). They have been working overtime to explain this "hiatus"; as a pause in a trend towards planetary ignition due to anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere.
Today we became aware of an academic paper by Dr. Ross McKitrick, an economist and statistician specializing in environmental science, titled HAC-Robust Measurement of the Duration of a Trendless Subsample in a Global Climate Time Series. (McKitrick, R. (2014) HAC-Robust Measurement of the Duration of a Trendless Subsample in a Global Climate Time Series. Open Journal of Statistics, 4, 527-535. doi: 10.4236/ojs.2014.47050.) From the abstract (emphasis ours):
The IPCC has drawn attention to an apparent leveling-off of globally-averaged temperatures over the past 15 years or so. Measuring the duration of the hiatus -- Application of the method [described in the abstract but technically complex] shows that there is now a trendless intervalof 19 years duration at the end of the HadCRUT4 surface temperature series, and of 16 – 26 years in the lower troposphere.
In other words, temperatures have not increased at the planet's surface for the last 19 years (since 1995). In the lowest layer of the atmosphere (the troposphere) the "hiatus"; – the term widely used to identify this period – may extend to 26 years.
This is one of the principal data sets used by climatologists in building climate models. McKitrick's analysis and conclusions may only be challenged by persons able to understand his premises and follow his calculations. Few will be qualified to do this. So folks, global warming is on hold, or as the community says, in hiatus.
The Common Bias
The bias we wish to point out is the assumption we are in a warming trend and one that man's activity will cause to rise catastrophically. It is not the idea of a hiatus that we have a problem with but the underlying assumption of trend that it is applied to.
If we look at the cyclical record of glaciation revealed in the data from the Vostok ice core (see the chart in Obama Declares War on Global Warming) we may infer that we are just off an interglacial peak temperature and are at the start of a cooling trend. In the context of the roughly 100,000 year glaciation cycle the current period of so-called warming is statistical noise. Indeed, this was a cover of Time magazine in 1977:
Source: The Omega Letter Commentary.
Generally, everyone discusses global temperature change in the context of a warming trend. Maybe we should switch back to the context of a cooling trend that the Time article was framed in terms of. At the least we should recognize we have a bias and that we are not trend neutral.
Ian is a retired information technologist. While working at Health Canada he completed a BCS degree with highest honours at Carleton University in 1999. In 1998 he took a leave of absence from the federal government and worked as a consultant to Ontario Hydro Nuclear for 15 months in Y2K risk management. He retired from the government in 2000, went on to earn an MCS degree at Carleton, 2002, and subsequently completed the requirements for a PhD except for a dissertation.
Several years of graduate studies have equipped him to do thorough background research and analysis on topics he finds engaging. He is owner of the eclectic blog, The POOG. The acronym “POOG” came from a forgotten source: “pissed-off old guy”. A web search found a more flattering but accurate association: ”The mightiest of all men. He fights ignorant darkness in the name of wisdom, truth, courage, and honor.”
