John Shade, ease up on the paranoia. I have nothing to do with Missy and only haven't returned as the discussion moved away from my original specific points. As I said in the original post I don't have an awful lot of time to devote to this, but I have genuine interests.

If Nuccitelli is so easy to dismiss, please tell me why. I don't have your experience. I'm not interested in Missy's more broad points at this stage, and was disappointed that the discussion moved away so quickly.

If Nuccitelli is so easy to dismiss, please tell me why.

Charlie, Nuccitelli is not a climate scientist: he is a representative of a partisan website, a "leak" from which a couple of years ago made clear that the so-called "Consensus Project" they're promoting is a PR exercise, not a scientific one ("we mustn't fall into the trap of spending too much time on analysis and too little time on promotion"). See here.

Charlie - type "dana nuccitelli liar" into google. You'll get several hits worth exploring. Make your own mind up from the material you find.

As far as your interest in sounding things out goes by querying BH readership, how will you judge who to trust?

Charlie..
When surface temperatures seemed to be rising quite rapidly twenty years ago, this was given as 'proof' of AGW. Heat storage in the oceans is now offered to account for 'the pause' in surface temperature escalation.
It is true that the oceans have vast heat capacity. But I never heard any of the catastrophists suggesting that the rise in surface temperature back then was due in some part to heat being released from the oceans (one mechanism for which is El Nino) - it was all due to CO2.

Thus, I find myself sceptical of these arguments " as a pair". If Dana wants to say now that all this heat is going into the ocean, then if surface temperatures tick up in the future he'll need to quantify how much of that is from heat coming out of the ocean, which is what his predecessors didn't do back when he was still in nappies. And I want to know where, geographically, all this heat is plummeting to the depths, bearing in mind that longwave radiation is all absorbed very close to the surface, somehow a lot of hot water from the top few millimetres is being aggregated and plunging down a plughole to the deep ocean. You'd think all those ARGO buoys would show us where this was happening.

Interestingly, the trend of solar activity using sunspots as a proxy from 1850 to recent times matches the trend of temperature very well. (Plot these for yourself (normalised) at woodfortrees). Formerly, the sun was discredited as an influence by showing that surface temperature and sunspot anomalies don't wiggle match. Now that temperature and CO2 have temporarily stopped wigglematching, I think people like me, who think the sun may have some effect in all this, are entitled to suspect that where sun- temperature wiggle matching failed, the heat was going into the oceans. A lot more plausible too since shortwave penetrates water much better than longwave. In other words, if Dana's claim is true, he has just re-opened the solar debate which they thought they'd buried years ago.

I'm still open to being convinced about AGW. I just need something to convince me that climate sensitivity to CO2 is anything other than 1.2K. This will require a clear demonstration of a positive feedback (water vapour doesn't seem to be cooperating) and a much better understanding of clouds.

'The pause' is interesting, but not sufficient to rule out AGW for me, though it seems to be for some people. The next few years should be interesting, particularly if the sun stays quiet.

I went to woodfortrees and can see no correlation between solar activity and ground temperature (Geoff Cruickshank, 11:59AM). What are you seeing that I am not?

I will try to put together a list of consensus points (Rhoda, 7:54AM).

Is Germany's CO2 cut a good or bad thing (Geronimo, 8:00AM)? I'm sure it depends upon your perspective. But someone claimed CO2 cuts are synonymous with world war. That is clearly untrue and alarmist. And by the way, your 40% rise in EU electricity prices prices still leaves them lower than Japan's.

Another posting of the Spencer graph... It is a popular little graph. Perhaps you could explain a few things.

Why do the model runs not start at zero? I presume the models must have started some time before mid-1977 (start of graph), or else it would not be possible to display a 5-year average from the 1st data point.

What is the baseline used to calculate the anomalies? Clearly it needs to be the same for all of the data plotted but it is not stated.

Why does it say "Trend line intercept = 0 at 1979 for all" when almost none of the curves hit zero in 1979?

What is the significance and effect of using rcp8.5 instead of one of the other scenarios?

Are there equaivalent plots of surface temperatures as opposed to mid-troposphere, or whole-earth rather than 20N-20S ?

It would be nice to see what difference would be made if the UAH and RSS data were plotted separately and the TLT data were used instead of TMT (I read the latter contains contamination the Spencer developed TLT to avoid. Yet he plotted TMT).

Oh and Charlie, 'liar' seems to mean "says things I disagree with" in this parallel world, so don't take it too seriously.

"Is Germany's CO2 cut a good or bad thing (Geronimo, 8:00AM)? I'm sure it depends upon your perspective. But someone claimed CO2 cuts are synonymous with world war. That is clearly untrue and alarmist. And by the way, your 40% rise in EU electricity prices prices still leaves them lower than Japan's."

I didn't say CO2 cuts were synonymous with world war, so I'll thank you to not imply that I did by including it in a response to my question. As for the response, well, yes Japan has higher electricity prices, but that wasn't the point of the graph, it was the percentage increase that was the point at issue. and that the EU electricity prices had increased by 40%.

As for the point of the Spencer/Christy graph it shows the models have not been able to come close to forecasting temperature. That you don't believe the observations comes as no surprise it's quite common, Dr. Trenberth actually said, "...the data must be wrong..."

I'm pleased to see that you don't take their word for it though and have a number of questions, good for you. Why don't you put them to Dr. Spencer and Dr. Christy, because I'm not in a position to give you the answers. Your question about TMT use instead of TLT has merit too. Clearly you're suspicious of them, which I think is good, so contact them they're extremely genial scientists and will engage with you.

"Oh and Charlie, 'liar' seems to mean "says things I disagree with" in this parallel world, so don't take it too seriously."

So we've run up the jolly roger and started wheeling out that ad hominems. No surprise there. Liar means someone who deliberately doesn't tell the truth in this parallel world.

Charlie, those who say it's still warming invariable refer to NASA's temperature record that managed to squeeze a few more years warming in by systematically adding more obscure temperature stations (theoretically to record Arctic warming). HadCRUT 4 did the same, replacing HadCRUT 3. One can theorise why they needed to fiddle with the temperature records but one way or another air warming has essentially stopped.

http://tinyurl.com/l9hhd8b

Why is debateable. It's a theory to say it's in the ocean but as other have written, if it's storing in the deep ocean now, who's to say it didn't emerge from the deep ocean in the 80s and 90s? Also, ocean temperature measurements have been very dodgy over the years. Only ARGO has offered any kind of decent coverage. The top 700m is still warming but dramatically slower. How did the extra warming sneek past ARGO to hide in the deep oceans?

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content55-07.png

Since 1950 we only see air warming for a maximm of 30 years and one might claim 25. It's not good news for warmists that we now have over 30 years when CO2 was high enough to have an effect but there was no warming and even cooling (remember to add in the early years).

While it's true to say there have been pauses in warming before and this could be the same, we have to remember that a huge percentage of the CO2 has been released in recent years. It should be having an ever increasing effect or there should be a demonstrable natural effect to counter it like massive volcanic activity. All the explanations why it might be static now hint that some of the warming in the 80s and 90s was due to the same effects. eg if Chinese SO2 is causing the pause then cuts in US and European CO2 would have boosted warming. Modellers are reluctant to make claims about the hiatus because they know that any rewrite of the climate rules apples to the past as well as the present and might throw out the apparent match between models and temperature. It's worth noting that the height of warming occurred when both Oceans were in their positive phases and the pause co-incided with the Pacific flipping to negative. Climate scientists must be worrying what will happen when the Atlantic follows.

All these things point to CO2 having smaller effect than previously thought. If the pause continues, more climate scientists will come out and say so. The 97% of consensus scientists will take a lot longer to realise that the science has changed. Certain activists won't ever admit they were wrong.

Like climate scientists speak, this is littered with 'might's and 'could's. Sceptics can't tell you how the climate works for the same reason the models don't seem to be working - climate's bloody complicated. Don't ever expect sceptics to come out with rival climate models unless someone throws a few billion pounds at them. We can't do the job of countless climate reasearchers spread across the globe.

Geronimo, no it was me who said cutting CO2 (without a viable alternative to fossil fuels) wasn’t insignificant compared to war, communism, poverty, famine and repression. Seriously cutting CO2 doesn’t feel like those things to Missy because she’s not seen significant CO2 reduction yet. Or supposedly been a victim of existing cuts by losing her job or being unable to afford her energy bills.

Missie, as far as I can tell, Germany has halved it’s CO2 footprint to 5.5 tonnes since 2009 and much of this was down to renewables *. However it manages its system by importing nuclear electricity from France when they’re short and exporting renewables energy to its neighbours when it has an excess. This is only possible if the grid has enough flexibility to do that. Similarly the only way the UK is able to cope with the unreliability is because we currently have an over capacity (gas running inefficiently for shortfalls) and pay wind owners to disconnect when there is over supply.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/instability-in-power-grid-comes-at-high-cost-for-german-industry-a-850419.html

Already some countries are threatening to cut Germany off because of the destabilising effects of energy dumping and sudden shortfalls. What if all of Europe had as much renewable energy as Germany? What happens here in the UK as our over supply is reduced to ‘just enough’ and the wind drops? Chaos.

At the moment about a quarter of Germany’s energy comes from its own nuclear, which is to be rapidly phased out and replaced by coal. So watch the CO2 footprint bob back up again. Oh dear, that didn’t last long. Also, renewables aren’t infinite and over time produce less energy. Wind in particular loses efficiency quite quickly over time and turbines are estimated to need replacing much sooner than expected. Paying a huge price for an inefficient but green energy sector is painful the first time but what about the second and third?

As Geronimo pointed out, German electricity prices are already very high and eventually this has an effect on industry. As the article mentions, unreliability can be even more devastating. Companies don’t make the decision to move lightly and the departure will be a steady haemorrhage rather than a mass exodus. However once the drift has started it’s hard to stop. For financial reasons companies don’t trumpet major financial decisions ahead of time so by the time authorities realise industry is leaving, it will be too late to reverse those plans already in motion. As the businesses generating profit move away so does prosperity, so do jobs. Is that as devastating as a war? No, but read on.

* 5.5 tonnes is still over 2.5 times what it would need to be to park global CO2 emissions and each successive tonne will be exponentially harder to replace than the one before. France has a similar footprint using only nuclear and hydro but reducing further is very difficult without converting most other energy sources to electricity generated by nuclear. The gas condensing boiler you put in today would need to be replaced for electric heating. Every technology change costs and with manufacturing money draining away because of a lack of competitiveness with coal powered countries, the public are less enthusiastic. Eventually the pain of cutting CO2 isn’t worth the smug feeling of self-righteousness.

http://www.thegwpf.org/german-solar-disaster-21-billion-euros-burned/

And the irony is that this has happened because they can’t compete with cheap solar panels imported from coal powered China.

Ill advised cutting of CO2 would feel a lot like communism, poverty, famine and repression and if the ignorant masses decide they’re fed up with hardship in the name of saving the planet, well at that point it would feel a lot like war too.

AFAIK

Each plot line (curve) for a model has an overall trend. They’ve been centred on 1979. This doesn’t mean each plot point for 1979 will be on the same point, just its trend line. They don’t go further back because there are no satellite measurements to compare with them.

The choice of Tropical Mid Troposphere 20S-20N is significant because is looks at the point where CO2 induced warming was supposed to be greatest. Remember the ‘hot spot’, it was supposed to be the fingerprint of man made warming?

Averaging balloon and satellite records is supposedly to produce a single pair of points to compare the model average with.

Basically the average of reality is diverging from the mean of model and even the ‘best’ of the models.

Any more questions or to check if I’m right, ask Dr Roy Spencer.

This is the earlier chart with just the trend lines.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT.png

Can you give an example of Nuccitelli 'lying'? I have seen people accused of being "liars" in various places but have not yet found the actual lies they are said to have told. Hence my assertion that the word has a different meaning in your universe. This is similar to the use of 'consensus' having its own definition here, whereas others think it refers to (in no particular order)

CO2, methane and other gasses acting as greenhouse gases

Human emissions of these gasses causing significant warming & climate change

Rapid loss of ice in the Arctic

Loss of ice mass from most ice sheets and glaciers

Rising ocean levels

Ocean acidification

Species extinctions, current and expected

Changes in ocean circulation and wind patterns

As far as German power production goes, you clearly know a lot more about this than I. Yet although an increase in occasions of voltage wobbles by 30% sounds a lot (if that is what the 30% in the article referred to), it could mean there's a wobble 4 times a week instead of 3, for example. Maybe I'm missing the point, but I can't see that 4 would suddenly be a problem when 3 wasn't.

But your (TinyCO2) point was that cutting CO2 was comparable to a world war. Whatever your level of expertise in power systems, I think that if you were to suggest to older Germans whether their dreadful experiences of life in their devastated country during and after WWII was comparable to the challenges of reducing their CO2 emissions by 20%, I think they would laugh at you, if you were lucky.

Like I said Missy, we (including Germany) haven't yet cut CO2 any where near enough to even park CO2, never mind reverse it. You keep ignoring that point. Do you think each tonne of CO2 you cut will be as easy as the first? Do I have to congratulate you on your 2 tonne footprint?

I also didn't mention 'world' anything. An individual dying of hunger or cold or committing suicide because they're broke won't appreciate the difference between war or being green.

Charlie
I suggested comparing the trends of SSN and temperature, normalising them so that you compare each trend with its mean.

Try this at woodfortrees
1) data source - GISTEMP LOTI
2) processing steps
linear trend OLS
normalise

Add Series
1) data source SIDC sunspot number
2) processing steps
from time 1850
linear trend OLS
normalise

You should see the GISTEMP trend rising from about -.4 to +.4. SSN trend will be slightly less slope but a thought provoking match.

Now replace GISTEMP with HADCRUT 4 global mean.

You should see one line exactly superimposed on the other- to confirm that they are both actually there enter a .1 offset as an extra processing step in either series.

Tiny; "Geronimo, no it was me who said cutting CO2 (without a viable alternative to fossil fuels) wasn’t insignificant compared to war, communism, poverty, famine and repression."

I agree, but I didn't say it and it was put in a response to me. I think we have a troll on board, didn't at first, but as ever Rhoda spotted her first. What is baffling is why she doesn't put "nuccettelli liar" into google herself, why do you think that is?

I don't know what a troll would look like on AGW, everywhere I go they argue in the same way. The ignorance on the science, the impacts and the solutions is part of what makes them accept the mess. They cling to consensus like a talisman. They need a physical symbol to represent it - perhaps a snake swallowing it's own tail to represent scientists who support the consensus because there is a consensus of scientists. "Back demon sceptic! Cower before the Ring of Consensus". Or should that be Hole of Consensus?

Thanks to all for replies.

Other than the specific issue about the slowdown in warming, I think my question about the Nuccitelli article raises an important (in my mind), broader point about how the general public (like me) gets their information about climate change.

Martin A suggests that the source of the Nuccitelli piece is questionable (I presume he means the Guardian). But whatever he may think, many others will think that precisely because these opinions are being published in that paper or on its website they are reliable.

So how does someone who is wavering discern the truth, when Guardian blogs, Bishop Hill, WUWT all sounds very convinced that they are telling the truth?

He's lying.

No, he's lying.

No, HE'S lying, and I've got proof.

But that proof is nonsense.

No, it's not.

Yes, it is.

NO, IT'S NOT!

I see Nuccitelli is at it again in the Graun, plugging the old "the deep ocean stole my warming" line. His post includes this extremely misleading graph, which skims over the fact that in the pre-Argo era (i.e. before the early 2000s) there were hardly any reliable measurements of the temperature of the deep ocean.

IIRR, the graph comes from a Comment that he and his Skeptical Science cronies had published in a scientific journal. That Comment was pretty rapidly and comprehensively shredded in another Comment by the authors of the original paper they were commenting on, The Skeptical Science team have chosen not to reply to that Comment
on the grounds that they have "better things to do" (presumably, scaremongering and propagandising in the Guardian is "better" than participating in the published literature).

BTW: You can check out the data for yourself at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/data_distribution.shtml, so don't take my word for it. Under the "Temperature profiles" section, compare, for example, the annual data for "Below 1000 metres" for, say, 2010 with the same data for any year in the 1990s to see just how few measurements were taken before the full deployment of the Argo floats.

I did invite Nuccitelli to comment on the paucity of data on a previous thread in the Graun, but he didn't choose to reply: see here.

Bob Tisdale has an excellent discussion of the deep ocean data here.

Martin, I appreciate the response, but I think we've been at crossed purposes since the beginning of this thread. It's clear that you have a different idea of what kind of discussion you like to see, and aren't interested in the idea of passing on your experience or even in the idea that anyone who knows about the details of the research and the back history should bother giving an explanation to anyone else. But I'm not sure everyone shares your position.

Charlie “broader point about how the general public (like me) gets their information about climate change.”

They don’t. Scepticism doesn’t have to be about having answers, it’s about not getting answers from official sources. CAGW isn’t like moon landings or 9/11. There isn’t very convincing tangible evidence of its existence. The argument relies on only telling half truths.

Evidence = it has warmed. Truth = it has warmed countless times before and we were already in a warming phase when we started observing the issue.
Evidence = CO2 shows greenhouse properties and can cause warming. Truth = the scary warming requires positive feedback for which there is no evidence; also each quantity of CO2 has less effect than the previous one.
Evidence = costs of hazards have been increasing. Truth = population and prosperity has been increasing and it’s almost impossible to extract a weather trend from such the short records we possess. Some hazards may get worse but others may improve.
Evidence = there are negative environmental and health events. Truth = usually they are proven to be unconnected with climate change or short term problems are found to be less disastrous than feared.
Evidence = we will run out of fossil fuels anyway so we need to switch to renewables now. Truth = but current renewables are useless and will only waste time and money in the long term.

Because there are a million threads to the CAGW tapestry each has to be cut to show that the whole thing is unsupportable. That’s why the consensus meme is so important to warmists. When you start to point out the holes in the argument they say ‘never mind the small stuff, the scientists know the whole thing and if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me’. To which I say ‘fine, pay up and look happy’.

I would have no problem with the science if it was very honest about what it knows, what it thinks it knows, and what it’s just guessing. Most of the stuff that pushed governments into panic mode is the guessed stuff; the huge sea level rises; weather catastrophes by the dozen; mass extinctions; etc. It’s all predicated on huge rises in temperatures and a direct link between bad weather and temperature; those are increasingly unlikely.

Climate scepticism isn’t one grand ‘ah hah!’ it’s a death by a thousand cuts. I’m sure you’d like a site where you could go and see all the arguments and counter arguments laid out and dealt with fairly. You and me both. You have to ask why it’s never been done and why you’re asking a bunch of freelancers for what you should already know.

"So how does someone who is wavering discern the truth, when Guardian blogs, Bishop Hill, WUWT all sounds very convinced that they are telling the truth?"

Charlie that's a cracking question. As a rule of thumb to get to the truth you really need to see if the science is robust. For that you don't need to understand it, basically you need to understand what makes the hypothesis fail, and if the observations support the hypothesis. For global warming there is no way the hypothesis fails. Witness those same scientists who were telling us we'd have the climate of Provence in the UK in the mid-21st century now telling us that they fully expected it to be bollock-freezing cold in the second decade of the 21st century as a result of global warming. Which brings me to the second support for the hypothesis, the forecast observations. In this instance the median of the 73 GCMs forecast a rise in temperature of 0.9C approx. between 1979 and 2013, the observations showed a rise of approx. O.2C. As we've seen from Missy above those who believed the theory, deny the observations are correct, or fiddled.

So you're left with instinct. One thing I can assure you of is that the models cannot predict the future, if they could given the complexity of the climate, we'd bugger up the Grand National, and all horse racing for our grandchildren because forecasting them is a piece of cake compared to forecasting the future state of the climate.

Actually you don't need to do any of these things in reality, you simply have to look at which side the environmentalists support. The other side is the honest one.