Paul Homewood and Christopher Booker are wrong about global surface temperatures

For some odd reason, arch-science denier Christopher Booker has been getting some play in the media. He's been broadcasting false claims about the surface temperature records.

Every so often a science denier will scour the temperature records to unearth some that have been adjusted upwards. They'll then shout to the world "fraud" "scam" "it's all a hoax". What I've never seen from any denier is them scouring the records for temperatures adjusted downwards. That would totally spoil their propaganda.

This sort of thing happens from time to time, often when the UN is meeting to discuss action on global warming. The timing of the denier attacks in this case coincide with the UN meeting in Geneva.

NOAA and temperature data - it must be a conspiracy.

Update: Nick Stokes of Moyhu has written two articles that demonstrate what would happen if Anthony Watts had his way and stations with no data were ignored completely. See here and here. Anthony Watts might change his tune if he read them.

Sou 3:22 pm 1 July 2014 AEST

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This article is about the kerfuffle that erupted between a bunch of science deniers. It all started when Steve Goddard accused NOAA and NASA of "fabricating data" (archived here).  The lie was spread all over the right wing media. Politifact and Climate Crocks among others pointed out he was wrong. Steve didn't explain how the two agencies did this. All he did was put up an animated chart that he claimed showed that the US temperature was warmer in the 1930s than at any time since. He wrote:

Prior to the year 2000, NASA showed US temperatures cooling since the 1930′s, and 1934 much warmer than 1998....Right after the year 2000, NASA and NOAA dramatically altered US climate history, making the past much colder and the present much warmer. The animation below shows how NASA cooled 1934 and warmed 1998, to make 1998 the hottest year in US history instead of 1934. This alteration turned a long term cooling trend since 1930 into a warming trend.

Steve doesn't say what data was "fabricated". Why should he? He's not a fact checker. Quite the opposite. He's in the denial business of making up stuff to stop any action to mitigate global warming.

This article is another one that's too long :( Click read more if you're on the home page.

Are US winters cooling or warming? It is all so very confusing at WUWT....

It wasn't that long ago that WUWT-ers were being warned that the world is heading for an ice age.  The "ice age cometh-ers" to varying degrees include:

• David "funny sunny" Archibald
• Tony "central England" Brown
• Ed "ice age cometh" Hoskins
• Denier Don Easterbrook

The one thing you can say about those WUWT contributors is that they are prepared to make a prediction, even though their predictions are laughable.  Most of the people at WUWT just scoff at science but aren't prepared to stick their neck out.  I've yet to see Anthony Watts make any prediction.  Wondering Willis once made a guess that the world is about to get cooler.  Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale, when pinned down, doesn't want to make any predictions.  He's too busy keeping track of bits of the ocean in the hope that some bits haven't warmed as much lately (so that he can put up a chart of a patch of sea and say that global warming isn't happening, or it's not happening in that bit of the globe).

It was freezing cold in the USA this winter, but it's not unusual?

Over the past few months, there have been a myriad of WUWT articles about just how cold it was this winter in the USA.  If there was a WUWT article about the record hot Californian winter, I must have missed it. Which is odd, since that's where Anthony Watts, the blog owner, hails from. Here are just some of the articles about how cold it was in the USA this past winter:

• Over 2000 cold and snow records set in the USA this past week - 13 December 2013
• New record low set in the coldest city in the continental USA – much of the country headed for a deep freeze - 2 January 2014
• USA cold weather records outnumber warm records 6 to 1 - 8 January 2014
• NOAA: US Cold records outnumber warm records 66 to 1 in the last 7 days - 8 March 2014
• Satellite Animation Shows Massive Eastern U.S. Cool Down - 13 March 2014
• Coldest U.S. winter in a century - 26 March 2014
• It’s official – Chicago experienced the coldest four months ever on record - 1 April 2014
• NASA on ‘the big chill’ this winter: ‘In some places temperatures were 40°F colder than average’ - 7 April 2014
• and more in the same vein.

However in an apparent about-face, today the headlines at WUWT are (archived here):

Holdren Is Wrong – Cold Winters Are Not Getting More Common

Paul Homewood, who wrote the article even put up a chart to prove that US winters aren't getting any colder.  In fact looking at the chart, since the 1980s winters in the USA have become a whole lot warmer:

Source: NOAA via WUWT

Paul injects a bit of reality at WUWT and writes:

Clearly, on a national basis, recent winters have not been unusually cold. In the last 10 years, only three winters have been colder than the 1901-2000 mean. Moreover, no winters in recent years have come anywhere near to being as cold as some of the winters in the 1970’s, for instance, or earlier.

Paul goes on to look to see how much of the USA had extreme winters.  Using his method, he confirmed that the 1970s was the last decade notable for cold extremes across the largest portion of contiguous USA.  He wrote that it's clear that much less of the country was affected by cold compared to the twentieth century:

It is abundantly clear that much less of the country has been affected by extreme cold this winter, and indeed other recent ones, when compared with the 20thC. There is also no trend towards cold winters becoming more common.

Then Paul remembers who he's writing for.  So he figures he'd better cover himself for the global warming deniers and say that mild winters aren't "taking over" either, writing:

What is also interesting is that there does not seem to be much of a trend towards milder winters taking over. Only the winter of 2011/12 stands out in this respect, and there have been plenty of similar years previously.

Yet if you look at the first chart he posted (above), it's pretty obvious even to the naked eye that in the last few decades, the average winter time temperature is much warmer than it was in the past. Even looking at his own charts of extremes, he should have recognised that there is a lot more red area than blue area in recent decades.  Here are the two charts Paul put up, showing extremes in minimum and extremes in maximum temperatures for winter, with my animations (click to enlarge):

Adapted from source: WUWT

So is it warming, cooling or doing neither? Anthony's readers must sometimes be scratching their head wondering whether to believe what they read at WUWT or whether to believe what they read at WUWT.

John Holdren and Jennifer Francis' Polar Vortex

John Holdren's statement, which Paul Homewood was countering, was from a video in which he discusses the polar vortex.

Paul quotes the following bits of text.  He doesn't link directly to where he got the quotes.  The first bit of text is from the above video (at 0:32), which Paul doesn't repost, and the second paragraph is taken from a White House web page :

“A growing body of evidence suggests that the kind of extreme cold being experienced by much of the United States as we speak is a pattern that we can expect to see with increasing frequency as global warming continues….

We also know that this week’s cold spell is of a type there’s reason to believe may become more frequent in a world that’s getting warmer, on average, because of greenhouse-gas pollution.”

 The video is short, so I'll copy the text here so you can read John Holdren's quote in context:

If you've been hearing that extreme cold spells like the one that we're having in the United States now disprove global warming, don't believe it. The fact is that no single weather episode can either prove or disprove global climate change.

Climate is the pattern of weather that we observe geographically and over the seasons, and it's described in terms of averages, variations, and probabilities. But a growing body of evidence suggests that the kind of extreme cold being experienced by much of the United States as we speak is a pattern that we can expect to see with increasing frequency as global warming continues. And the reason is this: in the warming world that we're experiencing, the far north, the Arctic, is warming roughly twice as rapidly as the mid-latitudes, such as the United States. That means that the temperature difference between the Arctic and the mid-latitudes is shrinking, and that temperature difference is what drives what is called the circumpolar vortex, which is the great counterclockwise-swirling mass of cold air that hovers over the Arctic. As the temperature difference between the Arctic and the mid-latitudes declines, the polar vortex weakens, and it becomes wavier. The waviness means that there can be increased, larger excursions of cold air southward -- that is, into the mid-latitudes -- and, in the other phase of the wave, increased excursions of relatively warmer mid-latitude air into the far north. 

Computer models tell us that there are many different factors influencing these patterns. And, as in all science, there will be continuing debate about exactly what is happening. But I believe the odds are that we can expect, as a result of global warming, to see more of this pattern of extreme cold in the mid-latitudes and some extreme warm in the far north.

Essentially, what John Holdren is describing is the hypothesis put forward by Jennifer Francis and Stephen Vavrus in a paper in GRL in 2012.  As John Holdren says, "there will be continuing debate about exactly what is happening".  Indeed the Francis hypothesis is the subject of ongoing debate.  Some scientists, such as Kevin Trenberth, disagree quite strongly. Others are more circumspect and are entertaining the idea that the hypothesis has merit.

Coincidentally, there is an article in the current issue of Science about this very topic, titled "Into the Maelstrom" and written by Eli Kintisch.  If you can get hold of a copy it's worth a read (at least I found it very interesting and informative).  Eli Kintisch says that Jennifer Francis has modified part of her hypothesis in the light of a paper by Elizabeth Barnes, backing off from the notion that "a curvier jet stream is leading to more atmospheric "blocking"". Here's an excerpt of the Science article:

The most vociferous critiques, however, have come from researchers who study atmospheric dynamics, or the many mechanisms that jostle and shape air masses. Given the Arctic's relatively puny influence over the planet's atmospheric energy flows, the notion that it can alter the jet stream "is just plain wrong," says dynamicist Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. The more likely culprit, he says, is natural variability driven by the tropics, where Earth gets its largest input of solar energy.

Such variability, Trenberth says, could explain the jet stream's giant curvy shape this past January, which brought record chill to the southeastern United States, warm temperatures to Alaska, and made "polar vortex" a household term. At the time, a massive amount of so-called latent heat was accumulating in the tropical Pacific, Trenberth notes, in an incipient El Niño event. Parcels of warm air from the tropics may have forced the jet stream northward in one place, causing it to meander southward farther east. "It may not be that Arctic amplification is causing a wavier jet stream, it may be that a wavier jet stream is causing Arctic amplification," he says.

"I understand that people would be skeptical," Francis says. "It's a new paradigm." But she counsels patience. She notes that evidence of Arctic amplification itself has emerged from the statistical noise only in the last 15 or so years, so it may take time for the changes to the jet stream to become statistically significant. And she believes the modeling experiments that fail to simulate a more meandering jet stream are biased, because they don't include sufficiently robust Arctic amplification.

Such arguments have persuaded some colleagues to at least wait and see. Oceanographer James Overland of NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington, for example, says, "I find the tropical explanation for the recent behavior of the jet stream no less implausible than the Arctic one." And he suspects that, as data accumulate, the dynamicists will come to gain a greater appreciation for the Arctic's role.

Paul Homewood's Strawman

I think it's worth pointing out that Paul Homewood's article is one big strawman.  He is trying to refute something that John Holdren didn't say.

Paul is arguing that because the winters on average or over much of the USA aren't the coldest compared to the entire record of winters then John Holdren is wrong.  But John Holdren was talking about cold spells not average winter temperatures.  He was talking about periods when parts of the USA may experience extremely cold weather.  Also, in my view the winter extremes need to be considered in comparison with a rising global surface temperature.  What this would mean is that cold extremes would be getting warmer over time, as global surface temperatures rise.  Yet there can still be extreme cold across parts of the USA, just not as extreme as the coldest in the instrumental record.  Perhaps in several decades from now, an extreme cold spell will be as warm as a current mild winter in the USA, yet it may still be caused by a "wavy" polar vortex.  (A mild winter may well be as warm as a mild spring or even a mild summer in the future.)

From the WUWT comments

Let's see how the WUWT-ers reacted to Paul arguing that US winters aren't getting colder and writing that "There has been nothing unusual or unprecedented about this winter."  They are all over the place.  Some of them are saying winters are warmer. Others are arguing winters are colder. Many of them seem to think the USA is the whole globe. For example: more soylent green! says:

April 18, 2014 at 12:50 pm
“As global warming continues?” Do you think Holdren means “when (or if) global warming continues” because it ain’t warmed in nearly 2 decades.
A technical question — If global warming causes colder winters, at what point does global warming become global cooling? Or does it all just average out? If it all just averages out, does that mean the earth doesn’t have a fever anymore?

phlogiston is trying to work it all out and says:

April 18, 2014 at 1:38 pm
So let me get this straight:
The scientific adviser to the POTUS
is saying that
global warming
is causing colder winters

TonyG isn't giving up easily and says:

April 18, 2014 at 10:53 am
Over a year ago, I saw a program on NGC that suggested AGW could cause another ice age. I guess cold winters would be much more common with glaciation.

pokerguy is deeply depressed and says:

April 18, 2014 at 11:23 am
There was a time when I believed that people in highly positions….at least in a democracy….could not just make things up without paying a price. Now the scales have fallen from my eyes. You can say anything you want for the most part and get away with it. Holdren has been making ridiculous claims without being exposed as a serial liar in the MSM for a long time. Ditto Obama. I don’t think it was more than a year ago when the President of the U.S. simply made up his own facts about global warming by asserting that the globe was heating up even faster than the experts had predicted….which of course is utterly false. In fact there’s arguably been no warming at all for over 17 years.

Deeply, deeply depressing. 

Magma picks up an inconsistency and says:

April 18, 2014 at 11:39 am
Holdren says “cold spells”. Homewood shows Dec-Feb averages.
There is a difference. 

Richard Day likes question marks and says:

April 18, 2014 at 11:48 am
So extreme cold is the result of global warming?
Is there ANYTHING global warming can’t do?????? 

herkimer isn't the only one who says it's been cooling since 1998 (now that year rings a bell) (excerpt):

April 18, 2014 at 11:58 am
Winters in Contiguous US have been getting cooler for 17 winters or since 1998 , but certainly not for the reasons that Holdren states. This recent decline in US winter temperatures is similar to the cooler US winter cycles of 1895-1920 and again 1954-1979 and is due to ocean cycles. 

Rud Istvan gets everything topsy turvey and says:

April 18, 2014 at 12:20 pm
Holden even recently lied to Congress about previous testimony on US drought by Roger Pielke Jr. When Pielke asked for a retraction and apology, he got a six page White House memo citing one paper. Apparently they cannot read either, because that paper (by Trenberth) also supported the Pielke testimony. Which was simply thatnitmisnot possible to make a connection between drought and climate change, per the IPCC SREX and other papers. It is possible to make regional US connections with PDO and AMO.

Why did Holdren try to trash Pielke’s testimony? Because Obama is using the California problem to pump for his climate agenda. Just when you think they cannot stoop lower, they do.

No, Rud, that's not why John Holdren had a go at Roger Pielke Jr's testimony.  This is.


Rob is seeing warmer winters and says:

April 18, 2014 at 2:48 pm
Winters have gotten much less severe
here along the Gulf Coast since the terrible cold decades of the 1980′s and 1960′s.
Holdren’s “speculation” is NOT Science. Not even close.

HenryP says, I'm not sure what:

April 18, 2014 at 3:19 pm
@DirkH
As we are cooling from the top, the higher latitudes get drier and the lower latitudes get wetter.
That is physics.
Locally, at some places, due to the drier conditions, it can get hotter,
paradoxically
perhaps 

Bart says:

April 18, 2014 at 6:52 pm
Seems I recall that last year’s warmer-than-usual winter was supposed to be the harbinger of things to come.

bushbunny is firmly in the global cooling camp and disagrees with Paul Homewood (but doesn't come right out and say so):

April 18, 2014 at 8:08 pm
Of course the government would announce this nonsense to uphold their beliefs, and not face the fact Northern America and Canada would suffer most from extra cold winters. I hope that you don’t experience any more extra cold winters for your health mainly and productivity. Your government should take measures now not to rely on the global warming scare but global cooling that will prove a lot more expensive in the long run to adapt to. 

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Eli Kintisch, "Into the Maelstrom", Science 18 April 2014: Vol. 344 no. 6181 pp. 250-253 DOI: 10.1126/science.344.6181.250

Francis, Jennifer A., and Stephen J. Vavrus. "Evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid‐latitudes." Geophysical Research Letters 39.6 (2012). doi:10.1029/2012GL051000,

Barnes, Elizabeth A. "Revisiting the evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in midlatitudes." Geophysical Research Letters 40.17 (2013): 4734-4739. doi:10.1002/grl.50880

Paul Homewood builds a strawman at WUWT and sends it off to China

Update: I almost forgot to write that I think it's a terrific turnaround for WUWT to suddenly take an active interest in urging nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions.  I look forward to many more articles by the environmental activists at WUWT.  Hopefully soon they will be strongly urging governments in the USA and Australia as well as urging China to cut its greenhouse gas emissions.

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At Anthony Watts pseudo-science blog, WUWT, there is an article by Paul Homewood (archived here).  He criticises the efforts of China to cut greenhouse gas emissions.  Paul has done some sums and has worked out that China's commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, because it's based on a percentage of GDP, would result in their doubling emissions by 2020.  Based on my cursory reading, that is an overly simplistic view of what is happening in China.

Paul Homewood's strawman

I haven't checked Paul's numbers or assumptions, but what I did notice was his writing this (archived here):

All of this rather begs the question – if CO2 is really such a problem, why are not the UN, Greenpeace, UNFCC, Western politicians, activist scientists and all the other hangers on jumping up and down and demanding that China starts making real cuts now?

What is evident is either:

• Paul Homewood isn't familiar with what these agencies and organisations are doing and have done or
• Paul Homewood is familiar with these efforts but chooses to disinform readers at WUWT, knowing they demand that their dislike of the UN, Greenpeace and environmentalism in general (and their conspiracy ideation) be appeased.

I haven't checked the specifics of what the UN and UNFCC and Western Politicians are doing in regard to China in particular.  However the fact that the UN organises conferences to combat global warming and get countries to agree on sustainability commitments is evidence that they are encouraging all member nations to deal with these issues.  (I did some quick research on what Greenpeace has been up to - see below.)

There is no pleasing deniers at WUWT

On the one hand WUWT-ers rail at any initiatives to combat global warming and improve the environment and the next minute they are complaining that not enough is being done.

No-one could ever accuse WUWT of being consistent!

As an aside, I find it surprising that someone at WUWT would suggest that scientists get involved in policy, seeing it's something they usually castigate scientists for doing even when they aren't.

What Greenpeace is doing in East Asia

I'm not up on what Greenpeace does so I did a bit of a web search to see what Greenpeace has been advocating and what it's been doing in East Asia.  Here are just a few of the items I came across, going back several years:

• Greenpeace China: Background briefing for the COP19 in Warsaw. 28.10.2013
• Under "What we do" a campaign to reduce air pollution in China including Hong Kong, with lots of links to further campaigns and action plans
• China air pollution concerns forces a new direction for coal use
• An article about a Greenpeace report from 2009: China's three biggest power firms emit more carbon than Britain, says report

There is a lot more as you can imagine.  Greenpeace is a large, active organisation and has an East Asia section.  For example, only a few days ago there was this article at Greenpeace, which refers in part to the new Air Pollution Control Plan announced this September, and to the individual pledges made by four key provinces to reduce coal consumption in real terms.  Below are some extracts:

How do we translate China's policy shift on air pollution into progressive climate position? Li Shuo

...Facing mounting public pressure from Beijing, as well as many other regions in China’s populous eastern provinces, the government published a comprehensive air pollution control plan in September of this year. Coal consumption control is featured heavily in the plan.

According to various evaluations, coal combustion is the leading cause of China’s air pollution. China’s coal consumption not only contributes to two thirds of the global CO2 emission growth in the past five years, but is also leading to systemic damage of the health of its citizens.

Pursuant with the call from the central government, four provinces (two of them – Shandong and Hebei are China’s top and fourth-largest coal consumers respectively) made individual pledges to peak and decline their coal consumption by 2017 – the first time in Chinese history that negative coal consumption targets have ever been mandated. Added together, these four provinces will need to collectively reduce 83 million ton of coal in the next four years, a sharp annual average decline of 6% This is even more significant given that these provinces still kept growing at 6-8% over the past five years.

...As China prepares to slash coal, climate benefits will inevitably follow. According to the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency's 2013 Trends in Global CO2 emission report, the slowdown of China’s energy appetite in 2012 has already contributed to the slowest global emission growth. This trend, predicted by the Agency is likely to continue. If that is the case, it will have considerable implication on the way from Warsaw to the 2015 Paris COP.

Warsaw is therefore a good opportunity to foster this emission trend and bring it down even further. The global community should encourage their Chinese counterparts to put air pollution and greenhouse gas mitigation equally on the agenda. Strong connections between the two issues should be facilitated and communicated back to Beijing, so that a mutually reinforcing loop could be created in domestic policy making.

Li Shuo is a Climate and Energy Campaigner with Greenpeace East Asia.

Here are some more articles of relevance:

• China to send air pollution inspection teams to provinces (Reuters, October 2013)
• Can China’s Air Pollution Action Plan Slow Down New Coal Power Development? (World Resources Institute October 2013) This article also talks about the shift of new coal plants to western provinces, outside of the new Air Pollution Action Plan.
• How China's action on air pollution is slowing its carbon emissions (UK Guardian November 2013)

Greenhouse gas emissions per capita and in total

Here are some numbers to digest - showing greenhouse gas emissions per capita from CDIAC as at 2010.  The first number is the world ranking in terms of per capita emissions.  The last number is that actual emissions per capita in tonnes of carbon (not CO2):

• 1 Qatar  10.94
• 12 USA  4.71
• 14 Australia  4.57
• 18 Canada   4.00
• 37 Japan  2.52
• 39 Germany  2.47
• 47 United Kingdom 2.16
• 63 China (Mainland) 1.68
• 75 Hong Kong 1.4
• 136 India 0.45

China and India need to bypass fossil fuels and shift straight to clean energy production

Looking at the above, it's obviously of critical importance that fast-growing economies like India and China develop their economies using clean energy and avoid as far as possible a transition through dirty energy.

Top ten total emitters in the world

I downloaded the latest data from CDIAC, which has preliminary numbers on a per country basis up to 2012. China was by far the largest emitter, with 2,625 million tonnes C followed by the USA with 1,396 million tonnes, then India with 611 million tonnes.  Here are the top ten nations, with their total emissions and per capita emissions.  Note that the per capita emissions are ranked on the basis of this list of top ten emitters only.  It does not include all nations.

Country	2012 m tonne	% increase on 2010	Pop (million)	Per capita	Rank per capita out of top ten only
China	2,625,730	16%	1350	1945	9
USA	1,396,791	-6%	314	4448	2
India	611,226.3	12%	1237	494	10
Russian Federation	491,840.3	4%	144	3416	4
Japan	342,270	7%	128	2674	6
Germany	199,716.1	-2%	82	2436	7
South Korea	166,679.2	8%	50	3334	5
Iran	164,497.7	6%	76	2164	8
Saudi Arabia	137,877.7	9%	28	4924	1
Canada	137,819.8	1%	35	3938	3

China is now the largest emitter, followed by the USA and then India.  China and India are the two fastest growing in terms of emissions growth over the period 2010 to 2012. China and India are the lowest per capita emitters in this list.

The USA is the only one of the current top ten to have reduced total emissions between 2010 and 2012. However - out of the top ten emitters, the USA still ranks number two on per capita emissions behind Saudi Arabia.

From the WUWT comments

As usual, many WUWT-ers make snide comments and don't bother doing any investigation themselves.  (WUWT comments section is often nothing more than a splatter board at which science rejectors and conspiracy theorists fling empty, meaningless words.)  Some of them are more aware and interested in the issue than others though.

What's odd is that usually WUWT-ers rant at NGOs for being activists.  WUWT-ers usually despise activism, especially when it relates to the environment.  In this thread though there are a lot of people complaining that NGOs aren't doing enough - or aren't "doing anything".  If only deniers would make up their minds.

You can read more comments archived here.


Jimbo says:

November 24, 2013 at 5:07 pm
There are lies, damned lies and………………….

H.R. says:

November 24, 2013 at 5:29 pm
Glad to see the Chinese still have a great sense of humor. The joke is on all the rest of the world.

John says:

November 24, 2013 at 5:28 pm
On the flip side, haven’t US CO2 emissions already actually been substantially cut. Driving miles are down and natural gas replaced a lot of coal power generation.. I thought we were the only country to actually achieve the Kyoto targets.

The USA has reduced total emissions in the past couple of years and over the long term has had no growth in per capita emissions.  But it is still a huge source of emissions (ranking in the top 15 nations on a per capita basis) and can't sit back on its laurels.   Here is a chart up to 2009 from CDIAC:

Source: CDIAC

Nick Stokes is not a typical WUWT-er and looks at the numbers from a different perspective.  He says:

November 24, 2013 at 6:00 pm
“jumping up and down and demanding that China starts making real cuts now?”

The CDIAC site you cited also has per capita figures for 2010: China 1.68 ton C/cap/yr, USA 4.71, Australia 4.57, Qatar 10.9.

CO2 needs a world effort. We can’t expect people to respond differently just because of the size of the political unit they happen to live in. China has a big population and will have a big GDP. The best we can do is to ensure that the GDP is achieved as efficiently as possible. We can’t expect Chinese to respond to Westerners pressuring them to cut in absolute terms when

Westerners are using more than twice as much.

“But don’t believe the likes of John Gummer…”

In your quote Gummer expected Chinese emissions to peak about 2025. You attempted to refute that by saying that they would be emitting more in 2020 that now. That does not refute.

“Actual emissions were 2625, which represents a cut of 41% from 4430″

Well, then, they are indeed doing well.

William McClenney says:

November 24, 2013 at 6:09 pm
Ah, but the latent question is: how does it feel to have been played?

Neville. breaks the mold and says:

November 24, 2013 at 6:10 pm
Her are the EIA co2 emission forecast until 2040— see graph. The OECD emissions will essentially flatline for 30 years while non OECD emissions will continue to soar.

http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/emissions.cfm

They say that fully 94% of extra co2 emissions will come from China ,India etc and only 6% from the OECD until 2040.

The entire OECD could retire and live in caves and it wouldn’t make ZIP difference at all to climate and temp.

John says:

November 24, 2013 at 6:13 pm
Neville – Have we learned anything yet about models and forecasts.

Gary Hladik says:

November 24, 2013 at 6:16 pm
Out of curiosity, is China actually doing anything to really cut CO2 emissions, in addition to replacing old coal power plants with new, and building nuclear power plants?

Mike Smith says:

November 24, 2013 at 6:49 pm
China is an interesting case. There must be a huge interest in reducing pollution, by which I mean particulate matter, carcinogens, toxic materials etc.

I doubt that the Chinese give a hoot about CO2 but, of course, their politicians will make all of the right noises to appease the west since they’re rather tired of playing the western world’s punching bag. I think the “China reassures world” article is fine example of same.

AntonyIndia says:

November 24, 2013 at 6:50 pm
China is always excused by Green alarmists: those poor communist underdogs. The US are the main target: those wicket ultra rich top dogs. Dawn facts and statistics. Viewing the world through green coloured glasses damages the world’s environment the most.

Dr. Bob decides to complain that NGOs aren't doing anything - or so he thinks and says:

November 24, 2013 at 7:28 pm
At the 2007 Pittsburgh Coal Conference, I remember a poster session on coal seam fires In China, coal seam fires emit more CO2 than all the cars in the US. A little searching indicated that 20-200 million tons of coal per year are lost to mine fires. The number is very vague as no one really knows how much coal is lost to mine fires. CO2 emissions from these sources are probably not counted in net emissions but represent maybe 12% of China’s GHG emissions.
If GHG emissions are truly a threat to mankind, why haven’t the NGO’s gone after this source of uncontrolled emissions? If CO2 was a real problem, this would be the low hanging fruit. But no one mentions this

While thousands may have died in Typhoon Haiyan, be prepared to "throw up in your mouth" at this article on WUWT

Update: Anthony Watts cannot help himself - see below

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Greg Laden has written an article about Super Typhoon Haiyan or Yolanda, as it's called in the Philippines.  I've already written a comment about the first reaction from deniers at WUWT.  Anthony Watts has surpassed that denial and now posted an article (archived here and here) about which Greg Laden writes (h/t MikeH):

Watts needs to take this offensive and absurd post off of his site. Homewood needs to apologize, and to do so sincerely. But before they do that, go have a look. It will probably make you throw up a little in your mouth.

Maybe 10,000 dead in the province of Leyte

Now that more reports are coming in, there could be as many as 10,000 people who have been killed by the typhoon so far.  And that's just in the Philippines.  According to reports, the typhoon has weakened to the equivalent of a Cat 2 cyclone and is heading for Vietnam.

Anthony Watts chastises "alarmist" media

Paul Homewood makes a token acknowledgement to those killed, but is more concerned about "unsubstantiated claims", writing as his opening paragraph:

Sadly it appears that at least 1000 1200* lives have been lost in Typhoon Yolanda (or Haiyan), that has just hit the Philippines. There appear to have been many unsubstantiated claims about its size, though these now appear to start being replaced by accurate information.

The slant taken by Paul Homewood is bad enough.  What's worse are the opening sentences at the very top of the article, which were written by Anthony Watts himself. What is Anthony Watts concerned about?  He's concerned about "alarmist" reporting.  Here is Anthony Watts' headline and opening lines (archived here and here):

Super Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda – another overhyped storm that didn’t match early reports

Here is the sort of headlines we had Friday, for example this one from Huffington Post where they got all excited about some early reports from Andrew Freedman:

Super Typhoon Haiyan Could Be One Of The Strongest Storms In World History

Super Typhoon Haiyan — which is one of the strongest storms in world history based on maximum windspeed — is about to plow through the Central Philippines, producing a potentially deadly storm surge and dumping heavy rainfall that could cause widespread flooding. As of Thursday afternoon Eastern time, Haiyan, known in the Philippines as Super Typhoon Yolanda, had estimated maximum sustained winds of 195 mph with gusts above 220 mph, which puts the storm in extraordinarily rare territory.

Ah those estimates, they sure don’t always meet up with reality later – Anthony

"Overhyped storm?" and "They sure don't always meet up with reality"?  Well, Anthony, it looks to me as if Huffington Post got the numbers from NASA and the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center.  Not real enough for WUWT?  I'd say the people in the Philippines don't regard one of "Earth's strongest storms ever" as "overhyped" and they certainly met up with reality.

Arguing over numbers and getting it wrong

Anthony and Paul go on to try to argue that everyone got the wind speeds wrong, writing that it really wasn't all that bad:

So at landfall the sustained wind was 235 kmh or 147 mph, with gusts upto 275 kmh or 171 mph. This is 60 mph less than the BBC have quoted.

The maximum strength reached by the typhoon appears to have been around landfall, as the reported windspeeds three hours earlier were 225 kmh (140mph).

Terrible though this storm was, it only ranks as a Category 4 storm, and it is clear nonsense to suggest that it is “one of the most powerful storms on record to make landfall “

"Only ranks as a Category 4 storm when it hit land"!!

Paul Homewood is writing to complain to the UK Press Commission about this headline in the Daily Mail (which paper deniers usually love because of it's frequent disinformation on climate science.)  This is the headline that Paul Homewood complained about:

NASA JPL: One of the most powerful storms ever recorded on earth

Paul Homewood objected to the headline describing the typhoon as 235 mph.  But according to NASA that's exactly right.  This is from NASA JPL:

November 08, 2013

New satellite images just obtained from NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua spacecraft and the Indian Space Research Organization's OceanSAT-2 ocean wind scatterometer provide a glimpse into one of the most powerful storms ever recorded on Earth. 

According to the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center, Typhoon Haiyan had maximum sustained winds of 195 mph (314 kilometers per hour), with gusts up to 235 mph (379 kilometers per hour) shortly before making landfall in the central Philippines today. That would make it one of the strongest storms ever recorded. Weather officials in the Philippines reported the storm, known locally as Typhoon Yolanda, came ashore with maximum sustained winds of 147 mph (235 kilometers per hour) and gusts of up to 170 mph (275 miles per hour). 

I'm finding it hard to imagine winds of 235 kph let alone gusts of 379 kph.


Anthony Watts is also objecting to these lines from newspaper reports, writing:

UPDATE4: Kent Noonan writes in with this addition -

CNN has had several articles stating the same numbers for wind speed as BBC and Mail. I saw these numbers first last night at 10PM Pacific time.

Today’s story: “Powered by 195-mph winds and gusts up to 235 mph, it then struck near Tacloban and Dulag on the island of Leyte, flooding the coastal communities.”
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/09/world/asia/philippines-typhoon-haiyan/index.html?hpt=hp_inthenews

If these “news” agencies don’t issue a correction, we will be forever battling the new meme of “most powerful storm in world history”.

Notice the "it then struck", which shows that it is entirely consistent with what NASA JPL reported.


(If any reader wants to play the numbers game, here is a list of tropical cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons.  Typhoon Tip led the scoreboard in terms of wind speed until Haiyan, with sustained wind speeds at its maximum of 305 kph, a bit less than Haiyan, which is reported to have had sustained wind speeds of 314 kph.  But Tip was much weaker than Haiyan when it reached land.)

What is really disturbing...

Anyway, what I think is really disturbing is that while maybe 10,000 people perished in the Philippine province of Leyte, all Anthony Watts is worried about is whether the newspaper reports have the wind speed right.  He is so focused on denying global warming that he cannot lift his brain out of the slime.

Thing is that, despite what Anthony Watts would have his readers believe, the science is not yet clear on what global warming will mean for tropical cyclones.  It is expected that the proportion of fiercer storms will rise but whether there will be more tropical cyclones or not has not yet been clearly established.

Vietnam is next in its path

Here is the current image from the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center (click to enlarge):

The winds are currently at 85 knots (157 kph) gusting to 105 knots (194 kph) and expected to weaken to 60 knots (111 kph) as it approaches Vietnam, with gusts to 75 knots (139 kph).

From the WUWT comments

Tim Walker says it's sad, but people die in cyclones all the time:

November 9, 2013 at 2:24 pm
Trying to correct (mistakes – SARC) after the MSM informs the public will make very little difference. The public’s perception is made by the first news articles. It is a very sad situation we are in. The deaths and trouble in the Philippines are sad, but this kind of thing happens each year in different places of the world. What the MSM does in creating false perceptions is worse, because the clowns the public elect based on the false perceptions are causing worse problems. The future is very grim. Good luck to one and all.

albertalad says he's busy telling the Canadian media they are over-reacting:

November 9, 2013 at 2:30 pm
Thanks for the information – I used your info to correct two newspapers in Canada – The National Post,m and the CBC – which of course wen crazy as usual with hopes of the Philippines themselves being wiped off the face of the earth as THE global warming event they all desperately needed to be that destructive. It never ceases to amaze me how excited the global warming ghouls are with something like this – they really cheer for death and destruction.

Jimbo says back in 1882 there was one tropical cyclone that was as bad.  (Jimbo's link is bad - try this one.):

November 9, 2013 at 2:33 pm
But what about the past? [H/t Steven Goddard]

Oct 22, 1882
“Observatory says lowest barometer at 11.40 a. m., 727.60 ; highest velocity wind registered, 144.4 miles an hour. Unable to measure greatest velocity of typhoon as anemometer damaged.”

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/38278695
more typhoons from the past in the Philippines.

Paul Homewood says the wind speed reported was "strangely exact".  Well, Paul - maybe that's because they reported "exactly" what the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center reported:

November 9, 2013 at 3:01 pm
The “mistake” of the Mail seems apparent, but I wonder if it is their source of information that is to blame? The BBC are well known for attempting to convert everything into metrics to make us “more European”.

Their “379 kmh” seems strangely exact. Have they also seen the “235″ figure and assumed it is mph (just as the Mail did) and then decided to convert it to kmh to get to 379kmh? Indeed, it suggests the original source, whatever it may be, is where the original error crept in.

Stuart Lynne says it's because they are poor:

November 9, 2013 at 3:31 pm
As always this disaster is based on the poverty of the area. Populations living in areas that are inadequately prepared for whatever natural events that may occur where they live because they do not have adequate financial resources to do so (or like Katrina) where the resources are misapplied.

eric1skeptic comes up with all sorts of "reasons" and builds a straw man in the process:

November 9, 2013 at 4:04 pm
The satellite presentation was basically perfect at landfall. There is little doubt this was the strongest possible storm given the physical limits of storms that size. Typhoon Tip in 1979 was much larger but did not have such good symmetry. Tip only brushed land and many similarly strong storms never hit land or weakened before landfall.

The point that will be lost on the alarmists is that the near-perfect symmetry of Haiyan is only possible with nearly perfect weather conditions surrounding the storm. If anything isn’t perfect then the storm becomes asymmetric and can’t achieve top strength. That kind of weather will have no correlation to warning. Furthermore the (theoretical) decrease in the lapse rate will work against any increase in SST’s The SST’s provide better evaporation but the lapse rate provides the condensation which releases latent heat and causes the convection.

Anthony Watts has convinced people like pokerguy who, being misled by Anthony Watts, complains:

November 9, 2013 at 6:01 pm
Meanwhile, someone competent ought to get into Wikipedia and fix things…Currently they’re saying this in first sentence:

“Typhoon Haiyan of November 2013, which is known in the Philippines as Typhoon Yolanda, is one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded.”

Rob Honeycutt calls them out and says that WUWT "should be ashamed":

November 9, 2013 at 5:14 pm
This is a particularly callous post, even for WUWT. Fatality numbers are just starting to come in and the latest are now saying over 10,000 have perished.

You people are playing silly number games in the face of real human suffering. You should be ashamed.

gregladen says:

November 9, 2013 at 5:57 pm
“Check reuters for the latest numbers,” is a citation of a source. Please do not add stupidity to your callousness. One locality is now citing 10,000 via the governer’s office.

Let me ask you this but you better answer quick because the ground is sliding from underneath you as I type this. How important is 1,200 vs. tens of thousands? If it turns out to be tens of thousands instead of 1,200 will you STFU forever? Please?

Let me know right away, I want to watch.

To which Anthony Watts, underlining his callous self-serving attitude, piously replied with the pathetic excuse "the problem with early estimates is what this post is about".

No it wasn't Anthony.  You posted it in "Alarmism":

Your article was about "alarmism" and news outlets getting "over-excited":

REPLY: its an estimate from a meeting last night. Since it was too hard for you to make a link, I searched. See here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/10/philippines-typhoon-casualty-idUSL4N0IV00F20131110

“We had a meeting last night with the governor and the other officials. The governor said based on their estimate, 10,000 died,” Soria told Reuters. “

The problem with early estimates is what this post is about. We’ll wait until something more concrete than an estimate from a late night meeting is given.

The Red Cross in the Phillipines says 1200, I trust them more than government officials making estimates. If it turns out the number is higher, I’ll report it. In the mean time feel free to be as upset as you wish.- Anthony

And in true conspiracy ideation, Anthony writes that he trusts the Red Cross more than "government officials".

And true to his policy of censoring posts from those he regards as "warmists", Anthony Watts is now busy deleting comments (latest archive here).

Update

Now Anthony Watts has trotted out his third article making light of the super typhoon.  He's picked up a comment by Bjorn Lomborg arguing that global warming means that while cyclones may get more fierce with global warming, they might not happen as often.  And by the end of the century people will be able to better afford the worsening tropical cyclones. (Archived here.)

All while people are still in turmoil in the Philippines and Vietnam is waiting.

Sickening and bizarre behaviour at WUWT.

11:39 pm 10 November 2013

It's back - WUWT is heading for an ice age

Not exactly, but the way has been paved by Paul Homewood, who usually brings updates of UK weather to WUWT.  He's shown that using RSS data and Woodfortrees the the lower troposphere as measured by RSS has cooled since 2001 therefore all the science is wrong! (archived here).

Paul didn't post this chart:

Data Source: SkepticalScience Nuccitelli et al (2012)

Or this one:

Adapted from Jos Hagelaars

But Paul did get a slew of "ice age cometh" and similar responses from the WUWT DuKEs :

Richard Hill is looking for a bet on a "new Ice Age" meme, but with what he thinks is a twist:

September 29, 2013 at 4:36 pm

Anthony, how about a bet on how soon a “new Ice Age” meme will arise?.

Just finished reading “Why the West Rules – for Now” by Ian Morris 2010. Gripping analysis of how history can be linked to archaeology to get the broad sweep. Morris shows how climate influences social development in both Asia and Europe. The response to the warm periods and cool downs are strikingly similar on both sides of Eurasia. It might have been luck that the West got past the Little Ice Age better than the East. But the threat of global cooling is real and our ability to respond to it is a worry. Morris has a chapter on future outlook but doesnt include the new ice age possibility. Maybe we are just a couple of Pinatubos away from a real bad scene.

Eric Worrall says he knows what the real threat is.  Maybe he's looking forward to chasing an antelope when it's 50º degrees (122º F) in the shade:

September 29, 2013 at 5:02 pm
Its obvious that the real threat is global cooling – shorter growing seasons, unseasonal frosts, hardship and hunger.

Humans have nothing to fear from a warmer climate, we are one of the most hot climate adapted animals on the planet. In anything except the baking tropical savannahs and jungles of our distant ancestors, we have to wear clothes to protect us from the cold.

Why are we so well adapted to the heat? It goes back to how our ancestors used to hunt. We couldn’t run faster than an antelope, but we could run further than an antelope, in hotter weather, until the antelope ran out of steam and simply lay down and died.

Other_Andy would probably swear on his mother's grave that the "long term trend is down":

September 29, 2013 at 5:39 pm
Jimbo says: What if it cools?

It is……Over the past 10,000 years the current Holocene epoch the world has cooled by about 1.0 °C. The latest ‘blip’ up might last a bit longer but the long term trend is down.

Scute says "It's not fair, I deliberately cherry picked 1997 not 1998!" - he knows little about trends:

September 29, 2013 at 5:04 pm
JJ I had just that problem yesterday in the comments on this BBC article.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24308509
I was accused of using a start date ‘around’ a high El Niño event. I had stated ’1997′ so this guy knew I was avoiding the 1998 peak in order not to cherry-pick. He still went for that knee jerk argument thinking I wouldn’t call him on it. I did.

Luke Warmist admits he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he can tell a lie as big as the next denier when he talks about "joined at the hip marching upward":

September 29, 2013 at 6:32 pm
A quick observation from a passerby. For years IPCC told us co2 and temp were joined at the hip forever marching upward on that 45 degree incline. Somehow, about 1998 the right side twin (temp) separated and went on his merry way ever so slightly rising, while co2 continued rising like a homesick angel. Now they’re trying to feed me some line about ‘total energy budget’ and ‘deep ocean below 2000m sequestration of heat’. I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I recognize what’s in the bowl they’re trying to give me ain’t food.
Regards, T.

John Mason has a message for "warmists" - it's the Little Ice Age bouncing ball meme again (excerpt):

September 29, 2013 at 7:38 pm...And if warmists see this blog post and think we don’t see the warming trend, we do and it started a couple of hundred years ago as we came out of the LIA and we have little to do with it nor little we can do about it whether nature drives the temps up or as we swing back down to the return of the ice age.

dbstealey has slipped his leash (again) calling another WUWT commenter "hater".  He reckons the Little Ice Age leprechauns have debunked the "alarmist fantasy" (aka the findings of scientific experts):

September 29, 2013 at 8:48 pm
Hater, your entire argument is based on unmeasurable assertions. That fails here at the internet’s “Best Science” site. So run along back to Pseudo-skeptical pseudo-science, they like unmeasurable assertions there.

And FYI, the planet has been warming naturally since the LIA. Doesn’t matter if CO2 is low or high, the warming is repeated exactly. Thus, the alarmist fantasy is once again debunked.

And this one is really cute.  JJ tells how fake skeptics "do it" by working backwards till they get an answer they like!  I'd have to be convinced that JJ understands the first thing about climate models.  JJ also has to fib about what the Santer et al study found (it found at least 17 years was necessary, not at most 17 years):

September 29, 2013 at 4:37 pm

“One reason is that 1998, the year invariably chosen by sceptics, was one of the warmest ever.”

Typical strawman. Skeptics don’t make the argument that they declare “invariable”.

First, we don’t start at a point in the past. Our starting point is not 1998, it is 2013. Then we see how far back we can go, and still have a trend so low that it demonstrates the lack of skill of the climate models. If temps were rising as the models had predicted, we would no be able to go back very far.

Second, we don’t end in 1998, either. Most analyses of the model-busting break in trend currently indicate ~17 years of insignificant trend. They end in 1996 or 1997 – the pre-trough or mid-rise rather than the El Nino peak in 1998. This 17 year period is longer than the NASA modelers had previously claimed was the longest period consistent with their predictions. It is as long as the period that Santer et al gave as the starting point for its soon to be continuous goal-post-moving exercise.

Manfred sees a conspiracy and says:

September 29, 2013 at 8:24 pm
According to figure 3, they used the coldest year as their start point. Any other reason for such an odd number of years like 62 ?

The answer to Manfred's question is most probably because the second half of the twentieth century started in 1951, which is 62 years ago.  Manfred is also wrong about 1951 being the coldest year.  The years 1950, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1964 and 1965 were all colder than 1951.

Data source: NASA

WUWT is on the mend - slowly

Good to see WUWT recovering (slowly) after the walloping they suffered when the IPCC SPM report was released.  They've still got a way to go before they recover fully.  The sign of full recovery will be when Anthony puts up another article by David Archibald predicting an "ice age by 2020" or sez  OMG it's insects and we should just kill off all the mammals.

On the rebound - bouncing ever upwards

There's a recent article on WUWT by Paul Homewood.  He's complaining about the hottest decade on record, and writes this:

Of course, they might have mentioned that the eruption of Pinatubo in 1991 meant that temperatures in that decade were depressed.

This is what happened over the last few years:

Data Source: NASA GISS

Yes, you can see a dip in the surface temperature in 1992 and 1993, but consider what happened in 1998.  Overall you'd be hard-pressed to say that temperatures in the 1990s were depressed.

What happens with a volcano is that aerosols reflect sunlight.  After the aerosols have disappeared then things get back to "normal" as more sunlight once again penetrates the atmosphere.  Except that normal these days has increased greenhouse gases.

In times past, the volcano would have cooled things down for a few months and then earth would have warmed up again.  But it wouldn't have kept getting warmer.  It would merely have eventually returned to its pre-volcanic state.  Here is a NASA image illustrating what happens with a volcano:

Source: NASA

The NASA fact sheet describes it as follows:

Volcanic Aerosol
Three types of aerosols significantly affect the Earth's climate. The first is the volcanic aerosol layer which forms in the stratosphere after major volcanic eruptions like Mt. Pinatubo. The dominant aerosol layer is actually formed by sulfur dioxide gas which is converted to droplets of sulfuric acid in the stratosphere over the course of a week to several months after the eruption (Fig. 1). Winds in the stratosphere spread the aerosols until they practically cover the globe. Once formed, these aerosols stay in the stratosphere for about two years. They reflect sunlight, reducing the amount of energy reaching the lower atmosphere and the Earth's surface, cooling them. The relative coolness of 1993 is thought to have been a response to the stratospheric aerosol layer that was produced by the Mt. Pinatubo eruption. In 1995, though several years had passed since the Mt. Pinatubo eruption, remnants of the layer remained in the atmosphere. Data from satellites such as the NASA Langley Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment II (SAGE II) have enabled scientists to better understand the effects of volcanic aerosols on our atmosphere.

Paul Homewood writes:

This means that about half of the 0.21C warming was simply the rebound from Pinatubo, and nothing to do with greenhouse gases.

I can't see that being correct.  In 1998, temperatures rose way high because of the strong El Niño   So that more than made up for the low years earlier in the decade.

Here are the average for each decade from the 1960s onwards.

Data Source: NASA GISS

In his WUWT article, Paul points to his home page which in turn goes to this article by Dr Hansen.  Here is the figure from the Hansen article to which Paul ends up referring:

You can see that the temperatures dropped anyway in 1991 and stayed lower in 1992 moving back up in 1993.

What Paul is doing wrong is not recognising that the temperatures kept on going up after 1993 and 1994.  So no, it's not "half" of that warming that was a "rebound from Pinatubo".  What lifted the average of the 1990s was the very high temperature in 1998 from the El Niño .  What if Pinatubo hadn't erupted.  Well, I'd say it would have got hotter sooner.  The chart would have shifted a bit to the left.

There was no particularly low or particularly high temperature in the 2000s relative to any other year that decade.  2004 and 2008 registered the lowest annual average, but really it was hot for the entire decade.

Overall, the content and general tone of Paul Homewood's article came across as a typical denialist article trying to downplay global warming.



Here are some choice comments from WUWT:

Lew Skannen says:

July 6, 2013 at 1:56 am “Almost 94 per cent of countries logged their warmest 10 years on record, it said.”
I have no idea what the actual stats are but I can imagine a situation where this claim is made because Nauru, Lichtenstein, Andorra, Vatican, Mauritius, Luxembourg and half a dozen Pacific islands all had their warmest decade …. and Russia didn’t.

I don't know if Russia had the hottest decade on record, but I do know it had the worst heat wave on record in 2010.

Clive Bond of Brisbane says:

July 5, 2013 at 11:10 pm  The planet has been warming for 300 years since the Little Ice Age. When would the warmest decade be?

That's the point, Clive Bond.  It's called global warming and it's caused by human activity.  And it looks as if the deniers are starting to shift the goal posts again with this comment from AlexS who says:

July 5, 2013 at 3:40 pm  It is telling they don’t say the “hottest century” or the “hottest millennium”.