Posted 8 February 2013

Andrew Bolt, a columnist of Australia's Melbourne Herald Sun has vigorously berated his country's Trade Minister about his unwillingness or inability to accept data that show that the world has not warmed for the past 16 years.

The trouble with facts on global warming

Andrew Bolt,  Herald Sun, February 07, 2013

DR Karl Kruszelnicki presents science on the ABC. Dr Craig Emerson is a minister in the Government that makes you pay a carbon tax. So the two should at least know the basic data about global warming.

Alas.

Kruszelnicki, one of Australia's "National Living Treasures", last week tweeted in outrage: "How does A Bolt get away with saying planet hasn't warmed in the last 16 years."

Emerson, the Trade Minister, replied: "Mr Bolt can have his own opinions but he can't have his own facts. Global temperatures are rising. Fact."

"Fact", Craig?

Late last year, the British Met Office released data showing no statistically significant warming for 16 years. Another data set from the Remote Sensing Systems Microwave Sounding Units even shows a slight cooling since 1997 though, again, it's not statistically significant.

Yes, Emerson could find yet other measurements showing a slight warming over that time, but not one of the main tools for measuring the world's temperature show any rise since that is statistically significant.

Let me explain "not statistically significant". It means the trend is so slight scientists don't know whether it's just caused by accident or background "noise".

Emerson won't take my word for it, because I've been a sceptic since even before Chief Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery predicted "the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems". Splash, splash.

So let me quote the latest draft report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body that has most ferociously pushed the global warming scare.

It notes that "much interest has focused on differences (in global temperatures) in the period since 1998 and an apparent flattening in HadCRUT3 trends" (HadCRUT is one of the temperature measurements showing no real warming).

The IPCC insists that some jiggling of the temperature data it uses means "all products now show a warming trend since 1998" but it still concedes -- and this is the important bit -- "none of these are statistically significant".

None. Other prominent scientists are more upfront.

"The data confirms the existence of a 'pause' in the warming," confirms Professor Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The MITs Professor Richard Lindzen, arguably the world's most famous climate scientist, has argued for two years that "there has been no warming since 1997 and no statistically significant warming since 1995".

Even global warming evangelist Phil Jones, whose Climatic Research Unit was famously exposed by the Climategate emails, admits the data he prefers can't detect any significant warming over that time.

"I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95 per cent significance level."

And however you slice it, the warming we've seen is below or around the very lowest predictions made by the IPCC, as the latest IPCC draft report shows.

Add that to the mounting evidence of other dud predictions made by warmists.

No, we are not seeing more or worse cyclones and hurricanes. No, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide have not run out of water. No, the world's rice and wheat crops have not fallen, but they've set new records.

IN fact, "there has been no increase (in Australia) in the frequency of natural hazard events since 1950", says Professor John McAneney, director of research group Risk Frontiers.

Not surprisingly, then, the rest of the world seems to have lost Australia's crusading zeal to stop a warming that for now seems to have stopped itself.

In Australia, we're forced to pay a $23-a-tonne carbon tax. But in Europe, carbon allowances have crashed to below $6. In New Zealand the price has plummeted to only $2.

None of this is to say the world did not warm last century and will not resume warming at some stage.

But the truth is that the world over the past 16 years has not warmed as most climate models and warmist scientists predicted. The increasing disasters we were told to expect have not happened.

I'm shocked - but sadly not surprised - a minister of the Gillard Government does not know any of this, despite foisting on us a massive carbon tax.

I just wish an ABC science communicator did not keep him so dangerously ignorant.