39 thoughts on “The “Hottest Year On Record””

  1. A single hottest-year-ever can be an outlier, and therefore misleading. Witness the way 1998 has been treated for the last 16 years. It makes more sense to look at averages over periods of years.

    Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry: ‘With 2014 essentially tied with 2005 and 2010 for hottest year, this implies that there has been essentially no trend in warming over the past decade.’

    Curry provides a perfect example of the misuse of individual years in isolation. The five-year average temperature of 2010-2014 was warmer than the average from 2005-2009, and the ten-year average of 2005-2014 was warmer than the average of 1995-2004. If you look at all the years, and not just the local peaks, the warming trend is obvious.

    1. If you look at insurance rates and hospital bills, you’ll notice a trend in rising health care costs.

      Jim has provided many perfect examples of the misuse of individual years in isolation.

    2. You missed the main point that Curry made: the climate models are failing validation badly. This year was another one of the “pause”, and every such year – even if it breaks temperature records by a small amount – makes the failure worse. Every such year decreases our estimates for the probably climate sensitivity.

      1. You missed the main point that Curry made: the climate models are failing validation badly.

        Curry is free to make that point without stating, erroneously, that there is no warming trend.

        This year was another one of the “pause”

        Pause in what? There’s no pause in warming as measured by surface instruments.

        1. Except those surface instrument measurements are flawed in many ways, and “adjusted.” And the warming is supposed to be happening in the troposphere, where it isn’t.

          1. Except those surface instrument measurements are flawed in many ways, and “adjusted.”

            That seems like a stretch. In the absence of an actual warming trend, the flaws and adjustments would have to accumulate over time to produce the measurements we’ve seen.

          2. We’re supposed to believe that year after year scientists in four different organizations (five if you count Berkeley Earth) are all producing increasingly fraudulent surface temperature measurements? Like I wrote, that seems like a stretch.

        2. What Curry wrote was perfectly accurate. There is a very considerable decrease in warming trend, to the point that it has not been significantly greater than zero for close to two decades. That is a very big problem for climate modellers. Satellite measurements are even more of a problem.
          The fact that has been a very slight warming trend for those two decades is not a reason to be announcing this year as evidence for AGW. It is evidence against. No one is going to pay for mitigation with the current warming trend; it would be no problem at all.
          On the other hand, there have been pauses before in the last century, though not quite as long, and with not nearly as much CO2 forcing. The temperature may well turn upward again; probably will. But it’s ridiculous to be touting “new temperature records”. Obviously, if there is any warming trend at all, you expect later years to be warmer than earlier years. So what? A very small warming trend is no problem.
          Is this an argument over the meaning of the word “pause”, or are we having a serious discussion? Did you notice Curry’s quotes around the word “pause”?

        3. “There’s no pause in warming as measured by surface instruments.”

          Absurd. There is a readily observable pause in every major surface temperature set over the last decade, and it is obvious the corner was turned much earlier. Only GISS, which is fudged with dubiously infilled polar data, shows even a slight rise. HADCRUT4 shows a decline. Even the zealots acknowledge the “pause” now. Your assertion is a complete non-starter. Who’s the denier now?

          Whether there is a small continued upward trend or not is moot anyway. It isn’t anywhere close to what was projected. The models were wrong. The AGW hypothesis has failed.

    3. If you look at all the years, and not just the local peaks, the warming trend is obvious.

      … and obviously overstated by every climate model known to man. Not one of them can explain the last 15 years, and no one can explain why that is.

      But that doesn’t matter, right Jim?

        1. God the stupid at that link makes my eyes hurt. That’s not a model, its a “graph”. With volcano years removed. Somehow. Do you really find solace in that kind of crap? If so, you’re probably beyond assistance.

          1. and no one can explain why that is.

            As I said, the graphic offers an explanation.

            ” With volcano years removed.”

            What, you want a medal? Why not remove them, do you think you’re clever to notice they were removed, do you think it removing them was some sort of deception?
            Large volcanic eruptions can cause cooler years, do you think that leaving those years in would somehow negate the point being made?

          2. It depends on what “point” is being made. If the “point” is “here’s something that might make you feel better”, then no, take the volcanos out.

          3. ” do you think it removing them was some sort of deception?”

            YES!

            Undoubtedly, it is completely unacceptable and unscientific to simply leave out data that doesn’t agree with your theory. Doing so wipes out any validity in one’s work.

      1. and obviously overstated by every climate model known to man

        The warming trend over the last fifty years isn’t some guess that’s been “overstated by climate models”, it’s a matter of historical record. I’m not a climate scientist, and I’m not an expert on how well that record matches past predictions. But it’s crazy for people to dispute that the record shows a warming trend to date, or that 2014 was the warmest year yet.

        1. The warming trend over the last fifty years isn’t some guess that’s been “overstated by climate models”, it’s a matter of historical record.

          Actually, it’s not. It’s an interpretation of (flawed) instrument data, and since we’ve had the satellites looking, it is belied by them. But even if it is warming, that doesn’t mean that we’re causing it, since we’re still coming out of the Little Ice Age. If it doesn’t match up with what the models predict, it increases the likelihood that it’s natural (or at least, that the modelers don’t know WTF they’re doing, and we can’t rely on them for policy decisions).

          1. Your link has absolutely nothing to do with how the trends in satellite and surface temperatures compare, and I don’t see the “heft”.

  2. After a quick hunt around it looks like the fuss the “skeptics” are making about it only just barely being a record is much, much louder than the fuss the AGW proponents are making about it being a record year.

    1. “The globe is warmer now than it has been in the last 100 years and more likely in at least 5,000 years,” said climate scientist Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, who wasn’t part of either research team. “Any wisps of doubt that human activities are at fault are now gone with the wind.”

      Nine of the 10 hottest years in NOAA global records have occurred since 2000. The odds of this happening at random are about 650 million to 1, according to University of South Carolina statistician John Grego.

      You’re right Andrew. I guess you can’t really characterize this dreck as fuss.

    2. Media outlets like the MSNBC Weather Channel are megaphoning the phony record big time, collectively challenging NDT and Michael Mann for the fraudulent “science” championship.

      1. Just about all the skeptic blog sites are going on about it, hardly any of the “alarmist” blog sites so far.

  3. “…on record…” are sort of, like, important words. The meaning is sort of, like, lost on most people, the people the alarmists are trying to alarm.

  4. Hyping the narrative? I’m shocked!

    We do expect the earth to warm with energy use (having nothing to do with carbon) assuming population continues to grow. So the alarmist liars may end up with something to point at.

    But wrecking the economy and screwing with peoples lives is the important agenda before we ever reach that point.

  5. Am I imagining things, or did the pause start at roughly the same time high quality instrumentation was deployed to monitor “global warming”?

      1. There’s a big difference – everyone involved in SETI or SETI@home knows up front that it is the longest of long shots, whereas CAGW has been sold as a sure thing, “An Inconvenient Truth”.

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