James Hansen Admits Global Temperature Standstill is Real

Dr David Whitehouse, Date: 17/01/13

The GWPF has been right all along. In a new report Hansen, Sato and Ruedy (2013) acknowledge the existence of a standstill in global temperature lasting a decade.

This is a welcome contribution to the study of global temperature. When others reached the same conclusion they have been ridiculed; so this admission should provide some pause for reflection by those who have attacked the very idea of a recent temperature standstill, often without understanding the data, focusing on who was making the argument and their alleged non-scientific motives.  According to Hansen et al. the Nasa Giss database has 2012 as the ninth warmest year on record, although statistically indistinguishable from the last 12 years, at least. Noaa says it’s the tenth warmest year. The difference is irrelevant.  Hansen discusses the possible contributions to global temperature in the past decade from stochastic variability and climate forcings. Personally I don’t think that the variations are demonstrably stochastic. Very early in the report Hansen makes the statement; “Global temperature thus continues at a high level that is sufficient to cause a substantial increase in the frequency of extreme warm anomalies.” To say that such an assertion is debatable is an understatement.  To Read More....

Word of the day

Stochastic (from the Greek for aim or guess) is an adjective that refers to systems whose behavior is intrinsically non-deterministic, sporadic, and categorically not intermittent (i.e. random). A stochastic process is one whose behavior is non-deterministic, in that a system's subsequent state is determined both by the process's predictable actions and by a random element.

My Take – Call me a dummy, but I had never in my life seen this word until last week in a book I am reading about Silent Spring.  I had to look it up then, and I’m still not entirely sure I know what it means, although reading the probability theory might help.  Although I am beginning to wonder if this isn't a weasel word.  Weasel words are words that are like escape clauses in a contract so that you can't be pinned down.