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Pat Michaels: Global warming apocalypse canceled (21st century has seen no rise in temperature, after all)
Article Tags: Pat Michaels
My greener friends are increasingly troubled by the lack of a rise in recent global surface temperatures. Using monthly data measured as the departure from long-term averages, there’s been no significant warming trend since the fall of 1996. In other words, we are now in our 17th year of flat temperatures.
Since 1900, the world has seen one other period of similar temperature stagnation (actually a slight cooling) that lasted for 30 years and ended around 1976. The current one is happening with much more putative warming “pressure,” because the atmosphere’s carbon-dioxide content is much higher than it was in mid-century.
From the Industrial Revolution to 1950, atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations rose by about 15 percent. Today, the increase is up to 41 percent, making long periods without warming either 1) increasingly unlikely, or 2) the natural result of simply overestimating how “sensitive” surface temperature is to carbon dioxide. My money is on the latter.
Now, just for fun, let’s assume that on Jan. 1, another warming trend began, at the same rate that was observed in the last such period, from 1977 through 1998, or 0.17 C per decade.
Source: washingtontimes.com
2013-01-18 04:03:01
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