Washington Post: Cooling Is Caused By Nature, Warming By Mankind Or Something

Of course, let’s not forget that Warmists will also blame cooling on Mankind at times, as well

Global temperatures have cooled since 2016. Here’s why that’s normal.

It was only two years ago that a new record-warm global temperature was set, but things have already cooled off significantly. Temperature anomalies hit record peaks in 2016, but have been sliding since then. Global temperatures are still much warmer than normal, but according to NASA, the first quarter of 2018 (January-March) was the fourth warmest, behind 2015, 2016, 2017 and tied with 2010.

This is normal, of course. The world has not seen the last of global warming. The long-term upward trend in temperatures is due to manmade fossil fuel emissions, but natural processes that impact global temperature — like El Nino — still play a role. Sometimes they make things warmer and sometimes they make things cooler.

The current cooling episode is mostly due to a reversal of waters in the Tropical Pacific, which can modulate global temperature. Since the Pacific Ocean is our largest global body of water, what it does makes a big difference on global climate. A similar reversal followed the super El Niño in the late 90s — 1998 was the hottest year on record at the time in part because of the warm El Nino water pushing global temperatures over the brink. Earth went from having one of the strongest El Niño events on record (very warm waters in the central Tropical Pacific) to a few years of cooler waters thanks to a La Niña period.

See? Any increase in temperature is your fault for refusing to ride a bicycle to work instead of taking your fossil fueled vehicle, and let’s not even get into that cheeseburger you ate the other day. Ugh! But cooling is mostly caused by Nature doing its thing.

Much of Europe, Asia, and North America have been running much cooler than the super El Niño-fired winter that included the first quarter of 2016.  Some of the recent cooling may also be tied to stronger North Atlantic high pressure “blocking” patterns that were the strongest in about eight years:

Such strong blocking pattern signatures may be associated with an incoming deep solar minimum period similar to what we experienced between 2008 and 2011, which helps to flush more cool to cold air into the middle latitudes during the winter seasons mainly (record snows in Europe and a very cool North American March-April period). This may be something to watch for next winter, but for now, this current “cooling” seems to be mostly influenced by La Niña and the ENSO cycle.

Question for the Cult of Climastrology: why can’t most of the warming be attributed to natural processes, the same way cooling is attributed to it?

Oh, right, that would be inconvenient after 25+ years of spreading awareness, blamestorming, scaring people, and would ruin a movement meant to increase taxation along with putting more and more people and private entities, along with economies, under the thumbs of centralized government.

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31 Responses to “Washington Post: Cooling Is Caused By Nature, Warming By Mankind Or Something”

  1. Jeffery says:

    TEACH asks:

    why can’t most of the warming be attributed to natural processes, the same way cooling is attributed to it?

    Have you noticed the pattern of warming? If you look at the temperature record you will observe an overall increase in temperature with time although it is occurring as a sawtooth plot. But the trend is up. Multiple physical phenomena contribute to the mean surface temperature, including elements that cause warming and some that cause cooling. It is the balance between these elements that determines relative warming or cooling assessed at any point in time.

    Cherry-picking, it was cooler in 2012 than in 1998! Yet the trend over the last several decades is an increase of about 0.2C per decade.

  2. Jl says:

    As shown, the earth isn’t warming rapidly

    • drowningpuppies says:

      It’s all in the presentation…

      … without using anomalies and magnified scales, it would be difficult to detect “climate change”.

      https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/18/an-interesting-plot-twist-call-it-an-anomaly/

    • Zachriel says:

      Jl: As shown, the earth isn’t warming rapidly

      Actually, the evidence indicates that the Earth is warming faster than at any time in thousands of years, and is projected to warm faster than at any time in millions of years.

      Clark et al., Consequences of twenty-first-century policy for multi-millennial climate and sea-level change, Nature Climate Change 2016.

      Diffenbaugh & Field, Changes in Ecologically Critical Terrestrial Climate Conditions, Science 2013.

  3. Jeffery says:

    So now you’re denying that it’s warming??

  4. Jl says:

    “faster than any time in thousands of years..”. Impossible to compare a 150 yr thermometer temp record with paleo records. In other words, how fast did the temp change in other 150 yr periods-say from 5000 BC to 4850 BC? You mean you don’t know? Then you can’t make that assertion,because there’s no proof.

  5. david7134 says:

    Z,
    Interesting to see a new Z. I suspect your term starts at the beginning of the year. Therefore you are likely in grade school. So I will make this simple. You don’t know a thing about critical reading. So, some basics. You reference the Washington Post, a proven rag of liberal propaganda that is not based in truth. Then you only read the abstract, which you did not understand. That is a common mistake, in fact much of the literature on cholesterol is based on people only reading abstracts when the body of the paper came to conclusions completely opposite from those in the abstract. I suspect the paper is full of holes that would not stand criticism. Now, most people who are conservative really don’t care if the environment is getting warm or cold as we have the smarts and know how to understand there is little you can do. And that is the issue in this religion that you have. The only answer to the environment put forward by the liberals/progressives/communist is to totally destroy the economy and accept global government, that is it and you can not prove otherwise as it has already started. Now, it has been shown that only 30% of college grads can not read a complicated book or article, much less give a critical analysis of it. I suspect you are one of the 70% that can’t read. Concentrate your studies in matters other than rhetoric such as critical analysis and reading and your life will be simpler and you will not have to live on your parents handouts.

    • Zachriel says:

      david7134: You reference the Washington Post

      Actually, we referenced a peer-reviewed paper in the journal Science.

      david7134: Then you only read the abstract, which you did not understand.

      Actually, we read the paper.

      david7134: I suspect the paper is full of holes that would not stand criticism.

      Heh. Waving your hands may be easier, but to argue against the paper, you have to actually address the specifics.

      • Drowningpuppies says:

        Ah, yes. The handwaving argument from the kiddiez again.

      • david7134 says:

        Z,
        As I said, you can’t understand a complex paper. Get some education and maturity.

        • Zachriel says:

          david7134: As I said, you can’t understand a complex paper.

          Chest-thumping is no more convincing than handwaving. You said, “suspect the paper is full of holes that would not stand criticism,” but it’s clear you don’t know because you haven’t read the paper. Let’s try a source geared towards laypersons.

          NASA: As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years. In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degrees Celsius, roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming.
          https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/page3.php

          • david7134 says:

            Z,
            You are really something for a grade school kid. Now, I have led a journal club at a medical school level. So, from the abstract, I can come to several conclusions. Then there is the fact that very few articles addressing the environment and specifically CO2 are full of mis-information and faults in logic. Now, I seriously doubt that you have read the whole article unless your high school has access to journal papers. Then there is the likihood of your not understanding any of the language, which is displayed in your comments. I am willing to bet that you are unfamiliar with the fact that there is always a significant jump in temperature just before an ice age. And, we are about due for an ice age, as well as a significant event to depopulate the world (infection, etc.). Another thing you are hung up on is the concept of peer review. You are too young to know that it is generally accepted that our peer review process is broken. That is true of medicine and certainly environmental science. Other Z’s came to appreciate this very quickly. Now, I don’t know what “chest thumping” you are talking about, I can easily see that you are not as smart as you and your mother think and this needs to be pointed out for a decent conversation. Finally, most people who are discussing this with you are suspicious that the temp may be up, but not convinced due to mishandling and fraud in the data. But that is not the issue. The fact is that there is little evidence of CO2 doing anything. You and Jeff go on about correlation, but correlation never is associated with causation. Then there is the case that almost immediately this was turned into a political issue with only one solution which is global government and destruction of the US economy.

          • drowningpuppies says:

            Oh please, kiddiez, the refuted Mann Hockey Stick graph again.
            Now that’s really convincing.

          • Zachriel says:

            david7134: So, from the abstract, I can come to several conclusions.

            And what conclusions are those? Have you had time to read either of the citations provided?

            david7134: The fact is that there is little evidence of CO2 doing anything.

            CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and its effect on surface temperatures has been known for over a century. Indeed, without CO2, the Earth’s oceans would be largely frozen, which can be deduced from first principles.

            david7134: You and Jeff go on about correlation, but correlation never is associated with causation.

            Huh? Greenhouse warming is the result of fundamental physics. It’s causative, not correlational.

          • drowningpuppies says:

            Care to discuss the basic physics of heat flow, kiddiez?

          • drowningpuppies says:

            Maybe we could start here.

            Hardly, but rather based on the basic physics of heat flow. Start with this basic fact: The Earth can only gain or lose heat radiatively.
            #2.3.1 Zachriel on 2018-02-11 10:24 (Reply)

            Whaddya say, kiddiez?

  6. Jl says:

    Sorry, Z- measuring temps to hundredths of a degree to show an asserted rate can’t be compared to paleo records with error bars that are probably at least 1 degree. The previous graph shown compares the pre-industrial rate to the rate after man’s CO2- In other words apples to apples- and the rates are statistically the same.

    • Zachriel says:

      Jl: measuring temps to hundredths of a degree to show an asserted rate can’t be compared to paleo records with error bars that are probably at least 1 degree.

      Where did you get that idea? The end of ice ages see a change in mean surface temperature of about 5°C over 5,000 years. The projected rate of change over the next century is twenty times that. Nothing in that statement requires measurements to a hundredth of a degree.

  7. Jl says:

    “The projected rate of change” means nothing, as it’s just an assertion not born out by facts. The facts we do have show similar rates pre and post CO2. https://twitter.com/lunatic__fringe/status/975348380502188034?s=21

  8. Jl says:

    “CO2 not the only driver of climate”. True, which is why there’s no way to tell which warming is natural, and which is not. The point being made was that the pre-industrial warming rate is indistinguishable from the post industrials warming rate, which several graphs have shown. And the “0.00/decade rate” is somewhat of a misnomer, as there was actually cooling during that period, directly opposite of what we were told was “supposed to happen”.

  9. Zachriel says:

    Jl: “CO2 not the only driver of climate”. True, which is why there’s no way to tell which warming is natural, and which is not.

    That doesn’t follow. You state it as a categorical, when it is contingent on the particulars. In this case, energy is conserved, and we can identify the various natural and artificial inputs to the system, so there’s no reason to think that the problem is inherently intractable.

    The greenhouse effect is a real phenomenon. Increasing the greenhouse effect will increase the Earth’s surface temperature. The question is by how much, the answer to which is complicated by positive and negative feedbacks.

    Jl: the “0.00/decade rate” is somewhat of a misnomer

    The chart said it was based on HadCRUT4. We looked up HadCRUT4 for the period, and there was virtually no change during the period. The trend line was improperly drawn, which is obvious from visual inspection. For some reason, he left 1940-1950 out of the trend. If he did, he would have found a slight cooling of 0.02°C per decade from 1940 through 1980.

    Jl: directly opposite of what we were told was “supposed to happen”.

    That is incorrect. CO2 is not the only driver of climate, so a monotonic increase is not expected. Not only are there external forcings, but there are internal variables, primarily having to do with the oceans, that cause chaotic cycling of warming and cooling irrespective of the overall warming of the system.

    • drowningpuppies says:

      To put it simply for the kiddiez…

      We are not to tell nature what she’s gotta be… She’s always got better imagination than we have.

      Richard P. Feynman

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