Sorry Alarmists, Even Warmist Joe Romm Confirms The Pause

He cherry picks the latest 12 month average, which just so happens to be a miniscule 0.074C higher than at the same stage in 1998. He forgets to tell you though that the current El Nino has been much longer lasting than 1998’s, and consequently temperatures in late 2015 were already comparatively elevated.

He also forgets to tell you that August 2016 is 0.07C cooler than the same month in 1998, or that the last five months have also been cooler this year.

In reality, these differences are no more than weather, and have no significance either way.

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Romm then goes on to mention that there is another satellite dataset, RSS, which somehow disproves the “deniers’” UAH. Unfortunately for the discredited Romm, the RSS data show exactly the same as UAH’s – the current 12-month average is 0.081 higher than in 1998, but again we find no statistically warming since 1998.

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We all accept that there was warming between 1979 and 1998, which coincided with the PDO switch and the movement of the AMO from its coldest state to its warmest.

It is what has happened since that matters. You know, that thing called the “Pause”, that even the UK Met Office, in July 2013, accepted was real, prior, of course, to the latest super El Nino. Indeed, it was so real, they even wrote a paper about it.

But even if we assume that the rise in temperature since 1998 is part of an underlying change, then so what?

A change of 0.07C over 18 years equates to 0.4C/century. This is way below anything forecast by the IPCC, Joe Romm or any of his well rewarded cohorts, as John Christy points out:

If all we are arguing about is an inconsequentially small rise in temperatures in the next century, one that is almost certainly beneficial, don’t the wheels fall off Joe Romm’s alarmist bandwagon?