Empirical evidence is always a good disinfectant for doomsday fears and conspiracy theories. And it's no different for the exuberant, catastrophic hyperbole, irrational and anti-science prognostications being pronounced on a daily basis regarding global warming.
The below charts of empirical evidence are another 'bolus' of disinfectant for the climate change hyperbole - hyperbole that is pushing both climate science research and debate to the ludicrous, for example.
| Chart #1 (click on any chart to enlarge) | Chart #2 |
| Chart #3 | Chart #4 |
| Chart #5 | Chart #6 |
Chart #1 is one that will never be shown by the establishment climate science community, nor by the climate-doomsday alarmists.
The chart plots the absolute global averages for both surfaces and atmospheric temperatures since the major 1998 El Niño peak. It is a peak-to-peak chart through December 2015 that reveals absolute global temperatures to be on a fairly stable path over the last 18 years.
Global temperatures move up and down in a narrow band, which is why the rolling 5-year averages are essentially flat. This stability has occurred in spite of the large increase in CO2 levels (see black dots on chart) during the same time frame.
Chart #2 is a plot of the same time period but using the familiar temperature anomalies instead of absolute temperatures.
Climate scientists and alarmists strongly favor anomalies for their lack of context. With anomalies, the public sees frightening large temperature spikes without realizing that real-world temperatures, while extremely variable, rarely remain outside a very narrow climate range - anomalies don't reveal the narrow range context that the absolutes show in Chart #1.
It's important to remember that in everyday life the public depends on the reporting of absolute temperatures. For example, the TV weather announcer would provide the following style of summation: "tomorrow will range from a cool of 45 degrees in the morning to a high of 73 degrees by late afternoon" - they don't state that tomorrow's temperatures will have an anomaly of +0.03 degree over the average baseline by late afternoon.
Simply stated, they use absolutes when reporting to the public, not meaningless anomalies. The absolute temperature degrees provide valuable context that allows the public, be they urban commuters, regional bureaucrats or rural farmers, to make informed and rational decisions.
With that said, it is certainly true that anomalies are invaluable for research, but for scientists to employ them for communications with the general public is in a reality a form of lying by context-omission.
By avoiding the use of absolute temperatures, the establishment can thus produce the desired agenda narrative, in a context vacuum, that our world is "rapidly warming" in order to persuade the public of favored energy/taxation policies.
But as this series of charts reveal, the context provided by the absolute temperatures is critically important to determining if the "rapidly warming" doomsday fears are rational and contextually evidence-based.
Charts #3 (absolutes) and #4 (anomalies) are plots of the same surface and atmospheric temperature datasets but for a different period: 1880 through 2015.
Charts #5 and #6 are more of the same, except the plots start at January 1979, the first full year of satellite temperature measurements and empirical 24/7 global measurement evidence - 37 years, as of the end of 2015.
With that long introduction out of the way, what do these 6 charts tell the policymakers, the taxpayers and the general public?
First, atmospheric CO2 levels have been climbing, relentlessly.
Second, the NOAA surface temperature dataset indicates that the globe has been steadily warming since 1880, but in a sporadic fashion.
The long-term warming trend since the Little Ice Age amounts to +0.7C degrees/century, per NOAA. The shorter term surface warming since 1998 has been at a rate of +1.4C/century; and the atmosphere has actually cooled at a -0.1C/century rate since 1998.
Third, climate change and its variation, as represented by global temperatures in Chart #4, is evident since the first decade of observations. Climate change 'has', and 'is', and 'will' happen - it is a natural phenomenon that happens.
Fourth, although the satellite evidence clearly indicates that the atmosphere has warmed since 1979, that warming has stalled since the 1998 peak - Chart #2's 5-year average for the RSS dataset vividly shows the 'Pause/Hiatus/Stall', equal to a cooling rate of -0.1/century.
Both the surface and atmospheric actual temperature changes are significantly below the estimates predicted due to the large CO2 increases.
And this fourth observation is especially critical.
The anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis states the greenhouse emissions will warm the lower atmosphere, which will then result in a subsequent warming of Earth's surface. Yet, since 1998 the surface has warmed (more on that surface "warming" here and here) while the atmosphere had not warmed at all through 2015 - this is a major AGW hypothesis disconnect.
In addition, the AGW hypothesis assumes that increasing greenhouse gases will cause the triggering of major positive feedbacks that in turn will cause dangerous, accelerated warming in the atmosphere and then the surface. In reality, the "dangerous, accelerated warming" has not taken place, anywhere.
Ergo, CO2 emissions are not resulting in the "consensus" predicted positive feedbacks.
Since there is no evidence of the doomsday positive feedback, which the climate experts and their computer models assume, the predictions of doomsday climate catastrophes actually remain without a sliver of requisite empirical evidence or scientific proof.
Notes: Datasets used: NOAA; RSS; CO2-modern; CO2-proxy. Excel was used to plot charts from the government's own climate data.