2015 lived up to expectations and was officially designated the hottest year in recorded history, beating the record set in 2014 by a wide margin. As a result, deniers can’t just reuse last year's uncertainty argument (though they are still clinging to last year’s satellite excuse).
Unfortunately, this strong scientific data doesn’t mean that bloggers or politicians (like the now widely debunked Ted Cruz) are likely to just accept this new record. Deniers are scrambling to find ways to rebut the science, even as climate scientists reiterated that this streak of records provides yet more evidence against the “pause” theory.
James Delingpole lobs the usual insults and retreads the satellite and data adjustment tropes. Daily Caller reporter Michael Bastasch, ever eager to let someone else do his work, turned to Climate Depot for quotes from Richard Lindzen. Lindzen’s points are odd, to say the least. He considers it “proof of dishonesty to argue about things like small fluctuations in temperatures or the sign of a trend.” Now, arguing over “small fluctuations” might be dishonest. For example, when there is a short-term reduction in the rate of warming after an El Nino event and deniers paint that as some sort of pause, that could be fairly considered a dishonest reporting of data. But “the sign of a trend” is pretty important, isn’t it? In fact, trends are the best and most reliable indicator we have to show long-term change in our environment.
But the most obvious own-goal was scored by David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation/Forum. His “analysis” (published on the GWP Forum, the political campaign part of the site, not the “educational charity” Foundation side) found that it’s “unwise” and “unsafe” to consider 2015 in looking at a temperature trend, because like 1998 it was an El Nino year and following years will be cooler. He points out that in the past when “some analysts” started their temperature trends at 1998, they “were rightly criticised for it.”
So we look forward to seeing Whitehouse rightly criticize himself, since he began the GWPF pamphlet on “Causes for the Pause” (.pdf) by asking “What is the reason for the lack of warming observed at the surface of the Earth since about 1997?”
What year starts at “about 1997”? Maybe… 1998?
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