Spiegel online/AP melden gerade 2008 sei eines der wärmsten Jahre gewesen und ein weiterer “Vorbote des Klimawandels”. Im Text erfährt man dann, es sei eines der wärmsten Jahre in DEUTSCHLAND gewesen. Für die durchschnittliche Globaltemperatur ist das ungefähr so interessant wie ein Sack Reis, der in China umfällt. Gloabal gesehen, und auf diese Messgröße bezieht sich die gesamte Klimadebatte, gibt es seit nunmehr fast zehn Jahren keine Erwärmung mehr, sondern Stagnation. Und 2008 geht es sogar bergab, das Jahr wird dem Stand der Dinge nach das KÄLTESTE seit langem sein. Die Durchschnittstemperatur wird voraussichtlich bei 14,3 Grad liegen, das ist 0,14 Grad weniger als der Durchschnitt von 2001 bis 2007. Siehe hier . Es ist einfach nur noch peinlich, welche Verrenkungen inzwischen gemacht werden, um das über Jahre gezimmerte Weltbild aufrecht zu erhalten.

Und hier noch einmal eine Analyse von David Whitehouse, einem bekannten britischen Wissenschafts-Publizisten und Naturfilmer:

“One would have thought that any dispassionate and scientifically rigorous look at the general temperature standstill since 2001, and now a slight fall in the average annual global temperature record would provide pause for thought about what is really going on, and, whatever side of the fence you sit, perhaps a humble appreciation that we do not by any means know as much about the complexities of the climate as some say we do.

And so it happened. The headline in the Guardian said;

“2008 will be coolest year of the decade; Global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, but cooler temperature is not evidence that global warming is slowing, say climate scientists” http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/05/climate-change-weather

If I may quote from the article;

“Prof Myles Allen at Oxford University who runs the climateprediction.net website, said he feared climate sceptics would overinterpret the figure. ‘You can bet your life there will be a lot of fuss about what a cold year it is. Actually no, its not been that cold a year, but the human memory is not very long, we are used to warm years,’ he said, ‘Even in the 80s [this year] would have felt like a warm year.’

And 2008 would have been a scorcher in Charles Dickens’s time - without human-induced warming there would have been a one in a hundred chance of getting a year this hot. ‘For Dickens this would have been an extremely warm year,’ he said. On the flip side, in the current climate there is a roughly one in 10chance of having a year this cool.”

Overinterpret? Is that a new way of saying don’t look at all the relevant data because it might be inconvenient?

As I pointed out, this is not telling the whole story, nor even putting it into a proper context. The important point evaded is not that 2008 would have been hot for Dickens but how hot is it with respect to the current warming spell. Nobody is arguing that the past decade is not warmer than previous ones and that the world¹s glaciers and ecosystems are not reacting to it. If 2008 is the coldest year since 2001 and the global average temperature didn’t change at all between 2001 2007 one should ask why! Talking about 2008 on its own and comparing it to Victorian times is misleading.

Then a few days later in the Guardian the environmental campaigner George Monbiot wrote, in response to the first article that “In the physical world global warming appears to be spilling over into runaway feedback.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/09/climate-change-science-environment

Really? What a load of nonsense. It’s statements like these that make me wonder if I am either living in the same physical world and if we need real world data at all?

It is said in that article that it’s all right because the Met Office predicted that 2008 would be cool because of the la Nina effect. What it didn’t say is that the previous year was predicted by the Met Office to be the warmest ever and it wasn¹t. la Ninas come along regularly and it’s no great scientific achievement to say that when one occurs the world will cool. A failed prediction of warming however is highly significant especially given the faith put in computer modelling.

Also this supposed explanation is not in itself adequate. If the predicted cooling by la Nina had not occurred then 2008 would probably have been the same temperature (given the uncertainties) as every year since 2001 and that in itself would require explanation.

Later on in the Monbiot article we have, as I predicted, the tired old cliché about “professional deniers employed by fossil fuel companies.” Where I wonder are their counterparts, the professional campaigners whose vested interests make them see a runaway warming world despite what the real world the data says?

I am broadly in favour of the global warming CO2 hypothesis but I know it is just that, a hypothesis - and that needs testing against real observations in the physical world. If it isn’t, then it’s not science.”