NOAA: Global Warming 'Pause' Never Happened

Taco Cowboy writes: The whole global warming debate is as confusing as ever. Researchers from the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have published a new study in Science saying there was no "pause" in global warming. Dr. Thomas Karl points out that the warming rate over the past 15 years is "virtually identical" to warming over the last century, and updated observations show temperatures did not plateau.

"The idea of a global warming 'hiatus' arose from questions over why the trend of warming temperatures appeared to be stalling recently compared to the later part of the 20th century. ... The new analysis corrects for ocean observations made using different methods as well as including new data on surface temperatures."

"According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global average temperatures have increased by around 0.05C per decade in the period between 1998 and 2012. This compares with an average of 0.12 per decade between 1951 and 2012. The new analysis suggests a figure of 0.116 per decade for 2000-2014, compared with 0.113 for 1950-1999."

Comments

Remember the hole in the ozone layer?

[Overzeetop]

I worked with the group who built and operated the optical sensor which discovered the hole in the ozone. Except that they didn't know they had. Every time the sensor took optical data over the poles there was an "anomaly" in the data and they got uncharacteristically low numbers. For three years, this was written off as an unexplained anomaly when viewing down towards the polar ice. Until they looked up from below and found out that there really was no ozone there. Going back to the old data resulted in a fairly large change to the interpretation of the existing data which had been thrown out as unexplained.

Science learns as it goes.

Re:Enjoy The Ride

[taiwanjohn]

Actually, there is a fairly simple solution that can be done in a couple of decades, and has the bonus side effect of producing megatons of food in some of the more impoverished regions of the world. The trick is to convert semi-arid and arid grasslands into productive grazing lands for herbivores by using Managed Intensive Rotational Grazing which is described in detail (with stunning before/after photos) by Allan Savory in this TED Talk.

In a nutshell: MIRG simulates the "mobbing, mowing, and moving" behavior of large herds of herbivores in nature, where herds "mob together" for protection from predators, and move constantly to find fresh pasture. Following in their wake is a swath of "disturbed" pasture, which has just been aerated by hoof prints and fed with a rich load of fertilizer. This spurs a blaze of regrowth in the grasses, which replaces root mass which had earlier been shed (many plants shed root mass when cropped, to preserve the root-shoot ratio). Thus, every time herbivores graze a piece of land, they sequester a large amount of carbon into the soil, and actually increase the health and the depth of the topsoil.

Obviously, there's quite a bit more to this story, including earthworks to harvest and retain water, permaculture design to optimize ecosystem health and productivity, etc. But hopefully this will be enough to get the gears turning...