Nice read...
RealClimate: Warming, interrupted: Much ado about natural variability
Before delving into the paper itself, a few words about the place of our work in the global warming debate are in order. A quote from the early 20th century Viennese polymath Egon Friedell (which I ran across in the wonderful book Cultural Amnesia by Clive James) captures the situation better than any words I could ever weave;
Electricity and magnetism are those forces of nature by which people who know nothing about electricity and magnetism can explain everything.
Substitute the words modes of natural climate variability for electricity and magnetism, and well , hopefully the point is made.
The contentious part of our paper is that the climate system appears to have had another episode around the turn of the 21st century, coinciding with the much discussed halt in global warming. Whether or not such a halt has really occurred is of course controversial (it appears quite marked in the HadCRUT3 data, less so in GISTEMP); only time will tell if its real. Regardless, its important to note that we are not talking about global cooling, just a pause in warming.
RealClimate: Warming, interrupted: Much ado about natural variability
Before delving into the paper itself, a few words about the place of our work in the global warming debate are in order. A quote from the early 20th century Viennese polymath Egon Friedell (which I ran across in the wonderful book Cultural Amnesia by Clive James) captures the situation better than any words I could ever weave;
Electricity and magnetism are those forces of nature by which people who know nothing about electricity and magnetism can explain everything.
Substitute the words modes of natural climate variability for electricity and magnetism, and well , hopefully the point is made.
The contentious part of our paper is that the climate system appears to have had another episode around the turn of the 21st century, coinciding with the much discussed halt in global warming. Whether or not such a halt has really occurred is of course controversial (it appears quite marked in the HadCRUT3 data, less so in GISTEMP); only time will tell if its real. Regardless, its important to note that we are not talking about global cooling, just a pause in warming.