It’s official: Andrew Bolt has lost the plot. On his blog on Wednesday, he presented the following graph (using UAH satellite data) as evidence of how “the pause in global warming continues”.
No intelligent person could look at these figures and see anything but a trend towards global warming. Before 1997, world temperatures were predominantly below the 1981-2010 average. After 1997, temperatures are predominantly above the 30-year average. On the instrumental record going back to 1850, there is no precedent for temperatures of this kind, with the decade 2000-09 the warmest on record.
If one were to draw a trend line through Bolt’s graph, it would slope upwards to the right, confirming warming of the order of 0.5 to 0.6 degrees across the 34-year period. At this rate, climate change will have a substantial impact on ecosystems and economic activity.
What is Bolt going on about? Since early last year, he has been running denialist propaganda, insisting on no warming since 1997. This is a classic exercise in statistical cherry-picking. As the graph shows, temperatures rose in the 1997-99 period due to El Nino. In recent years, weather patterns have experienced La Nina, with a cyclical cooling impact (due to the wet conditions it generates). In Bolt-land, this signifies a pause in global warming.
But climate change cannot be reliably understood or measured by cyclical changes in the weather. It is a long-term trend. Using Bolt’s graph, one could point to massive warming between 2000 and 2010 by cherry-picking those two 12-month periods to exaggerate the extent of temperature changes. But that would not do justice to the trend pattern. It would repeat Bolt’s statistical fraud, but from the reserve side of the argument.
In effect, Bolt has outed himself as a propagandist, hoist on his own petard. By any sensible reading of his graph, there is no pause in global warming. Climate change is real. Just ask the graph on Bolt’s blog — the ultimate condemnation of the denialist position.
What is Bolt going on about? you ask?
Absolutely the same thing all the conservative warriors are: starting fires everywhere.
The tactic of answering a question by asking another, or just simply inflaming an audience keeps that audience busy denying, retaliating or remonstrating. Clearly, it works.
If you took out all the responses to such attacks even from the likes of crikey there wouldn’t be much content left. Probably it’s because current news editors think that just because the same team of 10 or 20 LNP and Labor bloggers rant meaninglessly at each other creating 200+ comments they’re doing something right.
It’s exactly what the Gillard Government has been doing – so busy responding to Opposition taunts as puerile as Bolt’s that its own narrative is lost in the dust – and it’s still doing it.
Pity the media is doing the same thing.
Can someone wake me up when sanity returns.
It’s a sad commentary on the state of affairs that the drooling idiot Bolt actually gets paid to write this drivel. Still, as Eistein said, There is a limit to genius but there is no limit to stupidity!
First mistake – starting with the hypothesis that Blot is an “intelligent person”?
Surely that suggests curiosity and a willingness to learn, beyond one’s prejudices and preconceptions – starting with the recognition that maybe one doesn’t know it all?
Mark, you rightly admonish Andrew Bolt for failing to understand that climate change can only be understood over long term trends, but then go ahead and commit the same error.
You pour scorn on him for only looking at temperature changes over the last 34 years, and then state that “On the instrumental record going back to 1850, there is no precedent for temperatures of this kind.”… so what? 160 years of temperature changes is a micro second in climate terms. Lets take a look at some longer term trends and see if there’s anything to worry about.
If we look at a graph of the last 2000yrs its true that temperature as of 2004 are the highest they’ve ever been in this time… although only 0.3 degrees higher then the medieval warm period , which is not very terrifying. But still 2000yrs is a very small sample. Lets go back further.
Looking at the graph for the temperature record over the last 12,000yrs things look even more mundane. The average temperature now is actually 0.4 degrees colder than it was 8,000 years ago and for most of the last 12,000 years the temperature has been warmer than it is now. But still 12,000 years is a very small amount of time when looking at climate change trends
Lets look at the last 800,000yrs, shall we? In that time global temperatures have risen above the levels they are now no less than 3 time. Over the course of the graph the temperatures have fluctuated wildly… due to natural variation. About 20,000yrs ago the average global temperature was 13 degrees lower than it is now! And its shifted by 5 degrees or more, at least ten times. Wow seems like climate change is a natural phenomena, but still 800,000yrs is still a pretty small sample of time, given that the plant has been in existence for four and a half billion years. Lets look back even further… just for kicks.
This next graph goes back 5 million years. Seems like a reasonable sample. What does that show us? Since 5 million years ago to 2.5 million years ago, global temperature were constantly been between 0.5 degrees to 2.5 degrees warmer than it is now…. constantly. Since 2.5 million years ago the average trend global temperature has gone DOWN from the preceding 2.5 million odd years… as any intelligent person would see by looking at the graph.
So, in other words, Mark, I think your article does a great job in exposing the fraud committed by climate change deniers in their own articles.
You spelt it wrong, calling Bolt a petard.
Oh, I see. As you were.