Pirate's Cove

No, seriously, despite there being, as the article notes, no warming in at least 10 years. This comes from one of the biggest “climate change” at the AP, Seth Borenstein, continuing his practice of activist journalism

World continues to broil, NOAA’s 2012 report on warming finds

A new massive federal study says the world in 2012 sweltered with continued signs of climate change. Rising sea levels, snow melt, heat buildup in the oceans, and melting Arctic sea ice and Greenland ice sheets, all broke or nearly broke records, but temperatures only sneaked into the top 10.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday issued a peer-reviewed 260-page report, which agency chief Kathryn Sullivan calls its annual “checking on the pulse of the planet.” The report, written by 384 scientists around the world, compiles data already released, but it puts them in context of what’s been happening to Earth over decades.

So, activism from the NOAA. I wonder if they noted the cool temperatures in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East last year? How about the cool in the Southern latitudes? How about Antarctica continuing to cool down? How about the dearth of landfalling tropical systems? Fewer tornadoes?

(National Climatic Data Center director Tom) Karl says surface temperatures haven’t risen in the last 10 years, but he notes that is only a blip in time due to natural variability. When looking at more scientifically meaningful time frames of 30 years, 50 years and more than 100 years, temperatures are rising quite a bit, Karl said. Since records have been kept in 1880, all 10 of the warmest years ever have been in the past 15 years, NOAA records show.

Two points: first, over the past 50 years we’ve seen “climate scientists” and media types concerned about a coming ice age, due to a typical short term variability last from the 1940’s to the late 1970’s, which then turned towards more warming, with a big uptick lasting from the late 1970’s to early 1990’s. Since 1990, though, there has only been an uptick of .28F, and .14F since 1997. Not something to actually freak out about. Overall, there’s really only been an uptick of 1.4F since the end of the Little Ice Age, which, again, is not that big of a deal compared to previous warm periods.

Second, perhaps Mr. Karl should review the data from his own NCDC, which shows that 3 of those record years (it appears that he is referring to US lower 48 records) occurred well before CO2 at 350ppm. These include 1934, 1921, and 1931.

Depending on which of four independent analyses are used, 2012 ranked the eighth or ninth warmest year on record, the report says. Last year was warmer than every year in the previous century, except for 1998 when a record El Nino spiked temperatures globally. NOAA ranks 2010 as the warmest year on record.

WTF? Eight or ninth warmest on record, but still warmer than every year in the 20th? BS.

While the report purposely doesn’t address why the world is warming, “the causes are primarily greenhouse gases, the burning of fossil fuels,” Arndt says.

So, the report is about advocacy, not science. I wonder how they’ll treat 2013, considering that it has been very cool around most of the globe….oh, right, I forgot, the heat is doing a Where’s Waldo in the deep oceans.

(BTW, we can’t necessarily blame the headline for the article on Borenstein, since headlines are most often written by someone else when it comes to news organizations)

More: NoTricksZone highlights that 2012 was one of the coolest of the 21st century, and provides much more in destroying the report

For example the NOAA writes that the Arctic sea ice extent last year reached a record low “during the satellite era“. However, the satellite era only goes back 33 years, and the NOAA couldn’t be bothered to tell readers that low Arctic sea ice also persisted in the 1950s and is all part of natural cycles, and is thus not “unprecedented“. Also read here.

Make sure to read the whole article.