Feptic Falsehoods About "Global Warming"

An interview of renowned climate science expert Anthony Joules-per-second by OilPrice.com goes astray right from the very start:

Oilprice.com: We see a lot of confusion among readers over the terminology here. What is the difference between “Climate Change” and “Global Warming”? Which is the more loaded term, and why?

Anthony Watts: “Global warming” suggests a steady linear increase in temperature, but since that isn’t happening, proponents have shifted to the more universal term “climate change,” which can be liberally applied to just about anything observable in the atmosphere.

In fact, the UNFCCC dates from 1992, and was never called the "United Nations Framework Convention on Global Warming."

Likewise, the IPCC has never gone by the name "International Panel on Global Warming."

The 1965 report to the Johnson Administration, “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment,” has a chapter titled "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" that reads (pg 113)

"The possibility of climatic change resulting from changes in the quantity of atmospheric carbon dioxide was independently proposed by the American geologist T.C. Chamberlain (1999) and the Swedish chemist S. Arrhenius (1903), at the beginning of this century." [Emphasis mine]

(American-centric, they overlooked Arrhenius's 1896 paper, didn't they?)

I've never heard a (real) scientist say AGW implies a steady linear increase in temperature, for a good reason: it's ridiculous. But it's a convenient meme for fake skeptics ("feptics?") -- as long as there is some downward jog in surface temperatures they can cry "foul" and claim it means something.

Skeptical Science has a much longer deconstruction of this interview, which, based on its first sentence, you should not waste your valuable time reading.

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Speaking of short-term trends, a recent paper in Nature Geosciences finds little change in global radiative forcing from aerosols (at least for clear-sky conditions):

Aerosols both scatter and absorb incoming solar radiation, with consequences for the energy balance of the atmosphere. Unlike greenhouse gases, atmospheric aerosols are distributed non-uniformly around the Earth. Therefore, regional shifts in aerosol abundance could alter radiative forcing of the climate. Here, I use multi-angle imaging spectroradiometer (MISR) satellite data and the Atmospheric and Environmental Research radiative transfer model1 to assess the radiative effect of the spatial redistribution of aerosols over the past decade. Unexpectedly, the radiative transfer model shows that the movement of aerosols from high latitudes towards the Equator, as might happen if pollution shifts from Europe to southeast Asia, has little effect on clear-sky radiative forcing. Shorter slant paths and smaller upscatter fractions near the Equator compensate for more total sunlight there. Overall, there has been an almost exact cancellation in the clear-sky radiative forcing from aerosol increases and decreases in different parts of the world, whereas MISR should have been able to easily detect a change of 0.1 W m−2 per decade due to changing patterns. Long-term changes in global mean aerosol optical depth or indirect aerosol forcing of clouds are difficult to measure from satellites. However, the satellite data show that the regional redistribution of aerosols had little direct net effect on global average clear-sky radiative forcing from 2000 to 2012.

That is to say, you can't blame the "haitus" on China.

The 15-year haitus (which isn't real anyway) isn't going to last much longer, because soon the 1997-98 El Nino is going to fall out the back of the 15-year window, and that will pull down the back end of the linear regression line and quickly make the slopes less negative/more positive.

Besides, using a short interval like 15 years is a sucker's game. Just a few years ago, in spring 2007, the 15-yr trend for HadCRUT4 was 0.29 C/decade. That wasn't any more meaningful on the high end than the current value (0.04 C/decade) is on the low end.

In a few years (unless they're a big volcanic eruption) feptics will be the ones shouting about too-short intervals (or maybe, much like this, complain that it didn't warm from one year to the next, or that yesterday was warmer than today). That should be fun.