[rael-science] Global warming at a standstill, new Met Office figures show‏

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The Raelian Movement
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Global warming at a standstill, new Met Office figures show
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/9787662/Global-warming-at-a-standstill-new-Met-Office-figures-show.html

The Met Office has downgraded its forecast for global warming to
suggest that by 2017 temperatures will have remained about the same
for two decades.

It is thought that factors such as ocean current patterns may be
behind the slowdown Photo: REUTERS

11:59AM GMT 08 Jan 2013

531 Comments

A new scientific model has revised previous figures for the next five
years downwards by around a fifth.

The forecast compares how much higher average world temperatures are
likely to be than the “long-term average” from 1971-2000.

It had been thought that this would be 0.54C during the period 2012
-2016 but new data puts the figure for the 2013-2017 period at 0.43C.

This figure is little higher than the 0.40C recorded in 1998, the
warmest year in the Met Office Hadley Centre’s 160-year record –
suggesting global warming will have stalled in the intervening
two-decade period.

However, it is thought that factors such as ocean current patterns may
be behind the slowdown and scientists say the “variability” in climate
change does not alter the long-term trend of rising temperatures.

The new annual forecast, published on December 24, is the first to
make use of the Met Office’s latest climate model, HadGEM3, which it
said “includes a comprehensive set of improvements based on the latest
scientific understanding”.

It suggests that global average temperature will remain between 0.28C
and 0.59C above the long-term average “with values most likely to be
about 0.43C higher than average”.

The Met Office said: “This is an extremely challenging area of
research not least because long-term comprehensive observations of the
ocean do not exist to help us understand how the global oceans behave
over decadal and longer timescales.

“As with all areas of science, our knowledge is continually increasing
and it is therefore not surprising that our models and predictive
skill will continue to improve.

“The fact that the new model predicts less warming, globally, for the
coming five years does not necessarily tell us anything about
long-term predictions of climate change for the coming century.”

Labour MP Graham Stringer accused the Met Office of “burying bad news”
by releasing the data on Christmas Eve and said it should give up
climate change forecasts as well as long-term predictions.

He said: “They failed completely with their models to predict the
flattening out of global warming. I think that they are just trying to
bury bad news that their predictions in the medium and long-term have
been pretty poor.”

Figures from last November, showing that 2012 would be cooler than
average for the past decade, had already indicated that global warming
was slowing down.

Dr Peter Stott, Head of Climate Monitoring and Attribution at the Met
Office, said at the time that the past decade had been the warmest on
record.

But he pointed out that warming has slowed down since 2000, in
comparison to the rapid warming of the world since the 1970s.

“Although the first decade of the 21st century was the warmest on
record, warming has not been as rapid since 2000 as over the longer
period since the 1970s,” he said. “This variability in global
temperatures is not unusual, with several periods lasting a decade or
more with little or no warming since the instrumental record began.

“We are investigating why the temperature rise at the surface has
slowed in recent years, including how ocean heat content changes and
the effects of aerosols from atmospheric pollution may have influenced
global climate.”

Dr Stott warned that global warming could speed up again at any time,
and insisted that the general pattern of warming was not in doubt.

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"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.

There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history, 
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.

On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.

Rael
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