Time's Up: Lack of global warming has falsified the climate computer models

According to the NOAA State of the Climate 2008 report, climate computer model simulations show that if observations find that the globe has not warmed for periods of 15 years or more, the climate models predicting man-made warming from CO2 will be falsified at a confidence level of 95%:

“Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”

According to Phil Jones, there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995 [16 years, 3 months ago]. Ergo, the climate models have already been falsified at the 95% confidence level and it's time to revert to the null hypothesis that man made CO2 is not causing global warming.

The climategate team anticipated this "problem" in their private communications:



1) I think we have been too readily explaining the slow changes over past decade as a result of variability–that explanation is wearing thin. I would just suggest, as a backup to your prediction, that you also do some checking on the sulfate issue, just so you might have a quantified explanation in case the prediction is wrong. Otherwise, the Skeptics will be all over us–the world is really cooling, the models are no good, etc. And all this just as the US is about ready to get serious on the issue.
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We all, and you all in particular, need to be prepared.  http://bit.ly/eIf8M5



2) Yeah, it wasn’t so much 1998 and all that that I was concerned about, used to dealing with that, but the possibility that we might be going through a longer – 10 year – period [it's been over 13 years now since January 1998] of relatively stable temperatures beyond what you might expect from La Nina etc. Speculation, but if I see this as a possibility then others might also. Anyway, I’ll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again as that’s trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent cold-ish years. http://bit.ly/ajuqdN



3) The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant. [stated by Phil Jones in 2005] http://bit.ly/6qYf9a



4) The infamous Trenberth quote in the header above.



Related: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/07/noaa-explains-global-temperature.html :"Kudos to NOAA for being among the first to explicitly state what sort of observation would be inconsistent with model predictions -- 15 years of no warming. "