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20 years of watching thermometers (Read 22 times)

WebsterMark

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20 years of watching thermometers
01/04/26 at 06:15:46

My Twenty Years of Watching the Thermometer—and the Narrative
Anthony Watts

In November 2006, when I launched Watts Up With That?, the idea was simple enough: look at the data, check the instruments, and ask whether the conclusions being drawn actually followed from the evidence. It was never intended as a career in heresy. It was, at the time, a fairly normal scientific impulse steeped in curiosity.

Nearly twenty years later, that impulse requires a helmet.

As WUWT approaches its twentieth anniversary in 2026, it’s worth reflecting on how climate change went from being a hypothesis—one among many competing explanations for observed changes—to a full-fledged belief system, complete with sacred texts (IPCC reports), approved language, and the occasional excommunication.

The climate, meanwhile, has been far less dramatic.

2006–2008: When Thermometers Were Still Just Thermometers

Back in the mid-2000s, climate science still resembled…well, science. There were disagreements. There were debates. People argued about cloud feedbacks, solar influences, ocean cycles, and the reliability of historical temperature records without being accused of crimes against humanity.

Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth arrived in 2006 like a traveling roadshow of impending doom. Polar bears were stranded, seas were rising, and hurricanes were apparently lining up in formation. It was slick, emotional, and heavy on graphs that only went in one direction.

At the same time, a curious thing was happening on the ground. Actual thermometers—those stubbornly analog devices—were being placed next to heat sources, asphalt, and buildings. So WUWT did something radical: we took pictures.

This turned out to be surprisingly controversial, heretical even.

Apparently, photographing a thermometer next to an air conditioning exhaust was not “constructive engagement.” Who knew?

2009: Climategate—The Sound of Trust Hitting the Floor

Then came Climategate.

The emails were not hacked in the Hollywood sense; they were released, read, and promptly explained away. What they showed was not a grand conspiracy, but something far more human: groupthink, defensiveness, and an alarming willingness to manage perception instead of data.

“Hide the decline” entered the public lexicon, and suddenly climate scientists were explaining that it didn’t mean what it sounded like it meant. Which, coincidentally, is almost never a good sign.

For a brief moment, it looked like climate science might undergo a badly needed course correction. Transparency! Open data! Robust debate!

Instead, we got faux inquiries that investigated themselves and found themselves innocent.

Lesson learned: the problem was not the behavior—it was that outsiders noticed.

2010–2014: The Pause That Wasn’t There (Until It Was)

The next few years delivered an unexpected plot twist: the planet declined to follow the script.

Global temperatures flattened. Models predicted steady warming; observations did not comply. This became known as the “pause,” then the “hiatus,” then—after enough editorials—the “thing that never happened and you’re not allowed to mention.”

This was a golden age for climate creativity. Heat was hiding in the deep oceans, where it could not be measured but could still be blamed. Aerosols became the Swiss Army knife of explanations. Data adjustments proliferated.

When observations disagreed with models, the models were not questioned. The observations were “corrected.”

It was around this time that many of us realized the hierarchy had flipped. Models were now reality. Reality was negotiable.

2015: Paris—Promises, Promises

The Paris Agreement was hailed as a turning point. World leaders gathered to save the planet using pledges that were voluntary, unenforceable, and carefully worded to sound impressive while committing to very little.

It was a triumph of political theater.

No one asked how intermittent energy would power industrial societies. No one discussed grid stability. No one mentioned energy poverty. Those details were, apparently, unhelpful.

From this point on, climate policy became less about outcomes and more about optics. If emissions went up, the solution was more ambition. If costs rose, the solution was more commitment. Failure was proof that we simply hadn’t believed hard enough.

2018–2019: The Emergency Button Gets Stuck

Somewhere around 2018, the word “emergency” became mandatory.

We were told we had twelve years to save the planet. Then ten. Then five. The deadline kept moving, but always closer—like a cosmic treadmill.

Children were encouraged to panic. Adults were scolded for driving cars. Weather was promoted from background noise to moral indictment.

A heatwave? Climate change.
A flood? Climate change.
A cold snap? Climate change “disrupting the jet stream.”

Heads I win, tails you deny science.

2020–2022: When Everything Was an Emergency

The pandemic years revealed just how easily societies could be governed by emergency decree. Climate activism took careful notes.

Lockdowns briefly reduced emissions, proving once and for all that modern civilization could, in fact, be shut down—at great human cost—for minimal climatic benefit.

Energy policies, however, continued unabated. Reliable baseload was dismantled. Wind and solar were celebrated for theoretical capacity rather than actual performance.

When grids faltered and prices soared, we were told this was further proof of the need to double down.

It was around this time that “trust the science” quietly came to mean “do not ask questions.”

2023–2026: The Era of Unquestionable Certainty

Now, at the twenty-year mark, the climate narrative is polished, institutionalized, and remarkably immune to evidence.

Sea level rise continues at rates best appreciated with tide gauges and patience. Extreme weather remains stubbornly inconsistent with apocalyptic claims. Crop yields rise. Human adaptability refuses to cooperate with disaster models.

But none of that matters much anymore.

The climate scare no longer depends on predictions coming true—only on maintaining urgency. Models still overestimate warming, but the solution is always the same: adjust, attribute, and assert.

Dissent is not debated; it is diagnosed.

Twenty Years Later

After two decades of watching this unfold, I’ve learned that the most remarkable thing about the climate scare is not how much the climate has changed—but how much the rules of discussion have.

In 2006, skepticism was part of science.
In 2016, it is treated as a character flaw.
In 2026, it seems like people might be listening to us.
WUWT has endured because it kept doing the unfashionable thing: looking at the data, pointing out inconsistencies, and occasionally raising an eyebrow when the emperor’s new model ran a little warm.

The climate will continue to change. It always has. The real question is whether society can rediscover the value of skepticism before policy built on perpetual emergency does lasting damage.

And if not—well, at least the models will still be very confident. /sarc

By the way, if you not seen it yet, check out our newly updated Failed Climate Predictions Timeline.

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Eegore Serious Thumper Offline SuzukiSavage.com Rocks! Posts: 9950	Re: 20 years of watching thermometers Reply #1 - 01/04/26 at 11:17:57 Source https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/01/04/my-twenty-years-of-watching-the-thermo...
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thumperclone Serious Thumper Alliance Member Offline PGR rider riding with respect Posts: 7307 Grand Junction Colorado Gender:	Re: 20 years of watching thermometers Reply #2 - 01/04/26 at 12:20:27 climate is not static it has been changing since there was atmosphere denying humans have no effect is ludicrous
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WebsterMark

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Re: 20 years of watching thermometers
Reply #3 - Today at 04:52:43

The linked article shows the graphs mentioned

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2026-1-5-why-dont-global-lower-tropo...

The big news in 2025 for the climate scare was that all of a sudden this scare wasn’t such big news any more. We’re talking here about something that all of the right people had agreed for decades was an “existential” threat to humanity. It was supposedly the single most important thing that we all needed to focus on and transform our lives to stop. We only had ten years to “save the planet”; or maybe it was only five. If we failed, we would shortly be inundated by sea level rise, or maybe devastated by floods and droughts, or burned up by wildfires.

And then, during 2025, quite rapidly the scaremongering stories became less frequent. Several prominent priests of the climate cult turned apostate (e.g., Bill Gates, Matthew Yglesias). The political push for “net zero” dramatically slowed. Why? There have undoubtedly been many reasons for the shift. Among those have been Trump administration regulatory changes and de-funding of scare-promoting bureaucracies and NGOs, plus the emerging extreme costs and ineffectiveness of the “net zero” energy transition.

But here’s another issue that, although I rarely see it mentioned, could play a big role in the ongoing eclipse of the climate cult: The failure of global tropospheric temperatures to closely track the rise in atmospheric CO2.

The asserted basis for the climate scare is the proposition that greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere, primarily CO2 from the burning of hydrocarbon fuels, cause the atmosphere to warm. The hypothesis is that atmospheric temperatures are essentially stable in the absence of human influences, and that human-produced GHGs are introducing a forcing mechanism that causes atmospheric heat to track rising GHG levels, leading to higher and higher temperatures.

As our frequent and curmudgeonly commenter Richard Greene points out, you will be hard pressed to find any legitimate climate scientists to dispute the proposition that CO2 and some other human-produced gases (e.g., methane) are GHGs whose accumulation in the atmosphere is likely to lead to at least some warming. But, assuming that you accept that proposition, the question remains: Will the resulting warming be large, or moderate, or small? Indeed, could the GHG-induced warming be so small as to be even near or below the limit of detectability by available instruments? Could observed changes in temperatures be principally caused by other factors? And how could you assess those questions?

I suggest that the right way to assess the question is to look at the best available evidence. In other words, try using the Scientific Method! For these purposes, I propose as the best available evidence the record of global average lower tropospheric temperatures from the University of Alabama at Huntsville (based on NASA satellite readings); and the record of atmospheric CO2 levels from the NOAA observatory at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. It so happens that both of those records have just been updated through December 2025. Here are screenshots of the graphs from the two websites. First, here is the UAH global temperature record since 1979:

And here is the atmospheric CO2 record from NOAA since 1958:

A few things leap off the graphs. The CO2 trend has a small annual seasonality (associated with plant growth in the Northern Hemisphere, which has much more land area than the Southern); but aside from that, the trend is smoothly upward, with even a small amount of acceleration.

The trend of temperatures, on the other hand, is anything but smoothly upward. If you look at the UAH graph holistically, you will undoubtedly perceive an overall rising trend of temperatures as the years progress. But unlike the CO2 graph, the temperature graph is punctuated by periodic and significant reversals, where temperatures decline quite rapidly, and by amounts that are very large in relation to the overall rise.

Consider just the most recent 22 months, from April 2024 to December 2025. The UAH temperature anomaly has declined from +0.94 deg C to +0.30 deg C over that period, a decline of 0.64 deg C. The entire temperature rise in the UAH record from its inception in 1979 to its all-time record in April 2024 was from -0.47 deg C to +0.94 deg C, or 1.41 deg C. The recent 0.64 deg C decline represents almost half of that.

And yet even as world temperatures were giving back almost half of their increase over the past 46 years, the CO2 level continued its slow and steady rise, going from about 421 ppm to 427 ppm over those 22 months, according to the NOAA graph.

If you look at the NOAA graphs of the other GHGs, you will see that they follow a rising trend similar to the trend of CO2.

So, if CO2 and the other GHGs are the main factor in determining changes in atmospheric temperatures, why have the temperatures gone down for almost two years now while the GHGs have continued their rise?

I’m not saying that I know the answer to that question. I am saying that the know-it-alls who claim that the GHGs are the control knob for average atmospheric temperatures don’t know either.

Clearly, there are factors at play other than the GHGs, and the impact of those factors is not small relative to the impact of the GHGs. Whatever those factors are, they are capable of driving global average temperatures down by at least 0.64 deg C even as the concentration of GHGs continues to go up. In fact, they are capable of driving temperatures down even much more than that.

If you look at the other parts of the UAH temperature graph, you will see that this phenomenon of rapidly declining temperatures, as in the past 22 months, has also occurred repeatedly over the 46 year period of the satellite temperature record, all while the GHGs were continuously rising. Among the larger declines in the satellite temperature record were one of about 0.80 deg C from early 1988 to early 1989; one of more than a full 1 deg C from early 1998 to early 2000; one of about 0.80 deg C from early 2010 to early 2012; and one of more than 0.70 deg C from early 2016 to early 2018.

Something that was not GHGs drove temperatures down repeatedly by amounts ranging from 0.70 deg C to over a full 1 deg C over the past 46 years. And now that you know that, how exactly do you know that the increases in temperatures that have occurred over these years were not also caused in part or mostly, or even entirely, by these same unidentified forces? And if these forces are capable of driving temperatures down by more than 1 deg C, how exactly do we know that the current decline is not going to continue until temperatures have gone below the place where they started at about -0.47 deg C back in 1979? And if the temperatures do not go back to -0.47 deg C in the current round of decline, how do we know that they won’t go below that level in the next decline, or the one after?

There are obviously many hypotheses as to factors in play other than the GHGs. Some of those include: variations in solar irradiation; volcanic activity; atmospheric aerosols; level of cloudiness; and various oscillations in ocean temperatures. That list is by no means comprehensive. It may well be that there are other factors as yet unidentified. Moreover, I haven’t seen anyone who has put together a set of proposed factors that when combined can reproduce a pattern comparable to the satellite temperature record. You can call the unknown factors “noise,” but the “noise” may be as significant as all the other factors put together.

But the hypothesis that the GHGs are the main factor, the effective “control knob” of global temperatures? That looks to me to be falsified by the satellite temperature record. If commenters can explain why that is not the case, I’m very interested to hear why.

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