Well, yes….. and no, and yes, and no……. I keep reading more extrapolations and interpretations of Foster and Rahmsdorf’s if it weren’t for ENSO, we’d be warming! And, that’s probably true, but not in the way they’re rationalizing. Climatecrocks seem to be adopting this bit of sophistry.
Our ENSO doesn’t work in a vacuum. It doesn’t just randomly swing from positive to negative and back again. It interacts with many things and does many things. A couple of the things is does is it gathers heat and energy and disperses heat and energy. It doesn’t just magically occur.
But, it doesn’t hurt to look at the data. If you go to NOAA’s ENSO data table you see monthly values for ENSO 3.4. The argument is, if not for La Nina in the last few years, we’d be hotting up!
What I did was create a sum of the values for each year and graphed them. Before anyone screams “cherry pick!” I’ll openly admit that one can slide the start point from just about any location to give any trend they wish.
I used 1998 because that’s often a reference point for many. But, here we see very little trend, and it’s a slight warming one. What gives? Again, you can slide the start point to just about anywhere and show what ever one wishes to show. (Hat tip to Foster and Rahmsdorf and John Nielsen-Gammon for showing me just how effective this can be!!)
But, wouldn’t the argument cut both ways, anyway? If ENSO is the reason why global temps are down what makes us believe they wouldn’t increase global temps? Let’s look at the period with the most dramatic temp adjustments err… I mean increases…..
Source Woodfortrees
Here’s ENSO’s annual values during the same period.
Uhmm……. 
Well, now what, people! ……. which is it? Was it just ENSO which created our global warming scare? If ENSO pulled the recent years down, …….. okay, let’s play along, the explain this! Morons.
When not pretending to be scientists, Foster and Rahmsdorf and John Nielsen-Gammon are often thought to be auditioning for the scarecrow part in the Wizard of Oz. 
My thanks to WUWT commenter, agfosterjr for providing the impetus of this post.
“It doesn’t just randomly swing from positive to negative and back again.”
No not randomly. But sinusoidally, ohhh yeah. Prof Rahmstorf probably doesn’t like to hear this because it alone would knock a third off IPCC climate sensitivity values if they bothered to include it in the models.
Solar magnetic drops it another half, meaning real sensitivity is 1/6th the IPCC value, but I don’t think Prof Rahmstorf likes Prof Svensmark either.
lol, no, Rahmy is probably not a fan. I think it’s hilarious these people are clinging to Foster and Rahmsdorf like it’s a holy grail or something. It destroys their own baseless arguments.
Okay, so we can blame climate on ENSO….. ENSO doesn’t seem at all related to CO2 emissions. It can’t be both ways.
Well I’m proud to have inspired such a blog. Thanks, –AGF
AGF, thanks for popping by! I left a comment on the supplied link, but no reactions so far….. there is, of course, another in perpetual moderation……. until they kill it.
But did temperature really increase or Not? from 1979 to 1998?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1979/to:1998/mean:12
At least UAH says they were flat as a pancake.
Yeh, UAH and RSS present conundrums. But, even UAH shows a slight increase…. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1979/to:1998/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1979/to:1998/trend
This is NFW? If it is, it’s good to hear from you again! If not, it’s good to hear from you!
My point was/is, they can’t have it both ways. If ENSO cooled the last decade or so, then how can it not be responsible for the warming which allegedly took place, given the numbers put out by NOAA?
And where do you think the extra heat comes from?
lol, where did the coolness come from ?
David, the point is they….(read above) are pretending ENSO is running part of our global temps. Either it is or it isn’t. It doesn’t stand to reason to say ENSO reflects external forces to increase heat, but then it takes over to cause cooling. That’s vapid.
Is that an accurate avatar \ pic of DA? Because if it is, it looks like he consumed too much of his own carbon feet. For someone that preaches that, it’s going to be though on him when crunch time comes. But I get the feeling he thinks he is FOS privileged and will say he has carbon offsets for something or another.
1988 seems a bit of a outlier according to temp scales, apart from that and acknowlegement that the pacific, despite being the largest ocean, still doesn’t entirely drive the temperature (Atlantic was also in a warming cycle since the 70s which would explain the slightly less trend strength in the ENSO).
On a funny note of how pathetic the Bureau is in Australia (as well as the various climate change government departments) they had recently announced that there was a good chance that we would go to either El Nino or neutral conditions later this year. They were 70% confident…. lets think about that for a second, they were confident that a 2 in 3 chance to occur with all their scientific knowledge was 70% just 3.33% up from the normal statistical chance of 66.67%! Or so I had heard on the radio…. an actual investigation of what was recorded on the BOM site indicates different with the quote “Historically, about 70% of two-year La Niña events are followed by neutral or El Niño phases.” Of course the actual La Nina event only lasted Aug 2010 to about March 2011, not all that unusual but what has been the case has been the lack of positive index returns at all. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/monitoring/nino3_4.png
Note that we have virtually been in neutral conditions since February last year since -1 is required or even lower for a period of time before you would normally declare a La Nina to be dominant. They also couldn’t mean two years between considering at least 30 months are between the start of both La Ninas on the above link.
I’m not sure if this is an error or continuing the rhetoric to turn a frown upside down despite reality but on the http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/ page they report monthly and weekly sea surface temperatures separately. In the monthly table it reports
NINO3 +0.1 +0.1 no change
NINO3.4 −0.5 −0.3 0.2 °C warmer
NINO4 −0.7 −0.4 0.3 °C warmer
but note the funky climate maths in the weekly
Index Previous Current Temperature change
(2 weeks)
NINO3 +0.5 +0.3 0.2 °C warmer
NINO3.4 −0.2 −0.2 no change
NINO4 −0.2 −0.2 no change
So -0.5 to -0.3 is 0.2oC warmer but +0.5 to +0.3 is 0.2oC warmer as well? The BOM certainly sees warming everywhere. Of course that will change shortly with the next update but it would be interesting how often that type of ‘error’ occurs in warmist organistions.
Ahh…. the other Ninos! Why must 3.4 hold all the magic? But, yes,it’s been neutral for all intents and purposes.
ENSO is only a symptom of the state of the regional weather patterns. Some long term weather pattern is driving the conditions in the ENSO 3.4 region.
All these Yahoos set the rules that judge the conditions in ENSO 3.4 and then do not play by their own rules
Yep….. ENSO is causing the lack of warming now…… but it was CO2 which caused the increase in temps!!! Not El Nino!!! LMAO!!
That is like saying lung problems cause smoking.
A wet sidewalk causes rain
A dark sky causes the sun to set
The conditions in region 3.4 are the definition of the ocean atmosphere weather pattern in that portion of the Pacific. It is the ocean atmosphere weather pattern that is determining whether there is warming or cooling.
An area less that one one thousandth of the globe does not control temperatures on the globe.Neither does an insignificant concentration of a molecule.
.38 parts per thousand, I am still not impressed.
The last was referring to the estimated CO2 concentration in the atmosphere
lol, dude!!! Foster and Rahmsdorf and John Nielsen-Gammon said it does!!!! How can you not see this? If the sidewalk isn’t wet, then it prolly didn’t rain!!!! lol,
I think that’s what they’re going with. If the sidewalk isn’t wet, then it won’t rain.
Great analogies!
You do realize what I think of those charlatans.
And to think a person that calls them self a sceptic actually co-wrote a paper with JNG
These three are the epitome of Chicken Little times three.