by Judith Curry
If you had the opportunity to ask 5 critical questions for the IPCC, what would you ask?
Mike McGrath of the BBC asks the following questions:
1. The IPCC – weren’t they the ones who said the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035? How can we trust what they say this time?
2. Hasn’t global warming stopped since 1998?
3. Am I going to get flooded?
4. And what about the polar bears?
5. Does the IPCC have a future?
Marcel Crok provides the following list:
1) The increase in the global average temperature between 1900 and 1950 is almost indistinguishable from the warming between 1950 and 2010. However the increase in anthropogenic forcing was much higher in the most recent period than in the period of the so-called ‘early warming’. What is the explanation of the early warming?
2) There is evidence that there are still warm biases in the global average temperature series. Apart from the Urban Heat Island-effect there is now solid evidence that the trends in the minimum temperature are not a good indicator for climate change because they are related to disturbances in the nighttime boundary layer. The global trend in minimum temperature is twice as high as the trend in maximum temperatures. Do you agree that it’s better to use only the maximum temperature as a climate metric and do you accept that by doing that the increase in global temperature is actually between 0.1 and 0.2 degrees lower than the generally accepted 0.8 degrees of warming?
3) Models seriously overestimate the warming of the real climate in the past 25-30 years, not only globally (see here and here) but also in the tropical troposhere where a pronounced hotspot is expected seehere. What is your explanation for this? A follow up question would be: why would we trust claims of the IPCC that it’s very likely that most of the warming since 1950 is due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases, since these claims are based on the same models?
4) Several recente papers (Aldrin et al, Ring et al, Lewis, Otto et al) show that based on the observed climate of the past one and a half century, climate sensitivity is considerably lower (between 1.5 and 2 degrees) than the best estimate of three degrees that has been generally accepted by the climate science community for over thirty years. The CMIP5 models, run for the upcoming AR5 report, have a climate sensitivity of 3 degrees on average. How do you explain this large difference between estimates for climate sensitivity based on models and observations?
5) My last question is adopted from a recent blog post by Roger Pielke jr: “A difficult question for the climate science community is, how is it that this broad community of researchers — full of bright and thoughtful people — allowed intolerant activists who make false claims to certainty to become the public face of the field?”
JC comment: The idea of asking the IPCC questions is an interesting one. It seems to me that there somewhat of a disconnect between what the public/policy makers want to know, and the way that the IPCC frames it’s conclusions.
In the past, I’ve criticized and made recommendations regarding the IPCC. But I’ve never thought about asking them questions. Well, at the top of my list would be:
How have you responded to the IAC recommendations? If you have not yet implemented the IAC’s recommendations, then why not?
Update from the front lines: In the last month I’ve become a twitter afficionado (follow me @curryja). It is proving indispensible for updates these week regarding what is going on with the IPCC, MSM, etc.
Mat Collins, IPCC author that is in Stockholm, tweets: We are not allowed to tweet anything of substance. I can only perhaps say that progress is slow. Seems like there is a press/twitter embargo/blackout. Waiting to hear something feels like waiting for the papal enclave.
Those of you in the UK are in for some BBC treats. Ed Hawkins tweets: Large climate piece on @BBCNewsnight tonight, featuring Myles Allen, Emily Shuckburgh, Anastasios Tsonis, Nick Stern and yours truly. Gulp.
Tamsin Edwards tweets: Making an exception to “saying no to things” this Fri. Pencilled in for @bbcnews and @bbc5live to talk about IPCC report. In a word: urk!
FABULOUS to see new voices getting heard, especially Ed Hawkins, Anastasios Tsonis, and Tamsin Edwards.
Once again, you are on the front lines, and cheering on the troops. I love it. Very well done, and the idea about questions is very educational fun. I’d love to see the 5 questions from some global warming supporting climate scientists …
w.
Your use of the military metaphor is charming, willerd. Are you waxing nostalgic over your Army career (spent mostly in the psych ward at Letterman)?
1. How do you sleep at night?
2. Do you know Pinocchio called and said he wants his nose back?
3. Have you no shame?
4. What’s the difference between a climate scientist and a used car salesman?
5. Are we having fun yet?
Apt as those questions may be for Willis just to head off any confusion I meant them for the IPCC.
You can get anything you want
At Alice’s, at the end of the universe,
But if objection is your wont,
The waitress will rate you perverse.
===================
Excepting Alice.
markx:
“I hugely admire Muhammad Ali for his decision on Vietnam, where he put aside his whole career to stand his ground against the travesty that is a lottery draft to fight in a war…”
A good example of upholding one’s principles.
Alinsky: RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”
Don, your use of it speaks more of you than David.
Without regard for differences of scientific opinion (which are entirely immaterial in the present instance), please let me plainly say that hateful personal attacks like Don Monfort’s (above) are utterly indefensible and just plain morally wrong.
And no, I am not interested in excuses and explanations of any sort whatsoever.
+100
That is the most coherent comment that I have seen you make, fanny. It even looks like it was composed by a human. Now please get back in character and resume your clowning. You don’t know the history.
Kampuchea, my Kampuchea;
Don’t wanna see, but rather that than be ya.
===================
> It even looks like it was composed by a human.
Humanized, all too humanized.
It didn’t seem out of line to me. Shirkers who don’t have the decency to leave the country after refusing to answer the call of duty in time of need should be frequently reminded of their contemptible nature.
David Springer | September 24, 2013 at 4:08 pm |
Springer. In that comment you pretty well epitomize one of the great faults of the dimmer end of the intelligence scale of the human race.
Whilst blind obedience of one’s commander is a very useful thing to those who would send their massed minions against dug-in machine guns, in those instances when one has most of the facts in hand, and it is obvious the leaders of one’s state are flailing and blundering and playing local and international politics with the lives of their young soldiers and those of the citizens of some foreign land, sometimes those few with integrity must stand their ground and say no.
I hugely admire Muhammad Ali for his decision on Vietnam, where he put aside his whole career to stand his ground against the travesty that is a lottery draft to fight in a war no leader had ever paused to think through.
I’d not have the same respect for a man who deliberately avoided serving in WWII.
No doubt you share the strange mindset of the many commentators recently nominating their main important reason to go armed into Libya: “Because we implied we might, so we better not back down now or we will look weak”. A thought process born of bullies in school playgrounds.
Yes, indeed, fan! It gets so tiresome having to wade through personal attacks in these comments. Thank you for calling Monfort on that.
Hasn’t marine life survived higher levels of CO2?
“During past periods, stretching back millions of years, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have varied enormously; at times reaching concentrations far exceeding those at present and those projected over the next 100 years. Yet during these times of differing carbon dioxide concentrations, calciferous sea organisms continued to thrive. Whereas it is true that there have been “boom and bust” periods for corals and other calciferous sea organisms, the “boom and bust” events do not correlate with the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Incidentally, there is also no correlation with temperature.” ~Professor Brice Bosnich
I said this before but I used to scuba dive in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. Both with massive coral reefs and different temperatures and circulation environments. Plus all of Saudi Arabia to Riyadh used to be under shallow seas. How can these people make the cAGW claims with a straight face.? They must know.
Scott
UH google it. Professor Brice Bosnich is in error.
It’s the change in CO2 and temperature that is the killer, not the absolute value. If temperature and CO2 changes slowly enough then life adapts.
If it changes too fast. Blam.
Of course after the event life will eventually recover and then Professor Brice Bosnich and misinterpret it as life doing just fine.
‘Ocean life evolved and survived far higher levels of CO2 for millions of years in the past. Marine organisms actively create carbonate shells (using energy) which means crustacea, corals and molluscs aren’t automatically prey to pH changes in the same way that say a limestone rock would be.’ (Ibid.)
“If it changes too fast. Blam.”
Do you have any idea what a stupid thing you have just said?
The Mediterranean Sea is one of the most bio-productive marine environments on the planet and has a DAILY temperature average of 14 and 28 degrees C, winter to summer.
14 degrees in six months.
Marine life thrives on 100% EtOH, so a little extra carbonation is a bonus.
I believe you are thinking of the gentlemen of the Royal Marines and the United States Marine Corp.
1. is anybody going to read the full WG1 report and why?
2. does anybody remember about WG2 and WG3?
3. who’s the madman in charge of this mess?
4. how much of the previous reports survived time?
5. please go home and disappear?
1) What are ALL the Type B uncertainty errors in both natural and anthropogenic warming?
2) Is natural warming causing CO2 to increase or vice versa?
3) Are cloud changes due to CO2 changes or vice versa?
4) Are you including Hurst Kolmogorov dynamics aka climate persistance?
5) Do you account for the order of magnitude underestimation in CO2 due to gas diffusion in ice cores as identified by Murry Salby?
In an interview with Roger Harrabin of the BBC:
“Prof Pachauri’s leadership of the panel has been strongly supported by developing countries, although he has faced criticism in the West. He told me he had no plans to retire after the forthcoming report.”
Here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24204323
What IAC recommendations? The ever incisive Harrabin didn’t appear to mention them.
from a recent blog post by Roger Pielke jr:
“
A difficult question for the climate science community is, how is it that this broad community of researchers — full of bright and thoughtful people — allowed intolerant activists who make false claims to certainty to become the public face of the field?
”
One person’s difficult question for the climate science community is another person’s distraction from the scientific evidence.
One person’s intolerant activist who make false claims is another person’s advocate for integrity.
Concerns are noted.
Well Rev. Jeb,
It’s a great question. If the IPCC and many peer reviewed papers say there is no evidence for increases in hurricanes or drought, and the models actually predict hurricanes will be fewer but with a few that are occasionally stronger 50-100 years from now, why are activists and the media constantly hyping isolated weather events like drought. And if global warming is the problem, why are some cooling events and regional or local events being constantly hyped? Even Gavin Schmidt has a recent quote that says that the models and climate scientists never said everything would get worse and that all extreme events would be more extreme and more common, yet that is the common misconception. It’s dangerous on several levels to not base one’s beliefs on reality.
” papal enclave.” should be “papal conclave”. An enclave is a territorial foothold, like Hong Kong was a British enclave in Southern China. A conclave is a meeting held in closed chambers (con-clave = with a lock).
Like Long Beach.
Well, “con clavis”, with key (not lock).
My question for the IPCC (actually Bob Carter’s, paraphrased): How many times have polar bears become extinct?
Now that’s funny
I mean, it wouldn’t be if they really became extinct, but still…
About as many times as a drunk’s grandma died.
1) Of four discerned periods of temperature (early 20th century rise; mid-20th century flatline; late 20th century rise; 21st century flatline) you’ve “explained” one. What about the other three? (Similar to Marcel’s first, I guess).
2) You are very confident that climate sensitivity is between 1 C and 6 C. How is this progress after decades of work?
3) What factors could provide negative feedback reducing the impact of GHGs? What work is underway to investigate these, as opposed to dire and oft-quoted positive feedbacks?
4) Why did the head honcho of the ‘scientific’ and unbiased IPCC suggest that sceptics should be blasted on a one-way ride into outer space?
5) Do you know the consequences when officials “sex up” official documents?
The media might be turning…. When Enron fell, the media turned on the company with a vengeance because they had been fooled for so long and looked foolish. (Enron, btw, was the leading US company sounding the climate alarm with multiple profit centers in tow. http://www.masterresource.org/2010/06/they-loved-bp-enron-part-1/)
Climate exaggeration is politically correct and spikes interest, but it the fear stories have gotten old and the media is warming to a new set of facts.
Should be interesting!
the killer question always is – ‘what evidence would cause you to change your mind?”. This is of course a long , long thread that needs to be pulled and pulled. We can but hope.
1. What is the amount, source and nature of all compensation each and every member or employee of the IPCC, including staff and volunteers, have received from any source since beginning to work for the IPCC?
2. What political contributions have each and every member or employee of the IPCC, including staff and volunteers, made, including to whom, how much and when, beginning three years before they began working for the IPCC?.
3. What amount has been expended by or on behalf of each and every member or employee of the IPCC, including staff and volunteers, for travel, food, accommodations, and entertainment, since beginning to work for the IPCC?
4. What communications has each and every member or employee of the IPCC, including staff and volunteers, received from any sovereign government, or agent thereof, with respect to the contents of any assessment reports, or other documents prepared for release by the IPCC to the general public?
5. What is the name of each and every member or employee of the IPCC, including staff and volunteers, who has been disciplined, reprimanded, counseled or in any way been subject to any negative consequences for any of the misinformation and errors in previous assessment reports, and the nature of such discipline, reprimand, counseling or negative consequence?
Gary, I liked number 1. It had never crossed my mind.
I would prefer to ask a question of the authors. Do you feel that your future careers are going to be jeopardized by your name being associated with the IPCC AR5?
My question;
‘Have ANY of you ever read a history book?’
tonyb
I think we already know the answer to that one, Tony.
Strong and fearless sailed the IPCC,
El Draque bowled while flowed the sea.
Gaia’s fever, like Parva, laggard,
On Western rocks the models foundered.
======================
Tony, get your stuff published. It is great, and may help prevent an AR6.
Highest regards to a historical scholar and his painstaking work.
tonyb,
I second Rud Istvan comment. I can’t wait to see Sea Level Rise Part II and Part III. Lots of work and I still re read and enjoy the long slow thaw. We are all grateful for your work.
Scott
Duh, Parma.
====
If yer haven’t read Tony’s documentation of historic variability
of Earth’s climate yer haven’t lived.
A serf.
What I’d ask the IPCC:
What is it that you’re saying about your confidence levels?
Here’s is perhaps an example of what has been done to figure out what you’re saying:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2013/09/what-was-ipcc-ar4-most-certain-about.html
“…2,744 findings presented by the AR4 accompanied by associated likelihood terminology (shown above). Of those total findings, 573 came from Working Group I. Of those 573, a total of 17 non-unique findings were presented with a confidence level of greater than 95%.” – Pielke.
If the AR5 report is using a 95% confidence interval for its Banner Statement, can the math behind that be included in an easily accessible footnote?
The math may show a starting point of either 2744 findings or 573 finding using Pielke’s example. Individual confidence levels may be assigned to each finding. These individual confidence levels might then use a pyramid structure that leads to the Banner Statement confidence level.
The requested math supporting the conclusion need not be overly complicated, and could be provided as a general overview, but as your report is to provide information that is useful for decision makers, I think it’s important for those users to know what it is you are telling them with your Banner Statement.
I might be unfortunate if the users are handed a bunch of findings, 500-3000, and a Banner Statement, and leave it to the users to figure out how you got from the many to the Banner Statement. It seems to me that a failure to provide that link in a way that is understandable to the users, is a weakening of the report, raising questions when the goal is to provide answers.
Well, I asked the IPCC informally twice to revise what appeared to be scientific errors, and they were humble and responsive. Something you do not experience with the “climate scientist”, who made the errors in the first place. Arogance and lack of common sence is the norm among climate scientist, and that is the problem. As long as the IPCC continues to listen, they will get there.
What? Where? When? Why? Who?
=============================
They got lots of ‘splainin’ to do.
================
Hey IPCC, listen ter Judith Curry … Hey Jude!
‘… Take a sad song and make it be – e – ett – er,
The moment you let her under yer skin,
Then you start ter make it be – eh -tter.’
This question would be the first on my list, as well! Although, considering that the powers that be at the IPCC have gone to considerable lengths [starting here]to create the illusion of having implemented the IAC’s recommendations, I think I might phrase it somewhat differently! However, proper phrasing from which they could not weasel/wriggle/handwave away, would probably take up at least five questions, if not more;-)
So here are some that I would start with:
1. In its report, the IAC recommended that the IPCC :
Why was the bolded part of this recommendation not implemented?
2. In its report, the IAC had noted that:
This was followed by a number of specific recommendations, including:
a) “The IPCC should establish a formal set of criteria and processes for selecting Coordinating Lead Authors and Lead Authors”
Where might one find this formal set of criteria and processes, and how might any interested person confirm that they have, in fact, been applied during the selection process?
b) “The IPCC should strengthen and enforce its procedure for the use of unpublished and non-peer-reviewed literature, including […] ensuring that unpublished and non-peer-reviewed literature is appropriately flagged in the report.”
Notwithstanding the fact that this longstanding “flagging” rule had rarely been applied, the Task Group decided to eliminate this rule, deeming it to be “too impractical”.
Considering the detail in the References section of each chapter, for work cited in the IPCC’s reports, what makes such flagging “impractical”? How does this change reflect the recommended increase in transparency?
Hockey stick: good science or scientific fraud?
Wag, more possibly wishful thinking using esoteric statistics to hang a reputation under the blade. Turned out to be a guillotine, not a hockey blade.
Scott
@IPCC: Why does the IPCC not emphasize that “reducing and/or preventing deforestation is the mitigation option with the largest and most immediate carbon stock impact in the short term” (IPCC, AR4)?
Remember (IPCC, AR4 WG1, Ch. 7): “Forest clearing (mainly in the tropics) is a large contributor to the land use change component of the current atmospheric CO2 budget, accounting for up to one-third of total anthropogenic emissions.”
No enough world domination. Reforestation was specifically excluded probably because the US is a net Carbon sink, due to reforestation and other soil/water conservation efforts. Note: the Southeastern US, is not in the tropics and the British are buying pelletize sequestered carbon to offset their brilliant energy initiatives.
More excellent stuff coming from Germany, as reported by NoTricksZone:
http://notrickszone.com/2013/09/24/hans-von-storch-on-warming-pause-fellow-scientists-are-very-hard-pressed-for-an-explanation/
15 year period that starts with a strong El Nino and ends with and extended La Nina period and scientists want an explanation for a pause?
I’m still dumbstruck about the pause, the 15 year trends are almost all positive, and most fail to exclude the 0.2/decade dangerous trend.
2 C seems to me to be logical target to prevent the 3-5 C warming which is known from the Cretaceous period which had nearly no ice at both poles.
Oh yeah, here are my answers to the five questions
It was a typo, no, depends where you are so get out of Boulder CO, polar bears are threatened under the endangered species act, we can get rid of the IPCC if we reduce CO2 emmissions.
“I’m still dumbstruck about the pause, the 15 year trends are almost all positive, and most fail to exclude the 0.2/decade dangerous trend.
2 C seems to me to be logical target to prevent the 3-5 C warming which is known from the Cretaceous period which had nearly no ice at both poles.”
This is either poorly written or terribly confused.
A 0.2/decade trend is dangerous. But we should aim for a 2 C target to avoid dangerous warming of 3-5 C.
Now I don’t have a PhD in statistics, but I am pretty sure 0.2/decade would work out to be pretty close to 2 C over a century.
seems clear enough to me. If you don’t use 2C as a climate you are going to drift into that 3-5C range.
I would say even 2C is a risk of being too much.
lo9lwot,
That’s not the contradiction. If 2 C is dangerous, as bob droege seems to say, and you flat out say, then why have that as a target? If you’re going to decarbonize, why set a dangerous target?
If we are talking climate catastrophe, it seems to me the target should be whatever level would not be dangerous.
Are you guys hiding a desire to achieve zero future warming, but concealing the fact to avoid political seppuku?
You do know that it was a quite different planet during the Cretaceous period don’t you?
This is what the land/ocean area looked like.
http://www2.estrellamountain.edu/faculty/farabee/BIOBK/anauLate_Cret.jpg
1. It was a quote from Greenpeace.
2. Global temperatures stopped rising and look set to not rise for another decade to three. For God’s sake get with the science of the past 10 years.
3. Sea level is rising <0.69mm/yr in ARGO.
4. Polar bear populations are expanding. Might they become threatened after ice free Arctic conditions in 2013.
5. The IPCC is an irrelevancy – so who the hell give's a rats arse.
For God's we are arguing the same argument over and over with cognitively dissonant dunderheads.
Doc, you know the sun was dimmer then too don’t you?
The danger grows with every 0.1C of additional warming. 2C is a target to minimize this.
Hey Chief,
Once you fully understand Tsonis, then we can reduce the cognitive dissonance between the groups of dunderheads.
Your prediction of cooling for the next decade or three is just as good as Greenpeace’s prediction of himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035.
Would that prediction be true if 2 glacier disappeared?
How many glaciers are there in the Himalayas? I don’t know if anyone has counted all of them.
Boulder says sea level is rising at 3 mm/yr but lately data from there is unreliable if non existent. Climate change has something to do with that.
Some polar bear populations are expanding some are decreasing, polar bears as a whole are listed on the endangered species list.
Rather than repeat myself.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/24/five-critical-questions-for-the-ipcc/#comment-386412
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/24/five-critical-questions-for-the-ipcc/#comment-386435
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/24/five-critical-questions-for-the-ipcc/#comment-386435
So it wasn’t a typo? A lie or a mistake Bob? It makes a great deal of difference.
2C? “But this is scientific nonsense. “Two degrees is not a magical limit — it’s clearly a political goal,” says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). “The world will not come to an end right away in the event of stronger warming, nor are we definitely saved if warming is not as significant. The reality, of course, is much more complicated.”
Schellnhuber ought to know. He is the father of the two-degree target.
“Yes, I plead guilty,” he says, smiling.”
Up to 2C warming is net beneficial (Figure 1 Attribited to Richard Tol: http://www.lomborg.com/sites/default/files/Congress_testimony_April_2013_3.pdf )
lolwot: The danger grows with every 0.1C of additional warming. 2C is a target to minimize this.
The sky is falling!!!
Please keep yelling it, and see how that works out for you.
Gary,
That the current trends during the “pause” do not exclude the 0.2 C trend means we could be still on track to exceed 2 C this century. 2 C being a maximum target, one we don’t want to exceed.
I don’t think I’m confused if I think it is still warming and picking trends from El Nino to La Nina is cherry picking.
15 year trend from HADCRUT4 is +0.040 +/- 0.140
Call me a denier of the pause and I don’t have a degree in statistics either but I get the basics.
exactly, and the recent data is also compatible with a continuation of the very warming trend skeptics admit existed
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/cru79.jpg
The ‘background’ warming in the 20th century was 0.1 degrees C/decade. It is by no means guaranteed that the 20th century pattern will repeat in the 21st century.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/lontermtrend_zpse9264a75.png.html?sort=3&o=12
Finally, the presence of vigorous climate variability presents
significant challenges to near-term climate prediction (25, 26),
leaving open the possibility of steady or even declining global
mean surface temperatures over the next several decades that
could present a significant empirical obstacle to the implemetation of policies directed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (27). However, global warming could likewise suddenly and without any ostensive cause accelerate due to internal variability. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, the climate system appears wild, and may continue to hold many surprises if pressed.
http://deepeco.ucsd.edu/~george/publications/09_long-term_variability.pdf
Anastasios Tsonis is one of the voices now coming to the fore. He is at the forefront of discovering ‘A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts’. Surely this is worthy of a Nobel Prize when the world comes around to understanding. Perhaps they should rescind the IPCC’s and give him that one.
It is utterly idiotic for cognitively dissonant space cadets to continue to miss this central idea.
It’s a challenge to the paradigm. The “space cadets” simply can’t think out of the paradigm box.
“What do our results have to do with Global Warming, i.e., the century-scale response to greenhouse gas emissions? VERY LITTLE, contrary to claims that others have made on our behalf. Nature (with hopefully some constructive input from humans) will decide the global warming question based upon climate sensitivity, net radiative forcing, and oceanic storage of heat, not on the type of multi-decadal time scale variability we are discussing here. However, this apparent impulsive behavior explicitly highlights the fact that humanity is poking a complex, nonlinear system with GHG forcing – and that there are no guarantees to how the climate may respond.”
Guess who said that.
Kyle Swanson at realclimate – http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/07/warminginterrupted-much-ado-about-natural-variability/
Now what do you think that has to do with the decadal trajectory of climate, the underlying rate of warming between the 1976/77 and 1998/2001 climate shifts and the potential for future ‘surprises’ on both ends of the cooling/warming spectrum?
Seriously – it is utterly silly – or utter madness – to continue the charade.
However, the nature of these past shifts in climate state suggests the possibility of near constant temperature lasting a decade or more into the future must at least be entertained. The apparent lack of a proximate cause behind the halt in warming post 2001/02 challenges our understanding of the climate system, specifically the physical reasoning and causal links between longer time-scale modes of internal climate variability and the impact of such modes upon global temperature. Fortunately, climate science is rapidly developing the tools to meet this challenge, as in the near future it will be possible to attribute cause and effect in decadal-scale climate variability within the context of a seamless climate forecast system [Palmer et al., 2008]. Doing so is vital, as the future evolution of the global mean temperature may hold surprises on both the warm and cold ends of the spectrum due entirely to internal variability that lie well outside the envelope of a steadily increasing global mean temperature.’
Latif has a new decadal model – although he is suggesting that skill is about equal to tossing a coin.
I see what you mean, I am just saying that the data hasn’t yet demonstrated a slowdown in warming, or a “pause”.
The model projections are largely above the observed rate of the warming, but that rate has not clearly paused or stopped.
Trend lines are largely irrelevant. What is apparent is that no temperature exceeds the peak in 1998. There is a good reason for that.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/24/five-critical-questions-for-the-ipcc/#comment-386366
1998 was a temporary blip about 0.3C above trend.
Of course even at 0.2C/decade it would take perhaps a decade to reach that level again
1998 was an ENSO dragon king at the 1998/2001 climate shift. Temperature is not rising – and you are one of the few holdouts.
What data or evidence would falsify CAGW theory?
That is a great question, and there are several answers IMO.
1. History. That is why AR3 tried to erase the MWP using Mann’s bogus hockey stick. It is why everything ClimateReason (TonyB) guests posts here is so important.
2. Upward biased models. There are several proofs, the pause just being the most obvious now nearly admitted falsification. And the underlying reasons are obvious, and previously posted. (a) positive water vapor feedback is provably overstated. (b) positive cloud feedback is not only overstated, it probably has the wrong sign ( it is likely slightly negative). Both problems are inherent in grid cell scales and time steps, so not solvable with foreseeable advances in computing power.
3. Egregious selection bias in at least AR4, dissected in my second book.
4. Provable overstatement of the “C” consequences. See previous guest posts on crops, sea level, phytoplankton…. Or see IPCC SREX.
The general problem is almost insurmountable, because CAGW is no longer Popperian science. It has become a religion. Believers just believe. But they may be finding themselves becoming a small fringe sect.
“FABULOUS to see new voices getting heard, especially Ed Hawkins, Anastasios Tsonis, and Tamsin Edwards.”
Careful, some may consider this situation dangerously close to being a debate !
IPCC running into well deserved buzz saw.
Yay. About time.
I feel all gushy inside. Like Sally Field on Oscar night.
“You like me! You really like me!”
Patchy is now denying the pause. Some “warmest decade in recorded history” hand waving. Wisely, he didn’t mention the models I don’t believe.. Good choice. Were I a self-serving, ego-maniacal fraud who knows a good thing when he sees it, I wouldn’t either.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
One more question:
How IPCC many climate scientists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
501
300 to prepare an assessment (at government expense) of the catastrophic damage to the Earth that might be caused by the light bulb; 145 to stage lavish conferences (also at government expense) to discuss the potential damage; 50 to appear on the television to discuss the impending devastation; and 5 to travel to the Arctic (guess who pays) to find a dead polar bear to photograph, who will of course have already died because of the bulb, before it is even screwed in.
Oh yeah, and 1 to screw in the light bulb.
1) What statistical criteria is used to decide if a GCM has failed to match the measured global temperature?
2) How many GCM’s have been shown to failed to match reality?
3) How were these failed models analyzed, post hoc, to identify why they failed to match reality?
4) How were the failings in the modelers art published or propagated to the rest of the modeling community?
5) How often is the fidelity of the various GCM’s tested; weekly, monthly, yearly, or in longer units of time?
Doc, those are scientific questions. The IPCC isn’t.
Regards, and thanks for your biology comments on phytoplankton gene up regulation. I don’t know a ribosome from an elbow, but do know about reefs.
It should not take 5 questions to expose the hollowness of the newest IPCC effort. Just two.
Process: IAC improvement recommendation implementation?
Process Output: Why has nothing really changed between AR4 and AR5 (except your confidence in AGW went from 90 to 95%), when a host of additional observational data (e.g. ARGO ocean data, paused temperatures, ECS estimates) reveal fundamental problems with AR4 conclusions and with AR5 CMIP5 models?
Drop everything and read McSteve’s latest post:
http://climateaudit.org/2013/09/24/two-minutes-to-midnight/
IPCC Figure 1.4 contains an error, that works against the IPCCs favor
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/fake-skeptic-draws-fake-picture-of-global-temperature/
It’s odd that McSteve didn’t spot that one, only spotting the errors in HIS favor.
I knew you could do it. The old extended moving average trick and the slide the goal posts, BRILLIANT!
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/earlylate1.jpg?w=500&h=322
Look at how that moving average extends to the very end of the data, the man is truly a master.
Remember, actual reported temps are “noise”. The only real data is the sausage that comes out from whatever cherry picked time period is massaged to get the scariest looking graph.
Tick-tock…
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/global_warming_and_the_chilling_of_politics/14067#.UkIIR38tXNn
or is it drip, drip, drip?
“Look at how that moving average extends to the very end of the data, the man is truly a master”
It’s not a moving average.
lolwot, You are right, it is not a moving average. If it were a 5 year moving average it would look like this.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
The ~1910 minimum would fall just below -0.4, the 1940 peak would be ~+0.1 and the 2005 peak would be ~ 0.6 C. A total range of 1 C with pre 1940 being ~0.5 and post 1940 being ~0.5. You really need to know how to massage the data to get much more than that out of it. You should be proud.
It’s called a lowess smooth
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/changes/
“The ~1910 minimum would fall just below -0.4, the 1940 peak would be ~+0.1 and the 2005 peak would be ~ 0.6 C. A total range of 1 C with pre 1940 being ~0.5 and post 1940 being ~0.5”
Heh you’ve just made the exact error Tamino exposed. It’s like you didn’t even read what he said, just looked at the pictures.
Pre 1940 warming is only 0.5C if you deliberately compare the warmest and coldest year.
But why aren’t you doing that for the post 1940 period huh?
As Tamino says “You wanna play that game? OK. Let’s take the difference between the lowest and highest annual averages after 1940. That gives a post-1940 warming of 0.85 deg.C.”
lolwot:
Lowess curves have the same problems near end points as running averages do.
Also notice in the lowess post Tamino says “I often say that the modern global warming era starts in 1975.”.
That’s what the IPCC says too in AR4, as well as most climate modelers That is, according to the IPCC AR4, prior to roughly 1975, you don’t have to invoke anthropogenic forcing in models to explain the observed warming. So what happened from 1940 to 1975 is irrelevant to anthropogenically force warming.
Tamino is measuring, in some charts, from the minimums to maximums. So, you think this is a great way to measure deltas?
Tamino was talking about a post on WUWT:
The WUWT blog has a post by David Whitehouse (of the “Global Warming Policy Foundation”) discussing global temperature data. It features this graph from the leaked copy of the not-yet-completed 5th assessment report (AR5) of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change):
lolwot, since you and Tamino are just seekers of the truth and would never be temped to deceive, I introduce to you the ERSSTv3b without satellite cooling bias for your perusal. 1910 to the partial 2013 is the baseline period with handy linear regressions for the pre 1940 warming that inspire Callandar to reconsider global warming the Tamino’s favorite 1976 to 2013 period. Since you have issues with the 60N-60S in thin line are the hemispheres for reference.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-d6YmKsnvzMo/UkI9IXxcgyI/AAAAAAAAJoY/L8MNAa9n9aA/w919-h495-no/ERSSTv3b+wo+cooling+bias.png
That includes an extra 0.01C or warming by avoiding those troublesome satellites.
lolwot, “Heh you’ve just made the exact error Tamino exposed. It’s like you didn’t even read what he said, just looked at the pictures.”
No Tamino is spouting the same crap and pulling the same tricks. For some reason the minions of the great and powerful carbon wish to avoid the 1910 to 1940 rise. If you consider “Global Warming” started in 1975, 1910 to 1940 is a global recovery or a “global” something other than the great and powerful CO2, Black Carbon? Possibly, but not CO2. The rate of rise from 1910 to 1940 in the oceans, the mother of all heat capacity and the current topic of alarmist water cooler gossip, made yet another abrupt rise from the little ice age.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/–hk05PyzaUU/UkA6c9JVmlI/AAAAAAAAJnI/vo-1rzZCR2w/w927-h495-no/What+Uncertainty.png
The slope of the rises using paleo have been decreasing. Almost like the long term secular trend that shall remain ignored is approaching a “set point”
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2013/08/is-picture-worth-trillion-dollars.html
Now that is going to be an inconvenient truth. I don’t think any of the models have predicted a centuries long regime change.
I would agree with the conclusion that the problem did not arrive this week. I, personally, have been highlighting this issue for at least two years. And, if it was obvious to me, surely it must have been known to the IPCC authors.
Wow. The pace of battle quickens. (Got taught that some time ago in the Army). McSteve has just taken them apart, yet again.
The pause will be very hard for the IPCC to recover from given MSM reporting on it now happening, especially in Europe.
Let’s pile on.
I’ve got precisely the same feeling, Rud. The zeitgeist has changed markedly, and seemingly all of a sudden.. Those who don’t see that are either sleeping, or determinedly blind.
I asked similar questions on an earlier thread about the ramifications of the claim that the “missing heat” is hiding in the deep oceans.
If that is happening now, how do we know it didn’t happen during the last century when there was an extended period of cooling?
How do we know it hasn’t happened many times in the past?
How do we know how long it will/can last?
How do we know this is not the climate’s natural response to warming, regardless of the cause. that has led to such stable temps for so long?
How do we know that any future increase in retained heat from ACO2 won’t similarly end up sequestered in the deep ocean?
Where is the peer reviewed science that answers these questions without undermining CAGW? I have to think if there were any, we would have heard about it over and over lately.
It seems to me the consensus can’t have it both ways. The deep ocean is hiding the heat this time to save the CAGW theory, but it does not do so on a regular basis and will not do so in the future. And if this is the argument, where’s the peer reviewed beef?
Climate science has discovered a phenomenon new to physics: macro-quantum tunneling. The heat jumps the 0-1000 m barrier at the speed of light (in salt water).
Remember it’s not an error if Tamino does it.™
As an outsider, I have only one question to ask:
How many of your models use a constant Latent Heat of Vaporization of water?
I have asked for over a year what is a cumulative effect of that approximation, but I never got an answer other than it was a “potential problem”. I don’t know if it introduces a warming bias, or a cooling bias, but I do know these models are WRONG.
Sorry this is long. I got rolling.
1. How do you ascertain optimums in complex systems? For example, a) What is the optimum level of CO2 in parts per million for our the atmosphere, and how do you arrive at this number? b) What is the optimum number of people on our planet, and how do you arrive at this number?
2. In weather modeling, the assumption is that after a few days, enough chaos and uncertainty will have occurred to make the predictive value of the model close to zero. Why is this assumption exactly opposite in climate science? When running general circulation models, what justifies the opposite assumption that short term predictions are worthless, but long term ones valuable? At what point in the future projection does a model representation cease to be worthless and become valuable, and how is this measured?
3. Certainty of human attribution (due to CO2 emissions from fossil fuels) seemed to have almost magically appeared in AR2. I’ve never found much persuasive evidence of this. Which study or studies are most persuasive in this area, and are those studies based on correlations, or do they claim to have identified true causality?
4. What will be the real and lost opportunity costs if we actively suppress the use of efficient, high density fossil fuels in favor of inefficient,low density “green” energy, and it turns out that human emissions are not causal, or can only be shown to contribute a minor and acceptable amount of warming? Could not these costs be even higher than the costs of the disasters you predict?
5. h/t to Roger Pielke, Jr. With so many false environmental, medical and sociological psuedo-scientific scares (Paul Erlich, DDT, ozone hole, Peak Oil, Y2K, SARS, Bird Flu, West Nile, etc) perpetrated on the public over the last century, why does the IPCC continue to align itself with people who speak on that level? Why does it allow crucial roles to be filled by eco-activists who embrace radical, emotional, sometimes anti-human, and even Alinsky style bullying tactics? When will you insist on dispassion and the scientific method only? Why are not all these radicals summarily excluded from IPCC participation?
I guess to me, it all comes down to one issue, really. When will the IPCC stop being tendentious? When will it stop talking about consensus and “community,” and start asking honest questions? When will it stop looking only at ideas that support one foregone conclusion (ie. that CO2 from humans is a ecological boogey man)? When will it begin to demand that it’s participants become skeptics of their own work? When will it demand archiving, openness, falsification standards and replicatablity and auditability? When will it influence it’s members to be more, rather than less scientific; less rather than more activist? When will it insist on more blindness, less corruption in peer reviews? When will it begin to dismiss the work of “scientists” who behave disingenuously and corruptly?
My suspicion is that it will never stop being tendentious and unscientific. I say eliminate the IPCC. Frankly, I wouldn’t be sad to see the rest of the United Nations go away either. We can
chalk these failed agencies up as well-meaning, but failed experiments in global politics.
Your question 2. has been bothering me for a long time. I don’t have a problem with the idea that there will be non-chaotic features of a chaotic system (the poles will be cooler than the equator…), but I would like some evidence. What makes you think that global surface temperature is not chaotic? Especially what makes you think so when you’ve just introduced this huge ocean heat sink to which the surface heat is a rounding error?
The only answer I know of (correct me if I’m wrong here) is – Look, we are able to model from first principles the surface temperature for the last century: You see it isn’t chaotic. I don’t know how many of us are going to take that seriously now that the models diverged so badly as soon as they went from back-cast to forecasting. Curve-fitting seems a more likely explanation, and my question is back. Convince me that it is even possible to predict surface temperature.
If you think of doubling CO2 like gradually adding 1% to the solar strength, it is clear why, over the long term, this becomes more noticeable, and the sign of the effect is also clear.
Jim, how do you know that it doesn’t go into the ocean for a millennium? How do you know that the temperature won’t jump next year because of warmer water from a millennium ago? Or that it didn’t do that in 1980?
Leaving the ocean out of it, we already know that there are other things going on in the climate system besides CO2. That is obvious from the fact that no model reproduces last century’s surface temperatures _exactly_. Clouds can change albedo and reflect more sunlight, or less, some heat might go into melting Greenland, or not,… I won’t even start. Just because you’ve identified a forcing doesn’t prove to me that you can claim that the temperature will follow a predictable path. Pushing gently on my drunk friend may not get him home.
I don’t think many would dispute that if the sun gradually warmed up by 1%, the earth would also warm, and that is an effect even seen in sunspot cycles when the sun changes up and down by less than 0.1% every 11 years. It is just like that.
Jim, I understand that in the long run, other things being equal, this forcing will tend to, well, force. Unless something pushes back, it will correspond to a somewhat warmer sun and the trend will be upward. But that isn’t exactly what I’m questioning. I want to know, when I look at the graphs of climate models for the last century, and how they (pretty well) track surface temperatures – is that actually possible to do? Or is there enough chaos in the system (for instance from massive chunks of heat arriving randomly to and from the ocean depths) that the actual best they can do is, say, with fifty times larger error?
As I said before, the fact that they did it is irrelevant, unless you can convince me that they aren’t curve-fitted. And their performance out of sample implies that they are.
Jim D | September 25, 2013 at 12:17 am |
If you think of doubling CO2 like gradually adding 1% to the solar strength, it is clear why, over the long term, this becomes more noticeable, and the sign of the effect is also clear.
=============
Do you consider CO2 to be the climate “control knob” then?
If yes, then I assume you believe that at every point in Earth’s history when CO2 was at 400 ppm the GMT was the same as today, correct?
Also, Jim D, then I would assume, as the control knob, that every time the GMT rises, CO2 must have risen before, correct?
Number 3 has been my big question from the beginning. Now I know how to phrase it, Thanks?
Thanks! (hit the wrong button)
+ 100
http://notrickszone.com/2013/09/24/hans-von-storch-on-warming-pause-fellow-scientists-are-very-hard-pressed-for-an-explanation/
“warmist Ministry of Environment Dr. Harry Lehmann is asked if all the uncertainty is a problem for him. He responds with “yes and no“,…”
That’s some kind of surrealist, philosophical joke, right ?
It reminds me of the OED definition of the word recursion: “see recursion “.
I don’t mind your cuts. The paste is a problem.
OMG, sorry about that mess , cut and paste that cut more than intended.
1. Do you think it would be a good idea to produce an additional section of the report debunking climate skeptics lies? I mean take some of their arguments and tear them apart so the world can read the kind of BS they get up to on their blogs.
That is an excellent idea. Perhaps you and Andrew Adams can explain the proper scientific procedure for shifting confidence levels? You have developed quite a knack for hiding the pause. :)
In all fairness, if you are going to critique skeptical ideas, then you must allow skeptics into the deliberations, so that these ideas can be defended in the accepted scientific tradition.
I think that’s a great idea lolwot, but I would first correct their own lies.
Lolly,
There’s a reason defense attorneys discourage their guilty clients from testifying on their own behalf. Can you guess why?
So yes, excellent idea. Best one you’ve had by far.
pokerguy,
Most defense attorneys advise an innocent client not to testify as well.
When they have one.
i should ask
why do you think that surface global température rise means warming ?and warming of what ? because surface is a location not a system..?
Once you explained that, it is clear that surface global temperature varies in one year as much as in one decade or much..so what period is meaningful and why? and how do you calculate the right variable to “measure “surface warming and why?
Why do you call a bunch of runs of diffferents models an uncertainy?
Is there an error bar on your level of certainty? 90%+-
why 5 question?
1) What observations that can reasonably be made in the next 10 years would falsify CAGW?
2 through 5) unnecessary if the IPCC cannot answer 1).
As opposed to getting all your science from YouTube and wood for dimwits?
Son of AR4:
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2741148672/tt0031951?ref_=tt_ov_i
Does increased CO2 really spell doom for coral reefs?
‘In fact, the scleractinian corals, which are the major builders of the reefs of today, have been around some 200 million years, during most of which time both the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration and its temperature were much greater than they are today, which should immediately raise a red flag about the proffered cause of the recent decline in reef growth’ ~Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso
1. How do I get in on the IPCC gravy train?
1) When did you realize that CO2 impact was grossly over estimated?
2) What other issues are overstated to stimulate policy acceptance?
3) Has the IPCC ever considered a minor position paper?
4) Which was more attractive to delegates, Cancun or Yokohama?
5) Has the IPCC ever considered a permanent headquarters in say the Sahel? You could call it UNtopia.
Isn’t true that there is no global warming beyond what is explained by natural causes?
“If we didn’t know better, we’d think the operative rules were: Never seek logical or alternative answers, if you can blame a phenomenon or problem (like decreasing frog populations) on global warming. Do whatever it takes and fund whatever research is needed, to advance the goals of ending hydrocarbon use, increasing government control and `transforming’ society. And always include the terms `global warming’ or `climate change’ in any grant application.” ~Paul Driessen, Willie Soon, and David R. Legates (Cause for alarm, May 2010)
1. Do we have a theory of reproducible nonequilibrium quasi stationary thermodynamic systems? (yes, doi:10.1088/0305-4470/36/3/303)
note: A system is reproducible if for any pair of macrostates (A;B) A either always evolves to B or never.
2. Do we have a theory of non reproducible nonequilibrium quasi stationary thermodynamic systems? (no)
3. Is the terrestrial climate system reproducible? (no, it is chaotic, microstates belonging to the same macrostate can evolve to different macrostates with time)
4. Do computational models based on unknown physics make sense? (of course not)
5. What is the predictive value of GCMs? (none, as they do not make sense)
bonus question: What can be said about future climates with no computational model to rely on? (nothing)
What happened in the years 1976/77 and 1998/99 in the Pacific was so unusual that scientists spoke of abrupt climate changes. They referred to a sudden warming of the tropical Pacific in the mid-1970s and rapid cooling in the late 1990s. Both events turned the world’s climate topsy-turvy and are clearly reflected in the average temperature of Earth.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130822105042.htm
Until and unless you understand that something fundamentally deterministically chaotic happened in climate in 1976/77 and 1998/2001 – you are unequipped to understand the hiatus in surface temperature since 2002. You are unequipped also to understand how this this might evolve over the coming decades.
The available data shows the energy budget going negative after 1998 as well.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ProjectEarthshine-albedo_zps87fc3b7f.png.html?sort=3&o=6
Earthshine changes in albedo shown in blue, ISCCP-FD shown in black and CERES in red. A climatologically significant change before CERES followed by a long period of insignificant change.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/SWupnotes_zps3f1ab841.jpg.html?sort=3&o=47
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandlaken2013_zps3c92a9fc.png.html?sort=3&o=29
This leads directly to the latest ocean heat content analysis I am aware of.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/oceanheat_zps2cb4a7a1.png.html?sort=3&o=7
I have a question. How in God’s green Earth did they miss in AR4 dynamical complexity and the implications for climate means and variance over decades to millennia?
“Over the 62-year period 1951- 2012, observed and CMIP5 ensemble-mean trend agree to within 0.02 ºC per decade (Box 9.2 Figure 1c; CMIP5 ensemble-mean trend 0.13°C per decade). There is hence very high confidence that the CMIP5 models show long-term GMST trends consistent with observations, despite the disagreement over the most recent 15-year period. Due to internal climate variability, in any given 15-year period the observed GMST trend sometimes lies near one end of a model ensemble an effect that is pronounced in Box 9.2, Figure 1a,b since GMST was influenced by a very strong El Niño event in 1998” (Box 9.2 of the Government Draft via Climate Audit (and yes you really do need to go and read Steve’s post)
Q1. Please provide peer reviewed references for the above assertion.
It may be more important now to ask questions of the politicians.
1 their projections are clearly wrong, but they are about to shout them w greater volume. What do you think went wrong with the IPCC?
2 we have data on the real costs and performance of wind and solar. How long do you think you’ll remain in office if you go that route?
3 looking at your entitlement spending growth over the last decade and your shrinking birthrates; describe the impact that hamstringing your economy will have on your ability to deliver promised services.
4 How well did coalitions with greens work in Australia and Germany this year? When are your elections?
But I’ve never thought about asking them questions. Well, at the top of my list would be:
How have you responded to the IAC recommendations? If you have not yet implemented the IAC’s recommendations, then why not?” – JC
Haven’t read the comments yet, but in case someone else hasn’t pointed out the bleedin’ obvious….
Never thought about Google Judith??
FFS!
More stupid dog-whistling.
Michael, if you would use yor own recommendations you would find your own answers. In short, the IPCC ignored the IAC recommendations for their process improvement. Hello?
You mean like here???
http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/organization_review.shtml#.UkJbDD9h9IB
Amazing huh?
Those pondering asking the IPCC questions about the IAC, can like, look it up.
Micheal, please read Donna Laframbroise deconstruction above. There is a meaningful difference between pretend and real. Dr Curry made the point in her opening comments, and she should know because she was part of the IAC team that made the recommendations. You should really stop embarrassing yourself like this. Perhaps you need to read my book on the misinformation highway.
Rud,
Is this some special new meaning of the word ‘ignored’, or is it just some rhetorical hand waving that sounds better than ‘they implemeted the recommedantions, but not in a way I agree with’.
And
“Curry made the point in her opening comments, and she should know because she was part of the IAC team that made the recommendations.”
You sure about that?
I’m beginning to wonder of the problem with you isn’t serial incompetence, but delusions.
Please answer these questions:
“Why do scientists and news stories blame everything on global warming?
“… Why is warming always framed as bad news?
“Why does so much ‘research’ claim a warmer planet ‘may’ lead to more diarrhea, acne and childhood insomnia, more juvenile delinquency, war, violent crime and prostitution, death of the Loch Ness Monster – and even more Mongolian cows dying from cold weather?
“… Why is it a bad thing that more CO2 helps plants tolerate droughts better and re-vegetate deserts?
“… Why do ‘error corrections’ always seem to result in more warming than originally predicted, instead of less?
“And why do taxpayers have to shell out Big Bucks on this stuff?
~Driessen P, Soon W, Legates DR. Cause for alarm? (May 23, 2010)
1. How many milliseconds did they spend evaluating the solar effects on the late 20th century warming before they dismissed it out of hand and concluded it was just statistical noise.
What is the duration of, dismissed out of hand?
Minus 6 months.
But I thought the IPCC reported contained a “game-changing admission of enhanced solar forcing”?
(http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/13/ipcc-ar5-draft-leaked-contains-game-changing-admission-of-enhanced-solar-forcing/)
So much for that little lie. Got a lot of prominence last year though didn’t it. Skeptics will conveniently forget what they claimed.
Doesn’t the IPCC admit that TSI as the only ‘solar forcing’ which they then completely refuse to think or discus–i.e., dismiss out of hand?
“So much for that little lie.”
So the second order draft linked to in full on the WUWT post was a fake?
In denier world the IPCC report can both
a) make a “game-changing admission of enhanced solar forcing”
and
b) dismissed solar forcing out hand
In reality – and quite tellingly – neither are remotely true.
In the real world TSI is not the only solar forcing.
lolwot
When the report comes out please tell me what percent of warming is being attributed to solar forcing. I am relying on you to bring your expertise to the question. Dont let me down.
lolwot,
So you want to call Watts a liar, but can’t point to an actual, you know, lie. Got it.
You are just trying to distract from the contradiction.
“So much for that little lie.”
wasn’t part of the conversation? Then why did you post the comment? (And that’s a rhetorical question, your intent was obvious.)
I have no desire to go into detail about how the IPCC draft report was misrepresented last year. Needless to say there was no “game changer” about solar forcing in the IPCC draft as claimed.
After-all if there had been, why is dennis adams now claiming the IPCC draft dismisses solar forcing out of hand?
Accusing the IPCC of both admitting things and dismissing things is part of the propaganda. No regard for whether the claims contradict.
When it comes to “admitting” it always must be in quotes when it comes to the Left because the Left will never admit anything that conflicts with their ideologically-motivated agenda.
lolwot I am still asking the same question as above. When the report comes out I want YOU to tell me what the IPCC has to say about the percentage breakout from solar forcing. Simple question
“I have no desire to go into detail about how” Anthony Watts lied because I can’t.. I just like making false allegations about peoples” integrity.
If you fear warming, move to Nome, AK. Enjoy the annual race.
lolwot
Use your head.
IPCC is not going to concede a “game changer”.
They are calling “the game”.
Why should they want a “game changer”?
Duh!
Max
If we agree to put the schoolteachers of climatology, Leftist politicians and unelected bureaucrats in charge of the economy, pay more for less of everything and global warming does not stop, do we get our money back?
I’d add the following questions to the list:
(1) Why did the IPCC ignore the 0,5C temperature rise between 1910 and 1940?
(2) Why did the IPCC ignore the subsequent temperature frall detween 1940 and 1970?
(3) What happened to the peak 1940 heat after 1940?
(4)Is it a coincidence that the 1970 to 1998 temperature rise looks remarkably like a lagged version of the 1910 to 1940 rise?
(4) How does the IPCC reconcile the assumed high heat capacity of CO2 with its measured specific heat?
(5) The IPCC was not set up as a scientific research organisation bcause, at the time the ‘science was settled”. Does the IPCC still believe this?
(6) How long will the present ‘pause’ last?
(t) ….
The credibility of the IPCC depends on the answers to these and similar questions.
the sixth question is: when are they going to stop telling lies
1. Do none of you have any grandchildren?
2. Have you considered making your conclusions data driven?
3. On a scale of 1 to 10, how effective do you think the IPCC propaganda machine has been?
4. Have you considered making your attacks on climate sceptics shriller, and more vicious and nastier?
5. What is your plan for inducing foundations to give warmists more money?
(Inspired by Jeremy Grantham, who was not actually talking about the IPCC.) :)
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/apr/15/jeremy-grantham-population-china-climate
Yer can keep on
keepin’ on
pastin’ over
the cracks
in the wall
but in
the end
the wall
is fallin’
down.
H/t ter Robert Frost.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, except the IPCC.
I am not usually a poetry fan, but you just nailed the whole thing.
Robert Frost’s most famous poem was Fire or Ice.
How apropos.
Thanks, Rud. Love that poem too.
As you know, back in the 70’s it was some of the very same people warning it was ice.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Robert Frost
Rud
I love Ozymandias as it speaks of the continual rise and fall of great civilsations many through climate change and one off catastrophes including drought.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ozymandias/
tonyb
climatereason: But Ozymandias was a king, a tyrant. Tyrants topple; most people love Liberty, not Tyranny.
My questions:
1. What statistical confidence level do you have on your predictions about future climate change?
2. How many year’s data is needed in order to distinguish any trend in global temperatures?
3. Given that a co-relation exists between CO2 levels and global temperature movements can any conclusions be reached about causality and how do they compare with observations?
4. Are you satisfied that your report will be balanced and that opposing points of view have been given consideration?
5. Is your report all based on scientific papers subjected to effective peer reviews?
Question 2 is really important and one that will determine how we all deal with the issue in the next 20 years.
Dennis, in the 2008 NOAA’ state of the climate report (BAM 90 : special supplement (August 2009) starting at page 23 said 15 years. Santer moved to goalposts to 17 years in 2011. Separating signal and noise… J Geophys. Res. 116: D22105.
Depending on which data set and what significance bounds you chose, a statistically significant pause (indistinguishable from zero warming) now ranges from 15 to 23 years in all datasets. GISS at the usual two sigma level is 17 years.That’s why the whole kerfuffle is such a big deal for the IPCC.
1. Given that part of your explanation for the hiatus in warming over the last seventeen years rests on Trenberth’s hypothesis that “the missing heat” is in the deep oceans and given that Trenberth’s mechanisms for transportation of heat to the deep oceans have been only vaguely sketched and given that there is scant observational evidence for Trenberth’s hypothesis, how can you say that “the science is settled?”
To be continued…
I have only one question.
1. Can I have a job? I really need the money. I don’t know much about climate science or stuff like that, but I can write clearly. And spell.
Yes, but can you spiel?
=================
Dammit, kim, I have iced tea coming out my nostrils. Well, at least is wasn’t hot coffee this time. ;-)
I would ask them why they have the most fundamental of climate dynamics reversed. The temperature of the Frigid zone moves in opposition to the Temperate zone:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/23/the-medieval-warm-period-in-the-arctic/#comment-1398577
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/23/the-medieval-warm-period-in-the-arctic/#comment-1398892
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/23/the-medieval-warm-period-in-the-arctic/#comment-1399757
And during full glacial episodes there are near permanent El Nino conditions, that’s when the tropical hot spot appears.
1. How extensive is your ignorance of the oceans?
2. How extensive is your ignorance of the earth (the vast bulk of it, not just the skinny crust)?
3. How extensive is your ignorance of past climate?
4. How extensive is your ignorance of most things which might affect climate?
5. Who is your favourite Spice Girl?
If you answered “Scary” to the first four questions, you are credible.
If you answered “Scary” to question 5, you have strange tastes.
Spice girls?
G7
I found my first three:
(1) Are you really the head of the IPCC?!
(2) Really?!
(3) You?!
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_and_Apu
1: Does Pachy really wear his railroad engineer hat to bed?
Isn’t that in the book?
1. Why don’t you let Tamino run the place?
2. Why waste all that money, get 50 monkeys on 50 computers?
3. Why not try peanut butter and jelly sandwiches next time around?
4. How about a Magic 8 Ball to predict climate? You could have one custom made for you.
5. Can you look into the correlation of the S&P 500 with rising CO2? Gotta be something there.
The beauty of watching this pause discussion unfold — as a disengaged yet passionately curious observer — is that it makes one want to scream out “Don’t ride the noise!”.
A time series record with random white or red noise riding on top of a trend is dangerous to interpret unless the record is long enough.
It is easy to generate a Monte Carlo sequence of a simulated time series trend and see how frequently a “pause”-like run will appear at the end of a record:
http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/8168/mx0.gif
It is sad to see academics purporting to understand systemic and aleatory uncertainty make these kinds of mistake, and compound the problem resulting in more FUD.
I think your measured words are ponder-worthy. We need to let about 5 more years pass and see what happens.
Webbies paper is more than a decade old. The record has since been extended in fine resolution proxies by 1000 years at the latest proxy.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/library/?sort=3&page=1
‘While the correlation displays decadal-scale variability similar to changes in the interdecadal Pacific oscillation (IPO), the LDSSS record suggests rainfall in the modern instrumental era (1910–2009 ad) is below the long-term average. In addition, recent rainfall declines in some regions of eastern and southeastern Australia appear to be mirrored by a downward trend in the LDSSS record, suggesting current rainfall regimes are unusual though not unknown over the last millennium.’ http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00003.1
The short term record they were saying – without disputing that there were mechanisms for regime change and evidence such as biological changes – the short record didn’t preclude random variability. No one doubts these days that the long term record – as well as other numerical analysis – show dynamically complex changes in state space. Abrupt climate change in other words as a result of the nature of the system.
Nothing there Chief, you’re blowing chunks.
Who cares about rainfall in one region or whatever mumbo-jumbo yu are quote mining. You’re losing it.
This is all so much speculation. Can’t you see we are accumulating data in a short record? Your “abrupt climate change” is a geologic time scale transition. If we are indeed experiencing “abrupt climate change”, then it likely has to do with mankind’s spewing all sorts of stuff into the atmosphere, include CO2.
Chief, you really are a dense impediment on the scientific highway.
‘What happened in the years 1976/77 and 1998/99 in the Pacific was so unusual that scientists spoke of abrupt climate changes. They referred to a sudden warming of the tropical Pacific in the mid-1970s and rapid cooling in the late 1990s. Both events turned the world’s climate topsy-turvy and are clearly reflected in the average temperature of Earth. Today we know that the cause is the interaction between ocean and atmosphere.’
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130822105042.htm
The Vance et al 2013 paper is a high resolution proxy for ENSO over 1000 years showing decadal variation of the sort that Latif models. Rainfall is certainly part of the global ENSO dynamic. No one serious doubts anymore dynamical complexity in climate.
Right, don’t ride the noise.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-d6YmKsnvzMo/UkI9IXxcgyI/AAAAAAAAJoY/L8MNAa9n9aA/w919-h495-no/ERSSTv3b+wo+cooling+bias.png
What’s the difference between noise and the real thing?
We call it noise because it is the composition of potentially many different processes which are largely a superposition to the main trend or signal of interest.
This is a paper which takes the position favored by those of us that have studied red noise and Markov properties for years
There goes the Sun, dah dah dah daaaaah,
There goes the Sun, I–I saaaay
It’s all right
It’ll be a long, cold, lonely winter
Little darling,
It’ll feel like years since its been here,
There goes the sun.
dah dah dah daaaah. )
The sun stayed high til the end of the century – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/tsireconstruction_zps0ee199b5.png.html?sort=3&o=5
It is likely to be amplified through the system.
With new helioseismic data and new measures of the Earth’s reflectance, we can usefully separate and constrain the relative roles of the net sunlight’s two components, while probing the degree of their linkage. First, this is possible because helio-
seismic data provide the most precise measure ever of the solar cycle, which ultimately yields more profound physical limits
on past irradiance variations. Since irradiance variations are apparently minimal, changes in the Earth’s climate that seem
to be associated with changes in the level of solar activity—the Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice age for example—
would then seem to be due to terrestrial responses to more subtle changes in the Sun’s spectrum of radiative output. This
leads naturally to a linkage with terrestrial reflectance, the second component of the net sunlight, as the carrier of the
terrestrial amplification of the Sun’s varying output. Much progress has also been made in determining this difficult to
measure, and not-so-well-known quantity. We review our understanding of these two closely linked, fundamental drivers
of climate. http://bbso.njit.edu/Research/EarthShine/literature/Goode_Palle_2007_JASTP.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6j4TGqVl5g
BTW – loved your latest poem Beth.
Thx Chief.
It weren’ nothin’ )
BC
Yes, the 20-year trend line is just as likely to continue. In fact more likely, because it also connects to earlier data, being almost identical to 30 and 40 year trends.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:12/from:1993/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:12/from:1983.
What you notice about the 20-year trend is how the peaks and troughs go up at the same rate.
JimD, the 20 year trend is a little less likely of continuing, AMO and all that. The 100 year trend is more likely to continue which is about 0.8C per century if solar doesn’t have a significant impact. That is looking less likely since solar appears to have been as grossly underestimated by about as much as CO2 was overestimated.
Even the modelers are becoming a bit disgruntled with their models.
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2013/09/only-6-models.html
The believer ranks are thinning. Quick! Back to the drawing board Climateman!
Why has the rate of co2 growth in mid latitude stations in the SH decreased during the pause?
captd, a 20-year trend is more statistically robust as it fits more data better than a 15-year one, and unless your AMO also explains why the average El Ninos and La Ninas have been getting warmer, it is just another effort to sidetrack. Regarding the 100-year trend, did you notice that the last 50-year trend doubled that? Now you are going to raise the warming from 1910-1940, while denying it could be anything to do with the increase in solar activity then.
We have a 10 year trend that is likely to continue primarily as the cool mode of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation intensifies.
It seems tied to tropical ocean cloud changes in particular.
Here is a recent composite record from ISCCP-FD and MODIS – using tropical SST to intercalibrate.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ENSO11000.gif.html?sort=3&o=143
What it shows is reflected SW energy decreasing the the late 1990’s – by 2.4 W/m^2 between the 80’s and 90’s. It then decreases abruptly in the 1998/2001 climate shifts and changes slowly subsequently.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES_MODIS-1.gif.html?sort=3&o=100
The data is all consistent with theory. In particular the modest decrease in cloud in CERES and MODIS – which is the whole cause of temperature increase in ARGO – is consistent with a series of weak EL Nino and a weak cool mode PDO in the northern Pacific. It is this that is likely to shift to more consistently cool PDO conditions and more frequent and intense La Nina over the next few decades. Cooler SST and more cloud.
The whole basis is of abrupt change – a climate shift in 1998/2001 – and decadal modes that last for 20 to 40 years. If this is not understood it is like missing a key piece of the puzzle.
Another significant point is that the ocean pseuo-oscillations as illustrated by the southern oscillation index (SOI) wiggle about a steady-state value that hasn’t really changed for years. It actually appears indistinguishable from the red noise derived from the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process, which has a strong reversion to the mean property.
Compensate for that noise and the underlying trend is more clear.
Many people are generating simple models that include the SOI, which rides on top of the forcing trend:
http://diyclimate.x10.mx/responsemodel/nbox.html
I don’t think they are doing anything too sophisticated with the processing — just a lag filter tuned to match the pseudo-oscillations in the global temperature record with the SOI wiggles.
This is very similar to what Kosaka and Xie reported: “Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling,” Nature, 2013.
Not really. Lots of excitement brewing on potential simplifications.
To get Tamino excited is worth noting. After a while of looking at how models fit the data, you gain a sixth sense in detecting a really good model. I know Tamino has that skill.
You know there is nothing in the link? And certainly nothing about the variability of the SOI.
We know that a temperature lag of 7 months from the SOI explains 70% of temperature variability last century. There were 2 periods of warming and and these correspond to decades of positive SOI. The period to 1976 mean SOI wging sysas different to the mean of the warming period to 1998 – and different again since.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/maclean-2009-Fig4.gif.html?sort=3&o=124
Of course we also have centennial to millennial variability.
The CO2 signal is far from distinctly superimposed on an abruptly changeable system.
You are massively failing Chief. The SOI is a measure of pressure differentials and that has remained stationary in terms of an temporally averaged value for decades. This will not lead to an extended warming as there is no net forcing imbalance.
The SOI varies over decadal scales – predominantly negative to 1976 – positive to 1998 and negative again since.
It is a simple index of the difference in sea level pressure between Darwin and Tahiti. The name was coined in the 1930’s by Sir Gilbert Walker. In the 1950’s another famous oceanographer – Jacob Bjerknes – put another part of the puzzle in place by realising that this was accompanied by the see-saw of water temperatures in the Pacific. The El Nino-Southern Oscillation.
http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/teaching/Ag/ElNino/ENsoi.html
We have to take one more step to understand the energy implications of these decadal, centennial and millennial changes in ocean and atmosphere circulation. This has only been possible since satellites. Let’s remind ourselves about the size of the changes in energy budget caused by changes in atmospheric and ocean circulation. Note the large changes in LW emissions in what is a relatively stable period it seems.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Loeb2011-Fig1.png.html?sort=3&o=67
http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~jnorris/reprints/Loeb_et_al_ISSI_Surv_Geophys_2012.pdf
But it seems the changes in SW is more significant in decadal variability. Enric Palle and Ben Laken have recently produced a composite cloud record from ISCCP-FD and MODIS records using sea surface temperature to intercalibrate. You can see the change in cloud to the end of the century – 2.4 W/m^2 increase in SW forcing between the 80’s and 90’s – a jump in cloud at the 1998/2001 climate shift and minor changes since that are responsible for all the warming in ARGO.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandlaken2013_zps3c92a9fc.png.html?sort=3&o=29
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES_MODIS-1.gif.html?sort=3&o=100
So this is where forcing comes in – cold water and more cloud in a system that is dominated by the volume of 1000 year old water upwelling from the abyssal deep.
JimD, ” Now you are going to raise the warming from 1910-1940, while denying it could be anything to do with the increase in solar activity then.”
Typical nonsense. With tropical ocean paleo that 0.8C per century trend extends to about 1700. The variation above and below that trend are longer and stronger at the beginning and decrease with time. There are a combination of “causes” involved in the 300+ year rise, the long slow thaw from the LIA, but once the “global” oceans reach the pre-LIA “normal” it is not unreasonable to expect a reduction in the rate of warming.
Once that happens you can get a better estimate of CO2 related impacts, but if you keep including the base secular trend and warmer oscillations around its mean you will continue to over estimate individual impacts. Using the LIA as your “mean” is nutso-whacko bassackward lack of reasoning.
You can’t predict or attribute squat without having a reasonably accurate estimate of “mean” and range.
What happened in the years 1976/77 and 1998/99 in the Pacific was so unusual that scientists spoke of abrupt climate changes. They referred to a sudden warming of the tropical Pacific in the mid-1970s and rapid cooling in the late 1990s. Both events turned the world’s climate topsy-turvy and are clearly reflected in the average temperature of Earth. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130822105042.htm
The climate system has jumped from one mode of operation to another in the past. We are trying to understand how the earth’s climate system is engineered, so we can understand what it takes to trigger mode switches. Until we do, we cannot make good predictions about future climate change… Over the last several hundred thousand years, climate change has come mainly in discrete jumps that appear to be related to changes in the mode of thermohaline circulation. We place strong emphasis on using isotopes as a means to understand physical mixing and chemical cycling in the ocean, and the climate history as recorded in marine sediments.
http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/2246
It is utterly bizarre to consider anything in climate as random noise. It might apply to where a thunderstorm happens – for instance – but I would argue there it is fundamentally a deterministic if chaotic system. For climate the determinancy is obvious. “The ocean plays a crucial role in our climate system, especially when it comes to fluctuations over several years or decades,” explains Prof. Mojib Latif, co-author of the study. “The chances of correctly predicting such variations are much better than the weather for the next few weeks, because the climate is far less chaotic than the rapidly changing weather conditions,” said Latif. This is due to the slow changes in ocean currents which affect climate parameters such as air temperature and precipitation. “The fluctuations of the currents bring order to the weather chaos.” op. cit.
It is quite evident as well that there is variability at centennial to millennial scales. Ignoring noise is tantamount to ignoring the reality of a dynamically complex and abruptly changeable climate.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ENSO11000.gif.html?sort=3&o=143
All series in climate are non-stationary at all scales.
It is bizarre but predictable that webby is now complaining about scientists who don’t share his simplistic view of things. While he relies on a 30 year old paper that doesn’t say what he thinks it says. And while he ponces about congratulating himself on correcting the errors of the blogosphere. A study in ignorance, arrogance and self deception.
Chief:
“It is utterly bizarre to consider anything in climate as random noise.”
To paraphrase Professor Sapolsky:
Linear: Noise is stuff you want to get rid of. To see things more clearly.
Non-linear: Variability is not noise, it is the system.
I’ve been trying to find another who said what Sapolsky did.
One may just can fall back on the easy answer of variability, and say they’re done, and they’ve explained things. But one hasn’t explained it beyond naming it variability, and setting much aside.
This is difficult stuff. That we may not be able to figure this out real soon.
The main decomposition of the noise riding on top of the global signal does appear very close to the SOI signal. This is a pair of simple model fits
http://skepticalscience.com/pics/two_box_enso.png
http://images.sodahead.com/profiles/0/0/2/0/7/6/2/8/5/2bmvsgissrsquared-117883512421.png
The agreement is parsimonious.
Seeing the relationship of temperature to SOI with a 7 month lag is relatively simple.
e.g. http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/maclean-2009-Fig4.gif.html?sort=3&o=124
Figuring out why this changes abruptly every few decades, what other changes accompany this and where it is going in the future is the difficult bit.
“The ocean plays a crucial role in our climate system, especially when it comes to fluctuations over several years or decades,” explains Prof. Mojib Latif, co-author of the study. “The chances of correctly predicting such variations are much better than the weather for the next few weeks, because the climate is far less chaotic than the rapidly changing weather conditions,” said Latif. This is due to the slow changes in ocean currents which affect climate parameters such as air temperature and precipitation. “The fluctuations of the currents bring order to the weather chaos.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130822105042.htm
Yes, and note how the temperature keeps going up while the SOI is stationary in its mean value.
Massive fail on your part, Chief ! You inadvertently gave away the key procedure to removing the noise from the upward trend.
The smart guys from Australia, the http://SkepticalScience.com team, are also on to the deception:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=171
To save repeating myself – http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/24/five-critical-questions-for-the-ipcc/#comment-386597
John Cook is a massive idiot webster and so are you.
Chief
Webby claims to be able to do extremely convoluted mathematical gyrations, but he is apparently unable to read a thermometer.
Max
Swiss MaxiMiss,
Reading one thermometer is an anecdote. To be able to do statistics is a revelation.
You should look into it.
WHUT and Chief:
I really don’t understand how this always seems to get so acrimonious. It is self evident that complex systems are non-stationary and have cycles over various timescales that are often fractal. On a mechanistic level, this is just how you create a model.
Yet the difference between “chaos” and “noise + trend” is observationally largely in the eye of the beholder. Statistically, high dimensional chaos is indistinguishable from noise unless you have a lot of data and in the real world bifurcations prevent the amount of data collection needed to say what is deterministic vs. noise.
Many nonlinear tools compare directly to white/brown (red)/pink noise. I think in terms of systems, but one time I was talking with a modeller who preferred stochastic approaches and he nailed me with the argument that he could account for everything I was saying stochastically. I had to concede and then asked what the difference was. He said his models actually let him do better predictions whereas the nonlinear systems stuff is very handwavey.
Then it hit me, and I replied that the nonlinear systems view is what actually gave insight into how to construct systems from a control perspective. When the topic moved into how to intervene and design (biological) experiments, the systems view was more useful.
The problem is when you want to observe and intervene. I’ve listened to some very brilliant people who argue that none of our tools allow us to do this reasonably well (particularly in a natural system; we were talking about biology but climate would have the same issues) and philosophically it might not even be possible to do it reasonably. That’s a topic for another day, but if dynamicists and statisticians realize that pink/red noise is perfectly valid to describe almost any complex system, but doesn’t necessarily give insight into underlying architecture, then that is at least a start.
Webby
Your remark skirts the issue at hand – namely that all those thermometers out there (even the ones next to AC exhausts in summer or heated buildings in winter) show us that it has stopped warming and started cooling slightly.
And I could tell you where to place that thermometer to get an accurate reading, but our hostess would censor that out.
Max
We do know that you can not keep up with all the climate models, even the simple ones. Max just can’t handle them.
The Kosaka and Xie paper is a breakthrough. Any one with any proficiency with a spreadsheet can fit these trends. I will write a post on it and place it in the blog on my handle.
+1 WHT
A good discussion Chief and WHT and the lack of ad homs is most appreciated!
It’s all fake balance. The Chief learned well from his Chief Benefactor Rupert Murdoch. In addition to the Faux News “fair and balanced”, the Chief adds fake and balanced.
I am reminded of Krugman’s view of the fake balance that exists. The kranks report the earth is flat, and the obedient lap dogs report that “Views Differ on Shape of Planet!”
Clearly The Chief uses chaos as his all around balancing argument and it is so thoroughly debunked as to become a parody.
The SOI measure of temperature fluctuation has a stationary long-term mean and when this is compensated for in the temperature, what is left is the global warming trend. And this is increasing.
Chief will try to deny this, but he is bed-ridden for the moment. Wait another 8 hours and he will resume his flailing.
All climate series are non-stationary – including ENSO.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Vance2012-AntarticaLawDomeicecoresaltcontent.jpg.html?sort=3&o=84
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ENSO11000.gif.html?sort=3&o=143
In principle, changes in climate on a wide range of timescales can also arise from variations within the climate
system due to, for example, interactions between the oceans
and the atmosphere; in this document, this is referred to
as “internal climate variability”. Such internal variability can occur because the climate is an example of a chaotic system: one that
can exhibit complex unpredictable internal variations even in
the absence of the climate forcings discussed in the previous
paragraph.
http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2010/4294972962.pdf
The climate system has jumped from one mode of operation to another in the past. We are trying to understand how the earth’s climate system is engineered, so we can understand what it takes to trigger mode switches. Until we do, we cannot make good predictions about future climate change… Over the last several hundred thousand years, climate change has come mainly in discrete jumps that appear to be related to changes in the mode of thermohaline circulation. http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/2246
The world is still not warming for another decade to three and the only thing debunked is the webster.
@Chief Hydrologist
I’ve read a few of your comments and am thoroughly confused. As someone who has a nonlinear dynamics background, I agree that climatologists have made some big mistakes in framing:
1) Focusing on temperature changes, which may be highly unpredictable, especially since energy changes may lead to state changes
2) Treating climate as “predictable” over a long term
3) Assuming stationarity of the various cycles like ENSO, PDO, etc.
But from a systems control point, GW scares me to the point of being an “alarmist” because of instabilities in temperature/water cycle, as well as the potential for rapid and catastrophic reconfiguration that could lead to huge sea level rises or droughts or freezes. There is a plethora of evidence supporting rapid climate change on the order of decades, not centuries.
To me the major question is not: can we say what the climate will look like in 2100? The question is: can we say that our actions are likely to cause a bifurcation, which inherently will mean extreme variability and uncertainty?
So unless you don’t think there is any net forcing at all, then the fact you seem to believe in chaotic dynamics should make you much more alarmed, yet your comments seem dismissive of the risks.
I knew this damn “pause” thing was a real risk to AGW optics, and in 2005 I told everyone I knew there was unlikely to be any increased warming until 2012; then read Latif’s work a few years later and now think 2015 is more likely but 2020ish isn’t out of the question. However, weather extremes due to blocking patterns are increasing rapidly, with the internal variability increasing even if the temperature trend is relatively plateaued.
This is a classic signal of bifurcation and makes me worried about what we’ll see on the other side; particularly since the negative feedback of the Arctic, forests and oceans are all showing signs of extreme stress and could flip to positive feedback shortly.
All of the stuff you quote from the climate researchers gives more cause for “alarmism” not less, so what gives about your tone?
Well, even if increased variablity is given(conceded) you still must auger whither the weather. Is the increased variability from increased CO2, or the end of the Holocene? If from the first, we’ll end a little warmer and a lot more nourished. If from the latter, glaciation.
================
Mikkel,
There are valid reasons for “making the mistakes”:
Temperature changes are less predictable than some other changes like those in OHC, but:
– We have more data and over a longer period on temperatures than on other measures
– Local temperature changes affect us directly. Local changes are not equal to global averages, but there’s an obvious relationship.
Everyone should agree (and almost everyone is likely to agree) that climate is not accurately predictable. Trying to predict future climate to the extent possible is, however, essential for all rational decision making on climate policy.
Again everyone is likely to agree that none of the cycles is stationary, but again the first approximation to use is considering them as stationary. Going beyond that more research should be done, and is being done, to learn about the non-stationary features of these cycles.
One essential question is, which of these cycles are even quasi-periodic, and which are more properly handled as “randomly” spaced state shifts of a system with chaotic behavior and some more or less well defined attractors.
Not admitting the ‘extent possible’ entrains irrational decision making on climate policy.
==========
kim:
“Is the increased variability from increased CO2, or the end of the Holocene? If from the first, we’ll end a little warmer and a lot more nourished. If from the latter, glaciation.”
If forcing (and our land use changes) are close to what we think they are, then it’s not likely we’ll end up a “little warmer” and certainly it will happen so rapidly it’ll be a major catastrophe. Regardless, the amount of variability increase to get there is enough to hang ourselves.
Global warming can never be proven, but if the consensus model is accurate then the destabilization we’re going to see is a major threat.
I don’t see how anyone would want to take that risk.
Well, I disagree with your catastrophic fears, but in any case, it is a matter of balancing catastrophe from an unknown against a catastrophic known, economic and social self-destruction.
==============
But Pekka, you merely confirm why it has me forlorn!
The politics of climate change is existentially, darkly humorous, because the core reality of it is the worst possible set of circumstances imaginable.
The time delay is such that by the time we know we’re screwed, it’s too late to do anything. The complexity is such that it can never be proven. The changes on a social level are drastic. The mere act of understanding leads to feeling that we must do something one way or another, so it is impossible to be neutral. The changes will be very gradual but may become rapidly violent, so we can’t use curve fitting.
All of these things inherently make for a very hard sell, and so really it just comes down to propaganda.
Scientists are terrible at propaganda and it may doom us all.
Focusing on temperature means people localize it to the point that polls move many % based on heat/cold waves. Denier propaganda aims to exploit this.
It also means that things like the “pause” destroys credibility, as graphs are trotted out that show the temperatures getting further and further away from the smooth projections. “Ah, but the temperatures are still significantly within regions of uncertainties!” you might say. Yeah, try explaining that to the general populace, especially with deniers being able to draw a straight line from 1998 onwards.
Assuming predictability is necessary for rational decision making, I agree. But if you account for uncertainty, then statistically it is impossible to make a rational decision. The risk model has long tails, and is log-normal, rendering the method intractable. It’s the same reason why all the CDOs blew up and took down the financial system. Working within the same policy framework is begging for the same outcome, except the tail is literally ‘mass extinction event and end of all civilization’ instead of ‘give bad actors trillions of dollars and pretend things are ok.’
Assuming stationarity on the cycles is fine, particularly since we’re talking about short timespans and it’s such a technical topic that it doesn’t really matter much. However, I do fear it diverts attention cognitively and philosophically from the possibility of step changes.
I am sympathetic with why things are framed as they are, but ultimately it was a terrible miscalculation by whoever made it. It is probably because it was made by rational liberals who did not understand how things would be framed. Read “Pligrimmage to Nonviolence” by MLK, wherein he captures what I’m talking about.
kim: “Well, I disagree with your catastrophic fears, but in any case, it is a matter of balancing catastrophe from an unknown against a catastrophic known, economic and social self-destruction.”
Ultimately this is the discussion that needs to happen (I’m not saying on this thread, just generally). What you call destruction, I call rebirth. Do not get me wrong, I’m not a renewable cornucopian because I have done the math and we can’t just PV our way out of things.
But from a physics perspective, it is very possible to lower our energy demand through a combination of reduced consumption, better architecture, more localized production, etc. etc. that renewables can play a big part if supplemented with breeder nuclear reactors, allowing us to have basic needs + a few luxuries. In other words, the actual precursors to happiness.
The path to get there is just political, which is in the realm of people, not in the realm of nature. The catastrophic unknown is not in our hands.
I would rather willingly collectively dismantle what we have and rebuild it then close our eyes and hope for the best. The same mindset that makes me fearful of rapid climate change makes me optimistic that rapid social positive change could happen if the zeitgeist was there.
The first rule here is always to ignore The Chief.
The reality is that the low-level Ornstein-Uhlenbeck red noise in the ENSO and the shot noise of volcanic disturbances is all that it takes to explain the global temperature fluctuations of the 20th century, continuing into today. This also explains the “pause”
Look at the data and a simple model of SOI noise riding on top of a GHG-induced rising temperature trend
http://imageshack.us/a/img822/6338/f7r.gif
@WHUT
As I said above, I don’t dispute the red noise model fitting the observations, but that isn’t necessarily instructive at critical points over long time periods. More to the point, I don’t think noise is an adequate explanation for predicting events like observations noted here (www.aip.org/history/climate/rapid.htm). If you look at my comment above you’ll see the that noise models are fine observationally, but probably not mechanistically (except for a few systems).
So on balance of the actual data, you two should actually be in agreement from a methods perspective. From a philosophical perspective I want to see why he doesn’t seem to think things will be that bad.
Mikkel,
The problem is that we know too little empirically to build convincing logical chains of arguments. There’s a lot of information, but it’s too sparse and scattered for solid conclusions of that nature.
Another approach is building models of various complexity from simple mental models to huge Earth System models. A complex model can, in principle, use also sparse data, but so far the models have not really been convincing. Some modelers seem to believe that combining their models and empirical data they can constrain projections to the future to the extent that the projections can serve as guidelines for policies. More skepticism on the reliability of that approach is not restricted to the “skeptics” but shared also by part of the main stream scientists.
The uncertainties mean that very serious alternatives cannot be ruled out, but that’s not yet enough – it’s not possible to act on every uncertain risk. Several scientists, Nicolas Stern and Martin Weitzman are two well known examples, have presented calculations that emphasize the worst case risks and conclude that strong action is justified, but their analyses have been heavily criticized by others. Up to now the views on the right reaction to the problems remain highly subjective. Nobody can present arguments that are convincing to those whose preferred interpretation is different.
Mikkel, you nicely frame our predicament. My balm is paleontology where warmer sustains more total life, and more diversity of life.
=============
Kim, to riff on Keynes’ “In the long run we’re all dead” maybe “In the long run we can all have tropical beach condos.”
You are so much in the weeds. You are trying to ascribe a geologic tine scale effect to what we are now seeing? Words fail.
@WHUT Hah, of course not. Biting my tongue…
I’m saying that your view is completely justified because we haven’t hit any tipping points, and so the two viewpoints condense onto the same plane. However, once tipping points are hit then dramatic reconfiguration can happen within decades, not geological periods. If you read the link you’d know that.
mikkel, may I interest you in a subscription to our ‘Equatorial Cities Gazette’? We are currently running an architectural contest, and the leading contender models the jellyfish.
=================
Pekka: Everything you say is completely accurate and that is why it is a shame.
I am intimately aware with trying to build multi-scale models (in my instance, working with people attempting to go from genes -> neurons -> networks -> organs). The prime interest in our work was to target sleep apnea, but it could also be used for stroke and maybe heart attacks. Similar people were looking at diabetes and such.
The thing is, I’m not sure we got anywhere. I ended up leaving after attending a conference where some of the top scientists in the world (including ones who literally helped build the space shuttle) were talking about how after 40 years of research they had decided we would need a new mathematics to truly understand/predict biology, and it’d probably take hundreds of years to develop.
And that is with controlled conditions and repeatable experiments! The reality is that the curse of dimensionality means we’ll probably never have enough data to empirically know anything; everything will remain in the realm of educated conjecture. We will be forced to make decisions on imperfect knowledge and then adjust as things go.
Success between hospitals varies considerably, even accounting for demographics and there is no understanding why. There is the hope that the variables can be teased apart and then we will know, adopting only the best. However, perhaps it’d be wiser to adopt the practices of the best hospitals wholescale because we don’t know what the individual variables are. Then the hospitals can tinker as needed and in 10 years we can see what the differences are and adopt the tinkering by the new best hospitals, etc.
The first technique assumes we can tease apart individual influences, while the second is just an evolutionary heuristic. It is the difference between frequentist and Bayesian inference. The former is “objective” and the latter formalizes belief.
If climatologists and activists adopted Bayesian inferencing then all of the questions about “how do you falsify” and such become much easier to handle. It would also provide a framework to start transitioning economically and such, while linking the science.
But it fundamentally requires a philosophical shift in approach. So you are telling me valid reasons why things are the way they are given the tools you’re using; I think the tools need to be changed to be more useful.
If the GHG warming causes a tipping point, it is with 100% certainty that the direction will be hotter. So that is an alarmist argument.
Mikkel,
You haven’t read enough of my comments obviously. I sometimes describe myself as a climate catastrophist – in the sense of Rene Thom.
Here’s a comment on sensitivity – http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/25/nic-lewis-vs-the-uk-met-office/#comment-387044
Tipping points happen frequently and not just in paleoclimate. Around 1910, the mid 1940’s, the late 1970’s and 1998/2001.
‘Researchers first became intrigued by abrupt climate change when they discovered striking evidence of large, abrupt, and widespread changes preserved in paleoclimatic archives. Interpretation of such proxy records of climate—for example, using tree rings to judge occurrence of droughts or gas bubbles in ice cores to study the atmosphere at the time the bubbles were trapped—is a well-established science that has grown much in recent years. This chapter summarizes techniques for studying paleoclimate and highlights research results. The chapter concludes with examples of modern climate change and techniques for observing it. Modern climate records include abrupt changes that are smaller and briefer than in paleoclimate records but show that abrupt climate change is not restricted to the distant past.’ http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10136&page=19
Abrupt regime changes are quite evident in my field of interest. It has led to schemes of stratified rainfall and flood analysis – practical approaches to account for non-stationary series in at least decadal regimes in water resource planning.
‘The Inter-decadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) is the coherent pattern of sea-surface temperature (SST)
variability occurring on inter-decadal time-scales over the Pacific Ocean (Power et al ., 1998; Folland et al ,
1999; Power et al , 1999; Allan, 2000). In classifying the different IPO phases, Power et al . (1999) used
the thresholds of +/- 0.5 to distinguish positive, neutral and negative phases. Figure 1 shows the time-series
of the IPO over the period analysed in this study. As can be seen, during this period there have been three
major phases of the IPO: Two positive phases IPO
between 1924 and 1943 and 1979 and 1997, and
a negative phase IPO from 1946 to 1976.; http://www.seas.columbia.edu/wrc/flood/franks-australia-drought.pdf
Practically everyone is predicting a decline in MOC over the century. The open question is what an abrupt change in MOC would do to global climate. A change of 20 degrees C in places in as little as a decade? It has happened.
What to do about it? The politics of carbon mitigation are collapsing under the weight of green overreach. The world is not warming and people will be understandably miffed. When not laughing at the faux certainties of global warmists.
Is that my fault? You need to move to a more rational narrative that takes in the facts and offers a different and life affirming path.
@Chief. Fair enough, even though I’d read multiple threads I guess I didn’t catch that; it came off more as “we don’t know anything so we shouldn’t do anything.”
Personally, global warming is just one of a myriad of concerns that can all be addressed through a more “life affirming path” which also provides resiliency against economic and ecologic catastrophic change. That life affirming path is largely about reducing the need for certainty and control, instead of increasing it.
In the day after Fukushima I wrote that a partial meltdown was almost certain and a complete one not out of the question — despite what all the experts were saying. I stated this because I had seen interviews with the inventor of the design who said it was never meant for utility scale and was fundamentally unstable, as well as engineers who said they had no evidence the safety systems would work, there was just no evidence they wouldn’t work.
I said at the time that the nuclear apologists were dooming the field since even a cursory understanding of the core instability and layered “independent” safety systems that were actually prone to coupling told me there was a high risk of disaster.
Of course we know what happened, and then a reader asked how I could believe in AGW if I didn’t believe the nuclear engineering models. It’s simple, I said, “for the nuclear reactor, we needed to control it precisely or catastrophe was inevitable. This means we need great predictive skill no matter what happens. For AGW, we don’t need to control or predict it, we just need to know whether we may destabilize it. That answer is much easier.”
But of course the nuclear industry is on its death bed despite the plethora of plants being inherently stable, not like the populace will believe that now. And we are plummeting towards catastrophic climate change in part because the framing of AGW makes it sound more stable than it is. How ironic.
Well, comparative lack of ad homs anyway! :)
How many margaritas in Cancun does it take to agree with the UN-IPCC’s consensus opinion on AGW?
Wagathon,
Your comment reminds me of a response I got to a question I asked: “what do the 114 Australian delegates to the Copenhagen Conference actually do?
The answer I received was: “booze, sex and party, party, party”
Why did you receive a peace prize?
Was Al’s slide show accurate?
Should scientists be allowed to have email accounts?
Will you be happy if we have a Climate catastrophy?
What is the percentage chance the climate will change?
I wish I had time to render the Hockey Team in railroad hats.
Still blamine George Bush for beating Al Gore and refusing to sign Kyoto?
Still blaming George Bush for beating Al Gore and refusing to sign Kyoto?
How much has the Earth warmed since Bush refused to sign Kyoto?
Actually, it isn’t CO2 responsible for the warming, it’s Bush.
How close are Brazil, Russia, India and China to joining the UN-IPCC consensus on AGW?
There is something wrong with that plot?
Oceans drive land temperature.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/DIETMARDOMMENGET_zps939fe12e.png.html?sort=3&o=24
A characteristic feature of global warming is the land–sea contrast, with stronger warming over land than over oceans. Recent studies find that this land–sea contrast also exists in equilibrium global change scenarios, and it is caused by differences in the availability of surface moisture over land and oceans. In this study it is illustrated that this land–sea contrast exists also on interannual time scales and that the ocean–land interaction is strongly asymmetric. The land surface temperature is more sensitive to the oceans than the oceans are to the land surface temperature, which is related to the processes causing the land–sea contrast in global warming scenarios. It suggests that the ocean’s natural variability and change is leading to variability and change with enhanced magnitudes over the continents, causing much of the longer-time-scale (decadal) global-scale continental climate variability. Model simulations illustrate that continental warming due to anthropogenic forcing (e.g., the warming at the end of the last century or future climate change scenarios) is mostly (80%–90%) indirectly forced by the contemporaneous ocean warming, not directly by local radiative forcing.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI2778.1
The difference and variability is due to a generally lower water availability and lower lapse rate over land. But water availability is variable and should increase in a warmer world.
I point out again that this is a surface phenomenon and does not change the temperature of the troposphere. It is of limited interest once the explanation is understood.
http://static.berkeleyearth.org/graphics/gcm-acceleration.pdf
thats my question
My guess is that the less the ocean keeps up with the land, the drier the land gets, which is a positive feedback, through drier surfaces, less rain, less cloud, more warming, less evaporation. This situation can only be prevented if the ocean starts warming up quicker, which is not happening yet.
whoops
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/24/five-critical-questions-for-the-ipcc/#comment-386559
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vgl/mean:120/from:1900/plot/hadsst3gl/mean:120/from:1900
The land rate is about 4 C per doubling based on 1980-now. According to Mosher’s plot, the GCMs say this will only increase. Note how the land leads the ocean in this period. It is not subtle.
ya thats one explanation, makes you wonder about flooding though.
Im hoping that the higher resolution data we have (hadcrut is 5 degrees and we are at 1 degree , 1/4 degree over the US) might make for more helpful diagnostics when it comes to improving models. For example in the regional stuff Im looking at the model really mess up with deserts. not sure why,
The land doesn’t lead anything – it gains and loses energy daily. Your lead is wood for dimwits science. look at the real science I linked to.
” Chief Hydrologist | September 25, 2013 at 1:42 am |
Your lead is wood for dimwits science.”
Chief is turning into a neanderthal parody with his guttural spasms.
Seriously webster? You are a bizarre little troglodyte dweeb with the brains and manners of a slime mould.
Jim D
Thanks for posting “your guess”.
Let me give you mine.
My “guess” is that the ocean with its enormous heat capacity and water cycle acts as a giant thermostat for our planet, and it will continue to do so in the future.
Today’s understanding of how this all works is so rudimentary that it is totally absurd to fixate myopically on one tiny factor: human GHG emissions, and attempt to make meaningful predictions for the future (as IPCC has done).
Max
Steven Mosher
You posted a graph showing that GCMs project an acceleration in the land-only 2xCO2 transient climate response over this century as your “question” to IPCC.
I presume you “question” the validity of these GCM projections, in light of recent observations showing a decadal lack of warming despite rapidly increasing GHG concentrations.
Am I correct and is that your question to IPCC?
Max
Mosh and Jim D
– Land surface only (CRUTEM4 or BEST) show 0.05C cooling trend over past decade
– Sea surface only (HADSST2) shows 0.08C cooling trend over same period.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/from:2002/plot/best/from:2002/trend/detrend:-0.05/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/trend/detrend:-0.08/plot/crutem4vgl/from:2002/trend/detrend:-0.05
It’s like Kim says: the planet is cooling, but even kim doesn’t know for how long…
Max
Well, we passed the peak of this interglacial cycle about 8,000 years ago so now we are in the cooling part of the cycle, which lasts about 80,000 years – unless we do something to mitigate that threat.
Any suggestions as to what we could do to prevent, or reduce the severity of, the (natural) cooling part of the glacial-interglacial cycle we are now in?
,
MiniMax you apply 10 years to see this cooling. As you can see from the following plot, the trend from 10 years ago from now has a systemic standard error that overlaps severely with a warming trend:
http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/8168/mx0.gif
If one goes back 15 years, then the CRUTEM4 trend is warming with no overlap in standard error with the cooling regime.
Despite his name, MiniMax knows nothing about statistics and executes a maximum massive fail at estimating.
Half of your skeptic team thinks we are still in a warming recovery from the “little ice age”. The other half thinks the lil ice age is deepening, including lil kim.
Pick your side and your fight is with them. Good luck.
Webby has no sense of time-scale, no wonder, after years of indoctrination. Multi-millenial linear trend is COOLING, multi-centennial is WARMING (since the period known as LIA). The multi-millenial trend (since ~10 ka BP) consists of many multi-centennial warming/cooling excursions, the warming since the LIA being the latest and one of many.
Edim, Shove it with your snide comments — I might as well call you a Slavic dirt-bag.
Webby, either you indeed have no sense of time-scale, or you’re trying to mislead. I didn’t call you anything, just an observation.
Max, try placing your computer on a level surface, that way you can correctly evaluate short term trends.
Better yet, determine the error bars on your short term trends.
EDim,
“Indoctrination”?
Seeing you get called humorous/ridiculous by another denier is now your status. He recommended a SkyDragon blog for your contrarian ideas. These are your teammates that are telling you off !
Do you not get it?
Peter Lang#8:47
James Hansen says in his book, “Storms of My Grandchildren”, that an ice age could be prevented with the output from a single chlorofluorocarbon plant.
Webby and bob droege
Aw, c’mom, guys.
You are starting to sound goofy with your:
and
Of course, there is a “standard error” in all the surface temperature records(very likely understated significantly, as it appears from all the data out there).
BUT, the trend shows slight cooling over the past decade.
And that was the point.
It’s cooling (on land as well as sea), and “even kim doesn’t know for hpw long…”
Get used to it, guys. It’s not gonna go away just because you’d like it to.
Max
Sunspots going out of the visible spectrum. I can’t believe I can’t believe my eyes.
=======
kim
http://www.universetoday.com/103803/solar-cycle-24-on-track-to-be-the-weakest-in-100-years/
Webby and bob droege haven’t gotten the word yet.
Max
That one’s pretty amusing, Max. I liked this sentence near the end: ‘On a more ominous note, however, an extended cooling phase may give us reason to stall on preparing for the inevitable while giving ammunition to deniers, who like to cite natural trends exclusively.’
Ominous? Ominous? You can’t handle the Ominous!
===============
MiniMax,
Still rationalizing?
Observational science is pointing to the fact that a trendless ENSO index plus mapping to periods of transient volcanic particulates provides all the variability in the global temperature record.
http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/6338/f7r.gif
What that reveals underneath is a pure monotonic and slowly accelerating rise in temperature.
http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/6311/x4ph.gif
Good idea to keep rationalizing, as it is a property of denial
Thanks for sunspot link. I’ve been looking for something like that.
Web,
That’s quite a Scarlett letter. I guess one wears it for life.
Recognizing denial
In politicized instances of denial such as climate change denial, AIDS/HIV denialism, or Holocaust denial, research is necessary to establish the “truth”. It is only on that basis that one can confirm the presence of denial or denialism. That research can only plausibly be carried out by experts. Those wishing to expose denialism must therefore refer to the opinions of experts. Denialism often involves questioning the expertise of self-declared experts, considering their possible bias, or considering the possible inherent bias of the system in which they work. For example one may question the objectivity of the peer-review system according to which academic research is accepted for publication in leading academic journals.
Even in this case, it is possible to recognize denial by an objective criterion based on Freud’s original theory. Denial is associated with the defence mechanism of psychological repression of emotion. These emotions are released when the denial is identified or challenged. The emotion is then repressed again (it seems to disappear) and the topic is not discussed unless there is another challenge. In this way, the topic becomes taboo. This is an unusual behavioral pattern: normally, when a question is so important that people get emotional about it, those same people continue to discuss it until it is resolved or there is some progress toward a solution. The emotion motivates the search for a solution.
Unless of course you get real emotional about it.
I guess I don’t understand: In a very complex non-linear system, there’s no good reason to assume that a myth (“abstraction” if you prefer) like “climate sensitivity” is constant with changing conditions. And IPCC politics is a very complex non-linear system.
Why not try graphing the various model results against the political incentives their creators were responding to? Bet you’d get a pretty good correlation there.
Agree with you there AK. Climate sensitivity has to be a vector of PDF’s in an Hilbert space.
Five questions?
To ask of an entity that is equal parts ignorant and dishonest?
Whatever for?
IPCC, live by the natural variability, die by the natural variability.
Edim Balki,
Natural variability is the ENSO and its accompanying SOI shows no warming trend.
http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/3729/ky65.gif
Subtract this noise from the data and it looks smooth
http://images.sodahead.com/profiles/0/0/2/0/7/6/2/8/5/2bmvsgissrsquared-117883512421.png
What an excellent fit with such a simple model !
Webby, ENSO (and PDO, SOI, AMO…) DO show trends, of course you can always cherry-pick a period with no trend (or simply de-trend it and call it an oscillation with no trend). When ENSO is mostly positive, the global temperature indices rise, when it’s mostly negative, they decline.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/imei.png
EDim,
Why must you cherry pick when the data is right in your face:
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/3476/ejab.gif
If you look at the SOI of ENSO, you see NO LONG TERM TREND.
This is red noise with a reversion to the mean and the mean to zero. It’s like sloshing water in a bucket – by sloshing it around the volume doesn’t change
1 What reason do you exist?
2 What are you doing?
3 Why are you doing it?
4 What are the consequences?
5 When will you stop?
4. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Wo’kin’ fo’ da Yankee dol-lah…
18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2430573/An-adult-18-Not-Adolescence-ends-25-prevent-young-people-getting-inferiority-complex.html
Evolution slows for mankind.
My suggestions for critical questions for the IPCC:
1. Roger Pielke Jr.’s question stands as it is as #1: ” how is it that this broad community of researchers — full of bright and thoughtful people — allowed intolerant activists who make false claims to certainty to become the public face of the field?
2. How many more observation-based studies concluding a 2xCO2 ECS of 1.5 to 2.0ºC will it take before you back down from your old model-based mean prediction of 3.2ºC?
3. How many more years of no warming (or slight cooling) despite unabated human GHG emissions and concentrations reaching record levels will it take before you concede that these GHGs have not been the principal driver of late 20th century warming?
4. What specific physical evidence will it take to falsify your claim of potentially catastrophic AGW from today to 2100, as specifically outlined in your AR4 report?
5. When will you concede that you cannot attribute the late 20th century warming to increased GHG concentrations until you can explain the statistically indistinguishable early 20th century warming when there was very little increase in these GHGs?
Why oh why oh why oh why?
Struggling with question five though.
Know comment…
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/warning-100-year-climate-disasters-every-100-days-2013-09-25?dist=beforebell
it is everywhere, today too.
One key question that the IPCC report answers implicitly, but should answer explicitly, is this one:
The Suggested Answer Climate-change denialism already has ceased to recruit the most talented young people (to science, business, or politics). That is the fundamental reason why today’s aging cohort of irredemptable climate-change denialists is destined to steadily diminish in vigor, cease to be socially and politically relevant, and die.
The above progressive outcome of course has been James Hansen’s game-plan all along, … and we see plainly that today’s denialist demagogues have no long-term scientific, economic, or political capability to stop it.
The Short Answer Focus upon the strongest climate-change science and its progressive implications, and ignore the aging/dying cohort of increasingly irrelevant climate-change denialists.
It’s not complicated, Climate Etc readers!
Fan
You do get carried away sometimes don’t you?.
Here is the meaning of demagoguery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demagogue
Perhaps you can list those people posting on this blog that match the description?
Do you think that James Hansen was justified in his actions with the aircon at the hearing all those years ago?
Tonyb
Were we to personalize our climate-change discourse, TonyB, then Climate Etc readers might confuse us with Chris Monckton. That would be *BAD*, eh?
Fan
So you will presumably not use the word ‘demagogue’ as it is inappropriate, inaccurate and applies to no one on this blog.
tonyb
tonyb,
You are so nice to FOMB. You constantly try to educate and civilize him and Joshua. We appreciate your historical anecdotes of CET and sea levels. It is like comparing a theoretical model that dogs don’t walk on the beach to paw prints in the sand.
Scott
Links supplied by FOMD.
Especially, Wendell Berry’s magnificent Thomas Jefferson Lecture for 2012 is highly recommended to Climate Etc readers! Can short-sighted willfully ignorant denialist demagogues like Chris Monckton show anything to approach it?
TonyB, what elements of the above statement are counter-factual?
wow, he sure gets the motivations of the ‘boomer’ wrong.
Politics (and even science!) is very largely the art of counting allies, and James Hansen alone has recruited more young scientific allies (as coauthors) than all the climate-change skeptics in the world put together.
Denialist ideologues are badly losing the idea-recruitment competition, aren’t they Steven Mosher?
And in the long run, that’s what matters, eh?
Fan
No doubt there would be many things I disagree with in your tract, but lets stick to your continued manipulation and misuse of the word ‘demagogue.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demagogue
it is not an appropriate word is it?
You are right not to want to personalise the debate. So I will ask the previous question in a de-personalised manner
Hypothetically, if a scientist should want to promote their case by staging the circumstances of his or her speech to an important political body, would deliberately turning off the aircon on a hot day in order to more forcefully put over their case be considered ethical?
A simple yes or no is all that’s needed. Thanks Fan.
tonyb
FOMD
“Politics (and even science!) is very largely the art of counting allies, and James Hansen alone has recruited more young scientific allies (as coauthors) than all the climate-change skeptics in the world put together.”
I look at my own experience in this matter. The weakest students I knew in Graduate school attached themselves to aging former leaders in the field. They published on the backs of old men. Today, reviewing their independent publications I find nothing of noteworthy.
Of course, YMMV. But since I’m able to judge the quality of the work by actually reading it rather than counting heads, I’d have to say that I’m not entirely impressed with much of hansens recent work.
Also I dont play the comparison game with skeptics. In my mind its a given that hansen is better at science than skeptics. I dont need to stoop to the idiocy of counting heads and checking their birthdays and inspecting their genitals as you do. But the fact that hansen is better than skeptics doesnt tell me anything about whether his view represent the best we have.
Finally, the issue isnt Hansen, the issue you raised was Berry. I found his address to be incredibly shallow, especially with regard to understanding “boomers”. He splits americans into two groups. This is an old trick used to demonize. I find it morally reprehensible and think you are disgusting to recommend it to people.
Yes, “Demagoguery always relies on binaries.“
Thank you for providing Climate Etc readers with a well-distilled example of demagogic cognition, TonyB!
Fan
You once again insist on using the word ‘demagogue’.
Here is another definition to add to the previous one
https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/demagogue
‘A demagogue is someone who becomes a leader largely because of skills as a speaker or who appeals to emotions and prejudices.
Though the Greek root for demagogue literally means “a leader of the people,” the word has for centuries had a negative connotation: it actually means a leader who has manipulated the emotions and prejudices of the rabble. The reason for the negative connotation is that in ancient Athens, “the people” were considered to be an uncivilized mob. Two of the most famous historical demagogues are said to be Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.’
You already use the word deniers which as you well know already has an unfortunate Hitler connotation. Here you are adding another Hitler Connotation. No one here is a demagogue,
Why would you want to make another analogy between climate sceptics and Hitler? Do you really hate us that much?
BTW You seem to have avoided my question twice so I will try again.
‘Hypothetically, if a scientist should want to promote their case by staging the circumstances of his or her speech to an important political body, would deliberately turning off the aircon on a hot day in order to more forcefully put over their case be considered ethical?
A simple yes or no is all that’s needed. Thanks Fan.’
Tonyb
LOL … thank you yet again, TonyB, for showing Climate Etc readers that demagogues *love* to demand binary answers to questions that convey demagogic presuppositions and distract from foresighted science-guided enterprises.
You show considerable skill at distracting even yourself, TonyB!
Fan
Your grasp of the English Language seems to be loosening. Not only do you call Sceptics ‘demagogues’-a word rightly used to describe Hitler, but then you say ‘I demand’ yes no answers. Where do I demand? You have some trouble it appears in providing answers so to make it easy for you I suggest that rather than shower us with quotes and smilies and irrelevant phrases, that you merely need to answer a simple yes or no . Is that demagoguery? Is that ‘Demanding?’ I think not it, is being caring enough not to want to over burden your ability to provide straight answers.
So here is your fourth opportunity to answer the question. It can be a simple yes or no or if you really want to, but by all means give us one of your flowery answers if you would prefer. If you prefer not to answer thats your perogative but I guess we can suspect the answer.
‘Hypothetically, if a scientist should want to promote their case by staging the circumstances of his or her speech to an important political body, would deliberately turning off the aircon on a hot day in order to more forcefully put over their case be considered ethical? ‘
With best regards
Tonyb
Prediction It’s you, TonyB, who will be first to answer yes-or-no!
Here are your two questions:
Yes-or-No Question 1 Hypothetically, wouldn’t a politician (like Senator Tim Wirth for example) be more likely to engage in these shenanigans than a sober-minded scientist (like scientist James Hansen for example)?
Yes-or-No Question 2 Does Mother Nature play even the slightest heed to demagogic trickery?
TonyB, please note that *two* yes-or-no answers are respectfully requested, from you or *any* Climate Etc readers!
Fan
Fairs Fair. You never answer any of the questions I pose. Why on earth do you think I will therefore answer yours?
Other denizens who haven’t exhausted themselves asking you questions that never get answered might however oblige you.
tonyb
Here are your answers TonyB!
Answer #1 Yes, blaming scientists (like James Hansen) for the shenanigans of politicians (like Tim Wirth) is pure demagoguery.
Answer #2 No, Mother Nature pays no attention.
Are these answers satisfactorily, TonyB?
It is my pleasure to add two bits (binary!) to your climate-change understanding, TonyB!
1. Does the term ‘QC’ mean anything to anyone in your organization? Please explain how this applies to AR5, specifically to WG1, WG2, and WG3.
It’s all about OIL!
There was a time when ME oil was plentiful and cheap. Oil was so cheap it made sense to just buy it from the ME because there was more money to be made in the West using it than drilling for it. It’s all the ME really had to of any value to barter with anyway — that and opium — so, it all made sense good business sense.
All of that oil money, of course, gave power to the Arabs who ruled the region — the same people who have spent thousands of years making due with very little in an inhospitable environment. There was this naive notion at the time that these peoples with their customs forged in privation over centuries, might in fact be better equipped than other cultures to handle the challenges attendant to a head-snapping swing in fortune that the transfer of Western wealth brought–e.g., customs and beliefs that would help insulate them from the evils of quick and largely unearned good fortune.
Sadly, the ME has done nothing with its oil wealth but spend it. The people there have not used the oil-wealth to help acquire the skills and knowledge needed to carry out productive activities on their own initiative and behalf in preparation for the time when the easy oil-wealth runs out.
And, it has come to the point now were it no longer makes more sense to buy oil there: we have better alternatives. One of the alternatives was to let the Left create out of whole cloth a fear that using oil to make energy was heating the globe–e.g., a sort of, cut of your nose to spite your face way of responding to a desire to buy less oil from the ME.
But, following the Left down any path is a dead end. We see that in so many ways over so many years: the psychosis, hypocrisy and self-defeatism of global warming alarmism is just one obvious example of the Left leading society over the cliff.
1) Would you be willing to answer the best of the above questions while you are hooked up to a lie detector?
I’d like to ask questions of climate modelers:
1) How many adjustable parameters does you model contain and what physical processes do they control?
2) Have you done any work to demonstrate that the set of parameters used to provide output for AR5 was obtained from a globally optimum set of parameters or were parameters optimized one or a few at a time? If the latter, wouldn’t you have obtained a different set of parameters if they had been optimized in a different order?
3) How many different types of observations were used during optimization? Did optimization of parameters for one set of observations cause poorer agreement with other sets of observations?
4) Where in AR5 is the uncertainty in projections associated with “parameter uncertainty” discussed? Is this discussion adequate?
5) Given “parameter uncertainty”, should the IPCC be drawing probabilistic conclusions from the spread of model output? If not, was the IPCC careful not to draw probabilistic conclusions?
6) Given parameter uncertainty, should policymakers pay more attention to estimates of transient and equilibrium climate sensitivity derived from observations or from climate models? If your model’s climate sensitivities agreed with median values from observations, how much would this reduce future warming? Was this factor made clear in the SPM for AR5?
If there is any dissembling, I’d cite the brief discussion in AR4 WG1 !0.1 about “an ensemble of opportunity” and the problem with probabilistic conclusions. I’m sure it will be easy to find projections with inappropriate confidence intervals.
Global warming as determined by trace atmospheric Co2 is neither calculable, quantifiable or predictable. If it’s not any of these things how can it be said to exist in meaningful terms? Where are the figures/formula to dispute this?
What if the pause is just an optical illusion and the trend turns out to be a continuation of this in the future? Would the IPCC still need to explain it?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1973/mean:12/trend
Heretic.
Call me skeptical of the “pause”. Skeptics seem to have overlooked this as even a remote possibility, so I thought I would point it out for their serious consideration.
‘Skepticism’ is a one-way thing.
This skeptic doubts the temperature records to the extent that he would not be surprised if there were currently more warming than reported…or less. We just don’t know either way.
Departures from this line have been 0.1 degrees, and we are in one typical departure at the moment. The gradient means that the lowest troughs exceed the highest peaks 15 years before that.
I’m skeptical of the “pause” too. It’s a peak.
GaryM,
I too, am fairly ceratin that there is more, or less, warming than reported.
The IPCC too.
Jim D
You state that you are “skeptical” of the pause.
Good. There is certainly nothing wrong with that.
However, the “skeptic” also looks for possible underlying reasons or agendas that might sway an individual or a group to “bend” the data in a specific direction in order to satisfy the hidden agenda.
There is an “agenda” to impose a carbon tax. Whether this is driven by the desire to control energy costs, reduce energy use globally, profit from a piece of the resulting pie, generate revenue for pet projects or political supporters, etc. (or whatever reasoning), there is no doubt that a strong agenda exists.
This agenda is supported by increasing temperatures and by the CAGW premise, as outlined specifically by IPCC in its AR4 report.
So the likelihood is that, if there is any “bending” of the data, it will be to show more warming that actually exists in order to support the underlying agenda.
I can see no hidden agenda, which would be supported by the UK Met Office or GISS reporting a “pause” in warming that does not exist. Do you?
That is the view of this “skeptic”.
Max
manacker, I didn’t come at this with any agenda in mind, just the science and the data. This shows that the 0.1 amplitude perturbations have been around a rising trend for 40 years now, and there is not reason to think it is different now.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/trend/offset:0.1/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/trend/offset:-0.1
For me this makes for an easy prediction, because we are due for a +0.1 departure within a few years. There are several past swings from -0.1 to +0.1 within a couple of years, and we could see that coming up here. That is a more than 0.2 degree rise, which would end the pause talk for sure.
Michael,
But you buy the delusional claim that the reported temps are accurate to within tenths of a degree. I don’t think we even know enough to come anywhere near an accurate figure for global temperature, or heat content. It’s all conjecture.
This result is another link in a growing chain of evidence that internal climate variability played leading order role in the trajectory of 20th century global mean surface temperature. Freely evolving general circulation model trajectories have been shown to have large global mean surface temperature excursions similar to that observed in the early 20th century (8). These excursions appear to be consistent with fluctuations in the Atlantic thermohaline circulation (THC), which significantly impacts the northern hemisphere temperature (10, 11, 23). The apparent internal variability of the THC has been shown to have a different relation of the SST to subsurface ocean temperatures from that expected for forced variability in the North Atlantic (24), consistent with the THC at least playing a partial role in the internal variability identified here.
A vigorous spectrum of interdecadal internal variability presents numerous challenges to our current understanding of the climate. First, it suggests that climate models in general still have difficulty reproducing the magnitude and spatiotemporal patterns of internal variability necessary to capture the observed
character of the 20th century climate trajectory. Presumably, this is due primarily to deficiencies in ocean dynamics. Moving toward higher resolution, eddy resolving oceanic models should help reduce this deficiency. Second, theoretical arguments suggest that a more variable climate is a more sensitive climate to
imposed forcings (13). Viewed in this light, the lack of modeled compared to observed interdecadal variability (Fig. 2B) may indicate that current models underestimate climate sensitivity. Finally, the presence of vigorous climate variability presents significant challenges to near-term climate prediction (25, 26),
leaving open the possibility of steady or even declining global mean surface temperatures over the next several decades that could present a significant empirical obstacle to the implementation of policies directed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (27). However, global warming could likewise suddenly and without any ostensive cause accelerate due to internal variability.
To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, the climate system appears wild, and may continue to hold many surprises if pressed.
Is anyone serious predicting warming over the next decades?
Chief is a massive failure.
It is amazing how well the Southern Oscillation Index (from NCAR) fits the natural fluctuations of a temperature record such as GISS, and only shows deviations in recent years during the big volcanic disturbances.
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/3476/ejab.gif
From this one index and the sporadic volcano data which temporarily suppresses the temperature, all natural variability seems to be accounted for and all that is left is an upward warming trend.
Now I understand why Stefan and Tamino’s work is so straightforwardly practical. This is why Kanaka and Xie’s recent work is so important.
The SOI is one of those noise sources that has an extremely strong reversion to the mean, showing barely any deviation from time stationarity over the decades:
http://imageshack.us/a/img28/3729/ky65.gif
The SOI signal is stationary over decades as it shows very little trend.
If there is another variation that is of longer period than the ENSO, I don’t see it.
This is so easy to do that others have applied simple 2-box models using the SOI as a noise compensation to get a better fit to the global temperature records. Some terrific looking model fits include the following:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/two_box_enso.png
and
http://images.sodahead.com/profiles/0/0/2/0/7/6/2/8/5/2bmvsgissrsquared-117883512421.png
These are taken from this recent discussion at SkS:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pacific-ocean-global-warming-puzzle-Kosaka-Xie.html
I think we are getting close to the point that the SOI can be used to automatically remove the pseudo-oscillatory ocean noise.
Chief is a massive failure. That is what we can conclude.
Webster puts out pathetic little graphs that hide reality and links to pathetic blog science yet again. He is utterly clueless . As Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie say – the cooling is to do with the decadal La Nina pattern in the Pacific. Although if we listen to people who actually know what they are talking about – me for instance – it is a whole Pacific phenomenon. It is likely to continue cool for decades because that’s what a multi-decadal regime does. It is likely to cool the planet for centuries because that’s how it varies as well.
The SOI is just an aspect of ENSO? It is to do with Walker Circulation in the equatorial Pacific. In a La Nina warm water in the western Pacific causes water vapour to rise there and sea level pressure drops. This enhances trade winds across the Pacific. In an El Nino the reverse is true.
Here is Claus Wolter’s multivariate ENSO index.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ts.gif
You can see the dominance of La Nina (blue) before 1976, El Nino (red) to 1998 and La Nina since. This is something that is not questionable by anyone who has any understanding at all. Which sort of let’s you out.
The SOI varies over the same decadal periods – predominantly negative to 1976 – positive to 1998 and negative again along with the PDO. They are all part of the same system known the Pacific Decadal Variation or – alternatively – the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation. It is known without a doubt that this system adds to temperatures for decades and alternatively cools the planet. It is something that has been discussed for a decade and – frankly – Yu Kosaka and Shang-Ping Xie are a little late to the party.
e.g. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
The SOI is a simple index of the difference in sea level pressure between Darwin and Tahiti. The name was coined in the 1930′s by Sir Gilbert Walker. In the 1950′s another famous oceanographer – Jacob Bjerknes – put another part of the puzzle in place by realising that this was accompanied by the see-saw of water temperatures in the Pacific. The El Nino/La Nina patterns henceforth known as the El Nino – Southern Oscillation.
e.g. http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/teaching/Ag/ElNino/ENsoi.html
The most interesting work over the past 4 decades has identified abrupt climate changes working through the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Southern Annular Mode, the Artic Oscillation, the Indian Ocean Dipole and other measures of ocean and atmospheric states. These are measurements of sea surface temperature and atmospheric pressure over more than 100 years which show evidence for abrupt change to new climate conditions that persist for up to a few decades before shifting again. The ocean patterns cause changes in global rainfall and flood records which likewise show evidence for abrupt shifts and regimes that persist for decades. In Australia, less frequent flooding from early last century to the mid 1940’s, more frequent flooding to the late 1970’s and again a low rainfall regime to recent times.
This culminated in the discovery of deterministic chaos in the climate system in a 2007 paper by Anastasios Tsonis and colleagues. ‘Tsonis, A. A., K. Swanson, and S. Kravtsov (2007),
A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts, Geophys. Res. Lett.’ A signal event in the evolution of climate science.
Tsonis, of the Atmospheric Sciences Group at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and colleagues used a mathematical network approach to analyse abrupt climate change on decadal timescales. Ocean and atmospheric indices – in this case the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation and the North Pacific Oscillation – can be thought of as chaotic oscillators that capture the major modes of climate variability. Tsonis and colleagues calculated the ‘distance’ between the indices. It was found that they would synchronise at certain times and then shift into a new state.
It is no coincidence that shifts in ocean and atmospheric indices occur at the same time as changes in the trajectory of global surface temperature. Our ‘interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Tsonis said.
Four multi-decadal climate shifts were identified in the last century coinciding with changes in the surface temperature trajectory. Warming from 1909 to the mid 1940’s, cooling to the late 1970’s, warming to 1998 and declining since. The shifts are punctuated by extreme El Niño Southern Oscillation events. Fluctuations between La Niña and El Niño peak at these times and climate then settles into a damped oscillation. Until the next critical climate threshold – due in a decade or two if the history of climate is any indication.
We have to take one more step to understand the energy implications of these decadal, centennial and millennial changes in ocean and atmosphere circulation. This has only been possible since satellites. Let’s remind ourselves about the size of the changes in energy budget caused by changes in atmospheric and ocean circulation. Note the large changes in LW emissions in what is a relatively stable period it seems.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Loeb2011-Fig1.png.html?sort=3&o=67
http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~jnorris/reprints/Loeb_et_al_ISSI_Surv_Geophys_2012.pdf
But it seems the changes in SW is more significant in decadal variability. Enric Palle and Ben Laken have recently produced a composite cloud record from ISCCP-FD and MODIS records using sea surface temperature to intercalibrate. You can see the change in cloud to the end of the century – 2.4 W/m^2 increase in SW forcing between the 80′s and 90′s – a jump in cloud at the 1998/2001 climate shift and minor changes since that are responsible for all the warming in ARGO.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandlaken2013_zps3c92a9fc.png.html?sort=3&o=29
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES_MODIS-1.gif.html?sort=3&o=100
So this is where forcing comes in – cold water and more cloud in a system that is dominated by the volume of 1000 year old water upwelling from the abyssal deep.
God only knows what the webster is trying to say in his incoherent and discombobulated way. That there are not decadal regimes that warm and cool the planet? That we accidentally got more cold water upwelling for a decade and he hopes it will all just go away because the humiliation would be too much? Don’t know – don’t care. So sad – too bad.
Chief
You’ve put a lot of interesting info out there. And you have suggested, based on this info, that we might see a continuation of the current “pause” in warming (or slight cooling) over the next 1-3 decades.
But you also ask Webby the (maybe not so rhetorical) question:
In an earlier post, our hostess hinted at a continued “pause” for a decade or two.
Most other sources (such as Met Office) now concede that we may see another decade or two of cooling, with all sorts of mystical rationalizations for why this might be happening (natural variability, Chinese aerosols, “missing” heat disappearing into deep ocean, and what have you) – these all skirt the possibility that natural changes in low cloud cover may be playing a role, because this could upset the “CO2 control knob” premise..
But Webby has dodged this question. He even tries to rationalize away the thermometers out there.
Jim D has even stated he is “skeptical” of the pause itself.
Proving to me that it is hard to have a rational conversation with a true believer in the CAGW mantra.
Max
The longer and more copy-and-paste Chief’s reply, the more panicky he is.
Face it, the only pause is due to a few ENSO burps that will revert back to the mean, like they always do.
What is left is about a 3C ECS.
Webby
Yep.
You mean the same “ENSO burps” that caused the 1980s-1990s warming (especially the record year 1998)?
You don’t even need the CO2 effect, Webby.
Max
PS Here’s a tip: watch the clouds.
I am skeptical of the pause because a 40-year tend fits the whole pause period too within its natural variation, as I posted just above, and I trust longer trends to be more long-term going forwards.
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I’d love to see a separate post for question #2 regarding min vs max temp
Attribution of 20th C warming revisited
HadCRUT4 shows us that the “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature increased by 0.53ºC in the first half of the 20th C and by 0.41ºC over the second half.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1950/to:2000/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1900/to:1950/trend
Atmospheric CO2 is only being measured systematically since 1959 (Mauna Loa), but ice core data give us earlier estimates (Siegenthaler et al. 1987)
1900: 296 ppmv (C0)
1950: 313 ppmv (C1)
2000: 369 ppmv (C2)
IPCC AR4 WG1 SPM (Figure SPM.2.) tells us that, over the past, all other anthropogenic forcing factors beside CO2 (other GHGs, aerosols, etc.) have cancelled one another out so that forcing from CO2 = total anthropogenic forcing.
Using the logarithmic relation,
C1/C0 = 313/296 = 1.057 and ln(C1/C0) = 0.056
C2/C1 = 369/313 = 1.179 and ln(C2/C1) = 0.165
IPCC AR4 WG1 SPM (p.10) also tells us that “most of the observed increase in global average temperature since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations”.
So, if “most” means 70%, we have over the 2nd half C
Attributed to CO2 (= total anthropogenic):
0.7*0.41 = 0.29ºC
Attributed to natural factors:
0.41 – 0.29 = 0.12ºC
The 2xCO2 transient climate response (TCR) would then be:
0.29*ln(2)/ln(C2/C1) = 0.29*0.693/0.165 = 1.2ºC
And the warming in the 1st half attributed to CO2 (total anthropogenic) would be:
1.2*ln(C1/C0)/ln(2) = 1.2*0.056/0.693 = 0.10ºC
Attributed to natural factors:
0.53 – 0.10 = 0.43ºC
Over the entire 20th C the totals would be:
0.29 + 0.10 = 0.39ºC (41%) anthropogenic (= CO2)
0.12 + 0.43 = 0.55ºC (59%) natural (forcing plus variability)
If we assume that IPCC’s “most” means 80% we have (same calculation)
2xCO2 TCR = 1.4ºC
Over the entire 20th C the totals would be:
0.33 + 0.11 = 0.44ºC (47%) anthropogenic (= CO2)
0.08 + 0.42 = 0.50ºC (53%) natural (forcing plus variability)
Checks fairly closely with estimates from several solar studies, which conclude that around half of the total 20th C warming can be attributed to the unusually high level of 20th C solar activity (highest in several thousand years).
Unfortunately (for CAGW believers as well as the planet) the solar activity has decreased dramatically since the late 1990s. In addition, ENSO has shifted, etc. etc. and concurrently the average global temperature has also stopped rising and started cooling.
Will this trend continue and what could it mean for the CAGW premise and (more importantly) for the planet?
I don’t believe anyone has the answers to that.
Max
Max, no use reverse engineering your convoluted reasoning. The observational results give a 2C value for TCR and 3C for ECS. That is also the mean value of all the models and it has been that since 1979.
Webby
You make a statement that
(without backing it up with any data), while I have just demonstrated with observed data over the 20th C that this statement is incorrect, and that the 2xCO2 TCR is very likely around half the number you cite.
I suppose you have also missed the many recent observation-based studies, which suggest a 2xCO2 ECS of around half the earlier model-based predictions cited by IPCC in AR4.
Ya gotta keep up with the data, Webby.
Max
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I watched the Newsnight item on the new IPCC report and sadly the presenter that night was the now lethargic and disinterested Jeremy Paxman. He allowed Stern to babble that, despite the lack of evidence, we were still at great risk. Paxman knows next to nothing of the subject and clearly his editorial team couldn’t be bothered to research some tough questions to ask.
Not a classic interview by any standards.
One more question:
Can the delegates agree on the wording of the WG1 SPM in time for publication of the text tomorrow?
Reiner Grundmann’s comment on Klimazwiebel
Sure hope not. I’d love to see the game run into extra innings. Preferably aleph-null of them or so.
How long of a “pause” in observed temperature, whilst CO2 levels are rising, will it take before the IPCC agrees that they have been wrong all along? I.e. what is the criteria for rejection of your basic hypothesis?
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Re: JC comment: “The idea of asking the IPCC questions is an interesting one. It seems to me that there somewhat of a disconnect between what the public/policy makers want to know, and the way that the IPCC frames it’s conclusions.”
I’m unsure of what you meant to write. Perhaps you meant “connection” rather than “disconnect”. I see more a case of Siamese twins: policy makers (governments) and IPCC report writers (Summary for Policy Makers). Forehead to forehead. /sarc