Ok, it is now official:
“The long-term climate model simulations show a trend in global-mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2012 that agrees with the observed trend (very high confidence). There are, however, differences between simulated and observed trends over periods as short as 10 to 15 years”
It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. The best estimate of the human induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.
The IPCC has officially (and anti-climactically) issued the AR5 WG1 Summary for Policy Makers. I haven’t had time to go through the report in detail, I mainly looked for these two statements. Note the changes in these two statements from the final draft discussed last week:
“Models do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10 –15 years.”
“It is extremely likely that human influence on climate caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951−2010.”
These changes as a result of the ‘conclave’ this week totally dissonates my cognitives. Well, IPCC has thrown down the gauntlet – if the pause continues beyond 15 years (well it already has), they are toast. Even though they still use the word ‘most’ in the attribution statement, they go all out and pretty much say it is all AGW: “The best estimate of the human induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.”
In case you haven’t been paying attention, ‘extremely likely‘ in the attribution statement implies 95% confidence. Exactly what does 95% confidence mean in this context?
A few days ago, Seth Borenstein of AP attempted to explain What 95% certainty of warming means to scientists. Excerpts:
With the U.N. panel about to weigh in on the effects of greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of oil, coal and gas, The Associated Press asked scientists who specialize in climate, physics, epidemiology, public health, statistics and risk just what in science is more certain than human-caused climate change, what is about the same, and what is less.
They said gravity is a good example of something more certain than climate change. Climate change “is not as sure as if you drop a stone it will hit the Earth,” Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said. “It’s not certain, but it’s close.”
Arizona State University physicist Lawrence Krauss said the 95 percent quoted for climate change is equivalent to the current certainty among physicists that the universe is 13.8 billion years old.
The president of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, Ralph Cicerone, and more than a dozen other scientists contacted by the AP said the 95 percent certainty regarding climate change is most similar to the confidence scientists have in the decades’ worth of evidence that cigarettes are deadly.
“What is understood does not violate any mechanism that we understand about cancer,” while “statistics confirm what we know about cancer,” said Cicerone, an atmospheric scientist. Add to that a “very high consensus” among scientists about the harm of tobacco, and it sounds similar to the case for climate change, he said.
George Washington’s Gray said the 95 percent number the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will probably adopt may not be realistic. In general, regardless of the field of research, experts tend to overestimate their confidence in their certainty, he said. Other experts said the 95 percent figure is too low.
Jeff Severinghaus, a geoscientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said that through the use of radioactive isotopes, scientists are more than 99 percent sure that much of the carbon in the air has human fingerprints on it. And because of basic physics, scientists are 99 percent certain that carbon traps heat in what is called the greenhouse effect.
But the role of nature and all sorts of other factors bring the number down to 95 percent when you want to say that the majority of the warming is human-caused, he said.
JC comment: Oh, my aching head.
When writing the uncertainty monster paper, I tried to figure out how the IPCC AR4 came up with the ‘very likely’ (90%) confidence level for the attribution statement. Here is what I found (section 9.4):
“The approaches used in detection and attribution research described above cannot fully account for all uncertainties, and thus ultimately expert judgment is required to give a calibrated assessment of whether a specific cause is responsible for a given climate change. The assessment approach used in this chapter is to consider results from multiple studies using a variety of observational data sets, models, forcings and analysis techniques. The assessment based on these results typically takes into account the number of studies, the extent to which there is consensus among studies on the significance of detection results, the extent to which there is consensus on the consistency between the observed change and the change expected from forcing, the degree of consistency with other types of evidence, the extent to which known uncertainties are accounted for in and between studies, and whether there might be other physically plausible explanations for the given climate change. Having determined a particular likelihood assessment, this was then further downweighted to take into account any remaining uncertainties, such as, for example, structural uncertainties or a limited exploration of possible forcing histories of uncertain forcings. The overall assessment also considers whether several independent lines of evidence strengthen a result.”
Looks like the AR5 forgot to do the ‘down weighting.’ But seriously, this doesn’t tell us where the 90% came from for AR4.
The IAC Review of the IPCC recommended the following:
Chapter Lead Authors should provide a traceable account of how they arrived at their ratings for level of scientific understanding and likelihood that an outcome will occur.
The IPCC uncertainty guidance urges authors to provide a traceable account of how authors determined what ratings to use to describe the level of scientific understanding (Table 3.1) and the likelihood that a particular outcome will occur (Table 3.3). However, it is unclear whose judgments are reflected in the ratings that appear in the Fourth Assessment Report or how the judgments were determined. How exactly a consensus was reached regarding subjective probability distributions needs to be documented.
Yesterday, a reporter asked me how the IPCC came up with the 95% number. Here is the exchange that I had with him:
Wow
“Hard” science with 5 sigmas or with 10^-18 uncertainty
Wow indeed! In physics and other “hard” sciences, uncertainty claims must be documented with credible evidence. At The Reference Frame, Luboš Motl explains the high standard of five sigma to provide adequate confidence for a new particle discovery in physics. In defense of five standard deviations
Global climate models have strayed so far from hard science that ALL model projections from 1979 exceed recent temperatures. Furthermore, the model means are now OUTSIDE the two sigma 95% level.
E.g., Steve McIntyre observes IPCC’s faux science in Two Minutes to Midnight
Lucia similarly documents IPCC’s model projections failing over 30 years:
Leaked chapter 9 AR5: musings
Leaked SPM AR5: Multi-decadal trends.
i.e., the IPCC’s models are now WRONG with 95% confidence.
The IPCC’s 95% confidence in Anthropogenic attribution is a bad rhetorical joke, unsupported by the evidence!
In passing Lubos eloquently observes:
Contrast the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) setting the standard with their recent breakthrough with: An Atomic Clock with 10^-18 Instability
i.e. this has potential to improve satellite sea level measurements.
Optical clocks are now being implemented on 2 mm disks! See: A microresonator frequency comb optical clock
Rescue “Climate Science” from political correctness to the scientific method.
Contrast the growing confidence in peaking of crude oil.
The real problem is a growing confidence that conventional crude oil production has visibly plateaued. Note that US shale oil hides crude oil peak in rest of world. See graphs:
Incremental crude oil World Jan 2001 to May 2013
Incremental crude oil by Continent Jan 2001 – May 2013
Sam Foucher quantitatively documents how conventional crude oil production is approaching the 2 sigma (95%) probability of having peaked. (Crude Condensate Natural Gas Liquids C+C+NGL then subtracting tight oil and oil sands) Peak Oil Update: Final Thoughts, August 19, 2013 at TheOilDrum
Westexas documents how the Available Cumulative Net Exports (CNE) (Global net exports less imports by China and India) halved from 11 to 5 billion bbl between 2002 and 2011. Conversely global public debt doubled during that period from less than $20 trillion to $43 trillion. That portends far greater near term financial disaster than any of IPCC’s AGW catastrophies.
The potential of tight oil is just now being realized and can be replicated the world over.
“As a general rule, better well design will improve initial production, but more importantly it slows depletion. Encana (ECA) is a leader in this play and reports a decrease in well costs from $2.8 million per 1000 feet to $2.2 million. Its longest lateral to date is 8800 feet. I would guess operators will continue to work towards the 10000 foot laterals seen in other plays. Encana’s current well costs range from $12.5 to $14 million for a 7500 foot lateral. Its EURs range from 700 MBoe to 800 MBoe.”
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1715312-bakken-update-sanchez-has-upside-in-the-eagle-ford
If you are invested in this sector, you already know that there are four major issues being priced into the supply and demand future for domestic NG (with many other minor but important variables):
Shale: new production economics, regions, and technology
Imminent LNG Export: Significant volumes, long timeline
Coal-fired Power Replacement: Gradual, large, predictable
Liquids: rising gas production as an oil and NGL byproduct
Nearly every demand component will grow meaningfully as far as the eye can see. Industrial demand is further on the horizon but will also be significant, and home heating is not going away. Even CNG vehicles may eventually add an increment.
But here is the problem. Supply growth will smother all those sources for a long time. Current consensus is for flat to slightly increased domestic production in 2014. But the shale revolution is the story of supply growth that was repeatedly underestimated.
Unfortunately, hindsight is about 20/80 in this case. Perhaps memory is also warped. The individual rig and well productivity was there for all to see, but there was a significant lag in aggregate output during chapter 1 of the shale revolution. The basic story since 2007:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1715312-bakken-update-sanchez-has-upside-in-the-eagle-ford
1) The Eagle Ford could be the largest on-shore oil reserve ever discovered in the United States.
The Eagle Ford is a massive shale play of 20,000 square miles. The formation swoops across southern Texas from the Mexican border up into East Texas. Of its 12.8 million acres, EOG Resources (NYSE: EOG ) is the largest landowner with 639,000 acres.
While the true number of recoverable barrels under the Eagle Ford is unknown, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates the field holds between 7 billion to 10 billion barrels of oil. If these figures are accurate, the field would be the largest on-shore oil reserve ever discovered in the continental U.S.
…
2) The Eagle Ford is the fastest growing play in the world.
…
3) The Eagle Ford is producing some of the most valuable crude in the world
…
4) Drilling costs in the Eagle Ford are falling rapidly.
…
5) The Eagle Ford is the biggest investment bonanza on the continent
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/09/25/7-mind-blowing-facts-about-the-eagle-ford.aspx
Jim2:You can’t model what you don’t know and can’t predict. Repeat that 10 times every morning when you awake.
Jim2, making Iron/Steel, direct-reduced iron, from natural gas compared with coal generated coke, produces a far superior product.
Cheap, plentiful, natural gas could revitalize the US iron/steel industry.
I guess that people aren’t interested in blue-color jobs anymore.
jim2
Thanks for the ref to reduction in drilling costs.
I have filed patents on improving hydrocarbon recovery.
However, tight oil costs more and drops off faster. I recommend that you study evidence on the “Red Queen” at The Oil Drum. i.e. you have to continually run faster just to stay even. That is a devastating trend for investors.
I know what you say is true about the cost and production drop-off. The point is that the costs are declining and IP and continuing production rates are improving and continuing to do so. The world tight oil supply is yet to be tapped. I do know we will run out some day. It’s just difficult to know what technology will bring. The tight oil boom wasn’t prophesied like peak oil – if it was, it got no publicity. Why is that?
jim2
In IPCC talk, we are highly unlikely to “run out of oil” (>95%).
We are highly likely to see conventional crude oil peak in EACH geological region. See multi-hubbert analysis such as documented by James Hamilton
We are highly likely to see the crude oil plateau decline (=peak) in conventional crude oil within the next few years. (>95%) per Sam Foucher.
We will highly likely see tight oil peak in EACH geological region. (95%) like conventional crude.
Each of these have a far greater probability than the IPCC’s misplaced confidence of 95% AGW based on its argument from ignorance.
Your expectations of wonders from tight oil are likely misplaced for the same reason.
So, David, you can show me the prognostications of a tight oil boom, which we now have, from 10 years ago? Waiting for a link.
Like many people, David, you have 20/30 hindsight. Now that the tight oil boom has come along, you can make some educated guesses. And that nails the problem, you can’t see what’s coming. No one can.
Jim2
The structural model is multi-cycle hubbert model with a Hubbert peak for each region and geological resource. See Fig. 13 and Fig. 15 in Exponential growth, energetic Hubbert cycles, and the advancement of technology Tad Patzek 2008
Tight oil is just another type of resource that is being released by improvements in fracking technology. Now that the cost of oil is high enough many drillers jumped in an you see a short term boom. e.g. See Rockman’s post last year at TheOilDrum
The Bakken, Eagle Ford etc will each be fit with a “Hubbert” cycle. The total production is likely to be smaller than the 1970 US 48 state oil peak.
Look carefully at the economics. See Rune Likvern: Is the Typical NDIC Bakken Tight Oil Well a Sales Pitch? It borders on irrational exuberance but not as much as IPCC borders on irrational alarmism.
David. I do believe that each reservoir will peak. That is trivially true and wholly unremarkable. My point is that you can’t tell the future. Simple.
David,
Back away from the trees far enough to see the forest. The problem with spewing the Hubert model as an indicator is (and has always been) that you can’t predict future discovery of sources or technologies – period.
Simply stated – the mere fact that the largest on-shore US discovery of the most desirable type oil existed right underneath the center of America’s oil industry and within easy reach of production and transport means until it was cultivated. That is a fact, and an unpredictable one…
We most likely have hundreds of years of oil supplies and many hundreds of years of gas supplies which are equally unpredictable. AGW alarmism was misplaced and so are energy alarmist positions.
“Please tell me it’s more rigorous than that.”
Smart reporter. Must be from the NYT’s. (not),
“The 95% is basically expert judgment, it is a negotiated figure among the authors.”
In some idealized pokerguy world, it would have been nice to hear “so-called” expert judgment.
What I most interested in is seeing what our hostess is actually going to DO about this affront to physics.
Jim, I think she’s doing plenty. Be fair.
Agreed. Judith is fighting the good fight, and it seems mealy-mouthed to question that.
She’s already done a good bit. I’m 95% certain it won’t be she who ends up with egg on her face.
jim2 – thanks for your insightful Eagle Ford comments :o)
jim 2, an eggsellent observation.
bts.
She is doing everything she can do.
The numbers are all converging. Look for 97% across the board in AR6–if there is an AR6.
Thanks, Judith.
I am sure that pharmaceutical companies would like to be able to use the same methodology in calculating how they drug efficacy will be in treating the public;
“We are 95% certain that taking two 50 mg tablets of ‘Placebo’ will improve your health”
Or even:
Well, you can’t see any healing of that wound for some 15 years, but we know it’s there, somewhere deep down in your abdomen!
Note the change of wording in the attribution statement
AR4: “greenhouse gases”
AR5: “human influence”
Roger Pielke Sr will approve of this I think.
The “human influence”” sounds worse, imo.
Tainted, stinking, evil human influence.
In fact AR5 have two versions of the claim: the one that Judith quotes, ghg and other anthro forcings, and the second one in the box, saying ‘human influence’, both on page 12.
Human influence is the knob. Natural climate change is noise.
The vernier on the guiltometer. Turn it up to eighteen knots!
=========
John De Fayette
I think we have an asymptotic relationship here.
AR4 – 90%
AR5 – 95%
AR6 (if there is one) – 97% (as you write)
AR7 (yawn!) – 98%
AR8 (as we’ve entered the next Little Ice Age) – 98.5%
etc.
But the real question is: what is the relevance of all this?
(Asymptotically approaching 0% IMO.)
Max
Isn’t there a hiatus after 98?
No, most of the ARs lately are highest on record.
Judith Curry you are entirely right that 95% Bayesian priors are ludicrous … to the extent that this confidence arises from (notoriously imperfect!) large-scale computer models of decadal-scale dynamics.
And yet, the 95% confidence-level is wholly reasonable when
• it arises from thermodynamic energy balance, and
• and is founded upon radiation-transport physics, that
• predicts energy imbalance, ocean-rise, and ice-mass loss, and
• these phenomena are observed *without* decadal fluctuation, and
• moreover are affirmed by the paleo record, *and*
• (weakest of all!) are consonant with the computer models.
As for purely statistical cycle-science, the implausibility that purely statistical cycle-science yields predictive descriptions of climate change is responsible for the remnant 5% uncertainty!
In regard to the above considerations, this week’s survey article — multi-author! peer-reviewed! verifiably referenced! and scrupulously polite! — Climate sensitivity, sea level and atmospheric carbon dioxide (Proc. , 2013) is commended to Climate Etc readers.
Conclusion The IPCC5 article regrettably is a huge-committee effort that focuses too-largely upon mediocre model-based climate-change science. Yet despite these deficiencies, the IPCC5 confidence levels are well-justified.
FOMD, I feel so much better about this report that you, with your wall full of climatology and physics degrees and thick portfolio of peer-reviewed publications, feel that “the IPCC5 confidence levels are well-justified.”
Hey folks, more evidence that FOMD is a computer program.
First, it links to a paper by Hansen, et al, which cites Hansen 25 times. As we know, FOMD is programmed to search out and praise Hansen references.
Second, the abstract admits that, “Pleistocene climate oscillations yield a fast-feedback climate sensitivity of 3±1°C for a 4 W m−2 CO2 forcing if Holocene warming relative to the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) is used as calibration, but the error (uncertainty) is substantial and partly subjective ” and also “Ice sheet response time is poorly defined”.
Not exactly the kind of certainty that a human arguing a position here would cite. Other quotes show that the paper wasn’t picked because of its quality but rather because it mentioned “Hansen” 31 times:
“We subjectively estimate an uncertainty of approximately 20%.”
“Conventional global climate models are inappropriate, as they contain too much other detail in the form of parametrizations or approximations that break down as climate conditions become extreme.”
“In our present simulations, the ocean’s depth is reduced to 100m with five layers so as to achieve a rapid equilibrium response to forcings; this depth limitation reduces poleward ocean transport by more than half.”
“today’s ice sheets are assigned surface properties of the tundra”
“We suspect that the modelled water vapour feedback may be moderately exaggerated, because the water vapour amount in the control run exceeds observed amounts. In addition, the area of sea ice in the control run exceeds observations, which may increase the modelled sensitivity in the 1–4 × CO2 range.”
“Climate sensitivity extracted from Pleistocene climate change is thus inherently partly subjective…”
“This sensitivity is higher than estimated by Schmittner et al., partly because they included natural aerosol changes as a forcing.”
“Our climate simulations, using a simplified three-dimensional climate model to solve the fundamental equations for conservation of water, atmospheric mass, energy, momentum and the ideal gas law, but stripped to basic radiative, convective and dynamical processes, finds upturns in climate sensitivity at the same forcings as found with a more complex global climate model”
LOL … more evidence that climate-change denialists know how to count, but not how to read!
Fanny counts on us not actually reading his links. Well, most of us have learned not to waste our time. You must be new here.
Yup. There is no such person, just code. Almost as intelligent as a raccoon, but a lot clumsier. Still as AI goes, not bad.
Fan
I am glad you are around
Inspired by your numerous references to Dr Hansen and his Govt hearing in 1988 I looked up his iconic 1987 piece that became the centre of His presentation to the committee on energy and natural resources in june 1988 (what a scallywag that Wirth was eh?)
Any way I looked at his graph from his hearing notes and looked at what eventually became GIss and it seems that upon transferring from the hearing to GIss the 1940’s have cooled and the cool spot around 1965 has also changed.
In fact there are a number of substantial differences.
I know there were reasons for the 1940’s cooling in retrospect but can’t remember what they were. Can you remind me of the reasons behind that-and the other-changes?
Here are the links
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Environment/documents/2008/06/23/ClimateChangeHearing1988.pdf
see figure 1 for global 5 year mean taken from the hearing in 1988
Here is latest giss
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A.gif
temperatures seem to have warmed in later years and cooled in 1940’s
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/
Here is hansen lebedeff 1987
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1987/1987_Hansen_Lebedeff.pdf
Thanks for your help
tonyb
Fan Of Object LISP. He’s a comp sci PhD dissertation. A new object oriented LISP dialect for blog comment automation. FOOL for short. Using the Advanced Statistical Selection algorithm from a database of Hansen cites. The database is called Statistical Hansen Integrated Terminology. When you join that database with the FOMD personality table, Statistical Hansen Integrated Terminology hits the FAN. Then the fun begins.
> • it arises from thermodynamic energy balance
Even though we don’t have anything like robust energy balance data
> • and is founded upon radiation-transport physics, that
As do analyses with radically different, non-alarmist conclusions
> • predicts … ocean-rise, and ice-mass loss, and
Oceans has been rising since before CO2 increases, ice-mass is not decreasing overall
> • these phenomena are observed *without* decadal fluctuation, and
Equally consistent with radically different, non-alarmist conclusions
> • moreover are affirmed by the paleo record, *and*
aka the Hockey Stick fraud
> • (weakest of all!) are consonant with the computer models.
No they aren’t, the models are all running hotter than reality, and increasingly so
> this week’s survey article — multi-author! peer-reviewed! verifiably referenced!
Reality check – 100% written, pal-reviewed and verifiably referenced by the same government shills who gave us the likes of Climategate, which malfeasance they still will not criticize or punish.
Inescapable conclusion : 95% politics.
That is a prudent policy Don Monfort! It is well for denialists *never* to risk reading scientific literature that includes passages like:
Perhaps this summer’s near-lethal heat-waves in China, particularly if these heat-waves portend the end of the surface temperature ‘pause’, will alter too-common policies of willful ignorance, Don Monfort?
Or on the other hand, perhaps ignorance *is* bliss … for denialists? In your view, Don Monfort, do climate-change denialists prefer to be ignorant of science? Or is it just a habit?
Provide scientific proof that the heat waves in China were the result of manmade global warming. You can’t, Hansen can’t, no one can because there is none. The record frigid weather and snow late last year and earlier this year in China were equally or more extreme than the heat wave but of course, THAT was only weather, the heat wave was CLIMATE CHANGE
South Tarawa, at the Equatorial Pacific, is about as hot and humid as the planet gets. It records a max of between 31.1 degrees in the winter and 31.8 in the summer. You cannot get any higher as all you do is evaporate more water.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EnergyBalance/images/annual_solar_insolation.png
AFOMD,
Please link us the paper that reports the model that forecasted the pause or can backcast the pause.
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. Is it possible to successfully predict such climate shifts? This is the question that scientists, under the auspices of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, pursued. Using a coupled model of the ocean and the atmosphere, they were able to successfully replicate these events. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130822105042.htm
Don’t get too excited – reliability is about the same as tossing a coin.
kuhnkat, I think this is the paper you’re looking for:
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n7/full/nclimate1863.html
TonyW,
You and AFOMD might want to pawn this insufficient paper off as the answer to my question, BUT, it only deals with 2000-2010 and invokes the unproven and unseen deep ocean heat transfer as a mechanism for even just that 10 year period.
There were NO projections of even a ten year period and NO backcasts of even a 15 year period. (we are about 17 years now with a flat strat for 19!!!)
The problem you and the modelers encounter is that the models are biased to warming. To move the heat to the deep ocean means it won’t be back for hundreds of years based on their consensus science so will not affect temps between now and 2300 at the earliest. As they have not been able to show the mechanism they cannot plausibly state why it just started or when it will end. It also means that the oceans COULD BE giving up heat that went down hundreds of years ago just as with CO2!!! The warming from 1980-2000 COULD HAVE BEEN due to heat coming out of the oceans!!! (when you are SPECULATING there are few limits!!)
Trying to claim it was operational from 1980-2000 completely destroys their myth of energy balance. Saying it was NOT operational during that period stacks special pleading on top of special pleading. That leaves the possibility that the effect varies in conjunction with other mechanisms and would STILL destroy what has been built as far as energy balance..
Speculation is how you start working on a hypothesis and building experiments NOT on theories or conclusions.
Heh, heh. Can not believe I was the first poster, but to up my chances I went with a one word comment.
I like that they added CO2 and other anthropogenic factors. I can almost give them the over half. Or roughly half, like 50% +/- 20% if you factor in land use changes, development, black soot, aerosols, fluorocarbons, etc. And I would give them likely. Not sure if that would be 90% or 75% using their lingo.
It would have been more honest to stick with the original wording about the agreement with the models: “Models do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10 –15 years.”
What is hard to believe is that with the warming less than predicted and the myriad possible explanations for it (including many references to natural variability which had long been ignored or even ridiculed) that they would increase their certainty.
bill ” (including many references to natural variability which had long been ignored or even ridiculed) ”
Right, they model the “globe” with a 500 meter slab ocean and find that the real world ocean which is only 8 times larger acts different. Imagine that?
So the CO2 forcing doesnt fit, so it must be other human caused changes responsible for 50%. So if it turns out to be something else, well they were right. But i am 100% certain the GCMs are wrong. So there.
Would the IPCC dare to model separately all the known or suspected independent factors on earth temperature. then we can truly see where the certainty lies.
Having been in the room when many legislative decisions were made, you cannot be too cynical in figuring out how those decisions came to be. It is not pretty. Idealists stay away.
I can find no science in their pronouncement. Professional handicappers are 95% sure on the next horse race. Football fans are 95% sure on their team winning. Scientists are not 95% sure of anything unless they have the data to back it up. The AR5 is not a science paper, but (supposedly) a compilation of science papers. Yet while many of the papers offer good arguments for the influence of man on the climate, other than a few quack (and discredited) papers like Cook, Nuccitelli, none are saying “95%”. Because they are science papers and not indoctrination documents.
The worst part about this report is that it drives another nail into the coffin of the vocation of Climate Science. Climate science is appearing more like the alchemy of the 21st century, not science.
“Jeff Severinghaus, a geoscientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said that through the use of radioactive isotopes, scientists are more than 99 percent sure that much of the carbon in the air has human fingerprints on it. And because of basic physics, scientists are 99 percent certain that carbon (dioxide, already!) traps heat in what is called the greenhouse effect.”
This is the science part most skeptical lukewarmists can agree with. We don’t radioactive isotope measurements—just data on annual consumption of (fossil?) fuels worldwide, to know it is the cause of increasing carbon dioxide in the atm. The numbers I was once familiar with say annual release is about twice the annual increase of carbon dioxide, as some is absorbed into the oceans, and consumed by plant life worldwide. And even skeptical spectroscopists know carbon dioxide and water vapor are greenhouse gases.
But only the unstated assumption that 280 ppm carbon dioxide before the industrial revolution was the ideal amount makes this a problem. The beneficial effects of added carbon dioxide and a little lukewarming during the rest of this century may well outweigh any negative effects. Severinghaus’ statement makes no judgment on this. So if the 95% certainty claim is not in support of just “Cataclysmic” warming, but includes lukewarming, this is not a contensious issue.
I’m a luke warmer. I’m a luke warmer, watching ergs go byyyyyy. My, my myyyyy.
related issue of seas being about to turn from pH 7.1 to 6.9 ie from alkali to acid a truly frightening prospect…. maybe drastic ,erasures such as disturbing alkaline limestone sea beds, even with explosions might fend of total Eco disaster ….. controversial I Know!!!
“You Honor, and members of the Jury, even though we were unable to match the groves on the bullet taken from the body of the victim to bullets fired from the accused gun, we are 95% certain that at the time of the murder, the accused gun would have produced the same pattern of groves on a bullet, as our computer models show”
“And members of the jury, we told you the DNA report would point to the accused. It ruled him out. We told you that he had no alibi when in fact he had a very good one. We told you the investigation was rigorous and this trial showed it was not. We told you our explanation of what exactly happened that night was settled fact, and then throughout this trial we have changed the story several times in an effort to keep attention focused on the accused.
“It is true that recent observations show the victim, standing right over there, is alive and well and unharmed, but we have demonstrated that his death is indeed lurking in his big toe and that he will keel over any minute now. Therefore, members of the jury, comes the moment of truth! All we are asking here is that you vote to execute the accused and we caution you to ignore the merchants of doubt who shamelessly suggest this would somehow be devastating to the accused.”
What happened to the ‘more than 100%’ of the warming since the mid-20th century is anthropogenic? You know, the consensus (IPCC) attribution. The models using only natural forcings show a slightly cooling linear trend since ~1950. They make it up as they go?
https://www.sindark.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/ccattribution.PNG
Thank you, Professor Curry, for helping unravel this mystery.
Oliver K. Manuel
The IPCC have gambled everything on the “pause” turning around and warming resuming over the next 5 years. The science is far from settled IMO and its time that an alternative point of view is given the air time that it deserves.
Sceptics and non-aligned scientists need to work cohesively to bring down the IPCC and subject to the process of peer review that appears sadly lacking with the release of AR5.
But how, Peter? The 30,000 scientists who signed that petition (or however many it was) went over like a brick tossed in the water, How do we get this cohesiveness thing going?
Sceptics need to find as much common ground as possible pokerguy, they need to stop quarrelling with each other and do a proper, co-ordinated rebuttal of the IPCC and its accolytes and to provide policy makers with credible alternative strategies for dealing with climate change at the regional level.
In the meantime, sceptics have time and data on their side, and the public will not have any reason to panic. MSM needs to be managed better than previously and there are signs that they’re more open to printing and publishing the POV of credible sceptics.
Hey Peter,
You’re on the side of the angels as far as I’m concerned, but it’s the quarreling you mention that gives the Internet its vigor and strength.
There already is a coordinated rebuttal in the form of the NIPCC which just released its recent report. Do a quick google.
The quarrelling should be done with the AGWers not between sceptics. More science and objectivity and less ego and subjectivity is the go.
Scientists are usually to ornery to agree just to go along. If they seem to be, then there’s a skunk in the shed.
“Scientists are usually to ornery to agree just to go along. If they seem to be, then there’s a skunk in the shed..”
Precisely right. Peter you seem to be arguing for the creation of some sort of skeptic consensus. Look, again, I understand where you’re coming from. But in the real world, ain’t gonna happen imvho. And I’m not entirely persuaded it should.
Peter Davies: “The quarrelling should be done with the AGWers not between sceptics. More science and objectivity and less ego and subjectivity is the go.”
Except they REFUSE to engage with actual science or any objectivity. Ego and subjectivity are their core principles and they REFUSE to give those up.
What do you propose to do about that?
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My preference is to proceed trough the estimate of transient climate response (TCR). IPCC states on that that TCR is likely in the range of 1.0 to 2.5 C. To reach the level of very likely we must extend that range. Noting that values greater than 3 C are judged extremely unlikely the very likely range is perhaps 0.8 to 2.8 C.
CO2 concentration has increased from about 310 ppm in 1951 to about 395 ppm in 2012 or 0.4 %/year. The total increase is 35% of doubling when calculated using logarithms. Based on the estimates of TCR warming from additional CO2 is very likely in the range of 0.28 to 1.0 C with the best estimate near 0.6 C. The actual warming over this period has been about 0.6 C.
Based on this calculation the conclusion of AR5 is (just barely but still) justified based on CO2 alone. Estimates of the other components of human influence are such that they do not essentially change the conclusion.
Two additional comments:
1) The slower rate of increase (0.4%/year) means that the climate response should be a little higher than TCR as defined by IPCC.
2) We can see that the result can be obtained from a well defined calculation. The estimated uncertainty range of TCR is critical for the result, but that range has also been justified better than describing it as a purely subjective judgment of those who participate in writing the report.
One more clarification and correction.
One-sided “extremely likely” leads to the same limit as two-sided “very likely”. Both refer to 5% possibility that the limit is exceeded in a particular direction. Therefore I should have used 3.0 C as upper limit for TCR leading to 1.05 C rather than 1.0 C for the upper limit for CO2 induced warming. Whether I should have chosen a slightly lower limit than 0.8 C for the lower limit can be argued, and that would affect the justification of the IPCC statement based on the calculation I presented.
Adding the influence of slower rate of growth of the CO2 concentration and the other anthropogenic influences would help in keeping the statement justified.
Brian,
I do my best to stick to the truth. In my judgment all IPCC WG1 reports have been pretty good, not perfect but good and balanced. They have, however, been misused to a significant degree.
Another question is, whether the latest report is worth the effort put in writing it. I’m not convinced of that. More traditional reviews of science might be a better alternative, and building most on the effort on net rather than on a book still better.
Pekka, the warming from 1945 to 2013 is about .4C.
Quit cherry picking.
I made a small mistake in the ending year. The years mentioned in AR5 and in the post above are 1951 and 2010, therefore they are the only relevant years for this specific comparison. Using numbers for 2010 does not make much difference for the results.
1944 to 2011 is exactly .25C using HADCRUT4.
1951 to 2012 is .496C.
1953 to 2012 is 0.347C
I didn’t use exact annual averages but picked the change from graphics doing some averaging.
With those numbers the certainty of more than half of the warming is much higher. For 1944-2011 we might even conclude that the contribution of CO2 increase is very likely larger than the total warming – but that would be real cherry picking (and I assume that’s what you wish to tell).
I don’t particularly like the whole comparison. To me it’s not important what the share of human contribution has been over any specific past interval. The only interesting thing is, what we can conclude about the future. The value of TCR is a good guide for that. As others seem to consider it important to discuss the past, it’s best to do that correctly – meaning being consistent and trying to avoid logical errors at the minimum.
“With those numbers the certainty of more than half of the warming is much higher. For 1944-2011 we might even conclude that the contribution of CO2 increase is very likely larger than the total warming – but that would be real cherry picking (and I assume that’s what you wish to tell).”
So let’s call it 150% of .25C, which according to my elaborate calculations would be in the neighborhood of .38C.
Little Miss Sunshine,
It is looking like nearly 100% of the non-oscillatory warming seen since 1900 is due to the influence of GHGs.
How much non-oscillatory warming are you claiming, webby?
Webby, the non-oscillatory warming is tiny.
And why isn’t all that CO2 making it warmer after 1998?
And what happened to the positive feedbacks?
geez sunshine you dont seem to realize that reducing the warming since 1945 actually reinforces the IPCC attribution statement…if there’s less warming then CO2 caused a higher % of it.
Wait … so all the warming from methane,land use and natural variation (the natural variation that is the new explanation for the Pause) suddenly goes to zero?
Methane doesn’t cause warming if the warming was only .4C?
Land Use Change doesn’t cause warming if the warming was only .4C?
Natural Variations goes poof if there is only .4C of warming?
As I suspected, the CC in IPCC = Comedy Club.
Little Miss Sunshine,
It appears the +3C ECS warming for CO2 doubling is still operational.
Remove the SOI and volcanic disturbances and it looks like a steadily rising warming trend. No cherry-picking:
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
Yeah, Wubbie, remove the facts and that Fantasy Climate Science can give you any answer you wish.
Webby, your theory is a joke.
I repeat, are you saying that all the warming from methane,land use and natural variation (the natural variation that is the new explanation for the Pause) etc suddenly goes to zero?
Shouldn’t you be starting from 280ppm, Pekka?
Don,
Not for this comparison as that’s for warming from 1951 to 2010 (after correction for the final year).
Didn’t the CO2 added by humans prior to 1951 contribute to that warming?
Earlier changes in the concentration contributed to both the initial and final values of both concentration and temperature. The most reasonable choice is to consider only the values at the beginning and end of the period. A more detailed model of the dynamics of the changes might have a small effect on the outcome, but not at a level that would make any difference in comparison with the other uncertainties of the calculation.
It’s clear that there are uncertainties in this argument, but what we are searching for are not very accurate results but quantitatively justified values that represent the present state of understanding.
The simplest way of stating the outcome of my simple calculation is that the statement:
More than half of the warming from 1951 to 2010 is due to added CO2.
is essentially equivalent to statement:
TCR is higher than 0.8 C.
If we modify the first statement to include other human influences like methane and aerosols the limit of the second statement is slightly reduced, perhaps to 0.7 C.
OK, how about starting at 1945?
And:”The total increase is 35% of doubling when calculated using logarithms.”
Doubling from what base number?
Starting from 1945 the best estimate of CO2 contribution is well above 100% meaning that the best estimate of other contributions is negative.
The value 35% is obtained by the formula log(395/310)/log(2). As I wrote in two comments, I should have used the 2010 value 390 rather than 395, but the result changes only to 33%, which makes little difference for the conclusions.
OK, Pekka. I get it. One more question (rhetorical). How about doing your calculation, from 2000 up to the present?
“Starting from 1945 the best estimate of CO2 contribution is well above 100% meaning that the best estimate of other contributions is negative.”
So … without fossil fuels the next ice age would already be here?
Sunshinehours,
Did I see you using the words “cherry picking” somewhere?
Pekka, the 50s, 60s and 70s were all colder than the 1940s.
Why?
CO2?
Study this picture. You will see that the ENSO index is responsible for most of the fluctuations with the remainder caused by volcanic disturbances:
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
The two hot points occurring around 1939 and 1945 are the only remaining oddities in the temperature record.
Explain these two cases and one can unravel some part of the mystery.
You have to wonder if it is in some way related to the “bucket model” corrections applied to measurements of SST during that time-span:
http://icoads.noaa.gov/Boulder/Boulder.Jones.pdf
Sunshinehours,
I do believe (i.e. consider likely) that variability is strong on multi-year, decadal and even multi-decadal level. With such variability some years are warmer than the expectation value for the time. 1945 just happens to be such a year, and so is 1998.
If my view is correct, then warming is equal to the more persistent change when the two years being compared have a similar deviation from the expectation. It’s plausible that 1951 and 2010 are such a pair, and therefore the total warming from 1951 to 2010 might well equal the human influence which is of more persistent nature. This is also the best estimate of IPCC, but the range of uncertainty is wide. Here again I consider the IPCC estimate to correspond well to the empirical evidence we have available.
One example of that empirical evidence is the Otto et al paper where Nic Lewis is a co-author. That paper provides direct support for the IPCC statement.
Pekka, the whole decade of the 1940s was warmer than the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
I am genuinely puzzled. Why are you ignoring the need to complete and then verify the “forcings and feedbacks calculation” and all other empirical questions that mainstream climate science papers over, especially the “missing heat” hiding in the deep oceans.
Are you presenting a diagnosis to the effect that the IPCC has chosen to use CO2 alone? If so, why did they do that?
Theo,
I’m not doing anything else than comparing the estimated contribution of CO2 in the temperature development from 1951 to 2010 with the actual observed change. I can calculate the contribution of CO2 from the measured CO2 concentration and estimates of TCR.
The actual temperature development has been influenced by many different mechanisms, some by some and down by others. Summing the absolute values of all these influences might lead to a large number, but that’s not relevant for this comparison.
The outcome is that the actual warming is close to the best estimate of the influence of CO2, and that the estimated minimum contribution with 95% certainty is about 50% of the actual change in temperature.
These two observations are exactly what IPCC states in the new SPM.
Pekka Pirilä | September 27, 2013 at 12:07 pm |
Thanks. I have no criticism of what you have done. I cannot imagine what the IPCC is doing. Maybe they made their peculiar just so they could have the appearance of firm ground under the 95% figure.
Well Pekka gets it
HADCRU4 1951-2012 gives delta 0.851 degrees, for log(CO2) a delta of 0.1. Delta Log 560/280 is 0.3, so TR to 2x[CO2] is 2.5 degrees.
If half of this temperature rise was non-GHG, then this falls to 1.25 degrees.
If CO2 rises at its exponential rate and temperatures remain flat until 2022, the TR falls 2.1 and so GHG warming to 1.05 degrees. Which is the CO2 back radiation effect without water amplification.
RE: “CO2 concentration has increased from about 310 ppm in 1951 to about 395 ppm in 2012 or 0.4 %/year. The total increase is 35% of doubling . . .”
I’m wondering how much of that 35% increase happened between say, 1999 and 2012?
Breaking Business News The insurance market weighs in with an unbiased assessment of the Bayesian priors associated to climate-change:
Judith Curry, hopefully this objective, data-based, science-respecting, politically neutral, market-driven risk-assessment will increase your personal Bayesian prior that the conclusions of the IPCC5 report are broadly correct!
Anybody relying on a “consensus of risk managers” should recall what a similar consensus said about mortgage derivatives before 2006. And they put “their money” where their mouths were, or at least that of the companies paying their paychecks. Look what happened.
@fan extolling the “unbiased” insurance companies.
This is staggeringly naïve.
munichre lost more in its swaps deals the any weather event,it is certain (almost surely) that they did not forecast the swaps becoming toxic.
That’s really amusing. However, when you’re doing sarcasm or satire it’s a good idea just to put something at the end of your post to make sure that everyone gets it.
What? You were serious? Oh dear…
LOL … thank you for sharing your novel views AK!
Seriously AK, why not hang around the Wilmott forums? You would learn much about Ito-Stratonovich dynamical processes!
• basic stock-market denialism global stock-markets cannot ‘break bad’
• basic climate-change denialism global climate-change cannot ‘break bad’
These two varieties of denialism are equally nutty, isn’t that right AK?
Anybody with eyes could see I didn’t recommend trusting anybody. I just suggested limiting one’s trust in any “consensus” of risk managers. Fund managers and other stock market players are doing risk management just as (re-)insurance underwriters are. And risk managers are just as subject to fads as anybody else (e.g. climate scientists).
Hmmm … AK, which of the following is most nearly your personal Bayesian prior probability for the postulate “James Hansen’s 1981 climate-change worldview is broadly correct“
• 0% chance that Hansen is right, versus
• ~20% chance that Hansen is right, versus
• ~50% chance that Hansen is right, versus
• ~80% chance that Hansen is right, versus
• 100% chance that Hansen is right.
The first and last of these Bayesian priors are obviously nutty, eh AK?
In view of the last 30+ years of climate-change science, isn’t the common-sense probability that “Hansen is right” … plausibly about 80%?
That’s a rational conclusion, right AK?
Somewhere between 10% and 20%, at best. He’s clearly riding a political hobby horse, and that makes his “science” totally unreliable.
AK, your prior is sufficiently large that you (and many skeptics/denialists) require a “Plan B” in the event that:
• the land-temperature ‘pause’ already has ended, and
• sea-level rise-rates accelerate in the coming decade
Because these events will induce every rational person to adjust their Bayesian priors upward, isn’t that entirely correct AK?
Hansen’s 1981 dead certainty was based on 15 years of temperature rise amounting to 0.2C. Apparently it can be very lucrative to fit the tail of a catastrophic exponential to measurement error. Since then, numerous adjustments to the official (ho ho!) temperature data have practically erased the trend upon which Hansen hung his hat. But what difference does it make now…
Of course, we are constantly scolded that only an ignoramus would use 15 years to conclude that the climate has changed.
At least that’s why I forgive Paul Ehrlich’s proclamation of a coming cooling period based on… 15 years of temperature decline from 1960, which terminated the period he labeled as “the most extreme period of good weather in the last 1000 years.”
Thanks for bringing up Hansen 1981. I always enjoy a good chuckle.
Heh, sawing off the limb he sits on. Thanks, Chris.
===========
I have a “Plan ‘B'”, which I’ve pushed for other reasons: full steam ahead on methane, heavy R&D into solar/electrolytic hydrogen/biomethane. After all, even if CO2 represents no risk from climate changes, dumping all that fossil carbon into the system has other risks. Including the admittedly very low probability of pushing the ecosystem across some “tipping point” drastic enough to crash our civilization.
However, like most people who understand how the economics of our current system fit together, I regard the risk to our civilization from substantial increases to the cost/price of energy to be much higher.
Fan of more BS states
• the land-temperature ‘pause’ already has ended
• sea-level rise-rates accelerate in the coming decade
GISS shows that global temperatures have dropped over the last decade, Aug 2003 to 2013.
http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w318/DocMartyn/GISSuptoAug2013_zps25007a0c.png
Since, FOMBS states that land temperatures have increased, and we know that global temperatures have fallen, then the oceans must have cooled.
As we know the oceans have cooled, it follows that any ‘accelerated rise in sea-levels’ cannot be due to warming of the oceans. Thus, sea-levels cannot be used as a metric of global warming.
That’s terrific thinking, AK … `cuz now it’s evident that you and James Hansen will be on the same page just as soon as “the AK energy economy” expands to include a Hansen-style component of nuclear power!
It’s entirely clear that Pope Francis is on-track to serve effectively as a trusted mediator between AK-vision and the Hansen-vision!
Good on `yah, AK and James Hansen and Pope Francis!
If the cost of solar PV keeps dropping exponentially the way it has for the last few decades, it will render nuclear-fission based power uneconomical. Just use that big fusion reactor in the sky.
Memo from Big Carbon drop AK from the ‘approved list’!
`Cuz the world’s carbon-oligarchs value their carbon reserves at 100,000 billion dollars … and they’ll do whatever it takes to preserve the value of their in-the-ground wealth.
Corollary Pro-carbon bloggers are *so* underpaid!
Strike! Strike!! Strike!!!
You clearly didn’t catch the implications of “biomethane” based on hydrogen from electrolysis powered by solar PV (and CO2 from the air/sea): investments in transportation and processing of methane will be good for the foreseeable future, but investments in “gas in the ground” and even sea-floor methane hydrate will ultimately become obsolete. We’re talking about a medium-term transition completely off of fossil carbon, probably within 3-5 decades. With no special “breakthroughs” required. And no need to artificially raise the price of fossil carbon. Which latter will also annoy “big carbon”.
Oh, yeah, investments in power generation technology from methane will also be good for the foreseeable future.
A fan of *MORE* discourse
The insurance market weighs in …
What was AIG’s assessment?
Uh-huh.
The main point is, what insurance company in its right mind would not take any excuse to raise premiums, industry wide? From their POV, it’s no lose. If global warming/climate change doesn’t materialize, oh well. We pocket the whole shebang. If it does, they’re covered.
FanofmoreTrolling doesn’t “get” profits and profit motives.
I received this glossy 10 page investment report from some carbon trading outfit trying to get me to invest because of their “positioning” re climate change. I’ll tell you one thing, I have never seen anything like that produced by any skeptic or skeptic organization.
Follow the money indeed. This climate change thing means lots of money to certain groups who have positioned themselves to gain from it. Among those groups are governments and insurance companies. Governments because it gives them an excuse to raise taxes and get more control over people. Insurance companies because it justifies the raising of rates.
None of these will truly benefit the world, because economic growth doesn’t exist when a product is manufactured by force, and people are forced to buy that product. Real markets aren’t created by government fiat, they evolve by demand and profit motive. Sure you can have people who position themselves to gain by taking advantage of forced regulations and the like, but those gains are not true economic growth, they only malinvest scarce resources that could have gone towards really making things and services of value to free people who choose to buy them.
Maybe that isn’t pretty to some people who want to live in a profit-free candy-cane world of sugar and gumdrops, but it’s the best system we have ever had going.
Oops! Didn’t see this before my post on the same. Sorry.
Indeed, the AR5 report will help to accelerate the trend of insurance companies looking to encourage risk reduction to climate change through the hardening of key infrastructure and other vulnerable capital assets. Those communities that do so will be rewarded with lower premiums.
And the lower premiums won’t offset the cost of “hardening.”
It is interesting to see just where “skeptics” run into the limits of free-market fetishism.
Seems that it’s right at the intersection of Climate Change Avenue and Confirmation Bias Boulevard.
So Josh,
So Josh,
Is telling us where skeptics are next on your agenda? You know, the ones without the quotation marks.
Mr Fan Of … seems to believe that because the insurance for beach-front properties is going up, this proves CO2 is the control knob.
Fan,
The first question you must consider when vetting a decision is “who profits?” from the suggested action.
If there is a “scientific consensus” of “increased risk” (95% certainty! Manhattan under 20 ft of water!) then insurance companies can justify raising their rates.
Who profits from an alarmist prediction of 95% certainty of massive property damage?
Insurance companies profit.
The next step in the vetting process is to determine if the profiting party would tend to bend the truth in order to insure the profit will flow their way. That is, what does the historical record tell us about their prior actions.
Looking at the debacle that happened in 2008, and back through our economic history, clearly the answer is Yes, the insurance industry would bend the truth in order to ensure their profits.
Therefore, it is clear (95% certainty!) that the insurance companies’ parroting of IPCC end-of-the-world hysteria is not a useful tool to use to confirm the IPCC’s claims.
Crony capitalism–in which powerful politicians warp the playing field, and their cronies sit down at the trough to feed–should not be confused with real free market capitalism.
Insurance companies, and many others (GE, solar panels, windmills, “green energy”) are just pigs at the trough of this administration’s crony capitalist distortions of the market based on fake science.
At least I’m 95% certain that is the situation!
Kent Clizbe
Insurance business is … a business not a science.
What you can sell depends on the perceptions of the buyer as much as it does the quality of what you are selling. This occasionally leads to “bubbles” in markets, such as the 1990s IT bubble, the exaggerated response to Y2K (which was a business opportunity as well as a risk) and of course the mid-2000s mortgage market.
While it’s possible to argue that long term market behavior is largely rational, it’s important to note that the extend period that business plan to is about five years into the future. That’s not long enough for people to ignore irrational behavior in the market.
To claim that the behavior of a business proves a particular science is frankly risible. Somebody said you claim to have physics training. I assume this is purely formal, as I see no evidence of practical application of that training here.
Fan – Insurance companies have a direct interest in convincing the market that disaster is imminenet; that’s what justifies higher premiums. CAGW has been a godsend to them, since the higher premiums have yet to be have yet to be paid out in claims. Their opinion is equivalent to asking the fox whether the henhouse needs better access control.
I can’t believe the oil companies get slimed, but the insurance companies are held up as the paragon of virtue when they will rake in big bucks on a unproven allegation – that CO2 warming will be catestrophic.
AFOMD unfortunately shows a fairly high degree of ignorance. He calls his reference a “market-driven risk-assessment”. But people just talking about risks is not “market-driven”. Market-driven is the price set by the market. Unlike AFOMD, I have some experience in this area, being responsible for risk management for a Fortune 500 company. And I can tell him that the real market assessment is that large property insurance rates in 2013 are flat to down on prior years, continuing a recent trend (this includes buying protection on facilities in 100 year flood zones), Of course insurance companies will try talk up risks – it is the job of a market participant to talk his own book. But it is truly naive to believe that one self-interested party speaks for the market. If you want a market-assessment, look to the market.
Insurance companies, like everyone else planning for the future, have a business model. They see that if they don’t account for the probabilities of climate change in their calculations they may lose, and they are forced into a precautionary principle like any responsible business should be. There is room for ‘denier’ insurance companies to make a killing by not modifying rates for climate change and undercutting the more cautious ones. If there is a general insurance market rise in affected areas (e.g floods, droughts), that is saying this isn’t happening.
RE: “The insurance market weighs in with an unbiased assessment . . .”
You’re kidding, right?
“The long-term climate model simulations show a trend in global-mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2012 that agrees with the observed trend (very high confidence). There are, however, differences between simulated and observed trends over periods as short as 10 to 15 years”
This made me laugh with it’s grudging nod to, and simultaneous breezy dismissal of the pause (nothing to see here, move along).
Didn’t give themselves much room though, did they.
I find the use of the word “short” here interesting. The way I read it, the no spin way to express this would be, “periods as long as ”
“Short” sounds better.
Still with wiggle room. Note they didn’t say ‘periods as long as 10 to 15 years’.
Gad, pg beat me. Use of ‘short’ is disingenuous.
========
“Short”
Yes, Kim. I think It’s something people sensitive to word choice would notice. It seems an obvious fudge.
What a bunch of endearing rascals!
“wiggle room”, as the worm turns. If you don’t like creepy crawlies, don’t look under rocks. IPCC reports look like science, unless you know where they came from.
The IPCC don’t have any wriggle room left at all!
Given how the temperatures have fallen out of the bottom of the model projections, it would make more sense to say there’s a 95% certainty the models are wrong, and at least real statistics could back that up.
What the scientists are giving is an opinion about their beliefs, and trying to express such an opinion mathematically, to two significant figures no less, is as daft as saying “Honey bun, I’m 95 percent certain that I will love you forever.”
Models cannot be wrong as they only ‘project’ and not ‘predict’; apparently the meanings are quite different and only morons outside of Climate Science cannot understand the difference between the two.
There are some word games going on here. Please correct me if I am wrong but I do not think these two statements can be compatible.
and
In the first statement they are 95% confident that ALL the observed rise in surface temperatures can be explained just by AGW.
In the second statement they are 95% confident that HALF the observed rise in surface temperatures can be explained just by AGW.
Both statements cannot be true.
Yes. They make it up as they go. They used to say it’s more than ALL.
https://www.sindark.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/ccattribution.PNG
Clive,
I agree that it is hard to reconcile those two statements.
I think what they are trying to say is that at any one instant that there are compensating warming and cooling trends occurring. These trends are usually oscillating so that when a noisy warming trend occurs naturally (such as from ENSO or recovery from a volcanic disturbance) then we can’t really say that the current warming is 100% due to AGW.
Some proportion is due to that naturally warming component.
Now, over longer term trends, these ENSO and volcanic events are filtered out so that all we need to reconcile is the AGW trend from other warming trends such as recovery from the little ice age. Of course these are more slowly varying so that the contribution from geological time scales is a much lower proportion.
Objectively they could have made the percentage higher than 50%
I say this because after removing the SOI and volcanic disturbances, the warming trend appears to be accelerating, and there is really no sign of a pause in the long term:
http://imageshack.us/a/img109/7724/7m9.gif
Except global volcanic activity has been remarkably constant for decades and in fact is dropping off. This should mean that a) models should be able to reproduce volcanic disturbances and b) just using constant data would actually give too much weight to volcanic disturbances.
“Finally, we plot below the record since reasonably comprehensive reporting of global volcanism began in the 1960s. Note that the number of confirmed erupting volcanoes has leveled off between 50 and 70 per year through the past four decades, and a linear regression line through the data indicates that volcanism has been virtually constant.
http://www.volcano.si.edu/faq.cfm#q6
The OD 550, since 1998, has been lower than anytime since the late 50’s early 60’s.
Hi, Clive. I think the first statement, about the models, would necessarily include non-human influences on climate, too. So it’s not just AGW.
Ted,
So you are saying that including natural effects they can explain with 95% confidence the observed warming from 1950 to 2012, but they can only be sure that 50% of that warming is extremely likely due to CO2 emissions. This is a new development from AG4 and implies that ECS estimates from AG4 are acknowledged as being too high. They cannot rule out that (at the 5% level) ECS values are actually half those given in AG4. This is all now hidden away in their reduction of the lower bound for ECS from 2.5C to 1.5C. I would argue that a more honest statement would have been to also reduce their “most likely” value for ECS from 3C in AGr to 2.5C (or even 2C) for AG5
The estimates for ECS are still on target for a 3C warming due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2.
I believe the lower bound is being made lower because of physics modeling that says that the ocean surface temperature will take forever to fully respond to the forcing. The heat capacity is too large and the tails are too fat with regards to the diffusional response.
Since the ocean is 70% of the Earth’s area, the temperature anomaly will reflect that. It will show only 2/3 of the eventual ECS unless we wait a very long time.
The bind that they got themselves into is in not deeming the land temperature as the more significant temperature metric. Now it looks like they are hedging if they start pushing that number instead of the global temperature anomaly. That’s the problem with metrics — in that you have to stick with them once you defined them.
Web this is a political document. Get with it. they lowered the lower bound because they were hedging their bets. Apparently you believe this is driven by science.
The document is already obsolete. So what else is new? Science always marches on.
I noticed S.P. Xie is a drafting author, and who has some very interesting results concerning the pause.
Clive, my comment was simply in response to your statement “In the first statement they are 95% confident that ALL the observed rise in surface temperatures can be explained just by AGW.” The first statement was about models matching the observed trend. It does not follow from that that they claim all of this rise is attributable to AGW; the models also include natural processes.
BTW – I don’t necessarily agree that the models agree with the observed trend from this period. Or rather, I wouldn’t attach too much significance to this fact. Most of these models are calibrated with temperature data from this period. And so they should, of course, agree with the temperatures that were used to calibrate the models. It is rather silly to make such a claim while forgetting the contribution of the calibration process. But presenting models as some sort of independent line of evidence is a common problem in climate science.
I mean it was the IPCC being silly, making this claim about their models, not that you were making this claim. Just to clarify.
My meter of the same wiggles around 5-25 percent.
“It is extremely likely that human influence on climate caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951−2010.”
They need to show that there was at least twice as much natural forcing from 1910-1945 than 1951−2010 then.
Time is our friend and as it gradually passes, their increasingly implacable enemy and I’ll tell you exactly why I think that is so. On a very simple level, climate alarmism is all about making dire predictions of what’ll happen in the future. The bijou problemette they’re increasingly having, is that the predictions are simply failing to materialise.
The Polar bears stubbornly refuse to go extinct, indeed the buggers are thriving, the glaciers don’t appear to be disappearing, sea levels have stayed boringly level, we haven’t been subsumed by hordes of desperate climate refugees, the polar ice caps haven’t melted, the Great Barrier Reef is still with us, we haven’t fought any resource wars, oil hasn’t run out, the seas insist on not getting acidic, the rainforest is still around, islands have not sunk under the sea, the ozone holes haven’t got bigger, the world hasn’t entered a new ice age, acid rain appears to have fallen somewhere that can’t quite be located, the Gulf Stream hasn’t stopped, extreme weather events have been embarrassingly sparse in recent years and guess what? The world isn’t getting any warmer either. Indeed, it’s stayed roughly the same, or arguably become slightly cooler, in the last fifteen years.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/our-secret-weapon/
Time has told …
Pointman
“Joseph Stromberg reports at the Smithsonian that if there’s one group has an obvious and immediate financial stake in climate change, it’s the insurance industry and in recent years, insurance industry researchers who attempt to determine the annual odds of catastrophic weather-related disasters say they’re seeing something new. ‘Our business depends on us being neutral. We simply try to make the best possible assessment of risk today, with no vested interest,’ says Robert Muir-Wood, the chief scientist of Risk Management Solutions (RMS), a company that creates software models to allow insurance companies to calculate risk. Most insurers, including the reinsurance companies that bear much of the ultimate risk in the industry, have little time for the arguments heard in some right-wing circles that climate change isn’t happening, and are quite comfortable with the scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels is the main culprit of global warming. ‘Insurance is heavily dependent on scientific thought,’ says Frank Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Association of America. ‘It is not as amenable to politicized scientific thought.’ A pronounced shift can be seen in extreme rainfall events, heat waves and wind storms and the underlying reason is climate change, says Muir-Wood, driven by rising greenhouse gas emissions. ‘The first model in which we changed our perspective is on U.S. Atlantic hurricanes. Basically, after the 2004 and 2005 seasons, we determined that it was unsafe to simply assume that historical averages still applied,’ he says. ‘We’ve since seen that today’s activity has changed in other particular areas as well—with extreme rainfall events, such as the recent flooding in Boulder, Colorado, and with heat waves in certain parts of the world.’ Muir-Wood puts his money where his mouth is. ‘I personally wouldn’t invest in beachfront property anymore,’ he says, noting the steady increase in sea level we’re expecting to see worldwide in the coming century, on top of more extreme storms. ‘And if you’re thinking about it, I’d calculate quite carefully how far back you’d have to be in the event of a hurricane.'”
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/09/26/232228/what-the-insurance-industry-thinks-about-climate-change
I wonder if Dr. Curry could persuade Robert Muir-Wood to write a post?
He stumblebums over hurricanes.
=========
Jim2 also seems to think that because beachfront insurance is going up, CO2 is the Control Knob.
I’m quite sure that the insurance industry is raking it in, during this non-hurricane hurricane season. They’ve certainly raised their rates.
Pingback: “Extremely likely”? | The IPCC Report
I wouldn’t put too much faith in the Insurance industry, after all perceived greater risk means the ability to charge more for insurance and more people taking out insurance to guard against possible future losses ‘just in case’.
I think the government should sell most of its acreage in the US interior and start buying up coastal land. Let businesses build there so we can visit the coast and have fun, but no residences. And make anyone that builds anything there be responsible for their own rebuilding and other losses. I mean communities have been wiped out multiple times on the coast. The Fed shouldn’t be responsible for any losses there. States can if they choose.
But yes, Jim2, government should withdraw from insuring sea-level rise damage.
I absolutely agree.
… When the report states that scientists are “95 percent certain” that human activities are largely to cause for global warming, what does that mean?…
It means something VERY similar to the “Doomsday Clock” This is a symbolic clock face maintained since 1947 by the board of directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago. The closer the clock is to midnight, the closer the world is estimated to be to global disaster.
It is simply a public relations marketing presentation, ratcheted up whenever there’s a need for a scare…
As Judith said. The IPCC have nailed their colours to the mast. It seems like a clear sign they’re confident (95%?) that the pause will have ended before they hit the deadlines for papers to be submitted for AR6.
It’s pretty plain from the coverage in the MSM in the UK (particularly the BBC) that there’s a long way to go before there’s a critical examination of IPCC reports and the science that surrounds them. I am particularly impressed with the suggestion this morning that 1998 temps were an outlier caused by a massive El Nino and that it was therefore unreasonable look at global temps with ’98 as the starting point. Anyone remember ‘the consensus’ saying 1998 temp records were merely the result of a massive El Nino when it didn’t suit their message?
It’s no wonder I’ve become sceptical…
“It’s pretty plain from the coverage in the MSM in the UK (particularly the BBC) that there’s a long way to go before there’s a critical examination of IPCC reports and the science that surrounds them.”
As to be expected. I wouldn’t count on any critical examinations from the MSM for a very long time. If ever.
Thank goodness they don’t build anything!
They build ornate narrative structures on quicksand, which collapse catastrophically.
==============
In 2009 NASA’s 2008 state of climate report said beginning on page 23 that 15 years would be needed to falsify model predictions. In 2011 santer said 17 years. In 2013 Zweirs et. al. Published that the pause had already falsified the models to 95% certainty. The. Utoff for AR5 was mid 2012. Zweirs problem is he is the lead author on the WG1 attribution. Not only did the SPM paper this over, they even weakened the language from the ‘leaked’ draft. As Dr. Curry points out, they have absolutely painted themselves into a fatal corner if, as even the MET says, warming won’t recommended until after 2017.
Not giving a best guess on ECS, only a range, is likewise a transparent effort to avoid the numerous recent papers placing it observationally between 1.5 and 2, not the previous 3.
This is a political document. But the evasions give many politicians a good reason to ignore AR5. Just got to get the word to them. Couple of simple messages suffice, as they have all seen what happened in Australia.
In honor of the milestone of the report, here are a a few model fits to the GISS temperature record.
The first one takes a monotonically accelerating trend function and simply adds a scaled Southern Oscillation Index profile to match the fluctuations in the GISS record. The main volcanic eruptions are also added with exponential declines for the estimated sulphate production.
http://imageshack.us/a/img31/1630/jgg.gif
http://imageshack.us/a/img822/6338/f7r.gif (this is w/o volcanic)
There are only two regions that stick out, a cooler time span between the years of 2005-2105, and two warm spikes that appear over the course of WWII.
If we then subtract the SOI and volcanic disturbances from the original GISS record we get this corrected curve.
http://imageshack.us/a/img109/7724/7m9.gif
Surprise, surprise, there is no pause. The pause is just an artifact of a compensating sequence of dips in the SOI over the last few years. These fluctuations in SOI will get no larger so that the warming will resume. The transient climate response (TCR) is 2C and the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is 3C estimated by comparing to the land-only record .
Note that this is a concise description of what Kosaka and Xie found recently –
Y. Kosaka and S.-P. Xie, “Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling,” Nature, 2013.
Skeptics need to do this work for themselves if they want to become convinced that the pause is tied to a temporary downward cycle in a- bounded pseudo-oscillation. All the data is available so you can knock yourself out.
If the magnitude of the CO2 warming is so small that other effects overwhelm it, why should we care?
The effects of ENSO are transient. The SOI is stationary over long time periods and contributes no trend, only a couple of tenths of a degree during the excursions. Same with volcanic disturbances. On the other hand, the underlying trend is now 1C, which dwarfs the natural disturbances:
http://imageshack.us/a/img109/7724/7m9.gif
—
There is no hope for people that have their minds made up already. If you have convinced yourself that you won’t see something then of course you won’t.
The wikipedia entry for denialcontains an explanation for how rationalization plays into a denier’s psychology. When presented with obvious evidence they minimize the evidence
So when jim2 asks “why should we care?”, we all need to read harder. The data and physics speaks for what is happening, not the rationalizations of the denying mind-set.
“The data and physics speaks for what is happening”
No they don’t, that’s the whole point. We have but half-cocked models and sketchy data, and not too much idea on natural variability.
Admittedly hard for the alarmist / pause-denier psychology to accept, but there you have it. They need to read harder.
So you say “We have but ..”. Where exactly are you doing any kind of analysis, lazy-bones?
This is something that even you could construct, that is if you would care to lift a finger:
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
Looky there, No pause! Do you not see that?
The genius of simple analysis.
Web,
So even though the corrupt, ideology-driven IPCC admit the Pause, you deny it. Says it all. You’re right, I am too ‘lazy’ to cook and cherry-pick the data as you so admirably do. Standard Team tactics.
Hi WHT – this is an interesting simple model that seems to fit according to your linked images. I am curious about the fit since 1979 since that is when satellite is available. As a next step, can you overlay the following onto the same graph: line (1) GISS global temperature anomaly, monthly since 1979; line (2) the series (1) less the scaled SOI and volcano factors. In order to scale SOI and volcano, are you doing any lead/lag or averaging, and what are your sources of raw data. Thanks
Thanks for your interest MJF
This is a plot from 1979 onward, the trend is a guide to the eye. The SOI model is a cubic growth function with the scaled SOI on top and volcanic disturbances applied. I left the noisiness in the GISS so you can see how much noise it could remove:
http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/7003/dze.gif
This is after applying a window filter of 12 months:
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/5287/7r2p.gif
I use the SOI from NCAR and then apply a scaling factor and slight filter lag, between 6 and 7 months:
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/catalog/climind/soi.html
The volcanic data is from the BEST project, which is collected from a PhD thesis.
http://static.berkeleyearth.org/xls/forcing-comparison.xlsx
This is about as simple a model as you can imagine. The SOI is just a measure that takes the differences in barometric pressure between Darwin and Tahiti in the South Pacific. That apparently is a very sensitive measure of the large scale ocean upwelling that will then perturb the surface temperature world-wide.
Fascinating how this works, and it is even more fascinating that the warming changes that we are applying via GHG’s is leaving that kind of massive perturbation in the dust.
Web, can you list all of the volcanoes that have erupted since 1992 and show why they have not altered the optical depth of the atmosphere?
Doc, Good comment. I will delegate you with an action item to come up with that list. Please come back with estimates of sulphate emissions from each of the volcanos.
That’s what I call teamwork.
Doc above and web below, that has actually been done. I have an essay finished for the next book on it and the consequences. Turns out the aerosol explanation for pause model discrepancy does not fly. As Nic Lewis has posted, too high aerosols are used to artificially cool models that otherwise run too hot.
Only eruptions above level 4 VEI count. Anything 4 or below cannot punch aerosols up into the stratosphere where they hang around.
Rud, You are a bit behind in the research.
All of the current pause is explainable by the ENSO Index.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
Global volcanic activity has been “virtually constant” for decades. Even fallen a bit. A model using a constant trend would not be wrong due to volcanic activity.
“Finally, we plot below the record since reasonably comprehensive reporting of global volcanism began in the 1960s. Note that the number of confirmed erupting volcanoes has leveled off between 50 and 70 per year through the past four decades, and a linear regression line through the data indicates that volcanism has been virtually constant.”
http://www.volcano.si.edu/faq.cfm#q6
Rud
A couple of years ago I was at a Cambridge University dinner and sat next to a volcanologist.
She informed me that the latest thinking was that there were 10000 times more volcanoes than had previously been thought. Many were underwater
Obviously this could have an effect on aerosols, sulphur, co2 and warming into the sea, which I had previously understood to be trivial.
Whether or not this research has emerged or will be validated or has any impact I don’t know.
tonyb
jeffN,
I want to sincerely thank you for that link and chart on volcano activity.
http://www.volcano.si.edu/images/faq_increase.png
I think it is a valid mean value profile that we can include in the set of discrete volcanos that have been occurring.
If you look at this chart
http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/6032/gp2.gif
and notice where the excess warming and cooling regions occur, they happen to map to the two extreme intervals on the profile of “greater than 0.1 km^3” volcanic eruptions.
The warming bursts during WWII corresponds to the single most miminal volcanic activity period during the 20th century. Also the excess cooling in the +/- 5 years around 1910 corresponds to the highest level of activity of volcanic eruptions
It may be a coincidence but it also could work to reduce the variance in the model fit.
Playing with graphs is a video game for people with poor thumb coordination.
climatereason says there are
more volcanoes underwater than
had previously been thought.
There are more things beneath the sea,
Horatio, than you or any drowning man,
noye pensif, flottaison bleme et ravie,
… could imagine.
H/t The Bard and Rimbaud.
Good point! That explains why dogs are also skilled at making charts and graphs.
Thanks for your other reply. Just to clarify, in your link:
http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/7003/dze.gif
I am looking at the purple “SOI” line. Can you confirm or correct me in the following:
The SOI line is a function of a trend (eg extra CO2 forcing) plus some function of the SOI index and volcanic forcing
There is a causal relationship between Co2 and SOI eg Ruzmaikin
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00223.1
Absolutely yes. The designation SOI represents the SOI model, which includes a monotonic increasing trend, the scaled SOI signal, and any forcings due to volcanic disturbances.
Now we just got to wonder what makes up the trend.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandLaken2013_zps73c516f9.png.html?sort=3&o=30
Chief says:
This is not right. According to my analysis, the GHG-induced warming trend is above 0.9C total since 1880 and the ENSO only causes fluctuations on the order of +/- 0.2C — and these cancel in the long term because they have no trend.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
So, if anything, the GHG-induced warming explains the majority of the climate change.
You calculations are as usual incorrect webster.
http://www.auscsc.org.au/images/PDF/influenceofenso.pdf
Because with variability we are looking for variance and not trend. But your assumptions about the causes of trend are incorrect as well.
Let it be known that I am 100% behind the data described in that paper. It shows that all of the +/- fluctuation variability in global temperature is directly connected to the SOI with an occasional push by volcanic disturbances. Simple and straightforward enough, which I agree with.
Yet the authors of that paper do not take it to the logical extreme and compare the SOI across the entire range of global temperatures like I did with GISS. That data goes back to 1880.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
Obviously, the SOI will not account for the total temperature anomaly of 0.9C and will barely account for even a few percent of 0.9C. That is because the SOI is essentially trendless over that 130-year period of observation.
Note that the paper is co-written by the known Australian AGW denier Bob Carter. He obviously will not echo what I have said because it will blow his denialism out of the water. So he and his co-authors carefully tip-toe around the implications, hoping that no one will notice.
The problem for Bob Carter, The Chief, and all the rest of the deniers, is that the realists do notice this stuff.
Well the rate seems about right – <0.1 degrees /decade. Nothing much to worry about – if it weren't for nonlinearity.
The early bit was mostly caused by the Sun.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/tsireconstruction_zps0ee199b5.png.html?sort=3&o=5
The latter was mostly caused by clouds.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandLaken2013_zps73c516f9.png.html?sort=3&o=30
The underling rate is 0.2C per decade after removing the SOI signal, and it is slowly accelerating.
Wubbie:
“The underling rate is 0.2C per decade after removing the SOI signal, and it is slowly accelerating.”
Is that that relativistic acceleration I have heard about that never shows in velocity measurements increasing??
‘According to my analysis, the GHG-induced warming trend is above 0.9C total since 1880…’
Dishonest and a fool.
Not dishonest at all, and just a little less than what Wally Broeker predicted in 1975.
You should try that with the first version of GISS and see how it looks.
pantsOnFire,
AGW denier Bob Carter did it with his own data set:
I use a 6-month lag with GISS.
The problem is that the denier Bob Carter twists these correlation results in an awful way, much like Salby did with CO2/temperature correlation results.
The IPCC is falling apart, and Dr. Curry is now a leading light for those wanting to break through the propaganda of the past.
Ocean cycles which have an unknown driver account for a large proportion of our natural climate variability, but solar drivers are now back on the drawing board and can impart a substantial impact.
We may be entering another Dalton type solar slowdown which may play an important part of the projected future global temperatures that are not included in the IPCC models.
Dr. Curry, are you up to the task of contemplating the new solar science that can accurately predict future solar cycles that will have an effect on global temperatures. In the past this was not possible, but now there is a new peer reviewed paper that says otherwise.
http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=36513
Reblogged this on CACA.
Concerning the el nino of 1998, I don’t recall any warmists proclaiming, “oh, no big deal. We shouldn’t take the warm temps this year too seriously/ It’s just the el nino”
THey can’t have it both ways. Hansen explicitly predicts (and actively roots for) more and stronger el ninos as a consequence of global warming.
What are you talking about PG?
The current scientific process is to remove the fluctuations caused by Nino/Nina type of processes.
You start with a global record such as GISS and you add a model of continuous warming with a scaled contribution from the ENSO index (SOI values from NCAR)
http://imageshack.us/a/img822/6338/f7r.gif
Note that there are a few slight excursions from what appears to be an excellent fit already. There are really no free parameters in this fit apart from a scale factor and a constant short lag to simulate the propagation of the index.
So what they do is add the volcanic disturbances from known historical events, such as Pinatubi, etc. When these are added with a slower lag, the fit gets much better. There are only a few points that show excursions from the trend now, warming spikes during WWII and a shift in cooling for a few years around 1910:
http://imageshack.us/a/img31/1630/jgg.gif
Finally, we can remove these noise terms from the GISS record and show the underlying trend:
http://imageshack.us/a/img109/7724/7m9.gif
There is no longer any sign of a pause or hiatus caused by masking of noisy fluctuations — just like the signal from the Voyager space can be recovered from huge amounts of noise, the same can be accomplished with the global warming signal.
This is all stuff that I have done on my own the last couple of days. All the data is available.
Yep, you understand every detail of the climate system: oceans, biology of the ocean, biology of the land, all aspects of the atmosphere, all aspects of the prima donna water. Sure you do. I think you are a victim of premature recalculation.
To tell you the honest truth Web, there are times when I think you guys have a point WRT to drawing a line that begins with 1998. I readily concede I’m out of my depth here.
My point, for what it’s worth, is that the warmists seem to want both to use el nino’s as evidence of warming, then at other times to simply attribute them to natural variability.
jim2, obviously you have your mind made up and do not want to understand physical explanations for the behavior.
The wikipedia entry for denialcontains an explanation for how projection plays into a denier’s psychology. When presented with obvious evidence they project their inadequacies onto others:
There you go jim2, you are going through all the variations of denial.
What else you got? Anything scientific?
I’m sorry web, I think you are smart, but you can’t model what you don’t know. IMO, it’s better to admit you don’t know than to draw conclusions from a partial understanding. It’s understanding that you lack.
What happens is that there are scientific schools of thought involved in the larger analysis. Those doing the GCM computational experiments aren’t going to do the simple noise removal. They want to understand how the ENSO comes about in detail, and moreover want to look for any evidence of how it may get worse with global warming. Then there are others who take a more conservative approach and want to simply verify that the ENSO is not causing the warming. The latter is where I am coming from, because we do need truthiness when it comes to all the assertions of chaos mongers such as The Chief and Tomas Milanovic that so many people seem so impressed by.
The ongoing argument is whether these chaotic ocean disturbances are responsible for these significant temperature anomalies that we are seeing. What I did, and what researchers such as Kosake & Xie [1] and Tamino & Rahmstorf are doing is to show exactly how these fluctuations are contributing to the global temperature anomaly.
[1]Y. Kosaka and S.-P. Xie, “Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling,” Nature, 2013.
WHUT,
“The current scientific process is to remove the fluctuations caused by Nino/Nina type of processes.”
Since when, and where? And I’m not being sarcastic either (for a change). I asked about the impact of el Ninos on GAT several times previously, here and at Real Climate and their impact on global average temps. And each time I was assured that the increase in temperatures were the result of actual increase in heat in the climate system due to increased clouds which prevented more heat from radiating out.
In other words, the GAT increases up during an el Nino, and decreases during a la Nina, because the actual heat content is changing as a result of those phenomena. But if those fluctuations are being “removed”, that suggests that they are indeed just examples of heat being moved around within the system, and not an actual increase in GAT.
So are there any quick, intelligible to the non-scientist, links that show the adjustments, and explain why?
WebHubTelescope says:
“They want to understand how the ENSO comes about in detail, and moreover want to look for any evidence of how it may get worse with global warming.”
Long term studies show a higher frequency of El Nino episodes during the LIA and other cold periods. Positive forcing at seasonal to inter-annual scales leads to an average global surface temperature drop from La Nina influence but recharging of OHC (longer term gain), while reduced forcing allows El Nino conditions and temporary peaks in global average temperature, and OHC reduction (longer term loss). Here is the prime candidate for such external forcing :
http://snag.gy/UtqpX.jpg
I would not assume that El Nino and La Nino are equal in their effect on OHC either, it could easily be that one may be more effective in the short term, and the other more effective in the long term.
“I would not assume that El Nino and La Nino are equal in their effect on OHC either..” or surface temperatures.
Gary M,
Average surface temperature is not in any way a measure of the planetary heat content. It can go through all sorts of transient fluctuations as the ocean mixes deeper colder water and warmer surface water. The surface temperature just measures that portion that mixes at the surface. This is largely zero-sum in terms of heat content except for the fact that warmer surfaces will radiate more strongly according to Plank’s law, so that the total heat will decrease with El Ninos (greater outgoing IR).
The volcanic disturbances also transiently effect the surface temperature, but this is something that will truly affect the total heat content as they reduce the incoming solar insolation.
This is the way that it plays out:
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
There is no pause once the ENSO and volcanic fluctuations are removed. The warming lying underneath keeps on climbing, only temporarily compensated or masked by these processes.
WHUT,
“Average surface temperature is not in any way a measure of the planetary heat content.”
No kidding. Skeptics have been saying that for years. “Global Warming” has been sold since 1988 on the basis of the land surface and sea surface temp reports.
The sudden concern with heat content, where the focus has been all along, is just something new to you warmists in the public climate debate. And only then because the surface temps have that annoying “pause”.
But none of that answers my question.
You said “The current scientific process is to remove the fluctuations caused by Nino/Nina type of processes.”
The Real Climate folks and Dr. Curry indicated that the increased warming from el Ninos are a reflection of actual increase in heat content due to increased clouds due to the el Nino event.
But if that is the case, why would it be necessary to “remove the fluctuations caused by Nina/Nina type of processes?” And where is that explained? I see your graphs, But how can you determine what part of the temp rise in 1998 was a result el Nino noise? Why remove it? (Other than to claim there is no “pause”?) The graphs don’t explain anything about why or how.
WebHubTelescope (@WHUT)
“The ongoing argument is whether these chaotic ocean disturbances are responsible for these significant temperature anomalies that we are seeing.”
LOL.
Argument? What argument? There is no argument. There is only “consensus”. Curently perched at 97% agreement on 95% confidence that 133% of observed warming is due to people, not “chaotic ocean disturbances”.
And with respect to the connection between ‘global warming’ and ENSO, the “consensus” is that ‘global warming’ causes more El Ninos, and that ‘global warming’ causes fewer La Ninas. Just ask Jimmy ‘death train’ Hansen, Kevin ‘travesty’ Trenberth, and Anastasio ‘who?’ Tsonis.
Get that? ‘Global warming’ causes ENSO warming, not the other way around. You clowns that are claiming that ENSO causes ‘global warming’ are just a bunch of deniers – so says the “consensus”.
What happened in premodern times is unlikely to be repeated in the future. However, anthropogenic global warming [11-12] may have a significant effect on the character of ENSO and render this geophysical pattern even more challenging for certain societies. In fact, the phenomenon is listed among the so-called “tipping elements” in the Earth System [13-14] that might be transformed – sooner or later – by the greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil-fuel burning and land cover change. The scientific jury is still out, pondering the question how El Niño events will behave in a world without aggressive climate protection measures [15]. Will the eastern tropical Pacific warm permanently, periodically, or as irregularly as nowadays? Will the oscillation go away completely (something that appears rather unlikely according to Ref. 4) or gain in strength (as suggested by some paleo-climatic data)? In the latter case, anything that helps to improve the predictive power of the scientific ENSO analysis would be even more important than it is already today.
http://geog.ucsb.edu/mobile/events/department-news/1235/breakthrough-in-el-nino-forecasting/
Webby’s ability to spout ignorant nonsense with utter cerrtainty is unparalleled.
In addition to interannual variations associated with ENSO,
the tropical Pacific SSTs also fluctuate on longer time scales.
The patterns of Pacific Decadal Variability (PDV) are very similar to those of ENSO. When SST anomalies are positive in
the tropical eastern Pacific, they are negative to the west and over the central North and South Pacific, and positive over the tropical Indian Ocean and northeastern portions of the high
latitude Pacific Ocean. Many mechanisms have been proposed for explaining PDV. Changes in ENSO under global warming are uncertain. Increasing greenhouse gases changes the mean states in the tropical Pacific which in turn induce ENSO changes. Due to the fact that the change in mean tropical condition under global warming is quite uncertain even during the past few decades, it is hard to say whether ENSO is going to intensify or weaken, but it is very likely that ENSO will not disappear in the future.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/cdeser/Docs/submitted.wang.enso_review.pdf
Changes in ENSO under whatever warming – seemingly mostly natural – are not noticeable at all. That’s why we have had a decade of intense La Nina and have another decade to three to come.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ts.gif
The point is that the noise from the ENSO activity adds only transient effects to the climate and these are balanced positive and negative with no real trend over the 130 years that we have data for the SOI.
This is the noise profile that I used to correct the GIS:
http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/1161/p1u.gif
Notice that the perturbations are short and add +/- 0.1C to the temperature with occasional stronger peaks. That is not enough to add significant heat to the ocean when you consider that the excursions go positive and negative.
JJ `\_
That’s what I said.
Chief has been spouting this stuff for months and months on end with the same refrain of a “decade or three to come” for cooling excursions.
.
And so someone finally comes along and actually applies the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) to compensate for the noise and we learn that these excursions are ALWAYS overtaken by further secular warming. Furthermore, these excursions will never will get much more than 0.2C away from the baseline — if the last 130 years mean anything.
The following figure shows the equivalent SOI temperature that has been subtracted from the warming trend. Note that the temperature excursions will need to get greater to compensate for any additional warming.
http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/1161/p1u.gif
The last cooling spike was close to a record, and odds are these will not keep up.
Chief is predicting this “decade or three” “non-warming” for a few years now without having any basis. The scientific historical analysis says that it will not happen as the real underlying warming trend continues.
Let’s try again. Sure it hasn’t changed in 130 years.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Vance2012-AntarticaLawDomeicecoresaltcontent.jpg.html?sort=3&o=84
Why webby persists in obvious nonsense is a mystery.
How about NASA for decadal variability – http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
As for Tsonis – certainly Tsonis is one of many suggesting the potential for decadal cooling – e.g. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/07/warminginterrupted-much-ado-about-natural-variability/
‘We construct a network of observed climate indices in the period 1900–2000 and investigate their collective behavior. The results indicate that this network synchronized several times in this period. We find that in those cases where the synchronous state was followed by a steady increase in the coupling strength between the indices, the synchronous state was destroyed, after which a new climate state emerged. These shifts are associated with significant changes in global temperature trend and in ENSO variability. The latest such event is known as the great climate shift of the 1970s. We also find the evidence for such type of behavior in two climate simulations using a state-of-the-art model. This is the first time that this mechanism, which appears consistent with the theory of synchronized chaos, is discovered in a physical system of the size and complexity of the climate system. Citation: Tsonis, A. A., K. Swanson, and S. Kravtsov (2007), A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts, Geophys. Res. Lett. 34
Emphasis mine. Being right is smarter than being wrong. Webby is not smart. He is clueless. He just doesn’t have any background in these topics – and not much else either it seems.
WebHubTelescope: Finally, we can remove these noise terms from the GISS record and show the underlying trend:
http://imageshack.us/a/img109/7724/7m9.gif
We should know in a couple decades whether you have characterized the residual and trend processes correctly. Maybe we can compare notes in 2033.
GaryM:
“I asked about the impact of el Ninos on GAT several times previously…”
Search:
‘The Natural Warming of the Global Oceans Tisdale Youtube channel’
Parts 1 and 2. I find him to be pretty good. The best explanation of El Nino and La Nina I’ve seen.
It’s your downfall Chief.
You have gotten yourself into a hole because you thought you could get by without anybody ever challenging you. Compound that with the fact that you lack the analysis skills to be able to do anything more than copy&paste from other sources.
This is the concise analysis that illustrates how the SOI data explain away most of the significant yearly temperature fluctuations.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
Geez, that’s the way I grade exams. I wait 20 years until I can find out if the student has amounted to anything. That’s also the way I manage money. I give it to some guy and way 20 years and then check to see if it gained in value.
Aren’t all deniers the masters of the fallacious argument?
Ragnaar, You have to realize that Waymon would never do the analysis that I just presented. It would blow his entire effort out of the water.
Seriously? You just continue to ignore everyone from NASA to realclimate? You continue to refer disparagingly to relevant quotes from the literature as cut and paste? Provide nothing yourself but bald assertions without a semblance of theoretical justification by reference to actual literature? Insist – laughably – that if we remove natural variations there is no hiatus? That is how loser blog science is done and it has no resemblance to the real thing.
You know I have degrees in engineering and environmental science. That I run complex models. That I program solutions to differential equations. Do you really think that your trivial curve fitting is beyond me? More that it is a pointless exercise exercise unless you have the theory and the data correct. Something you routinely stuff up. There is no point in replicating anything you do because it is always so wide of the mark that it crosses the line into self parody.
What you do is make yet another curve with assumptions no one who actually understands what they are talking about would make. You then use the curve to justify the assumptions. A bit circular really.
Yes we know that ENSO explains 70% of climate variability – 80% in the tropics. We have known that for a decade or more.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/maclean-2009-Fig4.gif.html?sort=3&o=124
You are really no more than a laughable buffoon.
Chief said:
Yes, Chief, we all know that you are an excellent driver.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vMCTgGjTRA
That’s good.
Projecting again webby? You curve fit without any understanding of the underlying mechanisms and then preen and prattle about how deep and meaningful all this simple nonsense is.
This latest is making assumptions to fit a curve and then using the curve to prove the assumptions. Nothing but loser blog science and profound anti real science.
Everyone is on to you – you waste all out time with objectionable ravings full of abuse but containing math a smart 8 year old could handle – but that no one else wants to because it is just mistaken in theory.
You then complain about Australians because I call your meaningless rubbish for what it is.
PG –
I think there might be a few nits to pick here, but…
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/double-standard/#more-6775
Sure it hasn’t changed in 130 years.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Vance2012-AntarticaLawDomeicecoresaltcontent.jpg.html?sort=3&o=84
Whatever. Why he persists in obvious nonsense is a mystery.
‘We construct a network of observed climate indices in the period 1900–2000 and investigate their collective behavior. The results indicate that this network synchronized several times in this period. We find that in those cases where the synchronous state was followed by a steady increase in the coupling strength between the indices, the synchronous state was destroyed, after which a new climate state emerged. These shifts are associated with significant changes in global temperature trend and in ENSO variability. The latest such event is known as the great climate shift of the 1970s. We also find the evidence for such type of behavior in two climate simulations using a state-of-the-art model. This is the first time that this mechanism, which appears consistent with the theory of synchronized chaos, is discovered in a physical system of the size and complexity of the climate system. Citation: Tsonis, A. A., K. Swanson, and S. Kravtsov (2007), A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts, Geophys. Res. Lett. 34
Emphasis mine. Being right is smarter than being wrong. Webby is not smart. He is clueless.
No Chief, You don’t blindly copy&paste arbitrary citations. You take the data and use some statistical and signal processing smarts to analyze it. When you do that, you can start explaining the noise in the data, and thus get an appreciation for what the actual signal is.
See, that is how one reduces uncertainty. The goal is not to purposely increase uncertainty — that is called feeding the FUD monster. What you want to try to do is reduce the uncertainty.
This is the way that you decompose the pause:
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
No – you understand the science and apply techniques that make sense. You need to have both valid theory and comprehensive data. You are deficit in both. Nothing makes sense and yet you continue to prattle and preen about curve fitting blog science.
But here’s my last reply – http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/27/95/#comment-388600
Unbelievable nonsense.
The theory is that the Southern Oscillation Index influences the global temperature anomaly. The analysis is to see how the two track and whether the SOI can account for much of the fuctuations, along with volcanic data.
The results are in the pocket.
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/largeeruptions.cfm
“The theory is that the Southern Oscillation Index influences the global temperature anomaly.”
Really Wubbie?? A value calculated from observational data affects the Climate?!?!?!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
You figure out how that tiny water vapor feedback can help CO2 do something to the climate without models yet??
What you do is make yet another curve with assumptions no one who actually understands what they are talking about would make. You then use the curve to justify the assumptions. A bit circular really.
Yes we know that ENSO explains 70% of climate variability – 80% in the tropics. We have known that for a decade or more. You are as usual adecade late and a screw loose.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/maclean-2009-Fig4.gif.html?sort=3&o=124
You are really no more than a laughable buffoon.
Chief,
You are forgetting the way science works. One tries to make connections, and if those connections are solid, you retain that information and see where it takes you. It’s odd that you would rail against this because network connectivity is the way that Tsonis proceeds with his analysis — much too mathematically pretentious but those are his “connections” in any event.
If you think that Tsonis is doing any other than “curve fitting” himself, you are sadly mistaken.
All I do is a simple connection — mapping the global temperature record to the SOI record. Then add the connection to the volcanic disturbance. There you have it — Tsonis simplified. And the AGW signal is exposed.
Let’s see
Webby – fits a curve that is circular reasoning and finally discovers that ENSO influences surface temperature..
Tsonis uses a mathematical test for resonance between modes of climate variability to discover a new dynamical mechanism in climate. A fundamental breakthrough in the theory of climate.
Webster is utterly unbelievable.
Well, finally we have a standard to measure Climate Science to: GRAVITY!
We simply drop the IPCC documents from a balcony at any university building and estimate when it will hit the ground. And the math is traceable!
What’s happened since 2007 to increase confidence from 90% to 95%?
* Another 6 years of no warming
* Climategate
* Several papers saying models don’t match observations.
https://ipccreport.wordpress.com/2013/09/27/extremely-likely/
“The long-term climate model simulations show a trend in global-mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2012 that agrees with the observed trend (very high confidence). There are, however, differences between simulated and observed trends over periods as short as 10 to 15 years”
“…as short as 10 to 15 years”?
WTF?
The proper construction of that sentence with respect to the expected relationship between model predictions and observations would have been “… as long as 10 to 15 years”. Obviously, there are even more numerous and greater magnitude differences between model predictions and observations over even shorter periods than 10 years.
When people use propagandistic language manipulations like that, you know they’re lying. Stuff that into your Bayesian prior.
Every time their long term projected trend has been tested for 10 to 15 years they’ve had to change it. I think they worded that part of it correctly. The first part is where they made their error. You can’t really say a projection is matching long term observations until you have more than a hindcast.
Yep, insidious, evil, and wrong.
==========
Judith –
So it looks like your bridge-building may not have produced the results you were looking for. Maybe you should revisit your methodology to employ more of an “engineering quality” approach. Of course, it’s a dynamic and you aren’t responsible if others choose intransigence; but perhaps there might be something more effective than calling people “warmists” and turning a blind eye to labeling like “groveling, terrified coward,” and putting up obviously political and partisan guest posts w/o editorial comment.
Anyway –
95% confidence seems awfully high to me in such a complex dynamic… but I am curious:
Obviously, you confidence is well below 95% that “most” of the warming in the period outlined was due to ACO2. Accordingly, I assume that you think that more likely, more than 50% of that warming was due to natural variability (or is your confidence less than 95% but more than 50%).
Are the natural variables that you think are causal, cyclical?
If so, then do you think that temperatures, or other effects of temperature change like ice extent or sea levels, were lower relative to the period outlined when those cycles reached their acme during previous decades?
Do you think it is because of step changes or sudden climate shifts? If so, what causes to see for those step changes or climate shifts?
My 2 year old granddaughter used a new word the other day. Saw a bug and called it “yucky.”
Precisely my response to the above attack on a manifestly brave and well intentioned woman. . It’s clear to me now…I’m embarrassed it took me so long…that you’re simply a troll who gets cheap thrills out of getting negative attention. Good luck to you, sir.
Of course there is selectivity; she’s got taste.
====================
To both of you: I think Judith is going too far. I think the IPCC’s phrasing is not too far off the mark – as other skeptical voices have pointed out recently – in that they are covering ALL human influences (incl. land use, soot etc.) over a 60-YEAR period, which spans most of the obvious natural variability cycles (which while they may not cancel, seem to be quasi-oscillatory). It’s worth noting that this continued increase in the future, given the log nature of CO2 concentration to GW, is not catastrophic for a long time if ever.
OTOH – Joshua – I used to somewhat respect you. It’s been a long time since I saw a constructive comment. I’ve lost what respect I had. Please shove off.
That’s unfortunate, bill. I will continue to respect your input on the science, and look to your input as a touchstone.
stay tuned for a press release, week of Oct 11
Great news.
Will you be releasing an early draft, so that investigators can avoid reading the details before they exclaim that how you justify your conclusions is beyond them?
Breaking news: Michael Mann addresses the pause and the discrepancy between models and observations:
“If you look at the early IPCC predictions back from 1990 and what has taken place since, climate change is proceeding faster than we expected,” Mann told me by email.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/09/what-leading-scientists-say-you-should-know-about-todays-frightening-climate-report/280045/
I bet you didn’t know that the models were running cool. Better make sure your paper addresses THAT fact!
The whole story in The Atlantic would be a clever parody of modern science journalism if it weren’t real.
Food for thought. This link is for a basketball blog. The main guy is a minister. It is the most popular basketball blog on the internet. They have two or three moderators so it is easy for them patrol and they do occasionally kick people out and delete frequently. The main idea is NO PERSONAL ATTACKS. It does make for more pleasant discourse:
http://www.blazersedge.com/community-guidelines
well that has been my general idea, but so far i have resisted moderators other than myself
Judith
Wow! A press release about Joshua! He will become unbearable
tonyb
Ordvic,
As Blazer fan I used to read BE regularly.
I will still read the main page postings, but have not bothered with the fan posts for some time. Got tired of people who think they could be an NBA player, coach or GM.
I’m not a gambler but I can’t resist. I give it a 70% chance that the paper deals with decadal variations and the NAO, a 20% chance that it deals with AMOC and centennial variations, and a 10% chance of other. My 20% chance is probably higher than deserved but I have bias and I’m not afraid to use it.
not bad, you won’t be losing money :)
The link to discussion on a basketball blog is quite misguided, IMO. Those are fans talking about basketball, not the actual basketball players, who are known to play dirty all the time. Read how a guy like KG deals with his opponents, if you want an example
That is the reality. Science is a contact sport, and unless you can get rid of the mediocre and untalented and the poseurs, you won’t accomplish anything. This blog commenting area is loaded with people that haven’t a clue about the science but think they are actually playing. Bizarre.
Josh, me boy
Two comments:
You’re talking to a lady, so act like a gentleman (even if you really aren’t one).
Second (and more important). You think YOU are going to educate Dr. Curry when it comes to our planet’s climate?
Use your head, man – you’re way out of your depth.
Max
BTW – max –
My questions to Judith where not rhetorical. ‘
Her response was to wait for the press release.
I’d be curious to read your responses (or anyone else’s) to those questions if you’re interested.
Max, –
I thought I posted a reply but somehow it must have gotten lost:
I have two responses to your two comments:
The first is that I think that Judith is perfectly capable of defending herself – especially since she has the hammer here. I see no reason why she should get special treatment because she is a “lady.” She mixes it up just like everyone else. That her expertise is higher than anyone else here does not seem to me to be a reason to criticize her thinking in areas outside of her expertise: where her approach is more along the lines of “normative” or that of an “advocate.”
The second is that I am not trying to “educate” Judith on the science of climate change or on anything else. If you think that I have been trying to do so, you are mistaken.
So once again, I criticize Judith’s approach to the dynamics of the debate (not even on her approach to the science), and in response I get attacked personally.
Not that it makes any difference, but it certainly is interesting.
Actually, I have been deleting a number of your comments that seem likely to start a food fight and haven’t had substantive content.
oops.
That should be… “does not seem to me to be a reason not</ito criticize her thinking in areas outside of her expertise:
Joshua P Utz
CRATER LAKE — Crater Lake received a record-smashing 8 inches of snow in 24 hours Tuesday into Wednesday, the National Weather Service reported.
More than one month ahead of schedule, the frosty blanket made its earliest appearance since 1986, when snow fell a week earlier on Sept. 18. Before that, the earliest appearance of a winter wonderland at Crater Lake was Sept. 24, 1948.
“It looks like there were sharply higher values of snowfall above 6,000 feet,” said meteorologist Shad Keene. “Crater Lake tends to get the brunt of all the precipitation, so the chance of them exceeding a forecast is higher than in most places. It’ll really come down.”
http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130926/NEWS/309260314
The first sign of winter?
When “skeptics” show their intellectual objection to “realists” pointing to anomalous warm weather.
I think that the goal, amusing enough, is to point to show the fallacy of confusing short-term phenomena with long-term trends by pointing to short-term phenomena as if it is instructive about long-term trends.
Looks like we’re going to have an early winter, eh Jim2?
Goose – Gander – …
JC:
”
The increase from 90-95% means that they are more certain.
How they can justify this is beyond me.
”
JC:
”
I haven’t had time to go through the report in detail.
”
Some investigators might consider the possibility that these two statements are causally related.
Snide, and too stupid for you. Why you wanna sound so stupid?
=============
All the finest editors delete my best stuff. So do the worst editors.
==========
I like to think of you as The Very Irreverend…..but, Judith walked in to that.
The alarmists are trapped in terrain under sea level, and are burning the bridges crossing the canals. Where is Parma to recover their hopes?
===========
Interesting point given that Judith often criticizes others for reaching opinions about the veracity of IPCC reports w/o having studied them in detail.
However, I think it is probably safe to say that there is little research underlying the major conclusions in the report that Judith isn’t aware of.
So you agree that the Rev’s remark was stupid, or whatever blander adjective you think might apply. Now, about the snide?
==================
Dr. Curry has already publically proclaimed her ignorance of the details of the very report she is attempting to publically denigrate.
She might just as well have done up an “It’s beyond me!” post about her opinion of yoga, frogs, or vanilla ice cream.
Too busy writing strident blog posts to do research, I guess.
kim –
I don’t think it’s stupid, but I do think it’s probably “motivated.”
But there is a valid underlying point. Judith has the options for different responses. One option would be to address the underlying research, and her problems with it, in detail (as she often does). The other would be to throw out red meat and polemicize.
The relevant question, IMO, is which method is more consistent with “engineering quality” bridge building?
I think the former. I think that her criticisms should be research-based and scientifically consistent. There is no valid substitute, IMO.
When she steps beyond those bounds, IMO, she loses sight of the uncertainty monster, fails to reach the bar of “scientific” analysis, wanders into the territory of the “normative” and “activism,” and displays the selective argumentation that is a “tell” for motivated reasoning.
That’s interesting stuff, too, but it isn’t a valid substitute for researched based and scientifically consistent criticism.
It is what it is.
Well, her opinion on climate, and this report is useful, and far more so than your’s is. So, tell me about yoga, frogs, and ice cream, I’m all ears.
=======
”
So, tell me about yoga, frogs, and ice cream, I’m all ears.
”
Sure – They’re beyond me!
Hope that was useful.
Somewhere a while ago, Joshua, I wondered if you could, or would, investigate the motivated reasoning of the IPCC. You may start with its charter.
Mountains, molehills, elephants in the living room, yoghurt, dogs and ice bears.
===============
Heh, you pick a nit on her elephantine understanding.
======
Reverend
You are a man of the cloth. As such, you undoubtedly know all about religious dogma and Holy Scripture.
Dr. Curry is (believe it or not) a climate scientist, who is well informed about the current climate debate and the existential IPCC need to keep the hysteria alive or lose relevance. Certainly more so than you or I.
Do you seriously think that she is totally unaware of the reasoning that has gone into the latest AR5 report?
Get serious, man.
You make yourself look more foolish than you are.
Max
Well the only way the Rev’s comment could have any traction is if the AR5 has a detailed description of how the attribution confidence level was determined. AR4 didn’t, so its a good chance AR5 wont either…. unless they heeded the IAC advice.
I wonder if the Rev has completely read AR5 already to be able to make his assertion of causality between the two comments?
Reverend made no such assertion, John.
Nor does he need the AR5 to be as you said for his point to stand.
One does not simply fish in the dark to reach Mordor.
Ok Willard, no assertion made, however you have to show me where there is a clear description in AR4 of how the IPCC calculated 90% confidence, then show me where in AR5 where it does for 95% as well. If you can do either, you will be able to show me how my argument against the Rev is wrong.
Hah, willard picks a nit off a nit, and tries to worm it onto the hook.
willard, lest you wonder well, you are stuck with the IPCC’s delusional attribution. A self-audit might give you a clue where you went wrong.
========
You can see how they can be confident if the best-estimate anthropogenic effect bell curve spans the actual warming of 0.5 C seen since 1950. The 5% accounts for a freakish occurrence of CO2 accounting for less than 0.25 C (almost negative feedback) with more than 0.25 C coming from some yet unknown or even unhypothesized unrelated effect trending globally over the last 60 years. That they allowed for this at all is surprising, and “skeptics” should be happy with getting that much.
Reverend does not need to do what Judy should have done for her appeal not to be based on incredulity and Reverend’s point to stand, O John.
To warrant being considered knowledge, a belief has not only to be true. It must be justified.
Shifting the burden of proof on Reverend may be bazillion times less optimal than simply owning the incredibilist stance:
http://planet3.org/2012/08/24/incredibilism/
Willard,
Yes incredibilism. See Ben Pile of the GWPF, and how he got made mincemeat by the peak oil realists. Thanks for spot-lighting that one.
“Reverend does not need to do what Judy should have done for her appeal not to be based on incredulity and Reverend’s point to stand, O John.”
Wrong Willard, the Rev cherry picked two sentences and placed them together, out of context, to make a snarky comment. This is a practice employed by ‘skeptics’ here from time to time that might be challenged by insightful auditors.
JC explains how it is ‘beyond her’ in the post. The IPCC has no definition or description of how it determines any level of confidence it issues. When speaking of levels of confidence, one typically thinks of confidence intervals which are derived statistically. What statistical analysis was used to show 90% level of confidence in AR4? None is found, she looked and studied and found only verbiage. Where is the work to show the result? An auditor would question that? This information is pertinent to the Revs observation. If JC found no analysis in AR4 to show how the 90% level of confidence was determined and in AR5 they now claim 95% confidence, it is ‘beyond’ her as to how they arrived at it based on her current knowledge of what the IPCC has reported, or not reported, in the past. Revs comment gets traction (is justified) only if AR5 produces the elusive 95% confidence analysis because ‘I haven’t had time to go through the report in detail’ then shows her ‘how they can justify this….’. However, if the AR5 report again does not provide the analysis showing its determination, then the Rev also did not do his homework and no causal relationship can be justified despite her admission she has not looked into it yet. The reason for the increase of confidence from 90 to 95% will still be beyond her and everyone else. The cause of it being ‘beyond’ her will no longer be because ‘I haven’t had time to go through the report in detail’.
Reverend
The “uncertainties” regarding the attribution of late 20th C warming have only INCREASED as a result of the decadal “pause” in warming, despite unabated human GHG emissions and levels reaching record levels.
Yet the insiders at Stockholm ignore this and make a claim to the contrary.
Incredible!
As Dr. Curry stated on a previous thread, IPCC will lose all remaining credibility if it attempts to “sweep this under the rug”.
Looks like that’s the way it’s headed, Rev.
Max
Max is the perfect example of Willard’s description of an incredibilist.
[The incredulous stance] Against P (claimed by S), G claims that P is incredible: G can’t believe that P. Therefore G concludes that P can only be the result of something silly: a sleight of hand, stupidity, or else.
MiniMax is always saying something or someone is “silly”.
Hey, auditors; discuss the ‘long’ and the ‘short’ of it.
=========
Looking at Figure SPM5, anthropogenic forcings,
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5-SPM_Approved27Sep2013.pdf
carbon dioxide remains about the same at 1.68 versus 1.66 W/m2 in the AR4
http://www.ipcc.ch/graphics/ar4-wg1/jpg/spm2.jpg
Methane, however takes a jump from about 0.4 to 0.7 W/m2. Black carbon goes from 0.1 up to 0.6 W/m2. Solar drops from 0.12 to 0.05 W/m2 and ozone appears to have dropped a little. Aerosols, direct and indirect, seems to have gone from -1.7 to -1.3 W/m2 (not counting black carbon here).
The decrease in aerosol cooling suggests this side effect of air pollution had been overstated. Less cooling from aerosols means there is less masked warming waiting in the wings for when the skies are eventually cleaned by pollution regulation. It also means the climate is less sensitive to rising levels of greenhouse gases than some have feared (lower sensitivity). The increase in black carbon forcing also has the effect of lower the impact of long-lived carbon dioxide.
The new Summary for Policy Makers of the AR5 is out today. Figure SPM6 shows modeling results for anthropogenic and natural forcings for the period 1900-2000.
For comparison, here is the same from the AR4:
http://www.ipcc.ch/graphics/ar4-wg1/jpg/spm4.jpg
Looking at the bottom of the AR4 map, the graph for the entire globe shows a declining and then basically flat blue curve for natural forcings. The new AR5 version has a decided uptick after 1980 for natural forcings.
I wonder a) what is responsible for the change? and b) why the graph stops in the year 2000?
” extremely likely ”
It means they are not 100% certain that human influence is above 50%. So much for certainty.
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Are scientists really this clueless about how to calculate risk? I can only hope that the most clueless somehow self selected. I did not see a single mention of how prediction is used to bolster confidence in theories. Do modern scientists really not know that evolution went from highly contentious to settled science because first tens, then hundreds, and now thousands of nontrivial predictions have turned out to be correct? Is there no one in the sciences outside of engineering that can graphically represent risk in a logic tree and then manage the logic and data to produce an objective risk estimate?
They said gravity is a good example of something more certain than climate change. Climate change “is not as sure as if you drop a stone it will hit the Earth,” Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said. “It’s not certain, but it’s close.”
——-
Pure nonsense. We are 100% sure the climate changes, has done for 4.5 billion years, lots of geological evidence for it.
Comparing to gravity is actually quite revealing. Gravity is an event we can see and measure. Gravity as a theory is another matter. It’s simply not understood at all. There are theories, but no explanation yet.
So in that regard gravity and AGW share a common problem. Confirmation of the theory.
Like a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, the models are only as accurate as their least validated processes. If the 20 or so models that the IPCC supports have not been properly validated, any averaging of their results cannot be assessed for accuracy in any meaningful way. The 95% figure quoted is just a subjective average and only means that participants think that progress has been made, In modelling if one says that the model is 95% accurate, that would mean many runs have been done and for 95% of the total time covered by the runs the time function output agreed with observation or experiment with the real system;Clearly that is not what the IPCC meant to say.
Alex,
It is difficult to understand what they mean. In Physics, Chemistry and Engineering a model is judged by its performance in predicting future events. These assembly of models score poorly on that. They can’t predict the pause or El Nino, La Nina not counting AMO or PDO. All they can do is generate numbers in the far future.
Scott
Scott: Thanks for replying to mine.
Any scientist dependent on computer models for the quality of their work should supply regular updates on the validity of their models. The IPCC quotes model results but do not tell us how valid their models are. So they can’t complain if we ignore them.
their models never predicted the present or past ‘pause’ so are clearly not valid climate models.
Just a few questions that are left to me when all the extraneous stuff is filtered out:
1. Is it unreasonable that the warming since 1850 is mostly a rebound from the little ice age?
2. Is it unreasonable that a portion of warming from 1950 on is UHI effect?
3. Is it reasonable to be 95% uncertain the warming is GHG induced (not UHI and land use, deforestation) until the global temperature eclipses those of the RMP and the MWP, and the sea level increases above the RMP?
4. Is it unreasonable not to trust models which are wrong at both forecasting and hindcasting?
5. Why have I never met an individual with a degree in either science or engineering who buys AGW hook line and sinker?
1. Yes it is unreasonable.
2. None of it is UHI effect. The ocean is 70% of the earth’s surface and so 70% goes into the global T. Curry’s BEST also found no UHI
3. Too many predicate gyrations in that question.
4. Oooh, double negatives gone crazy. Pass.
5. Because they only study it in a cursory fashion?
Web tried to take the predicate gyrations through the Scylla and Charbydis of question 4.
==================
2. Is it unreasonable that a portion of warming from 1950 on is UHI effect?
The problem is that UHI effects only 30% of the data. So it doesnt change the attribution argument materially. Well, depends on your definition of materially. would bring the 95% down
Lets put it this way.
just sample numbers
.6C warming since 1951
what we want to see is
estimates for
A) warming due to natural variation
b) warming due to Human
c) possible bias.
The metric of 95% sure than more than 50% is just a stupid way of summarizing the data.
Steven Mosher
Just curious–somewhat related to UHI. In the past couple of years at BEST, has there been any opportunity yet to look into clustering effects on your spatial model, i.e., correlation function.
Dr. Althouse:
“Is it unreasonable that the warming since 1850 is mostly a rebound from the little ice age?”
Sounds reasonable to me, but I could not find any peer reviewed papers about it. Are such recoveries non-Scientific? Pseudo Science?
P.S. I have never met a climate scientist
We now have proof: socialism is a consensus of belief among Western citizens that it is far better to be taken care of by a government run by hypocritical liars that will promise you anything to stay in power, than to be responsible for your own actions.
Is there a cherry picking problem in the choice of 1951 as the start year? Look at the graph linked below of HadCRUT annual temperature anomalies (the only one I could find in a quick search that showed annual temp anomalies).
With the end point being about 0.4 degrees above the mean, the start point matters.
Here are some start points:
1945: 0.1 degree above the mean
1950: 0.2 degrees below the mean
1951: 0.3 degrees below the mean
Only 1956 was lower than 1951, and only by a tad, since the 1920s.
Not being a data expert myself, I wonder if a trend of some sort would have been a bit more accurate?
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://icecap.us/images/uploads/HADLEY_RAW.jpg&imgrefurl=http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/26/correcting-the-surface-temperature-record-for-uhi/&h=720&w=960&sz=78&tbnid=UkB5PPU5FN_LmM:&tbnh=81&tbnw=108&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dtemperature%2Brecord%2Bsince%2B1900s%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=temperature+record+since+1900s&usg=__tQpxAglr3_rLgbNCIx1WP5K9SEE=&docid=y9nslKLGOy6_pM&itg=1&sa=X&ei=NY9FUv3EHJjb4AO6h4H4Cw&ved=0CGkQ9QEwCA
Good chart. I like 1945 myself. But think of how they would have had to massage and adjust all the wording in their reports. 1945 would give a trend absent a little hysteria. Without hysteria why bother
Nice, John and dennis, hysteria is the point, since Nature isn’t co-operating. Stampede the dumb herd.
=========
Including Webby?
Because the time to heard the dumb stampede is past.
1951 was chosen to provide cover for the pause. Previously, ‘global warming’ was asserted only for the period after about 1979. It was held that prior to that time. CO2 enrichment was yet too low to have had substantial effect on surface temps. It was a very handy cherry pick, as it both avoided forcing folks to have to explain the inconvenient cooling period from 1940-1980, and also put the start date at the bottom of a trough right before the ‘global warming rise’. This provided the maximum possible warming rate rate with which to scare the masses.
But with the lack of warming from ~1996 to present, a new problem has surfaced. If you start in 1979, then the period of ‘global warming’ is not any longer than the current period of ‘not global warming’. Oh my. Can’t have that. If you call the pause “too short to be significant”, people are going to question the significance of the equally short period of warming. Better back it up to the bottom of an earlier trough… 1951. Give up some rate, gain some length.
100% politics.
1951 appears to be driven by the selection made in some key papers.
Its an odd year to pick given the volitility of the data at that time
Approx. three(6) solar cycles and one of the PDO.
===================
“Is there a cherry picking problem in the choice of 1951 as the start year?”
No.
“Not being a data expert myself, I wonder if a trend of some sort would have been a bit more accurate?”
Trend since 1951 is 0.0108C per year, yeilding 0.6634C total warming.
IPCC say “observed warming of approximately 0.6°C to 0.7°C over this period”
Glad to be of service.
One more thing. Note that lowering the temperature rise since 1951 would strengthen the IPCC attribution statement.
The IPCC say “Greenhouse gases contributed a global mean surface warming likely to be in the range of 0.5°C to 1.3°C over the period 1951 − 2010”
That’s 77% to 200% of the observed warming since 1951.
If you lower the warming to just 0.4C (by eg cherrypicking 1945) you increase the greenhouse gas contribution to 125% to 325%
Here is how they arrive at the 95%.
Summary For Policymakers key word count
“low confidence” = 23
“uncertainties” = 11
“uncertainty” = 16
[=95% confidence]
95% means that climatologists are able to determine the certainty of their knowledge with a precision of one digit. Lucky bastards!
A new trick in pause-denial.
Don’t deny anymore that temperatures are no higher than ~1995.
Rather just ignore it, and talk instead about from 1950 onwards.
Is there really anyone left who sincerely believes the IPCC is something other than a colossal flipping joke?
Andrew
Yep, all the ones scared to death and frozen with guilt.
==============
A well thought out critique of confidence levels.
It’s inevitable that alarmism will be recognized for the cost center that it is.
==========
This also makes me think of my old pal BBD. I guess something more important than saving the world from Global Warming has his attention right now. Perhaps he’s taking care of his mother. I hope it’s something real like that.
Andrew
The laughing crescendoes, tarentellic.
==========
When Michael and BBD find themselves in the same room, they’ll be using remarkably similar epithets toward “deniers.”
Remember, BBD’s schtick was repeat endlessly that 3C sensitivity was settled science… until that claim was no longer operative.
New schtick, new warrior.
“How does one distinguish trolling, from this;
“…the IPCC is something other than a colossal flipping joke?”
The evidence. It’s not rocket science.
Andrew
You mean besides the president, CNN, bbc, abc,NBC,CBS,msnbc, NYT?
“For the last 10-20 years or more, a few of us have been saying that the IPCC has been ignoring the elephant in the room… that the real climate system is simply not as sensitive to CO2 emissions as they claim. Of course, the lower the climate sensitivity, the less of a problem global warming and climate change becomes.” ~Dr. Roy W. Spencer
These changes as a result of the ‘conclave’ this week totally dissonates my cognitives. Well, IPCC has thrown down the gauntlet – if the pause continues beyond 15 years (well it already has), they are toast. Even though they still use the word ‘most’ in the attribution statement, they go all out and pretty much say it is all AGW: ”The best estimate of the human induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.”
Can’t agree more. We are in a cool mode since the 1998/2001 climate shift. These are emergent behaviours in a dynamically complex system that last for 20 to 40 years. So it is quite likely to last another decade at least. There is no guarantee either that as solar activity declines amplification through the system will not see the next shift to yet cooler conditions. Clearly the system has 1000 odd year periodicities.
e.g. – http://journals.ametsoc.org/action/showFullPopup?doi=10.1175%2FJCLI-D-12-00003.1&id=fig6
and – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ENSO11000.gif.html?sort=3&o=143
Along with the usual multi-decadal variability.
e.g. http://journals.ametsoc.org/action/showFullPopup?id=fig8&doi=10.1175%2FJCLI-D-12-00003.1
Here’s the reference – http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00003.1
The very picture of a stationary time series. Not. Decadal cooling not even a possibility? Seems very odd indeed.
“I continue to suspect that, in the coming years, scientists will increasingly realize that more CO2 in the atmosphere is, on the whole, good for life on Earth. Given that CO2 is necessary for life, and that nature continues to gobble up 50% of the CO2 we produce as fast as we can produce it, I won’t be that surprised when that paradigm shift occurs, either.”
~Dr. Roy W. Spencer
Sure lets believe a creationist!
…ad hom attacks — it’s what the global warming alarmists do.
lolwot, I am a Darwinian evolutionist, but like Roy, am troubled at the origins of DNA polymerase. Are you troubled as well.
you have to read it to believe it
http://theevolutioncrisis.org.uk/testimony2.php
you have to read it to believe it
http://theevolutioncrisis.org.uk/testimony2.php
A person should read the Bible.
Not sure if I will read it again, but I suggest that everyone should read it.
I mean the old testament and new testament. If you are an adult, you should not just read the new testament.
I think it’s reasonable to assume God exist.
But I see this quite different than believing in God.
Believing in God has a lot possible meanings- such as
the usefulness of God.
The general concept of God is “other world”, something
beyond existence other could familiar with.
Space aliens aren’t God, but they could be gods- or
they could be messengers of God.
God probably has to be “beyond time” as that almost a
requirement for creation of universe. So “aware of time”
but not confined to it. Time is part of nature of this universe.
One assume there are other dimensions/universes where there
is not time- therefore anything of such universe is not confined
to our time- though perhaps be aware of it. Nor are other universes confined within our space.
It’s difficult for me to imagine someone considering it possible that there
are other universes and also imagining God can’t exist.
It seems possible that one could have an universe without life “in it”-
our universe “apparently” doesn’t need life. I see no reason one can’t
have a universe without life- other than it’s pretty boring. And it would seem
like a waste of time:).
So it seems that this universe is a universe with life as part of it. And idea that life is solely confine to Earth, seems rather unlikely.
If were actually the case, then it seems like we *should* take space exploration far more seriously than we do.
Kind of a duty, rather than a choice.
But I assume there are thousands of civilization in our galaxy, and there are billions of galaxies [with thousands of civilizations]- so I guess that life is definitely part of this universe.
And it seems to me to get some more understanding of God- we need to go to Heaven. You know, UP!
Into the stars.
So talk to the vicious aliens- kill them if necessary. And generally be more than mostly harmless.
True, true… just we assume gravity exists, even though we don’t really understand exactly what it is or how it works and just because we don’t understand it as well as we would like it would be foolish to simply deny it exists and throw ourselves off a cliff. For example, Westerners have not learned that following the Left down any path is a dead end. We see in so many ways over so many years that the psychosis, hypocrisy and self-defeatism of global warming alarmism is another obvious example of the Left leading society off a cliff.
gbaikie,
Enjoyed! Well reasoned.
Although I almost always disagree with you, you usually are earnest in making your points but resorting to an ad hom is (I thought) below you.
I haven’t sent my $99 to 23andMe yet but I guess we all still trying to deal with our inner Neanderthal…
lolwot: Sure lets believe a creationist!
No need for belief. Just the patient accumulation of evidence and testing of hypotheses. Is there evidence that more CO2 is good for life on Earth? Yes. Is there evidence to the contrary? Yes again. I think it’s early days to be confident that the proposition is more strongly supported or undercut by the evidence. However, the IPCC and alarmists jumped too soon to the conclusion that increasing CO2 was necessarily bad.
Isaac Newton had strong beliefs about the Revelation of St John, but his scientific work was not hurt by them.
Agree lolwot,
creationists, along with same sex couples, atheists, Jews, Catholics, Gypsies, vegans, and any other group that someone might not like just shouldn’t be trusted or paid attention to.
It isn’t as if they were normal, right?
The argument is rather queer. That the terrestrial biomass “gobbles up” some of the CO2 we produce could be taken as [i]prima facie[/i] evidence that is has some need for it. But most of the extra CO2 is dissolved into the oceans because of Henry’s law. That Henry’s law must be obeyed hardly is an indication that the oceans and oceanic life have a “need” for more CO2 and a lower pH. That is unless God set up Henry’s law so that there would be some preordained harmony between our industrial activity and some need for the oceans to have a lower pH just now.
Most media consumers unfortunately, and apparently too many politicians.
“It should be evident to any rational human being that global warming is 95% anthropomorphic in origin. Indeed, the responsible anthropoids have voluntarily identified themselves in AR5.” – The Old Scientist’s Almanack
Gaia doesn’t do gulit, but humans can’t survive without it.
============
Well, guilt. We do Gollum well, too.
=======
Mann-made in ivory-towers
with glazed window chinks.
The IPCC has yet again tried to pull off an immense hoax by packaging it inside a pseudo-scientific report.
They did this 6 years ago with AR4 which had at its heart the claim that aerosols ‘making clouds more reflective’ hid CO2-AGW. To do this they substituted Sagan’s incorrect aerosol optical physics for Twomey’s more correct version when he had warned there was an unknown second optical effect.
This is large droplets in rain clouds scattering light much more effectively than small droplets – it’s why thunderclouds are very dark underneath and why Venus has high albedo. This is why Sagan got the Venusian atmosphere wrong and started the CO2-AGW scare for us.
This time the IPCC is trying to scare us with the ocean heat content argument. The claim that this is from the extra ‘back radiation’ from more CO2 is the scientific equivalent of bollocks because IR causes more evaporation, not temperature rise.
In reality, the extra ocean heating has been from the burst of Asian aerosol pollution making clouds less reflective so more SW energy enters the oceans and it is SW that does the heating.
Correct the physics mistakes and there is virtually zero CO2-AGW and the aerosol effect has stabilised hence no more warming. Don’t let this intergovernmental posse of confidence cheaters and their unscientific hacks fool you yet again.
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Whoever wrote this paragraph in the SPM I want some of what they were smoking. It certainly gives insight into one aspect of how they arrived at their 95% confidence figure.
The XBT system started being used circa 1993 only goes down to about 800 m. The Argo system started circa 2002 goes to 2000 m and wasn’t even completed until 2007. Yet they say they have sufficient observations to make claims about temperatures below 2000-3000 m and even all the way to the ocean bottom.
“There were likely no significant observed temperature trends between 2000 and 3000 m for this period.”
Huh? “Likely” ??? WTF does that mean?
This is not a matter of conjecture. Were significant temperature trends observed or not?
In AR5 WG1 SPM there are interesting changes compared with AR4 WG1 SPM concerning the estimated contributions to sea level rise from different sources (mm per year):
AR4, 1993-2003:
Thermal expansion 1.6
Glaciers and ice caps 0.77
Greenland ice sheet 0.21
Antarctic ice sheet 0.21
Sum 2.8
Observed total sea level rise 3.1
AR5, 1993-2010:
Thermal expansion 1.1
Glaciers and ice caps 0.76
Greenland ice sheet 0.33
Antarctic ice sheet 0.27
Land water storage 0.38
Sum 2.8
Total mean rate, “very likely” 3.2
Note also (AR5): “It is likely that similarly high rates occurred between 1920 and 1950.”
So “thermal expansion” is one third smaller in AR5, “land water storage” with a remarkable amount is completely new, and the sum remained constant.
For the “groundwater shock” see also: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/06/what-makes-sea-level-rise/
I’ve got $85.55 cents in my wallet at the moment. I wonder if I can convince Taylor Swift to sell her 5 acre Watch Hill RI beach front estate (which she bought for $17,500,000 (in cash no less) back in May and get out before she loses it all. Does anyone expect fire sale prices on the Hamptons?
I’m probably in the minority here, but to me 95% is on the low side considering the vast costs associated with climate policy. I mean, 95% means you are wrong at least 1 time out of 20.
Considering that the IPCC report is probably best viewed as a meta study and being generous with the assumption that all studies subsumed by it were also properly conducted at 95%, there would still have to be some correction for the type 1 errors that are guaranteed to arise with this approach.
There is no such documentation as far as I can tell. I don’t see any way that such a quantified assessment can be taken seriously, even if you make extremely generous assumptions.
It reminds me of stuff you see in Psychology textbooks from the 50s and 60s when they get into electroshock therapy.
How does it work?
The electricity only kills the bad brain cells.
How does electricity know which brain cells are bad?
It just does. Or maybe it doesn’t.
How do you know it only kills the bad brain cells?
Because we said so.
How sure are you about this?
It’s extremely likely.
Judith,
“It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. The best estimate of the human induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.”
Looking through chapter 10
“A detectable influence of greenhouse
56 gases is robustly seen in HadGEM2-ES (Stott and Jones, 2011), CanESM2 (Gillett et al., 2011a), and in all
57 other CMIP5 models except for GISS-E2-H (Gillett et al., 2012b; Jones et al., 2012). ”
It might be time to take a look at these papers with up to date data,
Especially considering that HADGEM2-ES is somewhat of a train wreck
while ModelE ( in my looks at the data ) has been toward the top of the pack in accuracy.
Finally
“In conclusion, the detection of the global temperature response to greenhouse gas increases is robust to
22 model and observational uncertainty, and methods applied to detect it. It is supported by basic physical
23 arguments. Furthermore, the spatial patterns of warming from simulations forced with increases in
24 greenhouse gases and other anthropogenic forcings agree well with observations but differ from warming
25 patterns associated with internal variability and those due to natural forcings (Sedlacek and Knutti, 2012).
26 We conclude that the greenhouse gas contribution to the observed warming of approximately 0.6 K over
27 1951–2010 was very likely between 0.6 and 1.4 K.
Well, this is just flat wrong. the spatial patterns of warming are POORLY matched by the models. The amplification pattern is all wrong
and the land/ocean contrast is out of wack.
could be fun to do a paper.
IPCC Review Comments: Second Order Draft (SOD) of the Working Group I Contribution
Submitted November 29, 2012 by Ross McKitrick
http://berkeleyearth.org/graphics/model-performance-against-berkeley-earth-data-set#regional-warming-model-comparison
Robustness and uncertainties in the new CMIP5
climate model projections by Reto Knutti and Jan Sedlácek
“A detectable influence of greenhouse gases is robustly seen in HadGEM2-ES (Stott and Jones, 2011), CanESM2 (Gillett et al., 2011a), and in all other CMIP5 models except for GISS-E2-H (Gillett et al., 2012b; Jones et al., 2012). ”
A detectable influence of greenhouse gases is robustly seen in the models, because it was robustly programmed into the models. FFS.
Starting after the 98 El Nino, the lower trop trend is about 1 C per century.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2000/plot/uah/from:2000/trend
Fresh from the MSM:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/26/opinion/shepherd-climate-report/index.html
The content is the same old boring naivete; what is interesting is the bio blurb:
Dr. J. Marshall Shepherd is the athletic association professor of geography and director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia. He is also the president of the American Meteorological Society and a former scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
“JC comment: Oh, my aching head.” [on Seth Borenstein’s piece]
Excellent review; good economy of effort on your part. I read and then walked away from that the other day when you first posted the link. What an incomprehensible mess it is. And how depressing the sloppy language used by the scientists mentioned in the artice. Given that, Borenstein was dead in the gate not to mention that if he had statistical legs himself he would not have accepted/used the statements he obtained.
To me writing about statistical concepts in a public context has always been very tough. Much precision is required in the language to avoid ambiguity. Get just a little informal in language and serious mis-interpretation by some readers is very likely. One can not leave conceptual fill-in-the-blanks when presenting statistical arguments.
As for scientists and statistics. Experience in CERCLA/RCRA world suggests that most scientists can do ‘statistics’ but only a relative handful opt to or can do good statistics, i.e., with adequate due diligence–data characterization, conceptualization, post-test diagnostics, presentation.
As for eliciting expert judgement…there useful formal protocols there too.
——
“When writing the uncertainty monster paper, I tried to figure out how the IPCC AR4 came up with the ‘very likely’ (90%) confidence level for the attribution statement. ”
Keep the pedal to the metal.
:O)
I can buy that increasing CO2 and black carbon and methane and tropospheric ozone may have contributed about half the warming in the last 60 years, especially if you use as a start year the average of the five years on each side of 1951, a conveniently low temperature year in that decade.
One half such warming would be around 0.3 degrees C over 60 years, or about half a degree C in a century.
Is anyone trauatized yet? Such a temperature increase would be below all the new articles on climates sensitivity. In fact, I could probably buy that human emissions of all sorts MIGHT have raised the temps a bit MORE than half since that 10 year average temp centered around 1951. And we would still have very low climate sensitivity, implying we have time to transition, slowly and without economic trauma, to a much lower carbon emitting world.
If one were a debate coach rather than a truth-seeking citizen-scientist, one would advise anti-Mitigationists to trade off attribution for sensitivity and UMs to make the opposite move. UMs go down a dangerous strategic path if they lower their estimate of “trend” warming in the past in order to claim a high percentage of that trend for CO2.
Similarly, UMs need to play the OHC card carefully. If the oceans are now and have long been a reliable and vast heat sink, then concerns about how CO2 forcing might screw with the humanosphere naturally recede. The key for them is to argue that the heat sink is unreliable, periodically getting insulated from the humanosphere by natural oscillations.
It’s starting to look like thread-the-needle time for UMs to get all these delicate arguments to work in the face of the last 15 or so years of data.
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That “95%” really catches the attention of the mainstream media. That’s pretty much all Westerners get for their money: expensive propaganda! Oh how Brazil, Russia, India and China are getting a good chuckle at the hypocrisy.
You wrote
Note the change of wording in the attribution statement
AR4: “greenhouse gases”
AR5: “human influence”
Roger Pielke Sr will approve of this I think.
Unfortunately, when they mean “human influence”, they still mean the dominance of human emissions of greenhouse gases. This is the same approach where the terms “climate change” and “climate disruption” are used as [erroneous] synonyms for global warming due to the emissions of greenhouse gases.
It is just a way for them to obfuscate the complexity of the real world climate system, so they can force their particular policy approaches on society.
Roger Sr.
But it does give them a fallback/CYA if they need to retreat.
it’s a lie told in service of a narrative. Why there is dependence upon narrative rather than nature is a Sixty-four Trillion Dollar Question.
==================
Roger P. Sr.:
I think your train of thought has merit here, and I think a precise use of terms should be for clarification, not the opposite.
By global warming does one mean only the troposphere?
What other ways to measure energy in the atmosphere or ocean are there and are they being measured?
Do they also show a pause?
Is the pause just about sensible tropospheric temperatures, and if so, how reliable of a proxy for climate sensitivity is it?
Is atmospheric sensible heat increase/or decrease just one example of climate change? What are others? What do they show?
Is climate disruption just one example of climate change? What are others?
These would be great questions for students (and even some Professors) to think about and answer.
“Unfortunately, when they mean “human influence”, they still mean the dominance of human emissions of greenhouse gases.”
Pfff but it’s true.
Look at how much CO2 has risen since 1950 and how much temperature has risen.
What sort of dementedly low climate sensitivity are you advocating that would prevent the CO2 rise explaining most of that warming?
In the SPM :
“No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies.”
Ooops, no consensus ?
Question: Why don’t the big oil companies come out and release the total amount of money they’re currently giving to skeptical organizations like the Heritage Foundation, and the amounts they’ve giving warmists like Greenpease and WWF?
Should, or at least would in a sane world, make it harder for the Al Gores and Michaek Manns to spread their risible lies about a well-funded denialist campaign….
‘scuse the woeful ignorance, but are these numbers already available?
Why is there always one last straw left for Dr. Curry and the IPCC consensus claims and Soviet science process?
She’s 25 years late on the truth as it is.
Speaking of “elephants”, when will Dr. Curry realize the IPCC is already “toast’ and the the meme of AGW is dead now and forever.
The terminate the IPCC movement should be supported by those closest to the field, I don’t see Dr. Curry making such a suggestion. Status quo suits her fine.
That’s a high level of dishonesty to be comfortable with.
You and Josh are flip sides of the same coin.
Then again maybe not. You are far more efficient at being a cad. Josh has to run on for paragraphs to convey what you do un a few words.
and the 90% or 95 % claim is enough to be skeptic
I wonder what happened to Dr. Marotzke.
“Arizona State University physicist Lawrence Krauss said the 95 percent quoted for climate change is equivalent to the current certainty among physicists that the universe is 13.8 billion years old.”
Does this mean that we can now call it ‘The Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming’ or ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming Theory’?
I just wanted to say how nice it is to have an earlier morning post on my day off. Things will change momentarily however as we gird ourselves for the onslaught of anger and absurdity from down under.
Ready for the countdown … 10, 9, 8, 7, …
An expert’s judgment is one of the worst ways of getting accurate predictions. When he communicates with other experts, the odds get even worse (bias confirmation).
95% is terrible odds in science, almost a guarantee that error and over-egging are dominant. About 3 more sigmas, minimum, please.
The climate is turning out to be kinda numb and insensitive. Very high pain threshold.
Breaking News:
Apostate Climate-Change Scientist James Hansen
Joins Climate-Change Skeptics; Slams IPCC5 Methods!
Calls IPCC5 ‘A Terrible Misunderstanding!’
Gosh, it sure is *TERRIFIC* to see James Hansen and Judith Curry on the same page!
Fan
Whilst you were being frivolous you were no doubt at the same time about to answer my earlier query about your favourite person.
No, not The Pope. No not Wendell Berry. NO, not Mosher,The other one Dr Hansen
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/27/95/#comment-388329
tonyb
Thank TonyB, for encouraging Climate Etc folks to re-read James Hansen’s 1988 Senate Testimony!
Gosh, the subsequent 342 consecutive months with a global temperature above the 20th century average sure make James Hansen’s 1988 testimony look like foresighted genius!
Did you notice the concluding sentence of Hansen’s 1988 testimony was
Gosh, that *also* makes James Hansen look like a foresighted genius, don’t you think TonyB?
`Cuz NASA’s systematic program of thermometric, gravimetric, radiometric, and altimetric observations (all on a global scale) has conclusively demonstrated (as James Hansen wisely foresaw) that the Earth is in a sustained state of energy imbalance with *no* decadal-scale remissions
Hansen’s outstanding scientific track record sure explains why James Hansen’s climate-change science is nowadays receiving the full attention of Popes Benedict *and* Francis!
Thank you again for inspiring Climate Etc readers to stop quibbling and cherry-picking, and stop embracing willful climate-change ignorance, and start *thinking* scientifically and morally and responsibly and common-sensibly, TonyB!
Fan
You didn’t actually answer my question. Why did the temperatures change downwards between the hearing and the formulation of Giss?
tonyb
> You didn’t actually answer my question.
I’ve heard that somewhere, TonyB.
But where?
Willard
Lots of people don’t answer questions if they don’t see them. Fan has a talent for comprehensively failing to reply to direct questions by answering questions that haven’t been asked.
tonyb
TonyB,
I had in mind something about “Richard Betts”.
Does that ring any bells?
Many thanks!
Willard
Perhaps you didn’t see my reply? I think you asked me if Betts had got a reply and I said I didn’t think so but there was so much shrapnel flying around I was distracted by it.
Ever willing to help and not wanting to appear evasive, if it is important to you let me know and I will try to go through some of the threads and try to be more specific. Is that fair? Let me know
tonyb
TonyB,
I’ve responded over there:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/28/ipcc-diagnosis-permanent-paradigm-paralysis/#comment-389596
Many thanks!
Please reflect TonyB, that insistence upon [too-narrow, wrong-headed] questions is an even more pernicious form of climate-change denialism than insistence upon [too-narrow, willfully ignorant] answers.
That’s the common-sense reason why other folks are not obligated to confine their understanding of climate-science to your too-narrow questions, TonyB!
Fan
This is the same answer you gave a couple of days ago when you didn’t want to answer a specific question.
Why don’t you just say you don’t want to comment on why the temperatures changed between Dr Hansens hearing and their arrival on Giss. I am sure there is a rational explanation and I thought you would be the right person to ask
By the way shouldn’t you also be calling me a demagogue by now?
Tonyb
Tony, I admire your energy and persistence with Fan, yet you must realize you’re not going to get anywhere. Fan is relentless. She’ll be shown to be wrong 6 ways to Sunday on some issue (to use an old fashioned phrase), to which she responds with evasions or outright silence, then comes right back with something else 10 minutes later, her confidence and certitude not one whit reduced. And so it goes. She’s like a force of nature.
I can’t figure the good woman out. At least she’s bright and cheerful. That’s a nice change.
Willard
I’d go along with poker that Fan sounds very much like a woman.
But that’s not evidence, of course.
Max
LOL … please reflect TonyB, that the title of the document in question is plainly “Statement of Dr. James Hansen, Director, NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies (June 23, 1988).”
The title is *not* ” cherry-picked answers to TonyB’s narrow-minded too-simple willfully ignorant climate-change questions.”
As it seems to me, it’s best (by far!) for Climate Etc folks to read Hansen’s *full* testimony … and then think for themselves. `Cuz data-cravin’ equation-lovin’ science-respectin’ article-readin’ “full-frontal nerdy“ is how how FOMD rolls!
As for FOMD’s chromosomal status, heck, *any* rational person would be proud to to claim the same high-power XX gender as Judith Curry, Naomi Oreskes, and Sou from Bundangawoolarangeera!
David Springer, not Spencor
Fan
I had already linked to the full testimony so there was no sort of cherry picking.
Too narrow? What are you talking about.
I am currently reading a book by phil jones in which he and camuffo are forensically examining 7 long European temperature records/. I am also reading the explanation by David Parker on adjustments to Cet.
There is a margin of error of 1 Degree C and adjustments of half a degree, These adjustments are absolutely central to climate change science.
I merely wanted your explanation as to why Hansens figures had been adjusted.
If you don’t want to reply that’s fine but its hardy a narrow question
tonyb
Just my sense, Will. Her style is definitely feminine. I’d be very surprised if she were not a woman. For just a couple of thing, she’s too cheerful to be a guy. Then there’s the matter of those emoticons. Also, I vaguely recall that she used to post under a different name, which I think was a gal’s, but can’t swear to it.
I’d say her chances of Fan being a woman are in the high confidence range of 95 percent.. I arrived at this number after quite a rigorous process, that I think should be considered something of a gold standard,
First, I consulted with my dogs. Then we all voted.
hmm the last time I ran gender genie text analyzer on a poster was on one of judiths
grad students. It pegged him as an feminine euro male.
Sorry Judy,
I wasn’t thinking if that was you moderating
Scott
Mosher, a good gender neutral description of a feminine Euro male = Florentine Fruitcake.
Mosh
Whilst Fan continues to sashay around the dance floor taking evasive action perhaps YOU can answer the very reasonable question I asked him
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/27/95/#comment-388329
tonyb
LOL …
• No one will go wrong reading for themselves the broad-band Hansen commentaries that TonyB suggests (both older and newer).
• Anyone one will go wrong restricting their cognition to the narrow-band climate-change questions that TonyB suggests!
Sure tony.
First, its hard to reconstruct piece by piece all the changes that
VARIOUS people made that result in the changes you see.
But let me have a wack.
First, understand that the GISS answers are the result of
Data input and Algorithm.
1. Data input.
There are two principle causes. First is the change in the core dataset. The moves throuh various versions of USCHN will result in changes because the processing of that data changed. Essentially the big adjustments for TOBS and other bits in the US.
By looking at datasets outside USCHN we can see that these adjustments are justified. In fact the adjustments are calibrated by looking at hourly stations close to the USCHN stations.
Next, the GISSTEMP algorithm will change the estimates of the past
as New data for the present comes in. This has to do with the RSM method. This seems bizarre to most folks but once you walk through the math you’ll see how new data about say 1995, changes what you think about 1945. There are also added stations so that plays a role as well.
2. ALgorithm side of things. You have to walk back through all the papers to to get an idea of the changes. But they do impact the answer.
The fundamental confusion people have is that they think that global indexs are averages. And so if Hansen average 1945 in 1987, then why does his average of 1945 change in 2012? Makes no sense right?
Well, it does make sense when you understand that
1. These algorithms do not calculate averages. They estimate fields.
2. If you change the data ( add more, adjust it etc )
3. If you improve the algorithm, your estimate of the past will change. It SHOULD change.
I’ll illustrate this with an example from out work.
To estimate a feild we have the climate field and a correlation field.
When we go back in time, say before 1850, we make an assumption.
The correlation structure of the past will be like the structure of the present. A good skeptic might object.. how do you know?
well, the answer is.. we dont. thats why it has to be assumed.
The structure could be different. I imagine somebody could say
” use this structure I made up” well, you could do that, you could calculate that. you could make a different assumption.. not sure how you would justify it. Therefore, if we get new data which changes our understanding of today that will cascade and reform what we thought the past was.. principly because of the uniformity assumption.
What is kewl is that there are a bunch of data recovery projects going on.. WIth our method we dont need long records. So,
I have predictions for locations in 1790. That prediction was made using a climate field and correlation field. There are no observations at that location. When the recovery data gets posted then I can check the prediction.
“3. If you improve the algorithm,”
Nice delusion there Pilgrim.
First there was Fantasy Football, now we have Fantasy Climate Science. What WILL they come up with next!! 8>)
Mosh
Thanks for your answer. You said;
“Next, the GISSTEMP algorithm will change the estimates of the past
as New data for the present comes in. This has to do with the RSM method. This seems bizarre to most folks but once you walk through the math you’ll see how new data about say 1995, changes what you think about 1945. There are also added stations so that plays a role as well.”
I think your reply deserves a thread in itself as we can understand (Although not necessarily agree) when say Camuffo notes that temperatures in Florence from 1740 were taken in a north facing room for five years and tries to work out what the temperature was outside
This goes back to the discussion you had with Jim regarding Estimate and measurement. To retrospectively change say 1945 because we have new data for 1995 seems strange. The temperature is what it is, whether it was measured correctly is another issue. It was not estimated.
Adjustments are an interesting subject in themselves and one that does not get aired enough.
Anyway, thanks for your detailed reply. Quite why Fan made such a song and dance about it I don’t know.
tonyb
Scepticism is the natural condition of the scientist within us all – and so it should be. Without challenging current hypotheses, we are not doing our job, and we will not learn either individually, or as a species.
The current observations of ‘no warming’ is a clear challenge to the hypothesis of AGW. The hypothesis has therefore, to explain, to change, or to die the death (in accordance with the scientific principle).
“The best estimate of the human induced contribution to warming (a) is similar to the observed warming over this period (b).” – AR5.
(a) happened and (b) happened. No conclusion.
“The ratio of the total climate response to the no-feedback response is commonly known as the feedback factor, which incorporates all the complexities of the climate system feedback interactions. For the doubled CO2 (a) and the 2% solar irradiance forcings, for which the direct no-feedback responses of the global surface temperature are 1.2° and 1.3°C, respectively, the ~4°C surface warming (b) implies respective feedback factors of 3.3 and 3.0 (5).” – Andrew A. Lacis,* Gavin A. Schmidt, David Rind, Reto A. Ruedy, – 2010
(a) happens and (b) happens.
Therefore (c)?
(c) Sensitivity.
(5) J. Hansen et al., AGU Geophys. Monogr. 29, 130 (1984).
I am increasingly convinced climate science has to go back to square one for any progress be made. It is definitely in trouble right now and a politically driven summary contributes nothing to a possible escape route.
My assessment is that some basic physics is still lacking and until this issue is investigated properly, no computational model makes sense. If the history of science is any guide, no simple theory with profound explanatory power is expected to emerge while research is restricted to a single run of a unique physical instance.
Nonequilibrium thermodynamics is still in its infancy. It can give us quite specific predictions on the behavior of a subclass of steady state systems (the reproducible ones), but fails to do so for the general case, to which the terrestrial climate system belongs to.
The would be attack should be two pronged. One has to analyze theory thoroughly to see why and how the Maximum Entropy Production Principle fails if the system is gradually transformed into a non reproducible one on transit to a chaotic state from one deterministic in the long run. More importantly, one should look for a more general extremum principle which is valid for non reproducible systems and falls back to MEPP for reproducible ones. At the same time one should bring various non reproducible quasi steady state nonequilibrium thermodynamic systems in the lab and study them experimentally. The terrestrial climate system would of course never fit there, but many other instances of this general class would.
The upshot is it is advisable to quit bothering with climate for a while and start doing physics.
See comments #34, #39 &. #60 under RealClimate — On mismatches between models and observations.
Berényi Péter said:
“I am increasingly convinced climate science has to go back to square one for any progress be made.”
——-
Maybe if we duplicate all the experiments over the past century and recollect all the data, drill new ice cores, etc., you think it would turn out different?
Human nature and nature itself being what they are would lead us directly back to this point.
I know there is such a thing as the lack of comprehension skill, dear R. But sometimes just a little effort may help. Try again please.
Hint: What I am proposing here is not to “duplicate all the experiments over the past century”, but something new, which was never done so far.
Well done, Judith. When I feel bombarded by zillions of climate scientists who insist that I shall surely fry, I do appreciate your objectivity and calm humour.
I just noticed we are sneaking up on 400,000 comments. Time to start the projections (or guesses) on when it will happen?
I just love this scientific statement.
In other words – we basically haven’t a clue what is happening to recent heat content in the ocean.
On an earlier thread Judith promoted Nic Lewis who argued that TCS has been statistically constrained to be more than 0.9C per doubling of CO2.
That means at least 0.31C warming from CO2 since 1950.
That is more than half the warming since 1950.
So Judith and Nic’s own figures more than back up the IPCC attribution statement.
Bearing in mind there are other greenhouse gases too and that the 0.9C TCS was the LOW end of the promoted constraint.
It seems Judith protests too much.
since nobody KNOWS what the sensitivity really is, one cannot be confident on an attribution. If CO2 sensitivity is logarithmic, the sensitivity can only be known if we know where on the curve we are, which we don’t. There are just too many variables involved in global temperature to be 95% sure that CO2 has a specific contribution to warming. It certainly doesn’t justify the misery and death which the policies resulting fro this document perpetuate.
Yet Nic Lewis claimed transient climate sensitivty had been constrained to more than 0.9C from observations.
You skeptics (and Judith) can’t have it both ways. You can’t demand everyone else accepts constraints which you then ignore.
“since nobody KNOWS what the sensitivity really is”
pff I’ve just realized how utterly DISINGENUOUS this statement is.
After having skeptics bang on for weeks that observations show climate sensitivity is less than thought!
now you come in to tell me noone knows what sensitivity really is.
It’s this double standard application of uncertainty that I accuse Judith Curry of too.
Just parroting the IPCC
What a damp squid of a prediction !
Note how carefully the dates have been chosen. The period 2006 to 2014 have been explicitly excluded from consideration.
Instead I wager a bet that global mean surface temperatures from 2013 to 2025 will not exceed those from 1998 to 2013 by more than 0.1C (moderate confidence) see here
clivebest
Did they give a + or – sign for that predicted 0.3 to 0.7C change from 1986-2005 to 2016-2035?
Seriously, it sounds like they had some Vegas bookies working on the wording of that prediction.
1986 to 2005 (HadCRUT4 anomaly) averaged 0.299C
2012 averaged 0.448C – so they already have 0.149C (or half of the low end of the range) in their pocket.
So they might just sneak in at the low end of the predicted 2016-2035 range (0.6C), but (unless there is massive massaging of the numbers) I do not believe that HadCRUT4 will show an average anomaly for that is anywhere near the upper end (1.0C).
And if Solar Cycle 24 has peaked (or is about to) at a Wolf number below 70 and SC25 is even weaker, they are in trouble with the low end, as well IMO.
Max
livebest
Your bet makes more sense.
1998-2013 averaged 0.454C (not 0.299C, like 1986-2005).
But, the Vegas bookies that were advising IPCC made sure they did not use this as the baseline number for the prediction, for obvious reasons.
Max
Yes – probably all members of WG1 can now all get high paid jobs as actuaries working for insurance companies to mitigate against climate change.
“Of course, the lower the climate sensitivity, the less of a problem global warming and climate change becomes.” ~Dr. Roy W. Spencer
Lets suppose ECS = 1.5C. That means if CO2 levels eventually reached 800 ppm (very unlikely before 2100) the global temperature would rises by 1.5C above todays levels . Even if nothing was done to curb emissions and we continued to burn available all available fossil fuels levels are still very unlikely to go much above 1000 ppm. This leaves global warming below dangerous levels.
Of course we must find alternative energy sources soon or face inevitable decline. Renewable energy is inherently low density ~ 2W/m2 – like horse power was in the 1700s. If you want carbon free energy without returning to neolithic times then unfortunately only nuclear can deliver.
Fortunately, nuclear can deliver.
===========
A darkest date in Science!
Just listened to Thomas Stocker on Swiss TV. It sounds very much like we are getting “politics as usual” from IPCC in Stockholm and Stocker is doing his best to convey the desired message. He stumbled a bit when the interviewer asked him about the “pause” – but came back with the standard “short term versus long term” rationalization and the statement that the first decade of the new millennium was the warmest on record (duh!).
Plus ça change…
No-one seems to want to know what is happening to temperatures in the SECOND decade of this century. I wonder why. Could it be that they are running COOLER than the first decade?
We will tell yer what yer need ter think.
See me ‘Letter from Galileo.’ H/t Brecht.
A serf.
http://beththeserf.wordpress.com/2013/06/02/what-are-blogs-good-for-anyway-fer-serfs/
There’s been 0.6C warming since 1950.
So Judith is arguing that we can’t be 95% sure that humans have caused at least 0.31C warming since 1950??
CO2 has risen about 28% since 1950. 36% of a doubling.
So Judith is effectively arguing that we can’t be 95% sure that TCS is greater than 0.86C per doubling of CO2.
I wonder what Judith bases this on when all the constraints on TCS, observational and model based do not support TCS as low as 0.86C.
“Well, IPCC has thrown down the gauntlet – if the pause continues beyond 15 years (well it already has), they are toast.”
I am curious as to why Prof. Curry, or anyone else, would think the IPCC is “toast” if the pause continues. Haven’t they already weathered numerous embarrassments? (Himalayan glaciers melting, Pachauri’s various conflicts of interest, Climategates I & II, etc.) They just ignore these minor slips, continue to assert that everything is proven, and proceed to the next international conference. Why would this be any different?
Good point. Failure has never gotten rid of any government bureaucracy.
UnfortunatelyI don’t think they are toast. It will take much much more to stop this AGW fraud. Big big money and lawyers I’m afraid. Or of course change of government especially in the USA LOL
Is this a second order economic derivative of the reaction to the IPCC?
The stock market seems to think there will be a lot more demand for zero carbon energy. Almost every foreign solar stock hit new highs today while American solar companies barely moved. This rise is despite many of the former leaders in deploying solar (Europe, USA, Australia) are slashing subsidies, feed in tariffs and renewable energy standards. I saw a report yesterday that claimed that for the first time global solar will deploy more new megawatts this year than wind.
America it seems will not be a leader in this area. The republican controlled House Energy subcommittee recently passed their appropriations budget where they slashed the DOE renewable energy R&D funding and transferred it to nuclear weapons research. If we really need better nuclear weapons why are we wasting money on climate research?
IPCC, in next working group assessment report, could reach 100% of confidence level. What they have to do is to cite only those published papers that attribute humans the origin of climate change.
Simple, don’t you think?.
Judith thank you very much for your work on this.
The best summary of this I saw today was this comment: “Before it was “very likely”. Now it is “extremely likely”. Another 15 years with no warming and they will be dead certain.”
And your name was frequently being cited.
Sop, they are 95% certain of something being true based on models they’ve admitted are flawed?
This ISN’T science…
No they are 95% certain based on observations.
Yes, they observe the model outputs.
lolwot
“Observations?”
Huh?
IPCC says “most” of warming.
What is “most”?
All other things being equal, “observations” would support “most” = 50% (TCR = 0.9C) or even 75% (TCR = 1.3C).
Some are inferring that “most” means “essentially all” (TCR = 1.8C), and the observations certainly do not support that
And all other things are not “equal”.
We had the warm ENSO period of the 1980s/1990s (which led to the all-time record warm year 1998), an observed decrease in late 20th C cloud cover (and albedo), the highest solar activity for several thousand years, etc.
There is just too much uncertainty to be able to attribute “most” of the warming to human GHGs (i.e. principally CO2).
Max
So Nic Lewis’s observational constraints on TCR are useless then.
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Judith, you so missed the mark on this.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/supporting-material/uncertainty-guidance-note.pdf
JC: The 95% is basically expert judgment, it is a negotiated figure among the authors. The increase from 90-95% means that they are more certain. How they can justify this is beyond me.
.
Reporter: You mean they sit around and say, “How certain are you?” ”Oh, I feel about 95 percent certain. Michael over there at Penn State feels a little more certain. And Judy at Georgia Tech feels a little less. So, yeah, overall I’d say we’re about 95 percent certain.” Please tell me it’s more rigorous than that.
.
JC: Well I wasn’t in the room, but last report they said 90%, and perhaps they felt it was appropriate or politic that they show progress and up it to 95%.
.
Reporter: So it really is as subjective as that?
.
JC: As far as I know, this is what goes on. All this has never been documented.
.
JC conclusion: Well, I have no idea what goes on in the sausage factory. 95% – take it with a grain of salt (or a stiff whiskey). That’s their story, and they’re sticking to it. Uncertain T. Monster is not happy.
There you go, the published, documented, widely available sausage factory Uncertainty Guidance.
I see no salt or whiskey listed in it. Expert judgment is the last resort where there is no alternative source for uncertainty, probability or likelihood to be expressed, and traceability is a hard requirement.
It’s far more rigorous than you said when you made stuff up to answer the reporter.
I hope you have the integrity to contact them and correct your many egregious errors before they become a source of yet further misinformation to the public.
Wow. Imagine that, Dr. Judith Curry making stuff up for the press.
Yes – pulling it out of your arse is a recognised technique in which you are expert Bart.
Judith, did I understand this correctly?
“It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. The best estimate of the human induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.”
The first sentence says nothing really. (i.e. the climate sensitivity is somewhere above 1C). The second sentence says that the best estimate is 0.5C warming due 30-40% CO2 increase. As I understand this, logarithms considered, 100% increase would warm about 1,1C and considering heat in the pipeline, equilibrium climate sensitivity would be about 2C????
Is that what they are really saying??
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So it’s worse than we thought, only less so.
Moreover, 97%….
That’s all. I just like saying 97%.
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JC: The 95% is basically expert judgment, it is a negotiated figure among the authors. The increase from 90-95% means that they are more certain. How they can justify this is beyond me.
There has never been any procedure of experiment and measurement that can be produced to determine whether a subjective probability assessment like this is accurate or inaccurate. This is different from insurance and genetics where there are lots of data available for testing the probabilities of well-described events such as higher accident rates in a stratum, or higher disease rates with particular alleles. I think that they are totally non-falsifiable, and therefore not a solid foundation for an epistemology. Scientists have been highly confident yet have been wrong; it was the evidence adduced to test the propositions that mattered, not the confidence of the researchers in the propositions.
judith curry
it seems my comment disappeared into the ether.
they were manipulating the data in the 50’s – 70’s also, only then wasn’t any scrutiny
I see several others have run the numbers above, but here is my go. Hadcrut4 has 0.5 C warming since 1950 and meanwhile CO2 has risen from 310 to 390 ppm. To account for half the warming, the CO2 and other anthro effects have to produce at least 0.25 C. A CO2 transient sensitivity of 0.75 C per doubling would give 0.25 C, and 1.5 C per doubling would give the full 0.5 C. I can see why the extremely likely confidence level is stated. Even most skeptics have now agreed with transient sensitivities above 0.8 C, if not the full 1.5 C that accounts for it all in terms of CO2. Neglecting net negative other effects like aerosols makes this a lower limit.
Skeptical Science has a fascinating piece on the AR5. I highly recommend everyone read it so they can see the IPCC is even more confident than Judith Curry says:
And if enough of you read it, perhaps one of you will be able to explain what in the world Dana Nuccitelli is saying. I’ve read his argument half a dozen times, and I still can’t figure it out.
As an added bonus, you’ll get to a novel insult leveled against our host: that’s she’s a podiatrist!
> I’ve read his argument half a dozen times, and I still can’t figure it out.
That’s because it makes no sense.
That would be my guess.
SKS didn’t call Judith a podiatrist, no wonder you get the science wrong.
Brandon. I am re-posting a comment from above. I think it explains it. The IPCC statement is
“It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. The best estimate of the human induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.”
The first sentence says that they are 95% certain that at least half of the warming of the period (5.0/2=0.25 C) is human caused. Since CO2 increased about 33% over the period, this says that we at a minimum expect a doubling to cause a rise of about 0.6C. We must take into account heat in the pipeline would have held this number back and full ECS would thus be about 1.0C That means everybody skeptics and lukewarmers alike can agree with this.
The second sentence is even more interesting. By the same logic, the heating that occurs beginning over a 60 years period starting at 1952 (one full cycle of the PDO) is “best estimate of the human induced contribution to warming”. Thus the best estimate of ECS is about 2.0C.
I am a humble engineer so I may have this wrong. However it seems to me that the activists at the IPCC demanded a number (95% certain) that could be used for PR. Scientists agreed so long as they could tell the truth hidden with words.
Brandon. I apologize. I had not read Dana’s piece. I made a simplification that other cooling/warming contributions cancelled out and I could just focus on CO2. Dana lives on another planet.
No problem Gil Pearson. It’s easy to make assumptions when those assumptions simplify thing or make them make sense. Your response may have been misguided, but if that’s the worst one can say about something you write on a blog, you should be happy.
By the way, I’m coming to believe all of Skeptical Science takes place on another planet. That piece had a section at the top talking about a new “resource” which discusses issues surrounding the IPCC. Curious, I checked it out. A few clicks later, I was at this page. It says:
Yet a link in its Further Reading section clearly states:
I don’t know how someone writes a piece claiming an error wasn’t spotted while linking to a source that writes paragraph after paragraph discussing how the error was found and (not well) addressed.
On another planet is as an good explanation as I can come up with.
brandon, there you go exercising your mad hacker skillz again!
> On another planet is as an good explanation as I can come up with.
As an good explanation as an editing error, say, bazillion times so.
When it is mentioned over at SkS that someone is outside their area of expertize I wonder about the author of such a statement?
The author “is an environmental scientist at a private environmental consulting firm in the Sacramento, California area. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in astrophysics from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Master’s Degree in physics from the University of California at Davis. He has been researching climate science, economics, and solutions as a hobby since 2006…”
Someone raised this issue in the comments. Dana Nuccitelli responded:
Apparently our hostess has no evidence for what she writes. She’s “merely giving her ‘gut feeling.'” Nuccitelli on the other hand, scrupulously refers back to “the expert scientific literature.” That’s why when the IPCC says:
He knows they really mean:
Because that’s what the expert scientific literature says. The IPCC just doesn’t realize it.
That was a waste of 10 minutes of my time.
Perhaps his reference to a podiatrist was wishful thinking? Who else removes a foot from your mouth?
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“Arizona State University physicist Lawrence Krauss said the 95 percent quoted for climate change is equivalent to the current certainty among physicists that the universe is 13.8 billion years old.”
Nasa
Measurements by the WMAP satellite can help determine the age of the universe. The detailed structure of the cosmic microwave background fluctuations depends on the current density of the universe, the composition of the universe and its expansion rate. As of 2013, WMAP determined these parameters with an accuracy of better than than 1.5%. In turn, knowing the composition with this precision, we can estimate the age of the universe to about 0.4%: 13.77 ± 0.059 billion years!
How does WMAP data enable us to determine the age of the universe is 13.77 billion years, with an uncertainty of only 0.4%? The key to this is that by knowing the composition of matter and energy density in the universe, we can use Einstein’s General Relativity to compute how fast the universe has been expanding in the past. With that information, we can turn the clock back and determine when the universe had “zero” size, according to Einstein. The time between then and now is the age of the universe. There is one caveat to keep in mind that affects the certainty of the age determination: we assume that the universe is flat, which is well supported by WMAP and other data. If we relax this assumption within the allowed range, the uncertainty increase a bit. Inflation naturally predicts a very nearly flat universe.
The expansion age measured by WMAP is larger than the oldest globular clusters, so the Big Bang theory has passed an important test using data independent of the type collected by WMAP. If the expansion age measured by WMAP had been smaller than the oldest globular clusters, then there would have been something fundamentally wrong about either the Big Bang theory or the theory of stellar evolution. Either way, astronomers would have needed to rethink many of their cherished ideas. But our current estimate of age fits well with what we know from other kinds of measurements.
UPDATE
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/03/21/age_of_the_universe_planck_results_show_universe_is_13_82_billion_years.html
Notice the difference in accounting of the uncertainty.
The age of the Universe is a little bit higher than we expected. A few years ago, the WMAP spacecraft looked at the Universe much as Planck has, and for the time got the best determination of the cosmic age: 13.73 +/- 0.12 billion years old.
######################
its kinda funny when you look at the assumptions required to derive a certainty. hehe.
the question is what do you get to assume. why is that the question? because there appear to be no positions that are assumptionless.
“Never try to teach a pig to sing, it wastes your time and annoys the pig.” – Robert A. Heinlein
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452 posts – do I have to read them, of can someone provide a quick summary consensus? (Tired after being trapped across the river with 500,000 fireworks viewers, eventually had to walk a long route home, then had my arm ripped by a silly cat, blood-thinners working just fine unfortunately. So I’d like the easy option.)
Some 400 posts that tell in various ways how totally wrong IPCC is and a few which argue that the 95% certainty is quantitatively derivable from empirical observations, and thus perfectly correct.
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Could someone explain how increased global atmospheric temperatures would equilibrate with the cold of space? My understanding is that increased heat (trapped from higher levels of GH gases), in the form of infrared light, should result in a feedback to reequilibrate earth temperature with space, maintaining a relatively homogenous temperature. I’m lost.
The temperature to space re-equilibrates, but that means the surface is warmer because of the extra surface insulating effect of the CO2. GHGs already provide 33 C worth of insulation, and this is just more on top of that.
So you mean that the infrared rate of equilibration with space is slowed because of GHG insulation? Would the stratophere not conduct the heat away from earth at a faster rate in such a scenario? If not, please explain how that is prevented. Thank you.
The stratosphere cools because it is not connected to the surface by convection. It can be thought of as its own layer independent of the insulation effect below. The extra CO2 in it allows it to lose heat to space more effectively, but it is still warmed by ozone absorption, so it has a different equilibrium state.
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There seem to be some technical problems in the release of the full final draft. A statement is made that the full report should be read together with the document Changes to the Underlying Scientific/Technical Assessment (IPCC-XXVI/Doc.3) for which I haven’s seen links. The draft itself was available through a link that soon disappeared.
From the executive summary of the Chapter 10 we can find a somewhat longer formulation of the statement. That longer version has two parts, the first on the effect of anthropogenic GHGs, the second on human activities including also other factors than GHGs. The two paragraphs are (emphasis from the report):
An additional paragraph closely linked to the argument states:
Stalling out, eh?
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Figure 10.20a tells about the evidence for the value of TCR. The related caption is
Figure 10.20: a) Examples of distributions of the transient climate response (TCR) estimated from observational constraints. PDFs, and ranges (5–95%) for the transient climate response estimated by different studies (see text). The grey shaded range marks the very likely range of 1°C–2.5°C for TCR and the grey solid line represents the extremely unlikely <3°C upper bound as assessed in this section. Representative distributions from AR4 shown as dashed lines and open bar.
It looks like they are really bending over backwards to accommodate some of the less skilled of the climate scientists. From all available evidence, a value of 2C for the TCR and 3C for the ECS is the best prediction.
Only if you apply Cargo Cult Science (CO2 knob).
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Dr, Curry, why is there no LOSU statement (Level of Scientific Understanding) in the Summary for Policy Makers report of AR 5. This is a very critical omission since knowing the LOSU would surely impact the decisions made by some policymakers since this demonstrates how poor the understanding is for many key climate forcing agents such as albedo and solar events.
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I won a math contest once in school with the question: How much is
3 x 7 ? with the answer: 19! and with a 95%Probability!
I was the cleverest in school…..
I forgot to mention: 95% means “I had HIGH CONFIDENCE” in the number 19″ JS
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Hey! This post couldn’t be written any better! Reading this post reminds me of my previous room mate!
He always kept chatting about this. I will forward this article
to him. Fairly certain he will have a good
read. Thanks for sharing!
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I leave a response whenever I appreciate a post on a website or if I
have something to contribute to the conversation. Usually
it’s triggered by the sincerness communicated in the post I looked at.
And on this post 95% (?) | Climate Etc.. I was actually moved enough to post a thought :) I do have some questions for you if you don’t
mind. Is it just me or does it seem like some of these remarks come across as if they are left by brain dead folks?
:-P And, if you are posting at additional places, I’d like to keep up
with anything new you have to post. Would you list all of your
social sites like your twitter feed, Facebook page or linkedin profile?