by Judith Curry
Diagnosis: paradigm paralysis, caused by motivated reasoning, oversimplification, and consensus seeking; worsened and made permanent by a vicious positive feedback effect at the climate science-policy interface.
In a previous post, I discussed the IPCC’s diagnosis of a planetary fever and their prescription for planet Earth. In this post, I provide a diagnosis and prescription for the IPCC.
In the 1990’s, the world’s nations embarked on a path to prevent dangerous anthropogenic climate change by stabilization of the concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases, which was codified by the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) treaty. The IPCC scientific assessments play a primary role in legitimizing national and international policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This objective has led to the IPCC assessments being framed around identifying anthropogenic influences on climate, dangerous environmental and socio-economic impacts of climate change, and stabilization of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
At the time of establishment of the UNFCCC, there was as yet no clear signal of anthropogenic warming in the observations, as per the IPCC First Assessment Report (FAR) in 1990. It wasn’t until the IPCC’s Second Assessment Report in 1995 that a ‘discernible’ human influence on global climate was identified. The scientific support for the UNFCCC treaty was not based on observations, but rather on our theoretical understanding of the greenhouse effect and simulations from global climate models. In the early 1990’s there was the belief in the feasibility of reducing uncertainties in climate science and climate models, and a consensus seeking approach was formalized by the IPCC. General circulation climate models became elevated to the central role by policy actors and scientists from other fields investigating climate change impacts and applications – this has in turn has elevated the role and position of these climate models in climate change research. Very substantial investments have been made in further developing climate models, with the expectations that these models will provide actionable information for policy makers.
In 2006/2007, climate change had soared to the top of the international political agenda, as a result of Hurricane Katrina, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, publication of the IPCC AR4 in 2007, and award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the IPCC. It was claimed that the science was settled, and that it clearly demanded radical policy and governmental action to substantially cut CO2 emissions.
Symptoms of the disease
Seven years later, with the release of the IPCC AR5, we find ourselves between the metaphorical rock and a hard place with regards to climate science and policy:
- as temperatures have declined and climate models have failed to predict this decline, the IPCC has gained confidence in catastrophic warming and dismisses the pause as unpredictable climate variability
- substantial criticisms are already being made of the IPCC AR5 Reports as well as of the IPCC process itself; IPCC insiders are bemoaning their loss of their scientific and political influence; the mainstream media seems not to be paying much attention to the AR5 SPM; and even IPCC insiders are realizing the need for a radical change
- global CO2 emissions continue to increase at higher than expected rates and a growing realization of the infeasibility of meeting emissions targets
- failure of the UNFCCC Conference of Parties to accomplish much since 2009 beyond agreeing to establish future meetings
- Growing realization that you can’t control climate by emissions reductions
- European countries and Australia are backing away from their emission reductions policies as they realize their economic cost and political unpopularity
- increasing levels of shrillness on both sides of the political debate, with the ‘warm side’ steeped in moral panic and hyperbole
And finally:
- after several decades and expenditures in the bazillions, the IPCC still has not provided a convincing argument for how much warming in the 20th century has been caused by humans.
- the politically charged rhetoric has contaminated academic climate research and the institutions that support climate research, so that individuals and institutions have become advocates; scientists with a perspective that is not consistent with the consensus are at best marginalized (difficult to obtain funding and get papers published by ‘gatekeeping’ journal editors) or at worst ostracized by labels of ‘denier’ or ‘heretic.’
- decision makers needing regionally specific climate change information are being provided by the climate community with either nothing or potentially misleading predictions from climate models.
Diagnosis of the cause of the disease
How and why did we land between a rock and a hard place on the climate change issue? There are probably many contributing reasons, but the most fundamental and profound reason is arguably that both the problem and solution were vastly oversimplified back in 1990 by the UNFCCC/IPCC, where the framed both the problem and the solution as irreducibly global. This framing was locked in by a self-reinforcing consensus-seeking approach to the science and a ‘speaking consensus to power’ approach for decision making that pointed to only one possible course of policy action – radical emissions reductions. The climate community has worked for more than 20 years to establish a scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change. The IPCC consensus building process played a useful role in the early synthesis of the scientific knowledge. However, the ongoing scientific consensus seeking process has had the unintended consequence of oversimplifying both the problem and its solution and hyper-politicizing both, introducing biases into the both the science and related decision making processes.
In their Wrong Trousers essay, Prins and Rayner argue that we have made the wrong cognitive choices in our attempts to define the problem of climate change, by relying on strategies that worked previously with ozone, sulphur emissions and nuclear bombs. While these issues may share some superficial similarities with the climate change problems, they are ‘tame’ problems (complicated, but with defined and achievable end-states), whereas climate change is ‘wicked’ (comprising open, complex and imperfectly understood systems). For wicked problems, effective policy requires profound integration of technical knowledge with understanding of social and natural systems. In a wicked problem, there is no end to causal chains in interacting open systems, and every wicked problem can be considered as a symptom of another problem; if we attempt to simplify the problem, we become risk becoming prisoners of our own assumptions.
The framing of the climate change problem by the UNFCCC/IPCC and the early articulation of a preferred policy option by the UNFCCC has arguably marginalized research on broader issues surrounding climate variability and change, resulting in an overconfident assessment of the importance of greenhouse gases in future climate change and stifling the development of a broader range of policy options. The result of this simplified framing of a wicked problem is that we lack the kinds of information to more broadly understand climate change and societal vulnerability.
Paradigm paralysis is the inability or refusal to see beyond the current models of thinking. The vast amount of scientific and political capital invested in the IPCC has become self-reinforcing, so it is not clear how move past this paralysis as long as the IPCC remains in existence. The wickedness of the climate change problem makes if difficult to identify points of irrefutable failure in either the science or the policies, although the IPCC’s insistence that the pause is irrelevant and temporary could provide just such a refutation if the pause continues. In any event, there is a growing realization of that neither the science or policy efforts are making much progress, and particularly in view of the failure climate models to predict the stagnation in warming, and that perhaps it is time to step back and see if we can do a better job of understanding and predicting climate variability and change and reducing societal and ecosystem vulnerabilities.
Broader implications of the disease
Specifically with regards to climate research, for the past decade most of the resources have been expended on providing projections of future climate change using complex Earth system models, assessing and interpreting the output of climate models, and application of the output of climate models by the climate impacts community.
The large investment in climate modeling, both in the U.S. and internationally, has been made with the expectation that climate models will support decision making on both mitigation and adaptation responses to climate change. So, are these complex global climate models especially useful for decision makers? The hope, and the potential, of climate models for providing credible regional climate change scenarios have not been realized.
With the failure of climate models to simulate the pause and regional climate variability, we have arguably reached the point of diminishing returns from this particular path of climate modeling – not just for decision support but also for scientific understanding of the climate system. In pursuit of this climate modeling path, the climate modeling community — and the funding agencies and the policy makers — have locked themselves into a single climate modeling framework with a focus on production runs for the IPCC, which has been very expensive in terms of funding and personnel. An unintended consequence of this strategy is that there has been very little left over for true climate modeling innovations and fundamental research into climate dynamics and theory — such research would not only support amelioration of deficiencies and failures in the current climate modeling systems, but would also lay the foundations for disruptive advances in our understanding of the climate system and our ability to predict emergent phenomena such as abrupt climate change.
Hoping and expecting to rely on information from climate models about projected regional climate change to guide adaptation response has diverted attention from using observational, historical and paleoclimate data from the region to more usefully develop the basis for future scenarios. Further, increased scientific focus on subseasonal (weeks) and seasonal (months) weather/climate forecasts could produce the basis for tactical adaptation practices with substantial societal benefits.
Securing the common interest on local and regional scales (referred to by Brunner and Lynch as “adaptive governance”) provides the rationale for effective climate adaptation strategies. This requires abandoning the irreducibly global consensus seeking approach in favor of open debate and discussion of a broad range of policy options that stimulate local and regional solutions to the multifaceted and interrelated issues surrounding climate change.
The IPCC needs to get out of the way so that scientists and policy makers can better do their jobs.
Conclusion
The diagnosis of paradigm paralysis seems fatal in the case of the IPCC, given the widespread nature of the infection and intrinsic motivated reasoning. We need to put down the IPCC as soon as possible – not to protect the patient who seems to be thriving in its own little cocoon, but for the sake of the rest of us whom it is trying to infect with its disease. Fortunately much of the population seems to be immune, but some governments seem highly susceptible to the disease. However, the precautionary principle demands that we not take any risks here, and hence the IPCC should be put down.
In diagnosing a mental disorder, as in modelling a climate, it is essential that you get the initial conditions right. Dr. Curry’s prescription is right, but for the wrong reason.
This is just wrong.
“In the 1990’s, the world’s nations embarked on a path to prevent dangerous anthropogenic climate change by stabilization of the concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases, which was codified by the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) treaty.”
More accurately stated:
[In the 1990’s, the progressives running many of the world’s western nations embarked on a path to use the threat of dangerous anthropogenic climate change to centralize power in their governments by claiming the need to stabilize the concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases, which was codified by the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) treaty.]
The substance of the UNFCCC treaty was known before a single delegate was sent. Which makes this wrong as well.
“The framing of the climate change problem by the UNFCCC/IPCC and the early articulation of a preferred policy option by the UNFCCC has arguably marginalized research on broader issues surrounding climate variability and change, resulting in an overconfident assessment of the importance of greenhouse gases in future climate change and stifling the development of a broader range of policy options.”
More accurately stated:
[The framing of the climate change problem by the UNFCCC/IPCC, as directed by their progressive/statist western political patrons, and the early articulation of the predetermined policy option by the UNFCCC has unquestionably and intentionally marginalized research on broader issues surrounding climate variability and change, resulting in an overconfident assessment of the importance of greenhouse gases in future climate change and stifling the development of a broader range of policy options, as required by the politicians who created and fund the IPCC.]
There, that’s better.
But the conclusion is of course correct. Time to put Old Yeller down (maybe Old Red would be more appropriate?), before he bites any more of the impoverished kids of the world.
Please do not say she is wrong. She is presenting a framework for discussion and maybe negotiation. Your revisions take away the possibilities of discussion and negotiation.
Theo Goodwin,
What precisely are the discussions and negotiations that you think are possible?
How to put the IPCC down?, When? Who pulls the trigger?
This is and always has been a political debate. I disagree with Dr. Curry on the wisdom of downplaying the mendacity of some of those involved. Those who fund, run, and benefit from the PR put out by the IPCC aren’t going to negotiate anything, with anyone. The best way to stop them…is to stop them. Not convince them to mend their ways.
The IPCC is just another political arm of the progressive movement in the west. I see no benefit in downplaying that.
Nor do I think Dr. Curry disagrees that the IPCC was at least in part a political operation from its inception. She has said that, or something very close to that, for a long time.
She is a climate scientist, appealing to her fellow scientists, and so treads softly. I suspect, and have said before, that I think she feels a strong pull to re-enter the tribe. But it is clear she will not sacrifice her integrity to do so.
So she phrases her posts in ways that are addressed as appeals to her colleagues. Offering them in effect a way out of the corner they have painted themselves into.
My comments are just that. Comments of an interested observer who enjoys the debate. And my opinion is that the only way to put the IPCC down is expose its political nature at every opportunity.
The only way to put the IPCC down is to elect governments that will defund it. The only way to “fix” climate science, is to get it away from the progressives. While I think Dr. Curry’s continued efforts are admirable, I also think they are politically naive, and doomed to failure.
That is my opinion, so that is what I write. Given what she has gotten from her own colleagues, and other commenters on this blog, I suspect Dr. Curry could not care less if I say she is wrong.
So this nobody anonymous commenter will continue to dissent.
Theo, Gary, I’m on both sides here. I see Judith’s post as a strong and clear statement which might have some influence – I’ve e-mailed our Environment Minister about it and suggested to a prominent friend that he e-mails the post to his influential circulation list. But I also tend to accept Gary’s view of the underlying political genesis of this issue. While I would personally argue that case, I think that it’s use by Judith (who in any event has a different perspective and is not as interested in politics as Gary and me) would detract from the impact of her post.
In this discussion, can we drop the term “progressives” in favour of something at least reasonably accurate – “repressives” perhaps?
I appreciate Dr. Curry’s position and commend her on her brave approach to this whole debate, but I agree with GaryM on this point – you don’t negotiate with terrorists and the AGW warmist cult has been just that for going on 15 yrs now. His corrections are valid, if not required to truly frame this matter…
“The IPCC is just another political arm of the progressive movement in the west. I see no benefit in downplaying that.”
In the light of revelations of 2009 and subsequently I would say the IPCC has fallen prey to people more like those who looted Enron and other corporations. E.G. Google Mr Pachauri’s history. It’s got nothing to do with “progressives” whatever you think those might be. Climate skeptics might have more credibility if they weren’t so aggressively far right wing in other areas.
Gary, you are presuming a vast conspiracy without presenting any evidence. Judith’s presumption is that some climate scientists and greenie activists armed with evidence of the basic radiative physics of CO2 and the reality of it increasing in the atmosphere convinced susceptible politicians that there was a real danger. I believe that Judith’s scenario is the more likely. Arguing that the whole thing is a conspiracy is not a productive line of attack. Stick with the science.
Don
I agree. I think it does no good in trying to present alternative rational viewpoints based on the facts as they seem to be, to believe vast numbers of scientists are in on some sort of conspiracy aided and abetted by all the worlds politicians.
That some scientists have confirmation bias and that some in positions of authority are able to guide the agenda may well be true. That there are green zealots who have seized on this as a good way to promote their ’cause’ may also be true. But a mass malevolent conspiracy? No.
tonyb
“Conspiracy” is not the word. Movement is. Progressivism is not a conspiracy. It is an elitist movement made up of people in various countries who share a belief in their ability, and right, to order the affairs of the inferiors.
And anyone who thinks it was the scientists who politicized climate science hasn’t been watching the process for the last 30 years.
The IPCC does exactly what it was created, staffed and funded to do. It did not create the drive for decarbonization. That came from the politicians. It was a U.S. senator who cause the thermostat to be turned up, and the windows in the Senate hearing room opened on a hot summer day in 1988. Not James Hansen.
These comments prove my point. So long there are those who tryo to ignore what the source of the problem really is, their prognoses are useless.
Put down the IPCC?
I say again, the only way to put down the IPCC is to cure the disease at its source, the politicians from whom it metastasized.
Don Monfort,
The only difference between what I wrote and what Dr Curry wrote was who in particular started the politicization of the process. By your confused logic, Dr. Curry is accusing the IPCC scientists of a conspiracy. And she is not. Nor was I.
I am not going to argue with you, Gary. What you said was very clearly a lame-ass conspiracy theory not supported by evidence or logic. Carry on, as you see fit.
I don’t think it has to be a conspiracy (although I did not read Gary’s entire post). I also think “progressives” is fine if you use the quotes. They think that they are progressive. I do object to giving them the noble title of liberal, however as they are only classically liberal in a small percent of their beliefs. It can be a “confederacy of dunces” instead. They think that something (A) is bad and that something else (B) makes them feel good so without really looking carefully at both sides, they are against A and for B and the rest is just group dynamics and reinforcing behaviors.
By the way, Judith in addition to the contributions to the “wicked” problem you mentioned, I will add the complicating factors that two of the things that are thought to be evil by one side, in reality have positive attributes that are conveniently ignored. At some level (note I said some), CO2 is a fertilizer. It is beneficial to photosynthetic organisms at the bottom of the food chain and therefore “can” lead to increases in productivity throughout the food chain. Also, the burning of fossil fuels provides the heat and energy needed to run society. Few were really against cleaning up the pollution from coal that led to acid rain and few were advocating shutting down all the coal plants in the 70’s. But now that some do advocate closing coal plants, one needs to really think about the consequences in a bad winter and ensure people don’t freeze to death. Some warmists tend to ignore this reality.
My LORD, Don! Did you not read the climategate emails? Of course there was a conspiracy. It didn’t take that many people to make it happen, either, since a very small cadre of suspects were in charge of the management of the surface weather data, namely, Professors Jones, Mann and Dr Hansen. However implicated or innocent the rest of the community might have been is moot. For the large scale modeling people’s efforts it was a simple matter of “garbage in – garbage out”.
I think half of the skeptics here are of the GaryM type, which gives the rest of you a bad name. You do need to separate yourselves better, and it is encouraging that some of you are.
Are you doing anything to separate yourself from your pariahs: fanny, joshie, mikey, lolly et al?
Science is a unifying concept, even if politics isn’t, but I happen to not disagree very strongly with what they say.
I’m sorry, but Gary is not Judith, he is free to frame the issues in a different way than she has, from a different perspective, and to look deeper for the origins of the problem. I completely agree, and have said so on this blog, that Judith has to tread softly because she is a respected climate scientist, and is still trying to reach out to those other scientists who have been caught up in the paradigm paralysis she speaks of. The way Judith talks about the problem is entirely appropriate – for her. She can stick to the science, but that doesn’t mean every observer must toe that line.
Gary’s way of analyzing the problem is also appropriate – for him. He never claimed a conspiracy, that implies that the participants had planned together to foist their agenda on the world. Don, I have great respect for you and what you’re doing, but I don’t think calling Garys assessment a “lame ass conspiracy theory” is accurate or helpful.
I think Gary explained himself very well, so I will just say this:
Sometimes people act in a way that behaves like a conspiracy with no active unified planning on their part – it is their ideology that leads them down certain policy paths, and they end up walking together with no intent.
I agree, in a general sense, with Judith, Gary, and you; however, I may not agree with everything you all might say about each other. I hope that’s ok.
I am also as free to disagree with Gary, as Gary is free to disagree with Judith and you are free to disagree with me. OK, tom?
Now does this not look like it alleges a grand conspiracy to centralize power for a motive other than to address the alleged threat of CAGW?:
“[In the 1990’s, the progressives running many of the world’s western nations embarked on a path to use the threat of dangerous anthropogenic climate change to centralize power in their governments by claiming the need to stabilize the concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases, which was codified by the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) treaty.]
The substance of the UNFCCC treaty was known before a single delegate was sent.”
Or do you really think that Gary meant that they all embarked on the same path independently and innocently, with the same ulterior motive to centralize power?
If you believed there was a real existential threat to the planet, my guess is you probably wouldn’t have a problem with strong, concerted government action using centralized power to address it. You might even demand it.
The central issue is the science. Carry on, as you see fit.
OK, jimmy dee. We will put you down in the et al category. You are known by the company you keep.
How dare you Sir ?
Your side has had a steamroller out during this entire movement. Your theory was incorrect, your data was manipulated and the results have been catastrophe in terms of policies and regulations. Careers have been crushed and jobs lost, while hundreds of billions have been wasted on this false agenda around the world. No Sir, we will not stand down until we take you down !
The problem with being a climate skeptic, or a lukewarmer like me, is the company you have to keep. There are quite a few kooks on this side of the fence, though one must admit that there are equal numbers of kooks, and a Cook, on the other side too.
One of the blogs I visit most often is Real Science but it’s an effort because the climate articles are sometimes outnumbered by political anti-presidential rantings. (And even if the rants were 100% true, I simply don’t care.)
To GaryM I say, the essence of being a true skeptic is the attitude, “Prove it.” You don’t come up with weird theories of your own.
Both armour and invisibility cloak for the
Slings of words and arrows of clocks
Is the core curiosity, the unrepetitive
Unveiling of understanding.
====================
I agree with tonyb. It’s probably wise for Judith to use the language she does, but the great thing about a blog is that if Faustino’s efforts result in our leaders reading this post, they can read GaryM’s comment and come to their own conclusion.
What I do wish, is that Judith would one day tell us why she thinks climate is a ‘problem’ (messy, wicked, or otherwise) at all? She treats it as an axiom, so we are left to infer, I suppose, that she means it is a problem now, in a way that it was not before industrialisation. But if so, why? And does it really merit the enormous expenditure implied in the improvement she wishes to see in modeling, when so many other, verifiable threats of catastrophe (antibiotic resistance, to name but one) clamour (or ought to) for investment?
We’ve just spent billions disconfirming the hypothesis that anthro-CO2 causes dangerous warming. In a sane world, we’d just leave it at that; the academic scum that has fouled the hull of climatology would fall away, and people like Judith would find themselves pre-eminent in a field that might have lost its glamour and prominence, along with 90% of its funding, but would have regained its integrity.
How would our leaders be affected by reading Gary’s post? I don’t think more than 2 progressives would experience an epiphany. Those who are predisposed to mistrust the progressives, already mistrust them without any need of guidance from Gary’s speculative allegations.
How should anyone concerned about the climate issue integrate this political stuff into their thinking? If AGW is a danger, it is a danger whether or not progressives are dishonest power grabbers. Actually, isn’t Gary’s allegation/argument an ad hominem logical fallacy, of some sort? We will have to ask willy, when he rears his head again. He must be out sick today, or he was called back to consensus dogma headquarters for repair and re-indoctrination.
Researcher Judith Curry is a scientist.
Does not the scientist ponder problems?
” she thinks climate is a ‘problem’ (messy, wicked, or otherwise) at all? She treats it as an axiom, …”
Don: Gary presents evidence, not ‘speculative allegations.’
Don, I should have been clearer – I was referring to the leaders we currently have in Australia, who are not dominated by progressive thinking, but amongst whom there are many who have, at one time or another, bought into the CAGW group-think, and remain, to varying degrees, in its grip.
These people are, axiomatically, unlikely to be scientifically literate. They looked to the scientific authority of the ‘experts’ when they joined the group-think. However remiss they may have been to accept so uncritically what Climategate has shown to be a contrived consensus, it’s important, now that authoritative dissent is finally being allowed to see the light of day, that they can look to it, for support in expressing what are still socially and politically risky views.
It’s not about preaching to the converted, but about emboldening and arming the ‘converted’, particularly the recently converted, with the means to convert others. Judith has impeccable credentials for this purpose. Those already thoroughly sceptical, but who are astute enough to realise that it’s best, when trying to change people’s views, not to belittle them for holding them in the first place, can link to Judith’s text knowing that she errs, if at all, on the side of rhetorical restraint. They can then read GaryM’s paraphrase, and come to their own conclusion – always the best kind. What’s not to like?
John RT, I’m not sure I understand your comment. Sure, climate is a ‘problem’, in the scientific sense, and in the same sense that hip displasia in overbred labradors is a ‘problem’. My point is that it’s neither the existential threat the warmists insist, nor indeed anywhere near the top of the list of mankind’s ‘problems’, and should not be funded and cosseted as though it were.
Tom;
Agreed: scientific ‘problem.’ The questions, ‘why do objects fall?’ ‘what is flight?’ can be explored. ‘Was there, really, a glacier at Talamanca, Costa Rica? When? for how long?’
…….,
No problem: merely curious.
I will have to help you John RT.
“In the 1990’s, the progressives running many of the world’s western nations embarked on a path to use the threat of dangerous anthropogenic climate change to centralize power in their governments by claiming the need to stabilize the concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases”
That looks like a broad accusation that unspecified “progressive” leaders of unspecified western nations conspired/decided amongst themselves to use the CAGW threat to centralize power. It looks to me like Gary is saying that the motive for centralizing power was not to solve the alleged CAGW problem, but it was to centralize power to order the affairs of the inferiors. Where did Gary provide evidence for that ulterior motivation?
If “progressive leaders” of the 1990s really believed that CAGW is an existential threat, then centralizing power to solve that particular problem was not out of character for “progressive leaders”. And after all, they had been elected to solve problems. So Gary’s real beef is that many western nations elect silly progressive leaders. I am with Gary on that. But it’s got nothing to do with whether or not we have to do something about AGW.
I don’t think that Judith is as certain as you are that AGW is not a problem. That is the problem. The uncertainty.
While I can’t speak for Dr. Curry, my interpretation of her remarks re: climate being a problem is that it is a massively complex, chaotic, non-linear coupled system that is nearly if not absolutely impossible to model with any real precision. We simply do not know all the variables affecting all the subsystems and which makes it impossible to fully understand how all those variables interact with each other.
it’s very likely you are right, Barnes; I’m 95% sure.
============
Judith could clear this up for us, but my understanding of her position is that AGW could very well be a problem and we need to understand climate better to determine if we have something to worry about, or not. And the IPCC and associated minions are not doing the science that will clear that up for us.
If Judith doesn’t want to talk, we could ask Mosher to explain his position. I think it’s about the same as Judith’s. Fred Moolten and Pekka may be more convinced that AGW is a problem and we need to take strong action, but their positions also seem to be sensible and not too far from Judith’s. They could be right. As for myself, I go with the smart people. We still need to find out if we have a problem. The pause could be just a pause. I would suggest giving Judith, Lindzen, Christy, Spencer,McIntyre, Mosher et al a few $BILLION$ to do some honest climate science.
GaryM
The road to IPCC climate paralysis was paved with both good and bad intentions in a convergence of powerful disparate interests.
Three examples of corporate and conservative contributions to IPCC mess.
1) The grandfather of the Kyoto Protocol and Cap and Trade was Ken Lay, former CEO of Enron. Lay was co-chair of Pres. Bush, Sr.’s 1992 re-election committee and also a heavy contributor to greens, i.e. $1M to Nature Conservancy.
2) The UK Thatcher government’s support of the IPCC and CO2 demonization coincidentally(?) worked toward demolishing coal labor unions. (And now coal plants are being converted to burn wood – NUTS!)
3) Edward Teller -a conservative, pro-nuclear scientist- funded AGW research while director of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in 1959. He reportedly saw AGHG as a means to counter KGB funded activists who opposed western nuclear power and industry, the latter on grounds of dangerous cooling pollution.
Good and bad intentions of disparate competing interests have paved the road to IPCC paralysis hell. Progressives bear a share of the blame and no more.
Contradictions concatenate. Nonetheless, the usual suspect makes a convenient whipping boy, at the make hay market.
==================
First, Bush was and is a progressive Republican. Not as statist as a Clinton or Obama, but a big government statist none the less.
Thatcher only accepted the claims of “global warming” until the politics of those driving the movement became clear. Then she realized it was just the progressive agenda disguised as science, ala DDT, the ozone layer, acid rain, nuclear power.
There is an old saying, one of the greatest success of the devil was convincing man he did not exist. Progressives have not been able to do that, but they have muddied the waters of what they truly believe and seek to the extent that most people have no coherent description of what a progressive is.
And this thread is a classic example of their success.
+ 10
Maggie should have never listened to those tricky progressives. What made her do it?
Hopefully, more of the hysterical progressive types will feel compelled to follow the lead of this committed alarmist:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2436551/A-weatherman-breaks-tears-vows-NEVER-fly-grim-climate-change-report.html
We can take up a collection to pay the sirgery bills for any of our local alarmist trolls, who want to demonstrate their willingness to make a statement.
Is there really a need for surgery now
That the pause is killing the cause?
Garym is correct here, Don Monfort and the other who deny the leftist investment in the AGW agenda are insane.
So is the middling of Dr. Curry.
IPCC should be “put down” the way Rome put down Carthage.
The fact that many people want to impose their own political ideology in interpreting this debate is no where clearer than the blaming of progressivism. When in fact progressivism is a philosophy celebrating technological, economic, industrial and social change as positive force for improving the human condition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism
The real argument of the warmists is that of the conservative or more radically the reactionary. The belief in the halcyon days of old, the moral degeneration of modern advancement, and the desire to force a return to an earlier “more moral age” i.e. a romanticism of the idyllic preindustrial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism
beautifully framed and stated — nice work Judith
Ben
I hope more climate scientists will have the courage to take a similar stand.
Hope all you want Steve, it isn’t going to happen. Isn’t it convenient that so few of the actual faults of the IPCC are listed (largely obfuscated) by Dr. Curry?
“increasing levels of shrillness on both sides of the political debate, with the ‘warm side’ steeped in moral panic and hyperbole”
“On both sides”????? There wouldn’t have been sides at all if it weren’t for premeditated assault of the Greenshirt left, its academic and media operatives to promote carbon regulations for state interests.
Next comes the new IPCC which will be the same as the old IPCC, Dr. Curry and fools here will endorse such stupidity. Dr. Curry is a false flag operation.
As one of the most popular politicians in the US says; “What difference,at this point, does it make?” if JC’s peers even know or care if they are being used for political ends? If you can’t get grants or publication, let alone get your science into the IPCC, there are plenty who are willing for whatever reason.
It has always been about advancing the cause of global governance, of further entrenching the UN at the heart of national politics, of imposing some kind of global social joust ice and economic share-the-wealth schemes nd scams.
The environmentalists Killer App, or so they thought, much better at scaring the rubes than the Club Of Rome, or Silent Spring, or recycled Malthusian death scripts, is now a huge problem for the Transnational Greenie Industries.
There Kiler App is really a butt naked emperor and they can’t stop that truth from becoming evident. They can deflect opinion, stretch out their ride on the $Gravy $Train, but this global warming nonsense is essentially over.
Too bad about the $$$$$$Trillions of dollars flushed down the Great Greenie Gaia Crapper. Might have been better spent finding a cure for cancer or delivering clean water to poor people, or improving schools and public infrastructure.
The worst off will be all the journalists around the world who have just been able to reprint Greenpeace news releases and call it reporting. They might actually have to turn on their former Greenie friends and blame them for all the trouble and suffering the Greenies are causing around the world.
We should keep in mind that AGW theory is solely a Western phobia so it will never be, ‘global,’
Politics will be the decider not climate change, though a cooling earth would certainly help.
Brilliant, brilliant work, Dr. Curry. Who knew that a Renaissance Woman would emerge from climate science? A Renaissance Woman is someone who has an excellent grasp of the science, scientific method, the political process, and all the connections among them. Your essay clearly and concisely states what is important at this time for the IPCC, AGW theory, and policy makers.
Everyone should have to read this. So glad I discovered this site. Brilliant, thoughtful work.
Me too, I hope you have spent time at Climate Audit as well. It was Steve McIntyre who has led me to here, Bishop Hill, and Wattupwiththat. I am so grateful to all who are educating me on this complex and interesting subject.
IPCC should be put down.
Agree.
Judith,
One thing is certain– you will either be very well known for someone who played a key role in putting the ship of climate science back on a true course or a rouge wave that will be remembered more as a curious phenomenon. Either way, you certainly show boldness and conviction and have put your ultimate legacy on the line, which I can admire regardless of future historical accounting of your efforts and impact.
RGates
Yes, disband the IPCC and give their funding to me. I will obviously spend it very wisely….(and quickly)
tonyb
Indeed R Gates, I wonder if Judith’s persistence, honesty, and body of scientific work will end up giving the mainstream paradigm’ers the rosy cheeks of red-faced embarrassment.
R Gates,
I know which horse I would rather be on.
True, true, the IPCC should be put down and financial support for the UN should be contingent on that.
WOW!!!! Judith for President!!!! If she has no inclination to run, we must draft her.
Most excellent, Dudette!
In my “Systems Theory…” course, I try to get my students to understand that the best way to solve a wicked problem is to go at it like two porcupines mating – very carefully. A few small steps, assess their effect, more small steps, assess – repeat as long as needed. It is true you may only reach a local optimum, but also true that the unintended consequences will be more manageable.
This Is a wonderful essay, that needed to be written by someone of our hostess’s stature. But there remains the REALLY intractible problem.
WHO IS GOING TO BELL THE CAT?
Just tell Fanny that it’s Hansen’s cat. He’ll do anything to get close to Hansen.
Very foundational and reasonable. Unfortunately, all it will take is a temperature up-spike a couple of years from now and the IPCC will be “off the hook”. Or, if the IPCC manages to get its political agenda adopted, we’ll hear how a continued pause (or decline) is well-redicted by the models and how their policies saved the world — even though they wouldn’t even be implemented yet.
Oh, cue the FOMD machine, with its creepy clown music in the background and its high praise of Hansen.
Curtain-call answered, and thanks for the cue, Wayne. Glad yah missed me!
What I will say, Fan of more Trolling, is that by allowing you to post your drivel here, it does expose the fact that skeptic-friendly blogs do far less censoring and banning than the “Consensus” blogs do. People who are just learning about the subject can at least glean that much.
Someone on the skeptic side who displays the blogging characteristics that you do would not see the light of day on warmist blogs. Of course, I concede that there are very few skeptics who are lame, misleading, dishonest, ideologically blinded trolls like you are.
Glad to have increased your knowledge of yourself and your trollishness Fan! That’s strong blog analysis isn’t it! Good on yah!
Could I please borrow your crystal ball?
re-post from Open thread – seems pertinent here.
Let’s examine this again.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/trend/offset:0.1/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:12/trend/offset:-0.1
It is the 40-year trend from HADCRUT4 with rails at plus and minus 0.1 degrees. We see today is still within the rails. We also see that a very analogous double-dip to the lower rail occurred just prior to 1998. Enough said.
Thanks, Jim D. That chart does a really good job of highlighting the pause since about 2000.
You probably also noticed that a -0.1 perturbation has been quite normal in the last 40 years, so this is just another one. Some of these are followed quite closely by +0.1 perturbations, so it could be that in 2 years we are 0.2 degrees warmer, just from the repeating properties of the past variation. Skeptics usually like pattern recognition exercises like this.
What is amazing to me on this diagram is that the 12-month running temperature never runs parallel to the mean trend for long. It is always oscillating up and down between the 0.1 amplitude extremes, and we are due for an uptick now.
Technical analysis of a weather chart is a new one. Groundbreaking work, Jim D.
Jim D, We are only due for an uptick, if, and only if, the temperature data is non-ergodic. The temperature data is, I would suggest, ergodic.
The underlying trend is an upward trend. That is all that matters.
These short-term yearly and decadal +/- fluctuations are merely noise which serve to obscure the trend.
Advanced signal processing applications make use of techniques such as Kalman filtering, which rely on the underlying model of the noise to retrieve the actual signal. The model of the noise in this case is abundantly clear. It is essentially the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) mixed with occasional volcanic disturbances.
Once the SOI noise model is applied to the global surface temperature data, such as GISS, the underlying trend becomes very apparent. What is left is the quite obvious GHG-warming forcing function which has acted to raise surface temperatures relentlessly over the past 100+ years.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
WHT, you opine that the current trend IS an upward trend. That is quite simply just plain wrong. The correct verb to use is ‘WAS’, not ‘IS ‘. If data is ergodic, then no-one has any idea what the current trend ‘IS’.
Suddenly Cripwell is not a fan of 130+ years of historical evidence, and instead prefers that a hypothetical will come to his rescue.
Calvinball Cripwell gets to make up his own rules whenever he feels like it.
we’ll hear how a continued pause (or decline) is well-redicted by the models and how their policies saved the world — even though they wouldn’t even be implemented yet.
That worked for ozone, but this time, too many people who know too much are watching, and that scam will not work this time with CO2.
We can but hope that this is century scale cyclic cooling; if it’s millenial scale, Katie bar the door.
I know, I know, Katie’s half deaf; she’s been hollered at for six or seven years now, hasn’t heard one bit.
============
Well done, Prof Curry, well done.
I think one of the most significant factors you mentioned is the time scale. One component of climate change is literally geological. One might argue that geological changes over the past 10,000 years don’t matter, but on the other hand a new island was just created off the coast of Pakistan. If climate is spatio-temporal chaotic, who can say things like this don’t matter?
Then there are the long-term ocean cycles.
While some have argued that observation isn’t necessary to crack the climate egg, I don’t agree. I think the crux of the problem is that we don’t have data over a long enough time span to adequately inform climate theory. Anything short of that is simply a guess, no matter how powerful the computer.
While some have argued that observation isn’t necessary to crack the climate egg, I don’t agree. I think the crux of the problem is that we don’t have data over a long enough time span to adequately inform climate theory. Anything short of that is simply a guess, no matter how powerful the computer.
We have more than enough Ice Core data to analyze and figure out true causes of climate change in the past 800k years. We don’t need to guess and we do not need an electronic computer. Look at the data and use the computer between your ears.
Ice core data isn’t all that straightforward for some of the measurements. Ice is a bit of a natural integrator. But no matter, we’ll see how it unfolds, won’t we?
R. Gates–
I do like “rouge wave” when applied to the distaff side.
Hmm, maybe it means all the skeptics wear make-up:-)
Perhaps if she and other female scientists lead the way in toppling the IPCC boat they’ll be both rogue and rouge waves.
Rogues cheek’t all rougey
Roar of fell catastrophe.
Waves of Furies boil.
=============
Lance, I did wonder whether Judith had changed her hairstyle and colour.
Excellent analysis Dr Curry. May I add a further complicating factor, which is the policy capture by anti-science ‘Green’ movements in the Western world.
Clearly, if CO2 are such a big problem, we need low-CO2 electricity generation, not no electricity generation. In Europe, that would mean nuclear generation for baseload, with fracking of natural gas for dispatchable generation to reduce the use of coal, thus reducing other pollutants at the same time.
It would mean lean-burn conventional engines which work better, oddly, without catalytic converters. These arguably reduce air pollution in cities (as would lean-burn) but more pollution in production and more higher fuel consumption.
It would mean GM crops for drought resistance and higher yields from the same land area.
Instead, we get non-dispatchable power from windmills and solar PV, both of which need big subsidies, and electric cars which cost more, have a high environmental impact and don’t meet most people’s use cases, biofuels causing food prices rises, and a lot of hand-waving about reduction in demand and insulation. Not to mention the export of industrial jobs to countries which don’t levy ‘Green’ taxes.
The anti-science ‘Green’ movements share much of the blame with the IPCC – we should listen to neither of them until they come to their senses and go back to the science.
The drive towards better energy storage technology would alleviate a lot of these issues with both renewable energy and electric transportation. This could also become the way for the future with some success.
And if unicorns existed …
Hi Jim,
But that’s the trouble. There is no better energy storage technology on the horizon. Hydro would be best, but there are few places where it is feasible on the scale necessary (except in low population density countries like Norway, which already uses hydro for generation).
Nothing else is on the horizon for anything like a reasonable commercial cost – batteries certainly aren’t, nor flywheels. Hydrogen (produced by electrolysis) has about the most potential, but the difficulties of storing and transporting hydrogen are large.
With current or foreseeable technology, its nuclear and natural gas, or a big reduction in demand.
Natural gas won’t last long. The US reserves when burned up will only add 1 ppm CO2 to the atmosphere, so I see no problem with that. Beyond NG is where the thinking needs to be. Nuclear is not a solution suitable for many countries, while renewable can be. Hydrogen and better ways of producing biofuels would be great.
Joule Unlimited already has a better way to produce biofuels from CO2 and sea water or waste water.
Methane is a great energy storage medium: relatively easy to store using mature technology. Hydrogen will be easy to produce from solar PV, with technology definitely on the horizon, although not mature. All we need is a bio-tech based system for taking hydrogen from electrolysis and CO2 from the air and creating methane. The energy yield from the reaction should be sufficient to power the extraction of CO2 from the air, or the ocean surface if that’s cheaper to implement.
Shouldn’t be too hard.
In June they announced a solid Li-S battery that is only one order of magnitude away from the ideal power density.
http://www.nature.com/news/sulphur-back-in-vogue-for-batteries-1.13267
The current improvements are about 3x improvement per decade.
I would guess that cheap, energy dense electrical storage is between 20-30 years away.
This is the main reason I am not bothered about oil depletion.
Judith Curry, please consider that the “best available science” points plainly toward the following climate-change future:
Milestone #1 James Hansen’s climate-change worldview is scientifically correct; and
Milestone #2 IPCC5 affirms that worldview (albeit too-conservatively); and
Milestone #3 Now the electorate, politicians, religious leaders, and enterprise-builders must move forward, together and sustainably.
In particular, Milestone #3 ain’t the job of IPCC5, is it Judith Curry?
Conclusion The ‘paralysis’ and the ‘pause’ both are illusions … and hence, both are pernicious forms of climate-change denialism that are attractive mainly because they are timid.
That’s common sense, eh Climate Etc readers?
There’s no ‘pause’ and there’s no ‘paralysis’; we’re in the climate-change pipe, five by five!
Yawn. Where are the Hansen Shrine pics, FOMTrolling? We’re still waiting.
Spoiler: your B.A. in PoliSci isn’t an actual science, much less one pertaining to climate. Hope that helps! ^_^
Thanks Judith for your very clear diagnosis.
Prognosis? Terminal!
I second the motion to put this terminally ill beast out of its misery.
Restore the Scientific Method.
Antidote: Roll out the Red Team: the “independent group that challenges an organization to improve its effectiveness.”
e.g., See the NIPCC’s Climate Change Reconsidered II
Excellent diagnosis and noteworthy suggestions for medication, Dr Curry. Thanks.
Well worth the read! You make me proud to be a Ga. Tech alum!
‘Hoping and expecting to rely on information from climate models about projected regional climate change to guide adaptation response has diverted attention from using observational, historical and paleoclimate data from the region to more usefully develop the basis for future scenarios.’
Yay! You’re talking my language. Please send lots of money for research.
tonyb
The patient, as they’ve always done for the last 200,000 years, will get through the occasional fever or chills. It was the IPCC that died on the operating table and they called it last Friday at 10am GMT. It was an elective suicide.
Pointman
Hmmm … how about a doctor assisted suicide … Dr. Curry.
It’s dead, Jim.
2 questions for the kumbaya chorus on this thread.
How do you think the IPCC should be put down?
And by whom?
Disbanded but the very organization that created it the UN. Next.
Dr. Curry explained that long ago. No more consensus reports. Reports will present debates among scientists in all its rawness. That step would set us on the road to truth and effectively kill the IPCC propaganda machine. Notice that the step raises the importance of criticism hugely and removes the motivation for going along to get along.
In effect every problem will have two solutions and both will be correct. Eventually one side will get tired of arguing and which ever one has the most political/economic/military power will win.
Gary, those are not difficult questions given that is a metaphor.
IPCC is a smallish ( by UN standards) organization headquartered in the WMO building in Geneva. You defund it. More precisely, the UN contributing members declare that their UN contributions come with a defunding string attached. Tuvalu may fund it themselves if they wish to continue. Gone. Having personally had to let go 14 people in three departments in one day as a result of an economically forced downsizing that was no fault of theirs personally, I would even volunteer for an all expenses paid trip to Geneva to deliver the message personally and individually to each and every one of them, starting with the director.
The bigger and more politically charged difficulties will be in places like the UK and the US, where the IPCC draws many of the contributing authors. Getting NASA out of climate and back to Mars. Shut some departments. Right sizing modeling staff; there are plentynof big data jobs in industry, and those modellers who are not sufficiently skilled to switchnshoild not have been working on climate models in the first place. Reallocating supercomputer time and staff to underfunded weather from overfunded climate. Early retirement or terminating those that fail to provide scientific rigor (let’s name some names-Feely at PMEL for pretending upwelling is ocean acidification, and that OA is a problem with biologically mismanaged oyster hatcheries. See Shell Game Post. The group at NOAA that has not quality controlled weather station siting, and who did not document homogenization that gives an upward temperature bias. There are many senior execs who could manage those challenges once the basic policy decisions at a Congressional level are made. Australia seems to have made something of a start just in the past two weeks.
The 2014 and 2016 elections will provide additional opportunities in the US if the Keystone is blocked, the EPA tries to regulate away coal plants (which will get overturned on legal challenge as clearly beyond their present lawful charter given there are no proved scaled CCS technologies…)
Anotherwords any responsible adult acting like an adult could manage the simple and necessary housecleaning tasks that occur every day in the real world.
Rud Istvan,
Surprisingly enough, I got that it was a metaphor.
But you didn’t answer the second question. You answer to the first assumed you had the power to close the IPCC down. I suspect that is not the case.
But the question of whom is the heart of the matter.
Do any of you really see any impetus whatsoever from those who actually fund and control the iPCC to shut it down? Did you read the news the last week or so? The polticians were not happy with the PR aspects of the SPM, so the IPCC changed it. Who precisely do you see willing to close it down, that actually has the power to do so?
Since you all failed to answer correctly, I’ll tell you. No one.
‘Getting NASA back to Mars’ is a spectactular waste of money…and they’re already there at the right – ‘adult’ – scale.
Gary is right, as he often is. The IPCC will be around for some time to come.
Gary, don’t confuse the will to shut it down with the power to shut it down.
Pauchauri is stepping down effective in 2015. This is an opportunity to thank him and the IPCC for their work, declare victory and shut the door.
You already said how and by whom Gary. These are political questions that you have faced, but very few others are willing to see and understand statism and the power it has over people’s minds. Wasn’t it Thomas Jefferson who said that the natural course of things is for liberty to yield and for tyranny to gain ground? It is very difficult to change the natural course of things without catastrophic failure of the dominant paradigm.
And, as someone once said, paraphrasing, there is a great deal of ruin in nations, and the ruin must proceed to a degree severe enough that people are ready to abandon the ways of thinking that ruined them.
Some of us are trying to change our governments now, Gary, before they are ruined, but it is a huge challenge fraught with great personal risk. Too many of us bow out and make excuses, which is unfortunate. I, myself, will not bow out.
It can’t be put down now. Mr. Pachauri has now enough money to keep it going.
Critical questions. The demise of the IPCC can occur only if sufficient significant governments seek it. Given that almost all Western governments have invested large amounts of political capital in the CAGW issue, it would mean that they have to determine that that is no longer politically sustainable, i.e., that sufficient of their electorates will vote against them on this issue (or on the economic pain caused by anti-emissions policies). That is by no means certain, however poorly many of us here think of the IPCC. Even Australia’s new scrap-the-carbon-tax government still buys into the IPCC story. This struggle is far from over, but Judith’s post will surely help sanity to prevail.
+100
Like Lysenkoism the IPCC diversion will only be dismantled when the political elite turns away from it. The truly horrible aspect of AGW is that it folds in well with so many people’s social, economic and political ideology. When it creates more negatives than positives for the politicians it will be abandoned and that day grows ever closer but it is still some distance off.
We can all go on debating the science till the cows come home but the science is so fuzzy it’s like a Rorschach Ink blot, it can mean almost anything to anybody depending on their outlook. The political class recognise this and it controls the real money and as long as they perceive an advantage in doing so they will fund climate alarmism.
Yes faustino,
Paradigm cracking required.
Ground swell protesting against
trough swill investing.
Beth the serf.
Maybe it is time for the Georgia Tech fight song. Not the whole thing but maybe a few lines.
“I`m a Ramblin Wreck from Georgia Tech and a hell of an engineer, like all the jolly good fellows I drink my whiskey clear, I`m a heluva, heluva, heluva engineer.”
My son is Georgia Tech graduate. Dr. Curry makes me proud that he went there. Go Yellow Jackets!
*by the very…*
Not sure that going to all the trouble of ‘putting it down’ will be needed.
Judging on the worldwide yawn that greeted yesterday’s announcement , I think it will just fade away into ignored obscurity – along with its members.
History books will show that it was a brief product of its time..but as the times changed (and the climate didn’t) it just withered ino ot irrelevance
I will shed no tears – bar for the good name of ‘science’ which it has done so much to harm .
Latimer, I suspect that you are a tad optimistic.
Alwa*s look on *he brigh* side of life! And hope one’s ke*board ge*s fixed ;-(
The IPCC suffers greatly from “Skeptical Science Sydrome”. The fatal brain disease has symptoms as follows:
1. Lack of ability to realize reality over fiction.
2. Lack of acceptable social skills.
3. Lack of cognitive ability to realize how sick one has become.
These are but a few of the common symptoms of this horrible disease.
No-one has answered my question. Let me try again. All the learned scientific societies have endorsed the ‘science’ put out by the IPCC. What scientist of sufficient stature is left to tackle, head on, the conclusions of a conference whose deputy chair was the head of the WMO?
That’s easy: George Carlin!
Richard Lindzen.
Seriously, in both Hansen’s recent commentaries and also Hansen’s recent articles, he does not scruple to say that the IPCC5’s conclusions are catastrophically wrong-headed.
Hopefully this reassures you that the tradition of vigorous scientific criticism is alive and well, Jim Cripwell!
Here is a Hockey Stick I believe in
http://oilindependents.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Crude-production-in-Texas-and-North-Dakota-5-9-12.jpg
An early contributor whom I regard as a person of integrity:
Carlin, Alan. “Comments on Draft Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions Under the Clean Air Act (Based on TSD Draft of March 9, 2009).” Scientific Blog. Carlin Economics and Science, March 16, 2009. http://www.carlineconomics.com/files/pdf/end_comments_7b1.pdf
“I do not maintain that I or anyone else have all the answers needed to take action now. Some of the conclusions reached in these comments may well be shown to be incorrect by future research. My conclusions do represent the best science in the sense of most closely corresponding to available observations that I currently know of, however, and are sufficiently at variance with those of the IPCC, CCSP, and the Draft TSD that I believe they support my increasing concern that EPA has not critically reviewed the findings by these other groups.
“As discussed in these comments, I believe my concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA before any attempt is made to reach conclusions on the subject of endangerment from GHGs. I believe that this review should start immediately and be a continuing effort as long as there is a serious possibility that EPA may be called upon to implement regulations designed to reduce global warming. The science has and undoubtedly will continue to change and EPA must have the capability to keep abreast of these changes if it is to successfully discharge its responsibilities. The Draft TSD suggests to me that we do not yet have that capability or that we have not used what we have.”
I know and/or have talked to many scientists who have served on the IPCC ARs. Are you implying that they are less than honest? That they are blind, or haven’t worked hard enough? Because the impression I get talking to them is that they worked their tails off trying to present the best science they possibly can, working for years to do so.
No. I assume that the majority of scientists are honest. They are also human.
I do not make the same assumption for “policy makers”.
I do not make the same assumption for “policy makers”
The IPCC report is written by scientists, not policymakers.
David Appell: “The IPCC report is written by scientists, not policymakers”
The Summary Report for Policy Makers is written by policymakers for policy makers. And that’s the only official document available at this moment.
■”European countries and Australia are backing away from their emission reductions policies as they realize their economic cost and political unpopularity”
Do not discount the Gallic folly… as Hollande and his minions will implement a carbon tax as a bargain with the EU tolerating their abysmal record on deficit reduction…
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.
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. 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 it is from extra ‘back radiation’ from more CO2 is scientific 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; the aerosol effect has stabilised hence no more warming. Don’t let this intergovernmental posse of confidence cheats and their unscientific hacks fool you yet again.
“Large droplets in rain clouds scattering light much more effectively than small droplets”
That is just a wrong statement. Satellite pictures show “ship wakes” where bright lines in cloud reflection occur where ships below have added aerosols.
These observations are valid but what they demonstrate is the nucleation of water droplets made visible by Mie scattering. However, if you look at clouds from underneath as the droplets coarsen, they get darker.
This is not absorption. Instead it is a large droplet process in the first 200 m or so which glider pilots see as directional UV rich scattering. It is related to the Glory phenomenon.
In 2010 G. L Stephens saw the same as I did except in satellite data which show louds with bimodal droplet size distributions have on average 25% higher optical depth.
He was apparently unable to publish this: my paper was rejectad by a Nature journal. I suspect it is because this news is devastating for the ‘consensus’ because the sign of the effect of pollution (reducing droplet coarsening kinetics) is reversed: this is the real AGW not CO2 which self compensates.
You are saying that for a given liquid content the effective droplet radius has exactly the opposite effect on optical depth from every theory out there.
There are two independent optical processes. Sagan’s theory assumes just the Mie scattering. Twomey showed the hemispherical albedo saturates at ~0.5 but he warned that for higher albedos, there had to be a second, different process.
Climate Alchemy pretends the monotonic albedo – optical depth relationship first used by Lacis and Hansen in 1974 extends up to the high albedos. It does not.
What really happens is that the second optical process takes over and shields the interior of the cloud so the real albedo – optical depth curve is the sum of the two. G L Stephens observed this at the same time as I did.
Thus the existing theories based on Sagan’s physics are wrong which is the main reason Climate Alchemy is in such a mess with the ludicrous claim that polluted clouds hide AGW.
In 2004, NASA substituted the Sagan idea for Twomey’s in order to get AR4; this was sharp practice.
As I mentioned at the beginning polluted clouds are more reflective and therefore let less shortwave get through to the surface. This is easiest to see over the oceans where their natural droplets are larger. This is just from observations.
Ships’ tracks clouds are thin. Thicker clouds behave differently, hence Stephens’ observations of an average 25% higher optical depth for bimodal clouds than unimodal clouds in the satellite data.
Do as I did and go outside to observe slow moving cumulus clouds as they prepare to rain – they get much darker underneath because less light gets into the top! Sagan’s single process theory (he misunderstood van der Hulst’s empirical data) is wrong.
AlecM, you know that clouds forming rain have to be deeper than those that don’t, I expect. This alone accounts for your observation.
Stephens corrected for these factors: bimodality gives average 25% higher optical depth than unimodal.
I observed single deep clouds as the droplets coarsen so approximately constant water content and physical dimensions.
I think I’ve never seen so sharp
The dimmest vision in clouds’ dark.
================
“Conclusion
The diagnosis of paradigm paralysis seems fatal in the case of the IPCC, given the widespread nature of the infection and intrinsic motivated reasoning. We need to put down the IPCC as soon as possible – not to protect the patient who seems to be thriving in its own little cocoon, but for the sake of the rest of us whom it is trying to infect with its disease. Fortunately much of the population seems to be immune, but some governments seem highly susceptible to the disease. However, the precautionary principle demands that we not take any risks here, and hence the IPCC should be put down.”
I think the only thing you save is the UN.
The IPCC is nice heavy anchor wrapped around the UN neck.
It’s a UN problem.
And the UN never solves problems and truly deserves the IPCC.
I say, let Nature take it’s course. And after the UN is dead, maybe
think about starting another international body.
gbaikie, if the UN dies, I would not replace it. Any replacement is likely to go the way of the UN, and serve little or no useful purpose at high cost.
+ 99
The IPCC analogy-
1. Your doctor warns you of a great medical catastrophe coming, but you cannot feel it or sense it yet. Although no diagnostic evidence exists of this coming catastrophe, your doctor claims that computer models of your body clearly predict it will occur soon.
2. If you wait until you can sense it or detect it with a diagnostic tool, it will be too late to do anything about it.
3. In order to avoid this modeled medical catastrophe, you must give your doctor and your doctor’s investment group great amounts of your money to implement treatments provided by companies that they just happen to have invested in all along. If you refuse treatment, your doctor will label you a denier.
4. After your doctor implements the treatments, your health will be the same as it is now. Your doctor will proclaim to have saved your life.
This particular patient and attendant pathology seems highly resistant to treatment. Perhaps starving the disease (i.e. defunding and US participation) is appropriate.
So, the solution to global warming is to get rid of the IPCC, or is there something else you would want to do? The IPCC are just the messengers, and you just want to kill the messenger.
There is no evidence that global warming IS a problem JimD, so why do we have to solve a non-problem? Hasn’t there been a universally acknowledged pause? Anyway, warming is good for everything and everybody. Only severe and sudden warming would be a problem, and there is no evidence that that is occurring or will occur. We have only tiny, slow increases in surface temps and tiny, slow increases in sea level rise, which have never ever been a problem for the inhabitants of the earth to deal with.
All else is woefully inadequate modeling work done by a relatively small, corrupt and ideologically-driven “scientific” community that is reinforcing its own biases and reviewing its own work.
You may think that once you have successfully killed the messenger, no one will even think that global warming is mostly anthropogenic, let alone a consensus. Science exists outside the IPCC reports, it may be news to you. That is not the solution to your global warming problem. You can’t make it go away just like that.
Very insightful analysis, but may I suggest that it is also unscientific to analyze climate dynamics in isolation from social dynamics. What you refer to as “vicious positive feedback effect at the climate science-policy interface” is what is also called “the second-order cybernetics,” which “studies how our perceptions of systems affects our ability to design ways of controlling them.” Surely, taking these second-order feedback into account is required for the climate system.
It is also required for the economic system, in which the pervasive paradigm of infinite growth in a finite planet also suffers from paralysis. Perhaps a new paradigm of steady-state economics and integral human development, as opposed to just growth in consuming superfluous goods and services, would relax some of the pressures on climate scientists to deliver solutions that are utterly outside the scope of climate physics. Just putting down the IPCC is no solution.
Part of the solution would be to make climate scientists aware of the unavoidable assumptions and values that may be influencing them, in various ways, when assessing climate data and climate simulations. Both climate scientists and politicians must understand that threats of climate change will not change human behavior patterns rooted in the patriarchal mentality of control and domination. May I suggest that the real solution must come from a new culture of solidarity and sustainability.
Luis,
Traditions and perceptions may be your stumbling blocks; step away from provincial patriarchal patterns. Posit cooperation as the essential human evolutionary tool. This reality – not the bugaboo of control and domination – pre-dates the Progressive/Statist solidarity. Look to AGW epigones for examples of solidarity.
..
“… human behavior patterns rooted in the patriarchal mentality of control and domination. May I suggest that the real solution must come from a new culture of solidarity and sustainability.”
..
Cooperation, proven through ages and epochs, promotes and advances civilization.
Further:
From whom do we learn which are ‘ superfluous goods and services?’
And, who decides which climate changes are ‘threats?’
The planet may be finite, but there’s room for at least an order of magnitude more people than currently inhabit it, with the right technology. Making proper use of even cis-Lunar space, at least 2 orders of magnitude. All this while reducing the ecological footprint of that increased population to a trace of its current value.
Anybody familiar with past growth of technology, and various projections for its future growth, knows this. Our hostess, as an admirer of Freeman Dyson, is surely aware of it, and presumably writes from that perspective. The problem isn’t to limit growth, it’s to channel it into avenues that reduce the footprint.
The fake “climate science” based on a totally obsolete paradigm that’s been used to try to justify a power grab by enemies of growth needs to be exposed for what it is and discarded. The IPCC, the organization at the center of this “paradigm” is the place to start.
“How do you think the IPCC should be put down?”
“And by whom?”
These are two questions from GaryM.
My answer, ” honest, competent and responsible people and scientists will get the job done. It is happening now Gary on this very thread before your very eyes. Brave leaders like Judith will lead the charge.”
Dr. Judith Curry, Boudica of Climate Science. May she live long and conquer.
The IPCC and those who support it and work to spread the alarm, have gone about their task in the worst way possible nearly from the beginning. It’s their fault to a very great extent, that this issue has become so politicized. It’s only gotten much, much worse. The very notion of attacking people as “deniers,” is just so, so dumb. Is insulting what is by now a very large group of people, many of them qualified, respected scientists, an effective way to persuade them?
I think most of us can agree, even the luke-warmers and the more reasonable alarmists among us, that the IPCC should have owned up to the uncertainties with a frank and open discussion. I don’t believe they talk about the recent papers on possible reduced sensitivity at all, but for a brief footnote. I mean crap, climate sensitivity is the whole ball game, is it not? Of course that was never going to happen, which is precisely why even the most rabid alarmists should be arguing for a new paradigm as per Judith.
They reduced their lower limit of equilibrium sensitivity to 1.5 C so that their consensus now includes these papers and people like Lewis. I think those results are not going to prove robust with more data in the future, but we’ll see.
Thanks, Jim. Good to know. Just curious, upon what are you basing your opinion that these papers will be shown to be weak?
They don’t take into account that the land and Arctic will warm faster at first and the oceans will warm more slowly and contribute most of the water vapor feedback later. By assuming a uniform warming rate everywhere and only using a short temperature record, they underpredict the true long-term equilibrium sensitivity by underestimating the water vapor feedback. There is a mechanistic paper on this by Armour et al.
Jim,
It’s easy to find mechanistic arguments to support both the conclusions of Armour et al and exactly opposite conclusions, the latter are actually more straightforward and the first choice. Determining which factors win overall is far from trivial. I wouldn’t trust any single (or even a few) papers as giving a definitive answer for that question.
pokerguy, how could they when Al Gore and the IPCC received a Nobel prize for alarmism? The way was set at this point.
There have been many examples of paradigm paralysis by supporters of the IPCC in interviews with the press in the UK. The starting point is always ‘CO2 is a greenhouse gas and we know adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will cause warming’.
Below I copy a comment from Dolphinhead on the Bishop Hill post on Richard Lindzen’s response to AR5
“That Lindzen should emphasise that it is heat transport that is key in understanding surface temperatures is one of those obvious facts that the simpletons who tell us CO2 is a greenhouse gas and greenhouse gasses cause warming (hereafter Chucklebrothers) fail to grasp. Radiative physics plays a minuscule part in heat transport processes and this is where the bloated vessel of the Chucklebrothers founders on the shores of reality.”
Absolutely. This is their weakest point.
Of course. Radiative physics (or even radiative balance) is handwaving. Multimodal heat transfer at the surface needs to be solved.
As Mark Twain noted, “Its easier to fool people than convince them that they’ve been fooled”, but maybe we’re almost there.
Pingback: Es “extremely likely” (+ del 95%) que el IPCC haya descarrilado. | Desde el exilio
My term for the IPCC syndrome is Artful Bias. See below. These are old but nothing has changed.
http://thewashingtonpest.blogspot.com/2007/02/ipccs-artful-bias.html
http://www.john-daly.com/guests/un_ipcc.htm
Some other Pest pieces pertaining to the present predicament.
The physics of climate change policy: Green Lip Syndrome.
http://thewashingtonpest.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html
My take on the IPCC/Gore Peace Prize.
http://thewashingtonpest.blogspot.com/
I told you so.
Outstanding piece and one of your best. It doesnt take long after reading this circumspect, thoughtful and well reasoned post to remember why I have such faith in your judgement and views. And then I read some of the hysterical and frantic pieces by some warmists which have been included in the last few posts. The contrast could not be more stark. The major media outlets need more of your perspectives, as do the public.
I’m waiting for the headline:
Prominent Climate Scientist Judith Curry Calls for Shuttering the IPCC
The folks at Real Climate, who had a melt down when Dr. Curry said hiding the decline was dishonest, are going to try to have her excommunicated from the church of climate science for heresy.
I admit to being a skeptic but if I were new to the issue and read JC’s excellent piece and then compared it to this from Mann, who would a reasonable person have more faith in? His is typical warmist fanaticism on steroids, complete with the usual ad homs just for good measure. How could anyone believe he is a scientist. What a pathetic example for the profession,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/28/ipcc-climate-change-deniers
Nothing more dangerous than an apostate, Gary. Which of course is why they hate Judith so much. She’s been accused of everything from insanity to being in the pay of big oil.
I’m struck over and over and over again by the idiocy of these people. The number one reason I got suspicious when I first got interested in this debate as a warmist 4 or so years ago, was the sheer nastiness of what then was my side. It rang all sorts of alarm bells. This was not the way responsible, trustworthy people acted.
The issue discussed in this post is essential, perhaps not so much the details of the institutional framework formed by UNFCCC and IPCC, but the direction climate research has taken.
The issues are really difficult (perhaps wicked although I’m not sure of that in all cases) on several levels. Building very complex models and expecting that they will produce well defined actionable answers has turned out to be unrealistic, and that should not have been a surprise.
The Earth system is so complex and in so essential ways that model improvement is likely to remain slow and trying to build models that cover both the oceans and the atmosphere may already be a too large stretch. Adding to that even slower changes is more or less futile until the main components are operationally in better shape.
Another area, more familiar to me professionally, is that of integrated assessment models that are supposed to describe economics of climate change consequences as well as technology development of potential mitigation measures. Their development is not any easier, and the problems are more genuinely wicked than the most difficult problems of natural sciences.
All kind of models are useful tools for science, but only few can give answers that provide direct and valid advice for policy decisions.
Pekka, what on Earth do you think the scientists put in their grant proposals, to get the funding to buy and program the computers?
The ‘models’ should have had testable, falsifiable, statistically defined end key stages.
That the scientists who developed these models get to define their utility is insanity. That you cannot proclaim this shows that at least some physicists have sold their souls.
Doc,
Defining the utility is always the responsibility of the user.
Continuing on that.
IPCC is as influential as the society more widely wants to make it. If IPCC would not exist, it’s present task might have been taken by some other community of climate scientists, perhaps one more dominated by alarmist views.
The demonstrated inutility is from a folies a deux, both buyer and user participated in the error.
==============
“IPCC is as influential as the society more widely wants to make it. If IPCC would not exist, it’s present task might have been taken by some other community of climate scientists, perhaps one more dominated by alarmist views.”
Hey Pekka, So what are you saying, that we should be grateful for the IPCC on the supposition that it could have been worse? Just curious, how do you suppose that would have worked? I mean in practical terms. For example, from whence would this group of extreme alarmist scientists have derived their authority?
In any case, there’s little doubt the IPCC has damaged its own credibility, hence the warmist cause, over and over and over again, now likely beyond repair.If you’re a warmist, I don’t see how you can’t be worried about the muted response in the media concerning the current IPCC report.
I’ve got a reliable model for you. Pachauri’s off the wall personal style with his inability to admit a mistake and his tendency toward self-aggrandizement and his proclivity for propagandizing perfectly predicts the behavior of the group he leads. NO surprise there I suppose.
“I’ve got a reliable model for you. Pachauri’s off the wall personal style with his inability to admit a mistake and his tendency toward self-aggrandizement and his proclivity for propagandizing perfectly predicts the behavior of the group he leads. NO surprise there I suppose.”
That guy is perfect for his job.
I wonder if a sense humor was involved with appointing him.
Perhaps it’s better to say that IPCC exists because governments wanted to have it. When the governments wanted to have such input from science they could have chosen some other organizational structure. The main reason for the present controversy is not IPCC but the spread of views on climate change that would exist also without IPCC.
Climate change is, of course, just one of the environmental worries. “Just one” is perhaps an understatement, because it’s presently the most visible global environmental issue. Even so it’s significance is not unrelated to the more general concerns about the environment and the weight such concerns have in the present world.
The IPCC reports (at least the WG1 reports) have not really been alarmistic. That’s true also about the new SPM. The content of the SPM might better be described as difficult to understand, which allows for further simplifications when it’s presented in media. Some of the statements presented claiming that they are based on the SPM are much more alarmistic than the SPM itself. I would expect that the same will apply even more clearly to the full report, but that remains to be seen.
By that I want to say that IPCC is not the ultimate source of the most alarmistic conclusions and that the same conclusions would probably be presented also without IPCC.
I propose a simple sentence: “The climate is very complex and poorly understood”. Now can I have my 1% of 1% of money spent on IPCC?
I hope that you will be successful in the the stand you have taken: as a non scientist, who has followed this debate carefully for many years, I would like to tell you that I have been disappointed to watch how the scientific communities (not just climate scientists) have allowed the IPCC to behave so badly for so long.
The use of words like “denier” to ridicule opponents to their “consensus” should have been stopped, instead reputable institutions like the Royal Society, and popular “science” journals like New Scientist fanned the flames by adopting this lexicon of abuse to smother debate.
The IPCC showed extreme lack of judgement when it allowed it’s own chairman to continue in post after he had called a respectable scientist (who was later shown to be correct) a “Voodoo” Scientist.
That this behaviour stops, and stops now, is important not only for climate science. It is important for the reputation of science as a whole.
We live in a different world, a world where the public adopt attitudes and becomes resentful very quickly. The science community is on the cusp of creating such resentment. You have allowed, and through your inaction encouraged, the politicians and even the president of the US to become climate zealots who use the IPCC reports as their bible. Their green policies are justified by the IPCC reports, and they are very costly for ordinary people, for instance in Britain our energy bills are estimated to be over 40% higher because of the drive for Co2 free energy. This really hurts the old and the poor.
It is time for the science community to point out that the IPCC reports are unreliable and not to be trusted. If you do not do that you will find that the general public will begin to classify you profession, science, as being a bit like banking and politics.
Good luck with your courageous stand on behalf of science, common sense and ordinary people who rely on scientists to give honest and dependable advice about how to live on this increasingly over-crowded planet.
Julian;
Evidence, please, in re overcrowded planet.
Dr. Curry:
It’s always nice when you bring up the chaos theory as I think it’s an area where some progress can be made with some possible short term payoffs such as pushing the forecast accuracies out to weeks and months which amongst others areas would benefit agriculture.
Using a business model reference, and your statements about a lost generation of of climate dynamicists, we’d say, management should have allocated resources into the areas that would’ve provided the most value to the shareholders.
I do not know where ‘management’ is located in regards to Climate Science other than to say it’s spread around pretty widely with some localized areas of concentration.
When Milanovic writes:
“The only thing I am reasonably sure of is that there will be no progress in understanding (spatio-temporal chaos theory) be it via chaos or not as long as people will insist on the crutches of functions/series that are only time dependent.” – http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/10/spatio-temporal-chaos/
He has me thinking that the GCMs run up against a wall as time increases, that their predictive value may have peaked or even declined with their increasing complexity. That it’s time to look at some things with a better chance to provide some answers. Your Climate Dynamicists.
Judith Curry:
”However, the precautionary principle demands that we not take any risks here, and hence the IPCC should be put down.”
PROBLEMS on AR5
Propositions of AR5 WG1/IPCC to cut anthropogenic CO2 emissions are not proved to be working. Even the cuts of CO2 emissions become harmful for welfare of mankind if actions recommended are carried out. Resources needed to cut useless CO2 emissions are lacking in objects where they really are needed.
The anthropogenic CO2 emissions have not properly proved to be any controlling cause of the global warming or of increase of CO2 content in atmosphere during the centuary of 1900, and the last over 15 years proves that even the total increase of CO2 in atmosphere cannot make the global trend of warming continue. (Look e.g. at my comment http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/23/quote-of-the-week-3/#comment-386855 )
We have to prove in a way simple enough that the recent warming have not been controlled by anthropogenic CO2 emissions. It is enough as you understand that any increase of anthropogenic CO2 emissions does not control the total CO2 increase in atmosphere:
RECENTLY THE ANTHROPOGENIC YEARLY INCREASE OF CO2 EMISSIONS TO ATMOSPHERE HAS BEEN 0.5 Gt AT THE MOST, WHEREAS THE TOTAL YEARLY INCREASE OF CO2 IN ATMOSPHERE HAS BEEN ABOUT 4 Gt.
For instance the recordbreaking yearly increase of anthropogenic CO2 emissions to atmosphere during 2010 has been 6 %; from total anthropogenic CO2 emissions of about 8 Gt a year (calculated in carbon) that 6 % makes about 0.5 Gt CO2 a year . In the same year the total increase of CO2 in atmosphere has been about 4 Gt a year. As we see the anthropogenic increase of CO2 emissions to atmosphere does not control the increase of CO2 content in atmosphere although all the increase would stay in atmosphere. In addition, from this yearly increase of anthropogenic CO2 emissions stays in atmosphere only 2 % i.e. 0.01 Gt CO2 a year ( the 2 % agrees with what the total yearly increase of 4 Gt CO2 in atmosphere is compared to the total yearly emissions of a little bit more than 200 Gt CO2 to atmosphere. (Look e.g. at comment http://judithcurry.com/2011/08/04/carbon-cycle-questions/#comment-198992 )
Why are all these people telling such enormous lies ? Who is behind it ?
The UN is a tool of American corporations (since the US government threatened to defund the UN) . The IPCC is a tool of the oil industry. Pachauri was an oil executive, even while head of the IPCC. Gore was the senator for Occidental Petroleum.
Wikipedia
Pachauri was on the Board of Directors of the Indian Oil Corporation (January 1999 to September 2003)
On 20 April 2002, Pachauri was elected Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations panel established by the WMO and UNEP to assess information relevant for understanding climate change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajendra_K._Pachauri
Pachauri has his own charities, Teri and Teri (Europe) that have done very well out of the climate alarmism. He is also extremely aggressive in protecting his reputation though the courts hiring lawyers known for their money wasting techniques, so the newspapers like the Sunday Telegraph who have already been burnt for minor inaccuracies in theri reporting of his business intersts (I heard it cost them £300,000 in damages) are very cautious about challenging his behaviour as Chairman of the IPCC.
The Scientific community should not allow their reputation to be associated with this man, he is bad news.
@ecofst
You got that wrong The oil industry is a tool of the oil industry.
Judith Curry
“We need to put down the IPCC as soon as possible – not to protect the patient who seems to be thriving in its own little cocoon, but for the sake of the rest of us whom it is trying to infect with its disease.”
Euthanizing a beloved companion in the terminal phases of a painful death seems the humane thing to do.
However, back in days of the “Black Death”, control of the contagion involved quarantining the offending ship, keeping the black rats on board with their plague ridden fleas.
I suggest quarantine measures instituted towards the offending creatures; those holed up in their ivory towers, or cornered in their government cubicles, or tethered to their soundproof media stations. Put a black “X” on their door and forbad any further human contact. More likely than not, they will perish from their own contagion.
A grim death I know, but, aren’t we doing it for our grandchildren after all?
@RIH008. +1
I was thinking along the same lines. The IPCC is only a ship. It is the crew and cargo that host the contagion. The Precautionary Principle dictates we dare not risk spreading the infection.
Fortunately, the public seems to be acquiring partial immunity to the worst effects of the disease.
Breaking *GOOD* News in Climate-Change Science
Climate-change skeptics around the world are *delighted* that Judith Curry’s long-standing and well-founded calls for more accurate IPCC models have been answered this week by the strong new paleo calibrations of Hansen, Sato, Russell, and Kharecha
Climate Etc regulars (like tomdesabla for example) well be pleased with this fast-paced skepticism-driven progress in climate-change science!
Well done, Curry/Hansen/Sato/Russell/Kharech! Aye Climate Etc lassies and laddies, now *that’s* how rational skepticism and strong science can each improve the other.
Take notes, IPCC5 scientists!
I need a stiff drink.
LOL … pokerguy, for pure pleasure, the dry humor of your posts beats a dry martini!
Thanks for pointing to the new Hansen paper. On the good side a runaway greenhouse is impossible on earth, he says, but on the bad side, the burning of all remaining fossil fuels makes most of the earth humanly uninhabitable due to high dewpoint temperatures. Bottom line: adaptation not enough. Stop burning, especially the coal.
Wasn’t he fulminating about the oceans boiling away at one point? Or was that Bill Nye the science guy?
I get them confused…
When facts change, Hansen changes his fantasies; what do you do, Good Sir?
===============
If you read this paper, he explains why that is impossible.
LOL … “fulminating” … pokerguy wins this week’s Climate Etc Rich Vocabulary Award *and* Dry Humor Award!
Well now FOMTrolling,
Clicked on your link, and the intro to your cited paper says:
“Humanity is now the dominant force driving changes in the Earth’s atmospheric composition and climate [1].”
The source for this statement? Why none other than the IPCC itself!
Somehow I’m not convinced that any paper that begins with that statement – sourced as coming from a politicized, corrupted body like the IPCC – which our host thinks, and I agree, should be disbanded, is credible. I think it shows that Hansen is doing advocacy and not science.
The paper uses term like “Potential Reserves” which anyone knows is not a technical term concerning energy quantities that are available for humans to use. Webbie can certainly confirm this, as the operative terms are “measured resource” “indicated resource” and “inferred resource.”
The term “potential reserve” is a contradiction in terms. If a resource is “potential” then it is not a “reserve” at all. Also, the paper talks about using
“all fossil fuels” without defining what that means other than to cite some other paper. Given Hansen’s confusion on the topic of available energy quantities, evidenced by his use of the nonsensical term “potential reserve,” I find it very hard to believe that the discussion of the effects of fossil fuel use in the Hansen paper has any scientific value.
Don’t you agree Fan of More Trolling!
Happy to have increased your understanding of the accurate use of energy terminology!
LOL … trace it back *further* tomdesabla, and you” find that this idea originates with the scientific polymath (and arch-conservative!) John von Neumann (1955) by way of James Hansen (1981).
It is a pleasure to increase your appreciation of the scientific literature tomdesabla!
We can *all* be glad when strong skepticism partners with strong science, to strengthen the mediocre-at-best IPCC5 conclusions!
All hail John von Neumann, inventor of the hackable computer, without which malware like FOMD wouldn’t be possible.
Hansen’s paper will have to be peer reviewed by McIntyre first.
Based on Hansen’s sterling track record with his predictions, I actually feel even more reassured that there is nothing to worry about. Thanks, FOMD
“◾European countries and Australia are backing away from their emission reductions policies as they realize their economic cost and political unpopularity”
Australian activists convinced the government that global warming made droughts permanent, and desalination plants were built at great cost. Those plants now are idled, as the dams are again full, and residents must continue paying for water which is not delivered.
Climate commissioner Tim Flannery famously warned, “Even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems.”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/no-thanks-for-flannery-at-end-of-climate-career/story-fni0ffxg-1226723061366
to understand the disease, read :
Groupthink : Collective delusions in Organizations and Markets by Roland Benabou of Princeton
http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/Groupthink%20IOM%202012_07_02%20BW.pdf
slides:
http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/Groupthink%20Slides%20for%20Posting_s.pdf
all is Mutual Assured Delusion…
when people supper from others delusion and cannot take advantage of being realist, they fall in collective delusion….
THANK YOU for this link
AlainCo, please let me join with Judith Curry is opining that your *terrific* link admirably explains <a href="AlainCo, please let me join with Judith Curry is opining that your *terrific* link admirably explains group-think folly!
Thank goodness for the independent, small, scientist/skeptic teams that have rationally, verifiably, and politely called the IPCC to account!
Good on `yah, independent-minded rational-discourse folks!
Whoops — bad link:
Of course, folly is only one explanation among many, of sustained counter-science group-think!
Thank you again, AlainCo!
Slow down a little, FOMTrolling, your html is showing.
That’s an interesting paper. I’m glad Judith Curry seems enthusiastic about it.
“The form of denial considered in the benchmark model of Section 2 is a collective illusion of control or overconfidence, leading to persistence in a costly course of action in spite of widely available evidence that it is doomed. The opposite case is collective apathy: rather than acknowledging a crisis that could be partly remedied through timely action, everyone pretends that things could be worse and that nothing can be done to improve them anyway. One can think of an ethnic group subject to discrimination or threat by another one, but whose members pessimistically deem it useless to fight back (Cialdini (1984), Hochschild
(1996)). Another example is global-warning denial.”
The Very Rev Jeb Hype commented in an earlier post:
(which, incidentally, is one of the few things he’s written that I wholeheartedly agree with)
This could be paraphrased as:
This is because of the way our brains are wired. The part of the brain which handles emotion and belief has few input connections from the thinking, rational part of the brain, but a great many connections going back the other way.
That means that it’s almost deaf to logic and rationality, but shouts back very loudly indeed.
This is why we find it so easy to fool ourselves, and it’s something we all suffer from.
Dr. Curry: Great post, maybe a milestone in the climate debate. To your symptomatology one could add the neglect of due diligence, which has been “outsourced” to unpaid volunteers like Steve McIntyre.
If I remember correctly, one member of the “community”, Ben Santer, once told that unpaid Canadian pensioner what he should be using his time to do – seemingly the multi-billion dollar climate establishment was far too busy defending the consensus to be able to perform the necessary quality control themselves.
Bebben,
I agree. I suggest you could add Nic Lewis.
The real cure for paradigm paralysis is, wonder of wonders, simply to change the paradigm and ignore the entire IPCC output.
The projections of the IPCC – Met office models and all the impact studies which derive from them are based on specifically structurally flawed and inherently useless models. They deserve no place in any serious discussion of future climate trends and represent an enormous waste of time and the billions spent on them. As a basis for public policy their forecasts are grossly in error and therefore worse than useless.
I would suggest that in reality climate forecasting is not a wicked problem at all but that by using basic commonsense and sound scientific judgment
perfectly useful forecasts can be made at a minute fraction of the cost .These can be updated on the basis of the new temperature, ocean, atmospheric and solar data as it comes in.
How then can we predict the future of a constantly changing climate?
When, about ten years ago ,I began to look into the CAGW – CO2 based scare, some simple observations immediately presented themselves. These seem to have escaped the notice of the Climate Establishment.
a) Night is colder than day.
b) Winter is colder than summer.
c) It is cooler in the shade and under clouds than in the sun
d) Temperatures vary more widely in deserts and hot humid days are more uncomfortable than dry hot days – humidity (enthalpy) might be an important factor. We use Sun Screen against UV rays – can this be a clue?
e) Being a Geologist I knew that the various Milankovitch cycles were seen repeatedly in the Geologic record and were the main climate drivers controlling the Quaternary Ice Ages.
f) I also considered whether the current climate was unusually hot or cold. Some modest knowledge of history brought to mind frost fairs on the Thames and the Little Ice Age and the Maunder Minimum without sunspots during the 17th century . The 300 years of Viking settlements in Greenland during the Medieval Warm Period and viniculture in Britain suggested a warmer world in earlier times than at present while the colder Dark Ages separate the MWP from the Roman Climate optimum.
g) I noted that CO2 was about 0.0375% of the Atmosphere and thought ,correctly as it turns out, that it was highly unlikely that such a little tail should wag such a big dog.
I concluded ,as might any person of reasonable common sense and average intelligence given these simple observations that changing solar activity and our orbital relations to the sun were the main climate drivers. More specific temperature drivers were the number of hours of sunshine, the amount of cloud cover, the humidity and the height of the sun in the sky at midday and at Midsummer . It seemed that the present day was likely not much or very little outside the range of climate variability for the last 2000 years and that no government action or policy was required or would be useful with regard to postulated anthropogenic CO2 driven climate change.
These conclusions based on about 15 minutes of any reasonably educated persons considered thought are, at once , much nearer the truth and certainly would be much more useful as a Guide to Policymakers than the output of the millions of man hours of time and effort that have been spent on IPCC – Met Office models.
During the last twelve months I have laid out ,in a series of posts, a review of the basic climate data and a method of forecasting climate based on recognizing Quasi Cyclic- Quasi Repetitive patterns in the temperature and driver data and from these have developed a simple rational, transparent forecast of future cooling. For details see these pertinent posts at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com.
10/30/12. Hurricane Sandy-Extreme Events and Global Cooling
11/18/12 Global Cooling Climate and Weather Forecasting
1/22/13 Global Cooling Timing and Amount
2/18/13 Its the Sun Stupid – the Minor Significance of CO2
4/2/13 Global Cooling Methods and Testable Decadal Predictions.
5/14/13 Climate Forecasting for Britain’s Seven Alarmist Scientists and for UK Politicians.
7/30/13 Skillful(so far) Thirty year Climate Forecast – 3 year Update and Latest Cooling Estimate.
This type of approach to forecasting is similar to the approach used by Scafetta and EasterBrook
The conclusions of the latest forecast are provided below.
“To summarize – Using the 60 and 1000 year quasi repetitive patterns in conjunction with the solar data leads straightforwardly to the following reasonable predictions for Global SSTs
1 Continued modest cooling until a more significant temperature drop at about 2016-17
2 Possible unusual cold snap 2021-22
3 Built in cooling trend until at least 2024
4 Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2035 minus 0.15 degrees
5Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2100 minus 0.5 degrees
6 General Conclusion – by 2100 all the 20th century temperature rise will have been reversed,
7 By 2650 earth could possibly be back to the depths of the little ice age.
8 The effect of increasing CO2 emissions will be minor but beneficial – they may slightly ameliorate the forecast cooling and more CO2 would help maintain crop yields .
9 Warning !!
The Solar Cycles 2,3,4 correlation with cycles 21,22,23 would suggest that a Dalton minimum could be imminent. The Livingston and Penn Solar data indicate that a faster drop to the Maunder Minimum Little Ice Age temperatures might even be on the horizon. If either of these actually occur there would be a much more rapid and economically disruptive cooling than that forecast above which may turn out to be a best case scenario.
How confident should one be in these above predictions? The pattern method doesn’t lend itself easily to statistical measures. However statistical calculations only provide an apparent rigor for the uninitiated and in relation to the IPCC climate models are entirely misleading because they make no allowance for the structural uncertainties in the model set up. This is where scientific judgment comes in – some people are better at pattern recognition and meaningful correlation than others. A past record of successful forecasting such as indicated above is a useful but not infallible measure. In this case I am reasonably sure – say 65/35 for about 20 years ahead. Beyond that certainty drops rapidly.I am sure, however, that it will prove closer to reality than anything put out by the IPCC, Met Office or the NASA group. In any case this is a Bayesian type forecast- in that it can easily be amended on an ongoing basis as the Temperature and Solar data accumulate.”
As Napoleon: ‘a town no more–swallowed up, vanished, gone to feed the fishes; nothing left but a fragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick chimney!’
H/t Sure, it’s all Clemons; wait’ll I stumble over Bierce’s ‘Chickamauga’.
==================
Napoleon the general, or Napoleon the pig?
Napoleon, Arkansas.
========
Thanks, Judith. That was a pleasure to read.
Reblogged this on Bob Tisdale – Climate Observations and commented:
This post by Judith Curry is a pleasure to read.
Hey, Judy, you lookin’ for a climate dynamicist?
=================
Monbiot said:
“Why are all these people telling such enormous lies ? Who is behind it ?”
—–
Fostering Paranoia is the downside.
– – – – – – – –
Judith,
I endorse explicitly your call for the IPCC to be disbanded.
And I recommend to the broader climate science community to do preliminary pre-planning for an international inter-university consortium to provide a non-governmental way to achieve professional guidance and auditing and assessment of climate science. Please participate in its leadership and formation.
Although I agree with your comprehensively negative assessment of the IPCC, I do not agree with your thinking on the fundamental causes of the manifold IPCC failures and missteps and irrational myopias. I think the fundamental causes are very profoundly at the epistemological basis of reasoning and science in the areas radically influenced by post-modern philosophy.
John
This amounts to a request for a do over, or a mulligan, with the science. Perhaps this was all just a dream, and we can start over and get a different result. Should we go back to the pre-political state in 1979 with the Charney Report? Probably not, if you read that it is quite certain about the CO2 effect already. Should we go back to Callendar in the 1930’s, the first to associate measured global warming with CO2. No, what was he thinking making that association in the first place? Should we go back to Arrhenius around 1900 who did a theoretical calculation and got a significant effect? No, clearly he only did that because he thought it might be significant, so it was flawed thinking. Perhaps we go back to Tyndall. Little did he know what his measured CO2 absorption does in the atmosphere. Yes, that would be the do-over starting point, 1850.
Do over starting from the Charney Report?
The Charney Report said 3C for ECS.
Best available evidence today still points to a 3C for ECS and 2C for TCR.
There is also no pause in warming, as whatever pause shows up in surface temperature records is a masking from cooling ENSO events.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
These excursions won’t grow unbounded, so that the warming will overtake the limited cooling.
Jim D
Taking an observation from a lab bench, postulating a more global role, and observing such a postulated role in a chaotic atmosphere are all very different constructs. The assumed linkages are just that, assumed; to be thought of as interesting, and labeled: perhaps.
It turns out that the predicted half degree warming in the last 30 years was very easy to detect because the chaos is small and self-canceling.
@JimD, I agree.
Having been looking for bedrock in the story of AGW, I’ve been back to Tyndall and read the original works. There are big holes in the application of Tyndall’s work to atmospheric warming. Specifically, no quantitation of warming vs absoprtion/emission/scattering. Still there are no apparent repeats of Tyndall’s experiments with modern more accurate equipment. No experimental quantitation of warming in any GHG caused by IR absorption over absorption/emission/scattering.
But who would be game?
The whole AGW warming hypothesis is based on the single unmeasured effect of CO2 to absorb IR and therefore possibly warm as opposed to absorb/emit/scatter. If a single robustly performed physics experiment demonstrated the warming effect to be overstated or negligible or evennon-existent, then the whole hypothesis and decades of scientific thinking in climate science comes tumbling down like a house of cards.
(Happy to be proven wrong by a real experiment any day.)
So, you are trying to convince me that you don’t know that CO2 absorption/emission lines have been observed in the atmosphere, along with the H2O ones.
@JimD
No problem with lines. I’m talking about absence of experimental thermodynamics demonstrating how lines translate to heat retention. All the hitrans data is measured inside IR reflective apparatus. So does not quantify heat retention because thermal emission is not permitted.
– – – – – – –
Jim D,
Disbanding the IPCC would not require a do over, per se. There would only be a required do over if the IPCC, potentially faced with disbandment, were to: smash their hard drives / thumb drives; shred their paper; refuse assess to all their secret forums; etc ; etc
That is info paid for by the public. And we should not avoid or be prevented from reading it. We do not want to do over their problematic behavior.
It is most important at this stage to have comprehensively a very hi-level understanding of their assessment processes via an audit to show how not to repeat what they did.
There is no do over needed in the published science they used, only need to continue the centuries long scientific process of correcting flawed papers.
John
“Jim D | September 28, 2013 at 5:40 pm | Reply
This amounts to a request for a do over, or a mulligan, with the science. Perhaps this was all just a dream, and we can start over and get a different result. Should we go back to the pre-political state in 1979 with the Charney Report?”
We go back to Charney Report and see as reasonable guess, but it seems that time and further observation has shown the effect from CO2 has to be less than they supposed. The largest error seems their assumption that increase CO2 levels would significantly increase in global water vapor.
The Charney Report may have been a reasonable guess, but I do think it’s fundamentally wrong, in that too much weight was given to the atmosphere
controlling global temperature.
And the Charney Report was continuing same error began in this earlier stuff, you mention:
“Probably not, if you read that it is quite certain about the CO2 effect already. Should we go back to Callendar in the 1930′s, the first to associate measured global warming with CO2. No, what was he thinking making that association in the first place? Should we go back to Arrhenius around 1900 who did a theoretical calculation and got a significant effect? No, clearly he only did that because he thought it might be significant, so it was flawed thinking. Perhaps we go back to Tyndall. Little did he know what his measured CO2 absorption does in the atmosphere. Yes, that would be the do-over starting point, 1850.”
And basic problem starts with blackbody and the assumption that the atmospheric greenhouse gases adds 33 C.
There are many problems with this assumption.
One problem can seen it vagueness of the values of these
greenhouse gases:
“By their percentage contribution to the greenhouse effect on Earth the four major gases are:
water vapor, 36–70%
carbon dioxide, 9–26%
methane, 4–9%
ozone, 3–7% ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
So water vapor does within the range of 36–70% of 33 C of warming.
So water vapor does in range of 11.78 C to 23.1 C
And CO2 does 2.97 to 8.54 C
So if there was no CO2 in atmosphere then global temperature
would be 3 to 8.5 C cooler. And earth has been 8.5 C cooler during glacial period. Yet some claim we would have a snowball earth without CO2. Now it’s impossible to have no CO2- why would they say it?
If were to liquify our atmosphere, CO2 cover Earth at thickness of about
5 mm. And earth’s water vapor would be about 25 mm thickness.
So, .5 cm and 2.5 cm, and the nitrogen would be about 42 feet thick [1280 cm].
Roughly water vapor, 36–70% and carbon dioxide, 9–26% indicates
H2O gas is about 4 times as effective, yet there is 5 times more H2O
gas as compared to the weaker CO2 gas.
Though it could be when water vapor is mentioned, it not really H2O gas,
That it’s sloppy term for H2O gas and small droplets of H2O.
It just means water of some sort in the air- excluding fog and clouds which are larger and denser droplets of air.
And do atmospheric droplets of H2O [and any CO2 involved as mixture] “count” as greenhouse gases?
And perhaps there is less than 25 mm worth of H2O gases globally??
In any case as I said it’s all rather vague.
But in terms of blackbody and the -18 C without greenhouse gases, if it was changed to greenhouse gases and liquids, I think it be better.
Of course that would require explaining what greenhouse liquids are.
Which can easily explained, by discussing solar ponds.
Solar ponds can with sunlight alone, create water temperature of 80 C. Solar ponds are a liquid greenhouse.
Causing water temperature in Solar pond as high or higher than the air temperature in a parked car with closed windows in parking lot during the day. And in term retaining or trapping heat, solar pond are much better than normal greenhouses.
So water can explained as same as atmosphere- sunlight is transparent
to water, sunlight passes thru the water and heats the water under the surface, and heat generated is blocked from radiating IR.
Here’s the crazy part, I believe ocean work better than solar ponds at retaining heat.
With solar pond one has relatively shallow water, and you can dark mud on bottom of pond. Sunlight passes thru the water and heats the mud, which then heat the water, and because heat gradient from salt water, the warmed water can’t rise to the surface. So water under surface can get to 80 C and water on surface of pond is around 30 C.
So not say ocean make hotter water- there nothing better at creating high temperature than solar pond, but say ocean trap more heat. Ocean heat up more volume of water. So whereas a solar pond may cause 1 meter depth of water to get to 80 C, the ocean is warming up tens of meter of ocean. So if 10 meter of water is warmed by say 10 C, this is more heat than 1 meter by 80 C. Not as hot, but more joules of heat is retained.
So in the tropical oceans which cover majority of surface area, you essentially have 100 meter deep “solar pond”.
So our oceans are liquid greenhouses.
.
gbaikie, it is an observed fact that the surface temperature is 33 C warmer than the radiative temperature of the earth. Competing ideas explaining that without existing and verified radiative transfer ideas, but with what they need, which is essentially new physics, would be interesting to read. None have been forthcoming. I suspect they got nothing. Why re-derive something that is explained by known physics?
– Jim D | September 29, 2013 at 4:28 pm |
gbaikie, it is an observed fact that the surface temperature is 33 C warmer than the radiative temperature of the earth. –
Solar ponds can be more than 60 C warmer beneath the water as compared at the surface or average air temperature.
Which is a similar point.
Except you get a greater temperature difference than 33 C and obviously no greenhouse gases are involved with causing this.
Everyone knows the ocean absorb most of the energy of the Sun. Everyone knows the tropics is the heat engine of Planet earth.
Everyone knows the Gulf Stream [warmed water from tropics] keeps Europe warmer.
Everyone knows that only factor which causes higher average temperature is warmer nights [and winter temperatures] and the ocean causes nights to be warmer.
And everyone knows that during interglacial periods, the oceans slowly warm and the result of warmer ocean is higher global average temperature.
This has nothing to do with new physics. What this has to do with is
stop ignoring what is already known. And that the religious types find
inconvenient for their gas theory.
Reblogged this on The View From Here and commented:
Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!
The only addition I might have made, would be to note that in 2010, the IAC did prescribe a series of medications which had the potential to significantly improve the health of the IPCC.
Alas, rather than following the dosage instructions, the IPCC pretended to take the medications, and as the intervening years have shown, just like a Delinquent Teenager (convinced that he knows better!) merely threw the prescription Into the Dustbin.
As a result, it appears that the steadily declining health of the IPCC has resulted in a paralysis that is now terminal.
hro01
+100
I note that for any particular posting by J. Curry, many of the comments revert back to the ingrained belief systems of the commenters, who immediately take off with their particular beliefs pro or con on AGW. Of course, that has always been true about comments on blogs. These commenters are equally guilty of paradigm paralysis, though at a lower scale of investment than the IPCC. Similarly, the NIPCC, with its latest 1,000 page report that takes the opposite view of the IPCC, also has paradigm paralysis. This posting is not about whether, and to what degree rising CO2 produces a warming effect. This post is about an ingrained belief system, much like a religion, where the members of the persuasion adhere to preconceived views, and repeatedly expound the same old message, regardless of the evidence. That CO2 produces a warming force, there is no doubt. The doubt lies in how strong it is, how buried it is in a myriad of natural variations, uncertainty in what the future will bring, and in the unlikely case that the alarmists ultimately prove to be right, is there much we can do to prevent the predicted future catastrophe while providing the people of the world with required energy?
To me the most important point in the post is that the research has been directed too heavily in directions that have turned out to be unproductive. Building larger and more complex models when essential gaps in knowledge make success unlikely or even impossible is the main example of that.
Even if one of the models would be excellent for the task, we would not have means to know that. For that reason the stated uncertainties are almost unchanged from early estimates (perhaps we do now have a little better reasons for those uncertainty estimates).
I reckon we should go back to pouring more of our research dollars into paleoclimate. Train and hire geologists and fire the modellers and geeks.
“To me the most important point in the post is that the research has been directed too heavily in directions that have turned out to be unproductive.”
+1000
And here is the rub.
we can never prevent sending money down a rat hole. Even in business we often sink millions in ideas that never pan out. Failure is good when there is a feedback. We move to dig in other places.
But the science is so heavily politicized now that some folks have a hard time admitting any kind of mistake or even admitting that the digging is going slower than expected.
A while back I wrote a piece on science under deadline. I think it applies here as well,
Nature doesnt just give up her secrets just cause we scheduled a report to come out every 5 or 6 years
But the science is so heavily politicized now that some folks have a hard time admitting any kind of mistake or even admitting that the digging is going slower than expected.
A while back I wrote a piece on science under deadline. I think it applies here as well,
I see. So the science is heavily politicized, but what YOU write is the sparkling truth.
This tells me all I need to know about you. And your conclusions.
We move to dig in other places.
As the Wasserstein distance is seemingly unchanged over 3 decades,it may be one of the blind culdersacs of scientific evolution.
I disagree Donald. The science is inconclusive so people take positions on the policy side.
Donald rapp,
How could you possible suggest such a thing? :)
Donald Rapp
Yes. The mechanism has been confirmed experimentally on a laboratory scale.
These are the real unresolved problems here, despite the unsubstantiated IPCC claim of greater “confidence”.
This is, indeed, the key unanswered question.
So far, there has been a lot of political arm waving but there have been almost no specific actionable proposals to dramatically reduce the human emissions of GHGs (principally CO2). Those few that have been proposed (carbon capture and sequestration for all new coal-fired power plants, geo-engineering schemes, switch to renewables such as wind and solar, etc.) would be extremely costly, could result in unknown and unintended negative consequences and would not bring any significant reduction of theoretical greenhouse warming by 2100.
The only proposal to date that could result in a slight reduction in 2100 atmospheric CO2 levels by maybe 60 to 80 ppmv and a miniscule reduction in global warming of 0.5 to 0.6C, would be to replace essentially all new coal-fired power plants world-wide with nuclear plants. Political considerations resulting from past fear-mongering by environmental lobby groups against nuclear power make it highly unlikely IMO that this proposal will be implemented.
IOW, we are unable to perceptibly change our planet’s climate, no matter how much money we throw at it.
IMO you’ve raised the key problems IPCC faces with its CGW paradigm.
Max
“That CO2 produces a warming force, there is no doubt.”
Of course there is doubt.
So the IPCC had it knuckles rapped after making mistakes in AR4. The IAC wrote a review for the IPCC and identified a whole load of problems which needed fixing to ensure a properly scientific outcome.
The IPCC responded with “Guidance Note for Lead Authors of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report on Consistent Treatment of Uncertainties” https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1gFp6Ioo3akNnNCaVpfR1dKTGM/edit?pli=1
“6) Consider all plausible sources of uncertainty. Experts tend to underestimate structural uncertainty arising from incomplete understanding of or competing conceptual frameworks for relevant systems and processes. Consider previous estimates of ranges, distributions, or other measures of uncertainty, their evolution, and the extent to which they cover all plausible sources of uncertainty.”
IPCC has learned apparently nothing and has become more certain with less robust data in favor of the model projections.
Trenberth thinks it’s time to change IPCC reporting.
https://theconversation.com/time-to-change-how-the-ipcc-reports-18039
Green journalists cling to the hope of environmental catastrophe to continue with “chicken little” heaadlines.
But the IPCC as Judith says, still needs to be put down to get out of the way of real science.
It is buried only skin deep. The fact that all one has to do is apply the Southern Oscillation index and a few volcanic disturbances to remove almost all of the natural variation makes it trivial to verify the relentless warming trend. Any pause thought to currently exist also disappears as a tranisent artifact of an SOI run.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
Any that is ignoring the relentless ocean heat accumulation.
C’mon man!
Rapp, I realize this simple analysis destroys the complicated skeptical narrative, so a “C’mon man!” is probably in order.
Sorry to spoil your pity party.
Donald Rapp
Webby is confused. He’s still undecided whether we’re about to run out of fossil fuels and the lights will go out or we’re about to fry ourselves to death with fossil fuels, but he KNOWS that doomsday is coming soon, either way.
And he loves to cite convoluted and complicated mathematical rationales to support his irrational fears.
Poor chap.
Max
It’s all part of my personal war against the scientific stupid.
I wonder what your excuse is, Max ?
We old timers still remember the dangers of Global Cooling of 1970s.
So how certain were the global coolers???
Some of us, not FOMBS, remember Hansen’s prediction that Manhattan would be 15 feet under water. The man has no gravitas and no credibility. He’s only marginally better than Al Gore, who apparently has a fever.
Webby
The “relentless ocean heat accumulation” is an imagined hobgoblin.
NOAA claims 0.06C warming of the top 2000m of ocean over the past 50 years (yawn!).
But we only have measurements that amount to anything since ARGO started in 2003, and they first showed slight cooling and (after some adjustments) now show slight warming.
So fuggidaboudit, Webby – there in no “relentless ocean heat accumulation”.
Come with another bogey-man.
Max
The ocean is retaining heat at the right amount to explain the difference between land and ocean warming rates.
What matters is that all the evidence is self consistent with the GHG theory. So far it is holding up, and relentlessly so.
The ocean is retaining heat at the right amount to explain…
Wishful thinking driving Theory before measurement.
IF the ocean is retaining the “right amount” of heat, then we do not have enough instruments in place long enough, in the right places, and with enough accuracy and precision to invalidate the null hypothesis. Argo cannot invalidate a zero temperature trend. Prior to Argo the coverage and precision is a joke compared to the task.
Levitus 2012 drew a pretty chart with less to support pre-2007 results than Mann had with Yamal.
Evidently, you are a fan of less discourse (much like the guy who goes by an inversion of that phrase) because you know the answers and you have no doubts. Since doubt is a necessary requirement for discourse, we can have no discourse – you and I – because you have no doubt.
‘… rather than on climate dynamics and theory that is needed to understand the effects of the sun on climate, the network of natural internal variability on multiple time scales, the mathematics of extreme events, and predictability of a complex system characterized by spatio-temporal chaos. New structural forms are needed for climate models that are capable of simulating the natural internal variability of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system on timescales from days to millennia and that can accurately account for the fast thermodynamic feedback processes associated with clouds and water vapor.’
Nowhere has there been a more succinct expression of the problem of climate. Spatio-temporal chaos implies the potential for abrupt shifts between regions of state space. Abrupt climate change is seen on decadal to millennial scales. Shifting emergent climate states as the sub-components of climate – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere – are pushed past equilibrium by solar, orbital or atmospheric changes and fluctuate wildly before settling into a new climate pattern. Jonathan Adams (http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/transit.html) described it as tremendous energies cascading through powerful systems. Wally Broecker called it poking a stick at a wild and angry beast.
The essential political problem arises from linear climate thinking and the refusal or inability to move past outdated ideas. The current climate state space suggests – at the least – non warming for another 10 to 30 years. Until the slowly evolving control variables generate enough momentum to unpredictably shift climate once again. The problem of course is that non warming for decades more delays for another generation any chance of practical and pragmatic carbon mitigation – and the beast is still wild and angry. The failure to understand the new climate science paradigm leads to a failure of policy.
The paradigm paralysis of the IPCC shows that there is no solution there and that this will just have to play out in the public arena. Here there are intractable differences between the two sides.
”It is easier to define libertarian ideas than to agree on a proper name for those ideas. The advocacy of individual liberty against state power has gone by many names over the century . . . In the first years of the 19th century the term liberalism came into widespread use in France and Spain and it soon spread, but by the end of that century the meaning had undergone a remarkable change. From the leave us alone philosophy, it had come to stand for advocacy of substantial government intervention in the marketplace. Eventually people began to call the philosophy of individual rights, free markets and limited government – the philosophies of Locke, Smith and Jefferson – classical liberalism.
For classical liberals, liberty and private property are intimately related. From the eighteenth century up to today, classical liberals have insisted that an economic system based on private property is uniquely consistent with individual liberty, allowing each to live their life – including employing their labour and their capital – as they see fit.’ http://www.cis.org.au/student-program/what-is-classical-liberalism
‘‘Green socialism’ is about taking a stand against – not for a long time realized – ‘green capitalism.’ The concept is about linking up a range of interests and movements in the name of “revolutionary Realpolitik,” ensuring that “their particular efforts, taken together, push beyond the framework of the existing order” (Rosa Luxemburg, Marxist Theory and the Proletariat). In the process, many of the old socialist themes – e.g., redistribution, power and property, planning and democracy – are updated and linked up with new issues. It is necessary to link ‘green socialism’ to real contradictions and conditions – to real social forces and movements that are tackling different issues, getting involved in different conflicts and developing concrete, experimental practices.’ http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/765.php
There will be ultimately be winners and losers in the climate war – because it is essentially a war of values fought superficially in the powerful idiom of science. Our side will win because so few have the inclination for radical social change. They merely want a prosperous and secure future. The cooling world will play into this nicely. Practical policy for carbon mitigation I fear will progress little in the meantime.
Chief rambles on but the fact is that there has been no change which shows any of the characteristics of the abrupt shifts to which he constantly refers to — look at the last 130 years and you won’t see anything like that.
All that you will see is a relentless warming trend, no pause, and a parallel build-up of heat in the oceans. The ENSO variations are well understood and can be excised from the warming trend with ease:
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
‘What happened in the years 1976/77 and 1998/99 in the Pacific was so unusual that scientists spoke of abrupt climate changes. They referred to a sudden warming of the tropical Pacific in the mid-1970s and rapid cooling in the late 1990s. Both events turned the world’s climate topsy-turvy and are clearly reflected in the average temperature of Earth. Today we know that the cause is the interaction between ocean and atmosphere.’ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130822105042.htm
The 1976/77 shift is known as the ‘Great Pacific Climate Shift’. The 1998/2001 shift doesn’t seem to have a name as yet. I nominate the ‘Momentous Pacific Climate Shift’. Momentous enough to show the system hasn’t changed to permanent El Nino conditions as people were wildly speculating about after the 1976/77 shift. It of course follows the periodicity of the SOI – which is merely a leading indicator of ENSO.
e.g. http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/maclean-2009-Fig4.gif.html?sort=3&o=124
The SOI captures 70% globally and 80% tropically of Global Tropospheric Temperature Anomaly (GTTA) variability in McLean et al 2009 with a 7 month lag. Horror of horrors they made the suggestion that such a powerful system that varies decadally – more positive after the late 1970’s and more negative after the late 1990’s – could have decadal temperature effects. Oh wait – that’s right – it does obviously.
e.g. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
It is the same periodicity in the PDO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PDO.svg
You can make assumptions to fit ENSO to a curve – but the curve doesn’t prove the assumptions correct. And science has moved well beyond what webby seems capable of understanding.
The simple point is that these mechanisms warm and cool the planet alternately in the instrumental record. That they change abruptly between states as is characteristic of dynamically complex systems.
In the longer term history suggests that a shift to yet cooler conditions on a centennial timescale is the pattern.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Vance2012-AntarticaLawDomeicecoresaltcontent.jpg.html?sort=3&o=84
El Nino is dry conditions in Australia. The energy forcing factor is cloud cover negatively correlated with sea surface temperature (SST). Pacific Decadal Variation changes dominate in changing SST.
Webby is a cogent example of the problem and not the source of any feasible solution.
Isn’t it amazing how well a temperature record such as GISS can be modeled by a montonically accelerating warming trend dotted with the SOI fluctuations and precisely placed volcanic disturbances?
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
And no sign of a pause when the stationary fluctuations are removed!
Webster, I guess it depends on what power microscope you use.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-5mVg9d-TpiE/Ukdq8lWIiMI/AAAAAAAAJtQ/I4hqEZL1ttA/w792-h512-no/alarmist.png
‘With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.’
Attributed to von Neumann by Enrico Fermi, as quoted by Freeman Dyson in “A meeting with Enrico Fermi” in Nature 427 (22 January 2004) p. 297
It is curve fitting – and it is not amazing at all. Unless there is proper theory and data it is nonsense with which he only succeeds in wastes everyone’s time. I suppose he is not the only one.
Tell you what, Cappy, you can keep graphing the data sets until you are blue in the face.
Worked as in “there are no more nuclear bombs” or as in “we don’t worry much about nuclear war anymore”. The latter is the usual way to solve wicked problems — move on to something else. Have a big benefit concert, then forget about it. The problem doesn’t go away, it just gets put back into perspective. We all burn out; it fades away. We turn to the next big thing. Life goes on. We sing “Won’t get fooled again”.
Realistically, in the absence of a real and perceptible “emergency” the great majority of people begin to suffer from issue fatigue. They discover that Al Gore is a bore and David Suzuki and ill informed scold. They realize that their heating bills have gone up but it has not made any positive difference to their family, neighbourhood, country or the planet in general.
Once this happens politicians know the game is up. So they move on to issues people actually care about. Meanwhile, organizations like the IPCC and the bureaucrats who enable it try to keep hope alive by ginning up whatever “science” they are given. But this is really just the dead cat bounce, denial on a grand scale. Once the political will has been lost the collapse of the structures of alarm is only a matter of time.
In 2007 there was a sense of urgency, of importance, to the IPCC – now it is routine.
I strongly disagree. I think we still worry about nuclear war. We spend 3 times more on improving our 3000+ nuclear weapons than we spend on climate research in total. Since the 2014 budget is spending 7.3 billion on nuclear weapons is proof we have not solved the problem. We have given the power of the ultimate weapon of mass destruction to the who ever ends up sitting in the White House.
If things had worked out differently in 2012 we could have had a President named Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain in charge of the fate of civilization. America is the most dangerous country in the world (on paper at least).
I agree that Herman Cain would have made a great President. Much better than the socialistic, “lead from behind” milquetoast we have now.
Obama saved American style capitalism. He extended the Bush tax cuts, two thirds of the stimulus was tax cuts, the Affordable Healthcare Act has reduced labor costs to business by shifting the cost of health care to the employee and average wages have declined. We need a new definition of what a socialist is I think.
I can see why you are a Herman Cain supporter. His strong belief in the role of women in society could have reversed the troubling influence women have had in politics, business and science. Have you noticed that most of the women in congress are left wing radicals?
Facts: “20.0% of the 100 seats in the Senate and 78, or 17.9%, of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives.”
And while the climate debate rages on we can at least stop worrying about the safety of the one thing that could actually cause instant global climate change – thermonuclear mass destruction.
Here are some recent news items…
The No 2 officer at the military command in charge of all US nuclear war-fighting forces has been suspended for counterfeiting and gambling.
Last spring the nuclear missile unit at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., pulled 17 launch control officers off duty after failing inspection.
In August a nuclear missile unit at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., failed a nuclear safety and security inspection.
Nice batch of FUD, Sparrow. Obama has done more to tear down US society than any of our enemies. He has moved us many giant steps towards socialism – crippling the free market capitalism that made us what we were. I take offense at the “war on women” BS – it’s just “progressive” propaganda, like so much of the drivel drooling from their mouths.
Your bluffing, let’s have some specifics jim2. What socialistic programs? Fact: He has signed more trade agreements than the last 3 republican presidents. Since 70% of the American economy is based on consumers buying stuff (mostly with debt) why blame Obama because we have become a nation of obese deadbeats? And to bring this back around to the topic of climate change I predict that *IF* there ever is a global response to reverse AGW it will come from the leaders of the world’s 3 great religions and not from politicians or the bleating of a UN panel of scientists.
“Since 70% of the American economy is based on consumers buying stuff (mostly with debt) why blame Obama because we have become a nation of obese deadbeats?”
That’s rich.
Obama has done SO MUCH to lower the unemployment rate. The only reason it is lower is because so many people have given up ever getting a job. No consumers means a crappy economy.
For example, instead of saddling companies with Obamacare fines, get rid of it. That would bring back some full time jobs that have been converted to part time due to Obamacare.
Then, institute something like a negative income tax – a simple tax system. This will bring back the rich, who have left due to the overburden of tax regulations.
Set the corporate tax close to zero, at least the lowest in the world. This will bring back corporations to the US. We need them. They are a good thing.
“Progressives” just don’t get it.
+ 1
As long as capital can move between countries with out restrictions (you’re going to love Chinese owned “Smithfield Foods” pork). Where is the logic of paying Americans better wages? Do you know who the highest paid employee is the federal government (and most states too)? Football coaches!
Now stop your wining and pay your taxes.
The US is still salvageable. We still have political stability, our workforce still has something left of the work ethic, compared to the rest of the world, we have great infrastructure. All we have to do is keep our regs simple and non-intrusive. We need to become a free country again. This doesn’t mean no EPA. It means common sense returns.
Very nice, Judith.
I think your reasoning works regardless of whether climate change is “Real” or not. That is, climate change may be occurring, but the approach to solving it is wrong.
The IPCC.
has an unsolvable problem.
A graceful exit. of prominent members.
I think it’s healthy for humanity to have a union to understanding the Earth’s climate.
At first I did not see anything wrong study whether CO2 has some influence on climate. if ozone influences the climate. if the sea level is rising. etc. …. etc..
The fluxes of information are wrong.
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Models should be open to alternative hypotheses and parametrizatione from the “skeptic” side, many of the well published. Models should be used to compare the results of the politics, introducing on them a affordable (not imaginary) degree of cutting CO2 emissiones. Models should be a tool for politics, to precise incertitudes,
Words can obscure a poor science temporarily.
with all the lies from IPCC, it only counts what they say – because of the politically bias media…
Many of the comments here continue to suggest that progress could be made by continuing down the model route -by going back and starting afresh in calculating climate sensitivity. This approach is doomed to failure – CO2 follows temperature in complicated ways- It is like trying to unscramble an egg. Just forget CO2 in the first instance- it is not close to being a main driver. An entirely different approach is need .We have a system of quasi independent oscillating and resonating variables and processes . Temperature and climate reflects the state of the system as a whole. system. It is simply not possible to model the individual components and their relationships with sufficient precision even if our assumptions regarding the principal components were much more realistic than those of the IPCC. Tweaking the models is a waste of resources.
A completely different approach is needed .For one such ,see my post above at 28/4:37 pm or at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
You seem to believe in orbital/tilt and solar drivers to climate, but not that returning CO2 to 700 ppm Eocene levels would do much to it. Is that your view?
The argument is for a better understanding of natural modes of climate variability. This is producing surprising outcomes and will continue to do so. Besides which – a change of 4 Watts/m^2 forcing over a century seems quite minor. It changes that much all the time.
There is a much better paradigm with which to explore climate change.
4 W/m2 may seem small to you, but is an order of magnitude larger than the solar change associated with the Maunder Minimum and Little Ice Age. And a more likely change is 5 W/m2 by 2100.
We assume that the solar reconstructions are approximately correct.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/tsireconstruction_zps0ee199b5.png.html?sort=3&o=5
But assuming that the change in TSI is the only change in forcing is incorrect.
We see a smaller scale example of the LIA in each sunspot cycle and temperature changes there hold no surprises relative to TSI changes, but the solar changes seem to also have a strong positive feedback comparable with the value expected for CO2, possibly even more, making a nonsense of low-sensitivity ideas.
Again – unless you know what the response is in the energy budget you’re wasting everyone’s time. Assuming a constant albedo is far from correct.
Assuming constant – or even necessarily positive sensitivity – is incorrect as well.
JimD, “We see a smaller scale example of the LIA in each sunspot cycle and temperature changes there hold no surprises relative to TSI changes, but the solar changes seem to also have a strong positive feedback comparable with the value expected for CO2,
The biggest mistake is trying to simplify all types of forcing into a one size fits all equation. Solar penetrates to some depth in the oceans, thermalizes the surface, i.e. black carbon on snow, has a larger energy impact in the low and mid latitudes and is absorbed in the atmosphere. CO2 only allows the atmosphere to retain energy longer and has a greater impact in the mid to high latitudes. Volcanic aerosols scatter as well as reflect, impact cloud water droplet size and have a stronger impact in day than night and greater impact in the northern hemisphere than the southern hemisphere on surface air temperatures.
dT=lambda*dF is not even wrong on realistic times scales.
If you see and recognize these strong positive feedbacks to solar changes, wouldn’t it make sense, just from the precautionary point of view, to assume the same is quite possible for other forcings, especially when backed up by paleoclimate (my 700 ppm comment above)? Views being so inconsistent for two types of forcing just reek of bias or prejudice.
JimD, “If you see and recognize these strong positive feedbacks to solar changes, wouldn’t it make sense, just from the precautionary point of view, to assume the same is quite possible for other forcings, especially when backed up by paleoclimate (my 700 ppm comment above)? Views being so inconsistent for two types of forcing just reek of bias or prejudice.”
No, it makes sense to recognize you have the mother of all fluid dynamic problems and quit making ridiculous simplifying assumptions. Every 700ppm or greater paleo reference has thousands of times more uncertainty than what we have today. OH transport changed with Drake Passage, Panama, producing a 3+ C drop in global temperature and a reduction in CO2. The data we have now, minus the hysterics, indicates a “sensitivity” all things remaining equal, of which there is fat chance, of ~1.6 C and the known CO2 “sensitivity” is ~1 C. Every thing else is a leap of mind altering faith.
Jim D I believe we can make useful decadal forecasts and somewhat less certain forecasts for the next several centuries without knowing the exact physical mechanisms involved by correlating quasi cyclical patterns in the temperature data with the most useful solar activity proxy data. i.e the Be10 record. This will be good enough for twenty years or so,( during which time there is no need for GHG emission controls or for any subsidies to renewables or biofuels which reduce living standards world wide.)
Obviously for good scientific and practical reasons we do need to investigate the physics of the principal components of the system. and gather more and better instrumental and proxy data. It would be nice to know the effect of 700ppm CO2 but there is no rush. As the AR5 report shows – even the IPCC have given up estimating it at this time. With another twenty years of better instrumental data in all fields our understanding of the temperature – CO2 relation can be improved.
Assuming that the reason for these climate investigations is to guard against challenges to civilization I see the biggest threat as our poor understanding of solar physics and processes. What I worry about is the occurrence of one or more Carrington events which as of now are totally unpredictable. There is no reason to suppose that the 1859 event is the largest possible.We are in desperate need of a very large investment in a new generation of solar satellites -the useful life of our current satellites is pitiful because of the harsh space environment Most of the money spent on computer modeling would be better spent on solar satellite design and deployment.
One who won’t dissan, Leif. Carrington’s scare me more than most of the agendas.
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Norman P, as I noted to the others, the CO2 levels near 700 ppm have an order of magnitude more forcing than the LIA’s Maunder Minimum solar change. Is it really that negligible when planning for the future, or is it just reasonable to account for it?
We are guessing about solar forcings, which re-inforces the point for more solar research.
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Jim D Actually the IPCC have had to acknowledge that nobody knows what the magnitude of the “forcing” of 700 ppm CO2 is. .A footnote in the new AR5 SPM says
“16 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.”
So much for their lunatic scheme to dial up a certain desired temperature by controlling CO2 emissions.
Further in the natural world CO2 is a feed back to temperature unless suddenly introduced in vast amounts by really major volcanic events e g the end Permian Siberian outpourings or the Deccan Traps.
Call to Order of Minitude.
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Further in the natural world CO2 is a feed back to temperature unless suddenly introduced in vast amounts by really major volcanic events
So X tons of CO2 is only a forcing if it comes from a volanic explosion, and quickly, but not if it comes from burning fossil fuels, even if the latter is 100-200 times larger than average volcanic eruptions?
How big does the “vast amount” have to be in order to influence climate?
There is no doubt about the forcing being nearly 4 W/m2 per doubling which is an order of magnitude more than the Maunder Minimum. This alone should make CO2 addition something to consider. 700 ppm is a level that is achievable by 2100 with existing fossil fuels and emission rates. This is a significant fraction of what has been ejected by volcanoes in paleoclimate changes, and will lead to significant warming as those events did. Skeptics like to befuddle uncertainty about sensitivity with certainty about forcing magnitudes, it seems, or maybe they can’t distinguish a forcing from a sensitivity. Anyway, the point is +5 W/m2 leaves a mark and can be compared with the LIA -0.5 W/m2 for scale.
David I said above “This approach is doomed to failure – CO2 follows temperature in complicated ways- It is like trying to unscramble an egg.”
We do not know enough to determine under what circumstance CO2 is a forcing or a feedback relative to temperature sometimes it maybe both sometimes over large areas it may even be a coolant e.g. if you think it is the main driver ( which I don’t) you would have to say it acted as a coolant for several thousand years from the Holocene climate optimum to the LIA – see Fig 6 in the last post at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
I quoted the end Permian Siberian traps as a possible example of CO2 as a forcing but even here CO2 was rising rapidly before the volcanic event. At the end Permian CO2 was at about 3000ppm +/ .
What more about CO2 do you need to know?
It is a well-mixed gas that absorbs and emits infrared radiation. We know its spectrum extremely well. We know its atmospheric distribution. Yes, there are feedbacks, but we also know we are independently emitting 30+ gigatons to the atmosphere every year.
It is building up in our atmosphere. Our atmosphere and oceans are warming. This is completely unsurprising. Pinning down the exact value of the warming as a function of CO2 is hard; but we don’t need an extremely precise function to know that, at the rates we have been emitting CO2, and will emit it in the future, our climate will change significantly.
David
There has been no net warming since 1997 with CO2 up 8%. The earth has been in a cooling trend since about 2003. See Figs I ands 4 in the link I posted.
David Do you really believe we can measure the temperature of the oceans to within a few thousands or even a hundredth of a degree. For the difficulties see
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/04/rough-estimate-of-the-annual-changes-in-ocean-temperatures-from-700-to-2000-meters-based-on-nodc-data/
Do you really believe we can measure the temperature of the oceans to within a few thousands or even a hundredth of a degree.
The ARGO scientists do. Which technical specifications of their equipment do you disagree with?
There has been no net warming since 1997 with CO2 up 8%.
False.
There has been a large amount of ocean warming since 1997.
How do you think that happened?
Ocean heat content anomalies may have peaked in 2003 – according to Lyman and Johnson 2013.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/LymnaandJohnson2013OHCA_zps703732d0.png.html?sort=3&o=2
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/OHCA_1950_2011_v3.pdf
It is consistent with energy considerations.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandLaken2013_zps73c516f9.png.html?sort=3&o=30
The heat content increase in ARGO was caused by modest changes in cloud cover.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/LymnaandJohnson2013OHCA_zps703732d0.png.html?sort=3&o=2
Beats me why David has to ask.
Ocean heat content anomalies may have peaked in 2003
Baloney. Look at the NOAA data… Instead of some site called “photo bucket” or something which can’t even tell you what paper is being hacked.
Science has standards. Use them.
If you don’t know how to properly cite scientific papers, learn it. This isn’t 7th grade.
David – the link to the paper currently revised and posted on the website of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory – and with gjohnson in the file name is clearly there just under the graph excised for convenience from the paper.
If you can’t learn to open links and simply want to engage in bogus obfuscation – by all means feel free.
BTW – here is the CERES/MODIS graph. It comes from Loeb et al 2012.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES_MODIS-1.gif.html?sort=3&o=100
http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~jnorris/reprints/Loeb_et_al_ISSI_Surv_Geophys_2012.pdf
Where has it been documented that the ocean below 2000 meters deep has not lost as much energy as the ocean above 2000 meters has gained?
“Where has it been documented that the ocean below 2000 meters deep has not lost as much energy as the ocean above 2000 meters has gained?”
That scenario might be hard to reconcile with the observed amount of sea level rise over the same period, unless the rate of melting of ice-sheets has been vastly underestimated.
David – at some point your fingers will get tired (not to mention cold) of holding on to the ledge outside your cultist office space and you’ll fall into the collective abyss of alarmism. But, there will always be a job managing the exploding polar bear population, or stacking fuel rods at Fukushima to fall back on….
Sea level has been rising at a steady rate since 1880. What do you suppose was the cause of it 130 years ago?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Recent_Sea_Level_Rise.png
It was rising way faster 4000 years ago than today. The interglacial period was thousands of years old by then but there were no anthropogenic emissions back then unless the Egyptians were doing it.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/ipcc2007/fig68.jpg
I’m afraid sea level rise as evidence for anthropogenic global warming just doesn’t hold water. :-)
David Appell, this map doesn’t show a steady rise. 20cm over 120 years is 1.67mm/year on average. But it has been 3mm/year over the last 20 years. Hence, the rise has been 14cm over the previous 100 years, which is 1.4mm/year. And there also is a visible acceleration over that period too. The rate over the first 20 years seems consistent with zero. Also, the rate over the last 4 or 5 millennia is about 0.55mm/year, and decelerating. So, we got a twofold or threefold acceleration in the early 20th century and a nearly sixfold acceleration towards the end. But this is a distraction from my objection to your earlier suggestion that the ocean heat content might have been roughly constant, just moving heat around, just as the sea levels were still steadily rising 3mm/year.
This was a response to David Springer, sorry. I got distracted by the peculiar threading format of this site.
Nonsense Pierre. I can lay a ruler on sea level rise since 1880 and any deviation from it is so small it’s just noise. The latter half of the twentieth century is called The Modern Maximum. About 50 years of solar activity higher than any time in the past 400 years since sunspots have been counted regularly. This steady steam of slightly higher insolation easily accounts for any perceived acceleration in sea level rise. Moreover the instruments used to measure the recent 3mm/yr are bleeding edge and haven’t been in operation long enough to determine if 1) it’s comparable with older means of assessing sea level rise and 2) it it’s accurate or subject to the pencil whipping of analysts with financial incentives to show an acceleration in sea level rise. Far too much of climate science rests on instrument measurements wherein in measured changes are so tiny and so close to zero that conscious choices in interpolation can change a polarity. We’ve seen it over and over again. ARGO initially showed the ocean losing heat until it was “corrected” to show it gaining heat. That’s how close to zero the ostensible gain in OHC really is – too small to accurately measure. Pick almost any bit of instrument data and it’s the same story – it can fudged in either direction and it just gets more fudgeable the farther back in time you go because the instruments are worse or there were not instruments at all just proxies of lower quality than the crudest instruments. And the coverage for global averages sucks even worse.
+9 . .
And, Thanks: two powerful new metaphors –
‘bleeding edge’
‘pencil whipping’
May I use them?
And you need to get your eyes checked if you can’t see from this graph
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/ipcc2007/fig68.jpg
that post glacial sea level rise was much faster thousands of years ago than today.
The current scuttlebut is that the Younger Dryas was a freak event that took the wind out of the sails of the Holocene glacial melt and left Greenland’s glacier largely intact. Sea level in the Eemian interglacial peaked some 6 – 9 meters higher than it’s ever been during the Holocene. The emerging narrative (out with the old narrative in with the new) is that the Holocene interglacial can’t end with Greenland’s ice sheet intact. It has to melt to expand the surface area of the global ocean, which makes a lower total albedo for the earth and makes for more snowfall on smaller continents which in turns allows glaciers to expand year over year. In other words it needs to get warmer before it can get colder.
“And you need to get your eyes checked if you can’t see from this graph”
How can you conclude anything about the last 4,000 years through looking that this graph. The resolution is much too low. Just look at a graph for the Holocene period, where you can actually resolve a variation that is thicker than the sea level curve. Either that or just quote me some global sea level estimate at any time during the last 5,000 years (and until 1000 years ago). And then compute the average trend until now. I challenge you to find anything higher than 1mm/year.
This is from Wikipedia: “Recent studies of Roman wells in Caesarea and of Roman piscinae in Italy indicate that sea level stayed fairly constant from a few hundred years AD to a few hundred years ago.
Based on geological data, global average sea level may have risen at an average rate of about 0.5 mm/yr over the last 6,000 years and at an average rate of 0.1–0.2 mm/yr over the last 3,000 years.”
The recent deceleration (until the industrial revolution) is even greater than I thought. And all this is perfectly consistent with your very low resolution graph — though indiscernible in it.
Judith,
Good post. It would be great if you could offer it to the Australian as a follow up to your excellent opinion piece of last week.
How was the $100 billion for research verified? If I quote this and am challenged, can I respond with a link?
The $100 billion is for both research and climate policies. Yes, there are links, but I do not have them to hand. I think one is on GWPF.
My humble opinion about man-made climate change:
1. Climate research and policies are highly politicised and biased (due to $100 billion of funding so far for climate research and policies).
2. The negative consequences of warming are probably exaggerated, and the positive consequences probably underrated and under researched.
3. The prescribed cure is worse than the disease; the mitigation policies proposed to date would deliver no measurable change to the climate or sea levels but would cost the world dearly.
4. We have a very poor understanding of ECS [e.g. AR5 WG1 SPM “Equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5°C to 4.5°C (high confidence), extremely unlikely less than 1°C (high confidence), and very unlikely greater than 6°C (medium confidence)”]. That is, our understanding of ECS is that it is somewhere in the range 1C – 6C. The very large range is an indication of our lack of understanding of what it actually is. If we could actually determine it accurately, the range would be very small at any given starting conditions; e.g. +/- 0.1C.
5. We have even less understanding of the damage function.
6. The world can reduce global GHG emissions over the next half century if it wants to. I expect it will; therefore, the consequences will not be as bad as the alarmists want us to believe.
7. The probability is low that the mitigation policies advocated by the alarmists for past 20+ years would succeed.
8. It is very likely that the climate scientists’ confidence in their projections is optimistic and overstated.
“6. The world can reduce global GHG emissions over the next half century if it wants to. I expect it will;”
Unlikely–China and India have indicated they won’t go along with emissions cuts, and their leaders are unlikely to try to deprive their populations of the escape from poverty that cheap energy provides. (Or, if they ever do sign such pledges, they won’t abide by them.)
rogerknights,
When nuclear is the cheapest electricity they will use it. Doing so doesn’t deprive their populations of cheap energy. So the aim should be to allow nuclear to become cheaper than fossil fuel energy, then the emissions problem is well on the way to being resolved.
Lang: “when nuclear is the cheapest they will use it”
I agree. The problem is it won’t be the cheapest without major technological breakthroughs in safe nuclear power generation and/or fossil fuel reserves become so depleted the cost of recovery makes the price surpass that of current nuclear power generation.
Don’t hold your breath for either eventuality. Methane (from continental and ocean clathrates as well as conventional sources) and liquifaction of coal appear to be the front runners as a bridge (which may be a very short bridge) to the ultimate safe renewable energy source which is sunshine. Efficient harvest of solar energy and conversion to liquid hydrocarbon fuels for storage/transport, compatible with existing consumption infrastructure, by either electronic or biological means, is far more likely to happen before any next generation nuclear technology could be rolled out. But you keep on cheerleading for it if that’s what floats your boat but I see disappointment in your future if you do.
Judith, your best post yet (leaving aside highly technical ones). I’ll copy it to the responsible minister.
“New structural forms are needed for climate models that are capable of simulating the natural internal variability of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system on timescales from days to millennia and that can accurately account for the fast thermodynamic feedback processes associated with clouds and water vapor.”
This is a truly constructive proposal by Judith, but the IPCC stands in the way “fhe diagnosis of paradigm paralysis seems fatal in the case of the IPCC, given the widespread nature of the infection and intrinsic motivated reasoning. We need to put down the IPCC as soon as possible”
Yes, the IPCC stands in the way of any solution of the climate problem. Many eminent scientists have been involved and the best hope is that the many internal contradictions will cause the IPCC to self-destruct.
Dr. Curry,
You are indeed a true scientist! Thanks for keeping an open mind and having the courage to challenge the ‘consensus’.
I still have to maintain anonymity online and keep my mouth shut in my professional circles due to having close colleagues who are IPCC true-believers. But the distance you’ve come since first entering dialogue with skeptics at WUWT, and the leadership you have shown, gives me hope that someday the CAGW defenders will be defanged. Sadly, as theirs is more of a political and ideological position rather than a scientific one, I suppose this change will be slow in coming, and I’ll be retired before then.
I have sent the following to Australia’s Environment Minister, Greg Hunt:
Dear Mr Hunt, I have been closely following the CAGW debate since 1989-90, when I was briefed by the IPCC’s chief scientist, Sir John Houghton, and have provided advice on it in my former role as an economic policy adviser.
I think that Judith Curry’s latest post on the issue is required reading. I can’t attach it, but it is at http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/28/ipcc-diagnosis-permanent-paradigm-paralysis/#comment-389231 .
Warwick McKibbin noted in his AFR article “the reality that policy should not be based on the belief that mankind can predict the future with any precision.” This is something I have stressed for many years – the world never turns out as we expect or project, it changes in ways we could not foresee. Policy should aim at increasing our capacity to deal beneficially to whatever befalls, enhancing flexibility, innovativeness and adaptability. Costly GHG emissions policies have acted against this, and reduced our capacity to deal with the future in the vain hope of making miniscule changes to any rise in temperature. It is foolish to continue such policies
Excellent comment Faustino +1
Faustino,
Excellent.
Judith is spot on ! While usual “tame” problems lend themselves to bureaucratic solutions, “wicked” problems like Climate Change evidently do not. The 15 year pause was completely unpredicted by all of the IPCC’s $100 billion models. Telling enough, as Judith explains, brilliantly ! ! !
The IPCC is in the process of self destruction so any further action on the part of rational scientific or policy proponents will be a waste of resources.
Love the IPCC or hate the IPCC and you continue the paradigm but ignore the IPCC and cease its funding and we can start a new paradigm altogether, for the better.
It occurs to me that focusing on killing the IPCC, is just diverting attention from where we should focus our efforts – realistically achievable policy.
To me, the policy we need to get to is clear. The technical solution is relatively simple. it is the politics that are wicked, not the technical solution. And I reckon I have the answer to politics bit too.
Technical solution: remove the impediments that are preventing the world from having low cost nuclear energy. Nuclear is already the safest way to generate electricity so there is no valid reason for maintaining the exorbitantly expensive impediments to further development and rollout. The restrictions and impediments are self defeating. They are preventing the world from having much safer, cleaner and more secure energy supply. Blocking it is just plain nuts. Once we have cheap nuclear power, we’ll be in a much better position to get low emissions transport fuels – fuels produced by cheap electricity, and electricity replacing gas for heating and oil for some transport. That’s the technical bit.
Politics: The USA is in the best position to make this happen. There is no need for world agreements. The USA needs to unshackle the nuclear industry for a start. Release the USA’s ability to innovate and commercialise the innovations. A well advised US President could lead the nation to make this happen. Then compete to supply the world with cheap nuclear power, hydrogen production and transport fuels. Jobs for the nation for half a century!! Progress would be greatly assisted if the so called ‘Progressives and the NGO’s that claim they are concerned about climate change, get strongly behind it – convert their membership from ‘antagonistic anti-nukes’ to enthusiastic advocates
Peter Lang +1
+ 1
Especially for the Commonwealth of Virginia, the southern terminus of the East Coast megalopolis, with both important sea-ports and mineral resources, and application of nuclear technology – military and power generation.
Taxing Carbon is a major breakthrough. Sin is understood to be the best thing to tax, but taxing it is generally seen as impractical, due to sin being generally underground (driven there by laws, with taxes thus reduced to excises on alcohol and tobacco) . . . However, taxing Carbon is easy, even when Carbon use is regarded as sinful, because there is no chance of anyone covering it up in a big way . . . All that had to be done was to put a handle on it, on Carbon use as sinful, that bureaucrats could use, scientific proof, formulae, models, and all that, and surround them with minders, Environmental PR minders. Hence the IPCC !” A post of mine to Facebook 16 hours ago, which I am now proud of because of ” its consistency with the Judith Curry article . . .”
32 minutes ago · Like
Peter Nielsen True John, and the proof is its consistency with the Judith Curry article of your most recent Post.
Integral to the IPCC’s brand of science is an irreducible animus to everything and everyone that questions the existence of an AGW consensus — to the Left a challenge to AGW theory is like an affront to Allah.
Dr Curry, my son just graduated from GA tech in the CS dept and have tremendous respect for the quality of work done at Tech. I have followed your work for a while and was impressed to your response years ago after being challenged at climate audit . Rather than dig in your heels you responded with dignity and learned from the experience. You are a true scientist and will be my hero an an example to follow. I am moving out of the GA area in a couple weeks and regret not being able to meet you in person.
Typo….”so it is not clear how move past this paralysis “
Prof. Ross McKitrick’s summary of the AR5 SPM:
“SPM in a nutshell: Since we started in 1990 we were right about the Arctic, wrong about the Antarctic, wrong about the tropical troposphere, wrong about the surface, wrong about hurricanes, wrong about the Himalayas, wrong about sensitivity, clueless on clouds and useless on regional trends.
And on that basis we’re 95% confident we’re right.”
Matt, could you link to the source, please? Thanks.
Happy to oblige. Prof. McKitrick’s posted his reaction to the AR5 SPM here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/27/reactions-to-ipcc-ar5-summary-for-policy-makers/
He posted his reaction to AR5 at 5:32pm. Since there are many posted reactions in the thread, the time stamp should help you locate his.
SPM in a nutshell: Since we started in 1990 we were right about the Arctic, wrong about the Antarctic, wrong about the tropical troposphere, wrong about the surface, wrong about hurricanes, wrong about the Himalayas, wrong about sensitivity, clueless on clouds and useless on regional trends.
A significant problem that arises is the significant failure of the models to replicate the dynamic response to singularities such as volcanics since the last review (Stenchikov 2006- Driscoll 2012)
This suggests either systemic failure in the dynamic core ( and associated physics) or problematic issues with the observations.
Define “wrong.”
It is an important part of the scientific method to get the sign correct.If you get the sign incorrect we suggest you are wrong eg Antarctic sea ice .Siberian/ eurasian warming during volcanic excursions (due to the positive phase of the AO) if you get the sign wrong eg Hanson or Schmidt in the various configurations show that there is indeed persistence of the ability to reproduce the wrong sign.
Are you a fan of Sharpling & Wurster?
David Appell, you truly excel at the art of the slap
JC wrote:
as temperatures have declined
What science supports this statement? Any at all?
We are cooling, David; for by now almost everyone knows.
Live, from the Big Appell, it’s Saturday Night Blog!
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Well, there is always this: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/plot/wti/from:2001/trend
Somehow I suspect you will say that is not ‘really’ a decline. But that argument completely misses the point. The real issue is that models have consistently projected rapid warming, even considering run-to-run variability in those models. The real Earth simply is not consistent with model projections. Or in simpler terms, the models are wrong. The fact that the IPCC can’t or won’t meaningfully address that reality is clear evidence that the organization is long past its ‘use by’ date, and so should be done away with. As Judith rightly points out, the IPCC is wedded to a paradigm that doesn’t work. There are lots of better things to do with the money, and lots of better ways to do productive research on climate. The IPCC and its entrenched advocate/scientists are just blocking progress, both scientific and political.
The current argument is that the variability of global temperature over short 10-20 year time-spans is connected to variability in SOI and in volcanic disturbances. This is demonstrated in the work of Kosaka and Xie[1] and what I have shown here:
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
The implication is that all the climate scientists have to do is predict the future profile of ENSO and any volcanic disturbances, unless they actually want skeptics to misinterpret what the data actually means.
[1]Y. Kosaka and S.-P. Xie, “Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling,” Nature, 2013.
Is there some reason you chose 2001 as the starting date (negative trend) rather than 2000 (or any earlier year) or 2006 (or any later year)? Did Judith say something about 2001 being the benchmark starting point for a “recent” trend?
Yes, the guy chose that date of 2001 because he is a statistical cherry-picker, too cowardly to let the long term duration show the true story.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
The real story is that the short-term fluctuations are related to the SOI, which is trendless in time spans over 100 years.
check this out
Cobb, K.M., N. Westphal, H. Sayani*, E. Di Lorenzo, H. Cheng, R.L. Edwards, C.D. Charles, Highly variable El Nino-Southern Oscillation throughout the Holocene, Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1228246, 2013.
http://shadow.eas.gatech.edu/%7Ekcobb/pubs/cobb13.pdf
If you pick certain discontinuous points from a set to generate your number, that’s cherry picking. But if you want to determine the slope of a linear regression of a certain time period, it isn’t cherry picking. It’s just the highlighting of a fact.
Time … is not on our side, no it isn’t.
“The uncertainty that arises from comparison of
various models is compounded by the fact that
instrumental records of ENSO are not sufficient-
ly long to test the accuracy of any given model
performance; these records are simply not long
enough to provide robust estimates of natural
ENSO variability.”
From: Highly Variable El Niño–Southern
Oscillation Throughout the Holocene
Kim M. Cobb,1* Niko Westphal,2† Hussein R. Sayani,1 Jordan T. Watson,2 Emanuele Di Lorenzo,1
H. Cheng,3,4 R. L. Edwards,4 Christopher D. Charles2
The retained heat has obviously continued to build up while the measure of the temperature as compensated by the well-known effect of the SOI [1] has reached a slow-down phase. As the AGW denier Bob Carter and his colleagues have shown[1], the SOI contributes all the variability in global temperature fluctuations. Since these trend-less SOI fluctuations are in a negative excursion phase, this has masked the underlying continued temperature rise. I show this here:
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
No temperature pause seen after SOI and volcanic disturbances are removed.
I like this kind of research where the deniers score own goals. The realists get the points, see [2].
[1]J. D. McLean, C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter, “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature,” Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 114, no. D14, Jul. 2009.
[2]Y. Kosaka and S.-P. Xie, “Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling,” Nature, 2013.
Calm down Web. Yes, much of the decline in warming is due to cyclical factors, the same cyclical factors which substantially enhanced warming in the 1975 yo 2000 period. Yes, forcing continues to rise and there will be continued warming with rising forcing. That fact is pretty much irrelevant. What is relevant is how much warming will take place. A most probable sensitivity somewhere under 2C per doubling of CO2 (my guess is about 1.6-1.8C is most probable) means that the warming is real, but the shrill demands for ‘a fundamental change in how people live there lives’ are becoming a more than a bit silly. That kind of ‘fundamental change’ is just not going to happen any time soon, if ever. Get over it.
All available evidence shows that the TCR is 2C and the ECS is 3C.
This number is solid and has not changed for 30+ years. I think you make the same mistake of conflating ECS and TCR as many other people.
This is a scientific question and has nothing to do with “‘a fundamental change in how people live there lives’ “, which would be a strange answer for a climate physics model.
We are cooling, David; for by now almost everyone knows.
What data says this?
kim does; but for how long is still perplexed, ignorant, and bewildered.
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Well, there is always this: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/plot/wti/from:2001/trend
What is the statistical significance of that trend?
What about other component’s of the Earth’s climate system?
Read the blogs, that’s all been settled.
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Of course it is not statistically significant! However, the difference between reality and model projections IS statistically significant. It seems you did not read the remainder of my comment, so I will give you another chance:
“The real issue is that models have consistently projected rapid warming, even considering run-to-run variability in those models. The real Earth simply is not consistent with model projections. Or in simpler terms, the models are wrong. The fact that the IPCC can’t or won’t meaningfully address that reality is clear evidence that the organization is long past its ‘use by’ date, and so should be done away with. As Judith rightly points out, the IPCC is wedded to a paradigm that doesn’t work. There are lots of better things to do with the money, and lots of better ways to do productive research on climate. The IPCC and its entrenched advocate/scientists are just blocking progress, both scientific and political.”
It is a problem in the SH,where significant feedbacks (in the reinforcing direction) are starting to operate such as seaice and the rate of growth of CO2.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3sh/from:1996.8/mean:12/plot/hadcrut3sh/from:1996.8/mean:12/trend
David – I would those “chips” of yours (with the AGW cult clown avatar) onto the no sun, no warming line if I were you…
Solar Cycle #24: On Track to be the Weakest in 100 Years
Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/103803/solar-cycle-24-on-track-to-be-the-weakest-in-100-years/#ixzz2gHE5ouHq
Or in simpler terms, the models are wrong.
What do you mean by “wrong?”
Wrong in which way? To what degree? Over what time period?
And how “right” do models have to be?
Wow, you seem pretty worked up. By ‘wrong’ I mean that the real Earth trend of the last 15 or so years falls outside the 95% confidence range of the pooled models; indeed, it is worse that that.. almost no runs of any of the IPCC models match the evolution of Earth’s average temperature over the past ~15 years… virtually all runs of all models are too warm. The probability of this being caused by chance (that is, that the models really are quantitatively correct and the recent trend is just very unusual) is very small. The models certainly do some things reasonably well, but in terms of quantitative accuracy, they fail rather miserably. As a policy tool they are dubious at best, and ridiculous at worst.
.
How ‘right’ do they have to be? Well, that is a complicated question, since it depends to some extent of personal values and judgement, but being unable to make accurate quantitative projections means that the models will not be given much credibility by lots of people/voters (including me).
By ‘wrong’ I mean that the real Earth trend of the last 15 or so years falls outside the 95% confidence range of the pooled models;
Says what?
By ‘wrong’ I mean that the real Earth trend of the last 15 or so years falls outside the 95% confidence range of the pooled models;
So you think that because climate models have not correctly predicted/projected a sliver of the climate system (the surface) for the last 15 years, since 1850, they are totally useless and should be completely disregarded?
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-useful-paper-on-one-models-results.html
How “right” does a climate model have to be?
within about 0.2 C and they are
But what other sciences can model stochastic phenomenon?
We can’t predict the ENSO changes, so why should we require models to?
within about 0.2 C and they are
For what? Lower stratosphere? Ocean surface? Global average land surface? USA48?
Over what time period? 10 years? 20 years? 50 years? Models can back predict for decades:
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-useful-paper-on-one-models-results.html
How accurate does a model have to be?
I’d also like to know: when were these model projections made? They must have assumed certain paths for CO2 emissions, CH4, N2O, aerosols, etc…. How good were those assumptions, given what actually trapsnired?
David Appell,
“So you think that because climate models have not correctly predicted/projected a sliver of the climate system (the surface) for the last 15 years, since 1850, they are totally useless and should be completely disregarded?”
Actually, they are quite wrong in lots of ways, not just surface temperature projections (way too much ocean heat uptake, incorrect short term variability, incorrect rainfall patterns, even incorrect absolute temperatures, very poor region projections..worse even than global average projections), so yes, they really are not very useful for POLICY guidance. Please also keep in mind that the ‘hind-cast’ accuracy of climate models means absolutely nothing because the models are ‘tuned’… what matters is forecast accuracy, and there the models do poorly.
If you want good policy guidance, I can give it to you without the billions spent on climate models: Increasing GHG’s will cause additional warming, how much is uncertain. Sea levels will continue to rise with additional warming; how much is uncertain, but probably not more than about 20-25 inches over the next 90 years. Secondary effects (ecosystem changes, habitat shifts, etc.) are even less certain than projections of warming. Some positive effects of warming and rising CO2 are likely (fewer wintertime deaths, more productive farming), but also very uncertain. Since the risks are very poorly defined and mainly in the distant future, while the costs of mitigation are both huge and immediate, a prudent course is to adopt some ‘no-regrets’ energy policies which will be beneficial in the long run, no matter how much warming takes place. These include breeder and thorium reactor technology development to replace fossil fueled power, energy storage research, energy efficiency incentives, and careful review of region climate risks (like coastal flooding) followed by appropriate planing.
There. And no charge.
Actually, they are quite wrong in lots of ways
Says who?
Someone like you doesn’t get to just list a bunch of variables and write off thousands of man-hours of work by experts.
If you can’t provide any details, then admit it. But junk like your last reply doesn’t come close to being meaningful.
What do you mean by “wrong?”
1. they get the absolute temperature wrong. The spread is 3 K
In a recent regional study I was doing the projected temperatures for chicago ( 2040 ) were 137F. Opps. Getting the absolute temperature wrong means that you will screw up processes that are temperature dependent. in short, anomalies dont melt ice
2. They get the amplification ratios wrong. Those that do warm the polar regions warm them too rapidly.
3. They get changes in seasonality wrong
4 They get sea surface salinity wrong
5. They get arctic ice wrong
6. they get the land contrast wrong.
7. In one regional model Im looking at they get desert temperatures wrong by 9C
need I go on?
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Wrong in which way?
It depends on the metric
To what degree?
sometime the errors are 100% or more. Other times less.
For example, the regional model Im working on, will get the temperature correct for the entire field ( averaged over 30 years ) but the trend is the wrong direction and its a disaster in the spatial dimension
Over what time period?
30 years or more, I only look at long term measures
And how “right” do models have to be
That is a question that policy makers have NEVER ANSWERED.
Consequently no body can answer the question if they are good enough for a given purpose.
In a recent regional study I was doing the projected temperatures for chicago ( 2040 ) were 137F.
What does this mean? It’s not even a correct sentence in the English language…. If you obtained such a result that means YOUR projection was wrong, not anyone elses.
So you do amateur analysis, and then blame the results on others. Nice. How honest of you.
David Appell | September 29, 2013 at 12:03 am |
In a recent regional study I was doing the projected temperatures for chicago ( 2040 ) were 137F.
What does this mean? It’s not even a correct sentence in the English language…. If you obtained such a result that means YOUR projection was wrong, not anyone elses.
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Sorry David, you asked what were wrong with models.
I told you. I took the data from a regional model. I Checked their projected temperatures for Chicago in the future scenarios. It was 137F.
The team of researchers all agreed the model was bunk.
This of course doesnt get published and cant get published.
So, unless you want me to throw mud at the particular modelling team in public, I’ll suggest you accept the f
Also, what is that accuracy of your model?
Or Judith’s?
D. Apppell:
“I’m sorry, but as a journalist, …”
This long thread, with your insistence on ‘credentialism’ [look it up], reminds me why I am proud to be related to three generations of reporters. Nary journalist in the lot.
The models are pretty wrong. At the very least they do a poor job on decadal time scales. They also do a poor job on regional climate. So what do they get right? There has been a big effort to get natural variability such as ENSO into them recently, but it apparently didn’t help their skill. The problem here , Appell, is that the projections of the future are based on them and even on longer time scales for example the last 3 decades, as Lucia and McIntyre have demonstrated, they dramatically overestimate warming. That can only be explained by some important problems. This also calls into question the huge sums spent on these models. As JC says, we should invest in fundamental understanding so we have a prayer of improving our projections.
This problem seems to me to undermine most of what the IPCC has to say, especially since they did not give a best estimate of ECS. Thus, the science, which was supposed to be settled, is getting more uncertain over time. Without an ECS number, the future looks to be dominated by the uncertainty monster.
What does “pretty wrong” mean? I’ve read a lot of science textbooks, but have never seen that term in any of them.
Lets put it this way, Appell, so you will understand. In no other area of science or modeling impacting public policy would such wrong models be tolerated. In my area, if we tried to show this kind of thing, we would be out of business. The public would demand observationally based data instead, an entirely appropriate demand.
Getting the lift or drag of an airplane wrong by a factor of 2 is a disaster, both scientifically, and from a business perspective. Any responsible scientist would have a fiduciary obligation to point out such errors, be totally honest about them, and either fix them or come up with an improvement plan. But the IPCC is apparently subject to no such scruples.
Where has the IPCC gone wrong by a factor of 2?
And how would you correct that? What, specifically, do you recommend in order to improve climate models and eliminate this claimed factor of 2?
By the way, what does your model give for this result?
Look at McIntyre’s recent careful examination of 30 year trends in temperature vs. the models.
I mentioned how to improve things. Stop spending on running GCM’s and building more and focus on the fundamental understanding. There appears to be something wrong in the tropics even with the moist adiabatic theory. Let’s get a grip on that problem.
I don’t have a model because I don’t have $100 million to build one and a team of 50 people. It’s not up to me to come up with a model. It’s up to the experts. That’s the adult notion of responsibility. If you fly on airplanes and you see that estimates of lift are off by a factor of 2, its not up to you to determine why or come up with a better model, its up to the experts and the airplane companies. Are you an adult, or just looking to score cheap points?
Look at McIntyre’s recent careful examination of 30 year trends in temperature vs. the models.
Where was that published?
Stop spending on running GCM’s and building more and focus on the fundamental understanding.
What is wrong with the “fundamental understanding?”
Specifically.
David, It’s in one of his 2 most recent posts, I think. I can look if you want me to.
It’s not up to me to come up with a model.
You can’t build a model on your PC?
I don’t believe that.
Have you even tried?
It’s in his most recent post.
David Appell,
The areas of largest uncertainty in the models is in cloud influences/feedbacks. The resolution of the models is far too course (the “grid size” is too large) to actually model could behavior directly, and even if that were possible, the computing resources would be astronopmical… far beyond the range of any existing (or near future) computer). So modelers use “parameters” to account for how they think clouds will form and behave. They also use assumed histories for aerosol effects (cooling) which are adjusted so that the models sort-of match the historical temperature trends. The problem is that the cloud effects and the aerosol offsets are very uncertain (the aerosol influences are becoming a bit better defined, but are still very uncertain). Feed-backs from clouds are enormously important, so much so that if you know the model’s cloud feed-backs you pretty much know the model’s sensitivity. If the models have clouds wrong (and there is at least some evidence they do) that would explain why they consistently overstate sensitivity. The ‘fudge factor’ of aerosols allows the modelers to match historical temperatures, no matter what cloud parameters are used. If this all sounds a bit ad-hoc to you, it should… the models really are very, very uncertain, because they are not meaningfully constrained by historical data.
McIntyre also does an analysis of the tropical troposphere data vs. models. The mismatch is very bad. Something is being missed in our understanding of the tropics.
Again, where was McIntyre’s work published?
It’s in his most recent post.
Oh, you mean a BLOG post.
I’m sorry, but as a journalist I put no stock in blog posts. They are not peer reviewed, and not reviewed at all, and have no quality controls. Too many of them are just laughable.
Real science is reviewed and published in real journals. It adheres to certain scholarly standards, can be read and assessed by experts, and put to the test of replication. I assumed all that was obvious.
I’m tellin’ ya, Appell, we gotta have more cabal.
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Appell, You are a case, aren’t you? Lets see according to the refereed literature, Vioxx was safe and effective. Madoff was also only found out by a mathematician who told the SEC that it was his returns were impossible. The experts said Madoff was fine. My brother who is an expert says despite years of attempts to improve, the medical literature is still of surprisingly poor quality.
Have you never heard of the concept of an independent audit? In medicine, its statisticians who are good at this and are included at the beginning of any study that hopes to be taken seriously. In climate science, uniform priors are a plague that skews results.
As a journalist, I would think you would be looking for inconsistencies and problems that need to be fixed. Unless, of course, you view your role as just parroting the literature and of course failing to mention any negative results. Seymour Hirsch would not approve.
Vioxx was safe and effective.
So you think that because ONE result was faulty — in which the company withheld data — ALL results are wrong?
is that your position? Does that include all of YOUR scientific results, all fo JC’s, all of everyone’s in the world?
Or just the results you don’t like?
David Young: Have you ever done any science yourself?
David Appell,
“I’m sorry, but as a journalist I put no stock in blog posts. They are not peer reviewed, and not reviewed at all, and have no quality controls. Too many of them are just laughable.
Real science is reviewed and published in real journals. It adheres to certain scholarly standards, can be read and assessed by experts, and put to the test of replication. I assumed all that was obvious.”
Spoken like a journalist indeed. But I am a scientist, and I have a slightly different perspective: much of what is published in many journals (certainly NOT just in climate science) is either flat wrong, irrelevant, or silly. Most real progress in science does not take place because of journal publications, but long before any publication in informal discussions, careful thought, experimentation, and maybe even in blog posts. In the case of climate science, the process of peer review has been, shall we say, distorted a bit, due to political considerations, gate keeping and the like (see the UEA emails for examples of this). So it is a field were I suspect there is some degree of bias in the published literature.
One thing that I can tell you for certain: independent of field, good science leads to accurate quantitative predictions… please consider that when evaluating the quality of climate science.
Steven Fitzpatrick: I have a PhD in theoretical physics. I am well aware that work published in journals is not necessarily correct, and sometimes turns out to be wrong.
But work published in peer reviewed journals adheres to certain scholarly standards, and [eer review meaqns it IS NOT OBVIOUSLY WRONG.
That is the difference with a blog post, which can be (and often is) utter garbage, complely unreviewed, totally useless.
good science leads to accurate quantitative predictions
Define “accurate.”
Since you’re the scientist and all.
the models really are very, very uncertain, because they are not meaningfully constrained by historical data.
Nice words. Where is your better model? Or just a better subset of a model to handle clouds?
David Appell.
David Young bitch slapped gavin and others at RC around when they questioned his bone fides.
Hes worked in fluid dynamics. DAFS. david young fluid dynamics
I
Sure Mosher, whatever you say.
yes david Appell.
I had noticed a presentation on time stepping errors by Williams, and when I pointed it out david Young was one of the few people to understand the problem. He tried to engage Gavin and folks.
Of course some idiots forgot to check his papers. They look sillier than you only because they are smarter.
You, are just stupid, so I expect this from you.
Check the bios on the denizens page, then DAFS. dont mistake him for the david young of harvard.
I have yet to see anything smart written by you Mosher, though clearly you are sure you are the smartest person in the room. What a waste of your talents, spent on all these blogs.
You can’t tell smart from shinola, Appell. Mosher isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed but he can cut you to shreds any day of the week.
David See Fig 1 in the latest post at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
What do you think this shows?
Hey Appell – what’s it like to be an animated dildo?
I know what it shows, a variation due to the SOI, an index which has been stationary and virtually trendless for the last 130+ years.
Subtract the SOI signal and underlying this is a warming trend.
Check out this figure and you can see how it works:
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
Good going PukiteyBoy. Publish it in Nature and we can probably get Minnessotans For Global Warming to do a Hide The Decline video with you instead of Michael Mann in it. :-)
Judith,
“However, the precautionary principle demands that we not take any risks here, and hence the IPCC should be put down.”
I don’t think Gavin is going to like this suggestion very much.
On the other hand, I do.
Quite frankly, I don’t care much what Gavin thinks. He is one of the more sarcastic and opaque people in this debate and his recent posts have involved a lot of cherry picking to make things seem worse than they are.
Anyway, is Gavin honest?
One of the people being interviewed is a lying little beeatch and the other is John Christy.
He (Schmidt) is less dishonest than some of the usual suspects. There’s no credible denial of his intellectual dishonesty in the way he moderates RealClimate. His defense of improprieties revealed in Climategate emails was reprehensible and forever excludes him from the ranks of honest men. He defended actions by Phil Jones, for example, that were found to be criminal but not prosecutable due to statute of limitations – the acts were still criminal acts. Just my opinion but I’m far from alone in it.
Big Dave may need a hint:
http://climateaudit.org/2005/10/29/is-gavin-schmidt-honest/
Right that down.
The climate audit link confirms what I had to say about Gavin Schmidt. I didn’t a clue about me being right. I already knew that. Maybe you should bother reading the long articles you link through to the end. If you can focus for that long which is a matter of grave doubt.
The procedure that “worked” with the ozone hole is a better example than you think. The Montreal Protocol ended use of CFHCs etc., with the sad caveat that it would take 20 years for the change to work its way through. But the Ozone Hole proceeded to shrink in the next year or two . Oops.
And further studies established that it waxed and waned to its own rhythms, and was pretty much unaffected by our emissions. But the substantial economic damage had been done, and continues (substitutes are less effective, and far more costly).
So a misdiagnosis generated a global and costly fix, which achieved nothing. The IPCC in a nutshell.
Which studies showed that it waxed and waned on its own cycles, and hasn’t been effected by human emissions?
These:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4LENN_enUS461US461&q=ozone+natural+variation
Thanks for asking.
I’m waiting for the sun-UV-ozone-climate connection. It, erl, Happens, I’m inclined to ultra-violet, but cosmic rays are so seductive.
===============
David Springer: that link returned 320,000 results.
You’ll have to do better.
Don’t bother, though — I filter out crude and obscene commenters.
“Don’t bother, though — I filter out crude and obscene commenters.”
There are 16 comebacks to this. Lets see who does the best one
I’m waiting for the sun-UV-ozone-climate connection.
http://strat-www.met.fu-berlin.de/~matthes/sparc/Rozanov_eep_noy.pdf
David Appell | September 28, 2013 at 11:22 pm |
“David Springer: that link returned 320,000 results. You’ll have to do better.”
Which of them do you not agree with?
320,000 refutations in the literature isn’t enough for you?
Steven Mosher | September 28, 2013 at 11:39 pm |
“Don’t bother, though — I filter out crude and obscene commenters.”
>There are 16 comebacks to this. Lets see who does the best one
Sort of like a Balleen whale filters krill out of seawater. The major difference is that one has sub-human intelligence and the other lives in the ocean.
“With the failure of climate models to simulate the pause and regional climate variability, we have arguably reached the point of diminishing returns from this particular path of climate modeling – not just for decision support but also for scientific understanding of the climate system”
This is correct but sad, One of the great developments of the 20fh century was the ability to simulate accurately almost any complex dynamic system. The differential Calculus of Issac Newton could st last provide new possibilities of understanding and developing dynamic systems of almost any complexity. For a new development you no longer had to build a prototype first, you could build a mathematical model, The sadness is that the IPCC misuse of that capability may deter others from using it.
Absurd. Models aren’t going away — they are the only game in town, and not just in climate, but in all science.
Nonsense.
‘In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles. The generation of such model ensembles will require the dedication of greatly increased computer resources and the application of new methods of model diagnosis. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive, but such statistical information is essential.’ http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/505.htm
Here they are talking about perturbed physics models – something still in it’s infancy – not ensembles of opportunity. Models are chaotic without a doubt. There are multiple feasible solutions within the range of plausible inputs.
e.g. http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1956/4751/F8.expansion.html
James McWilliams sees potential limits to understanding. ‘Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable. They echo other famous limitations on scientist’s expectations, namely the undecidability of some propositions within axiomatic mathematical systems (Gödel’s theorem) and the uncomputability of some algorithms due to excessive size of the calculation.’ http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709.long
Julia Slingo and Tim Palmer wonder about how far uncertainties can be reduced. ‘Finally, Lorenz’s theory of the atmosphere (and ocean) as a chaotic system raises fundamental, but unanswered questions about how much the uncertainties in climate-change projections can be reduced. In 1969, Lorenz [30] wrote: ‘Perhaps we can visualize the day when all of the relevant physical principles will be perfectly known. It may then still not be possible to express these principles as mathematical equations which can be solved by digital computers. We may believe, for example, that the motion of the unsaturated portion of the atmosphere is governed by the Navier–Stokes equations, but to use these equations properly we should have to describe each turbulent eddy—a task far beyond the capacity of the largest computer. We must therefore express the pertinent statistical properties of turbulent eddies as functions of the larger-scale motions. We do not yet know how to do this, nor have we proven that the desired functions exist’. Thirty years later, this problem remains unsolved, and may possibly be unsolvable.’ http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1956/4751.full
David Appell naively calls it the only game in town. Real scientific understanding will – as always – come from continued observation and analysis.
Nature holds the house margin.
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Again: climate models are the only game in town.
No one has any idea how to project future climate, if not with a model. None.
It seems that no one has much of an idea on how to predict future climate even with a model.
‘The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of (perturbed physics) ensembles of model solutions.’
Is unpredictability such a problem? Perhaps but it is what it is. Mode shifts occur every few decades.
‘The climate system has jumped from one mode of operation to another in the past. We are trying to understand how the earth’s climate system is engineered, so we can understand what it takes to trigger mode switches. Until we do, we cannot make good predictions about future climate change…’ Wally Broecker
>i>It seems that no one has much of an idea on how to predict future climate even with a model.
Nonsense. GISS’s E2 model does a pretty good job, except for the last decade:
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-useful-paper-on-one-models-results.html
“…but to use these equations properly we should have to describe each turbulent eddy—a task far beyond the capacity of the largest computer.” – Slingo and Palmer.
I’d guess that the atmosphere is made up of thousands of these eddys and there is chaos at each place where one eddy touches the adjoining one. Chaos in that a complete calculation cannot be done that captures what the two eddys are doing to each other. Since we have little hope of doing the above calculations for longer time frames, we might say the limits of Reductive Science are approached.
The paper the Chief linked is this one again: http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1956/4751.full
With pictures for people like me. To me I think Chaos theory has helped me to understand one of the problems.
David you say “they are the only game in town, and not just in climate, but in all science.”
Not so most -science is experimental you can’t run experiments on problems like climate.
and as for climate see my post above at 28/ 4:37 pm
Chaos in that a complete calculation cannot be done that captures what the two eddys are doing to each other.
Such eddies occur in gases or fluids all the time. Even in your backyard swimming pool — you know from swimming in one that there are cool and hot spots. Yet we can say, with a good bit of accuracy, how the average temperature of the pool willl change when the sun goes down. The entire field of thermodynamics was invented to calculate such properties in the large and in the long term, even when statistical flucatuations cannot all be accounted for. Climate calculations are in the large and in the long-term, subject to basic physical laws like conservation of energy.
Really David? No comprehension of the theoretical difficulties of nonlinear models?
Most of these models are tuned to conditions up to the end of the century. They then promptly miss decadal cooling.
Did you miss the bit about multiple solutions? Julia Slingo and Tim Palmer drew a picture.
‘Lorenz was able to show that even for a simple set of nonlinear equations (1.1), the evolution of the solution could be changed by minute perturbations to the initial conditions, in other words, beyond a certain forecast lead time, there is no longer a single, deterministic solution and hence all forecasts must be treated as probabilistic. The fractionally dimensioned space occupied by the trajectories of the solutions of these nonlinear equations became known as the Lorenz attractor (figure 1), which suggests that nonlinear systems, such as the atmosphere, may exhibit regime-like structures that are, although fully deterministic, subject to abrupt and seemingly random change.’
‘Therefore, we should expect a degree of irreducible imprecision in quantitative correspondences with nature, even with plausibly formulated models and careful calibration (tuning) to several empirical measures. Where precision is an issue (e.g., in a climate forecast), only simulation ensembles made across systematically designed model families allow an estimate of the level of relevant irreducible imprecision…
AOS models are therefore to be judged by their degree of plausibility, not whether they are correct or best. This perspective extends to the component discrete algorithms, parameterizations, and coupling breadth: There are better or worse choices (some seemingly satisfactory for their purpose or others needing repair) but not correct or best ones. The bases for judging are a priori formulation, representing the relevant natural processes and choosing the discrete algorithms, and a posteriori solution behavior.’
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709.long
Did you get the sense of the last sentence of James McWilliams? That’s right – they pull it out of their arses.
Much as I suspect you do David.
The historical evidence, say, for the Holocene, shows that large nonlinear changes are not common in the climate system. Nor are they absent. They just aren’t common on the time scale of 100 years.
Do you really expect to see some large nonlinear change in the next 5 years? 10 years? 50 years? 100 years? 500 years?
Therefore we can proceed to calculate expected climate changes using standard, nonlinear physics.
In any case, it’s all we can do, until someone figures out how to accurately incorporate chaotic changes. I’m sure some “skeptic” (ahem) is working on that right now, right?
‘What happened in the years 1976/77 and 1998/99 in the Pacific was so unusual that scientists spoke of abrupt climate changes. They referred to a sudden warming of the tropical Pacific in the mid-1970s and rapid cooling in the late 1990s. Both events turned the world’s climate topsy-turvy and are clearly reflected in the average temperature of Earth. Today we know that the cause is the interaction between ocean and atmosphere.’ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130822105042.htm
Swimming pools are not chaotic – climate is. I have quoted enough science – including the Godfather of climate science Wally Broecker. If you can quote some actual science to say that climate is not chaotic – and not just some idiot metaphor – I will be happy to consider it.
Broeckner himself did standard, nonlinear calculations. in fact, his 1975 prediction for the temperature of the year 2000 was pretty much on target:
“Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?”
Wallace S. Broecker, Science Vol. 189 no. 4201 pp. 460-463, August 8, 1975
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/files/2009/10/broeckerglobalwarming75.pdf
The SOI is contributing all the +/- variability to the global temperature signal. The SOI may be chaotic but it appears stationary, with nary a trend over the past 130+ years.
It is probably better described as an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck type of red noise model with a strong reversion to the mean, i.e. 0C.
As David Appel says, Broeker made his predictions in 1975 and if I am interpreting his table right, said that 2010 would have a global temperature anomaly of 1.1C and CO2 of 403 PPM. Those are consistent with a 3C ECS / 2C TCR.
It is also consistent with the analysis after removing the contributions of the irrelevant-over-the-long-term SOI.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
Note that the trend line is at 1C, pretty close to Broeker’s estimate.
Chief FireWater likes to score own goals, don’t he?
David
Here is a good example of how models get used. Simple model to answer a constrained question.
http://webgis.wr.usgs.gov/mer/March_2002_presentations/Bridges/Bridges_MER_low_T's_(NTB_TZM).pdf
Non-stationarity is simply a statistical property meaning that there are different means and variances at different times. Thus the mean of the SOI was more positive from the mid 1940’s to the late 1970’s, more negative to the end of the century and higher on average again since. It means that it is not a simple harmonic oscillating about a constant mean.
e.g. http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/maclean-2009-Fig4.gif.html?sort=3&o=124
The mean was also more positive over most of the millennia until the Pacific shifted into an El Nino mode in the modern era.
e.g. http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Vance2012-AntarticaLawDomeicecoresaltcontent.jpg.html?sort=3&o=84
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00003.1
So the series is non-stationary over periods of interest. Decadal regimes of warmer and cooler global temps, drought and floods and cyclones and calm in places where we live.
Chaotic is a different story – it is a theory to explain these sudden shifts between modes of climate behaviour that lead to non-stationarity of the time series.
Red, brown, purple, white or pink noise is no explanation. Climate doesn’t just jump around randomly – and there are certainly causes behind Pacific climate states.
The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) 10-year average is the same in 1880 as it is in 2010. That is why I say it is trendless and nearly stationary over time. This is very important as it blows HUGE holes in the denier arguments that this variability contribution is responsible for ANY of the accumulated natural variability over the last 130 years.
Sure there are localized temporal variations, but these are merely noise in the relentless upward trend result from GHG-based warming. This includes the pause, which is just a transient fluctuation that will eventually resume as a strong warming.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
Cloud seem to be responsible for much of the recent warming – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandlaken2013_zps3c92a9fc.png.html?sort=3&o=29
It is inversely related to sst temperature which is how it why the multidecadal and longer variability of the Pacific is important.
The multidecadal variability is also important for decadal predictions. These regimes persist for 20 to 40 years in the proxy records. So odds are we are in a cooling regime for another 10 to 30 years.
The longer term variability – the 1000 year pattern – suggests a cool pattern over centuries is possible.
We were talking chaos in models – something that is not doubted since Lorenz truncated the input for his 1960’s convection model.
Broecker was doing superpositioning of cycles with CO2 warming. Great timing – he picked the 1976/77 climate shift one year before. These regimes are chaotic and not cyclic.
‘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.’ Tsonis, A. A., K. Swanson, and S. Kravtsov (2007),
A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts, Geophys. Res. Lett.,34
These regimes have alternately warmed and cooled the planet over the past century. Such that the residual rate of greenhouse gas warming is at most 0.1 degrees C/decade. Not all that much to worry about if it were not for nonlinearity in climate.
The satellite record brings even that into doubt.
‘In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.’ http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-4-4-1.html
It is very unlikely as well that the 20th century pattern of alternating warm and cool will be repeated indefinitely. We know a lot more about longer term ENSO patterns these days.
David Appell | September 28, 2013 at 11:05 pm |
“Real science is reviewed and published in real journals. It adheres to certain scholarly standards, can be read and assessed by experts, and put to the test of replication.”
Where has increasing atmospheric CO2 from 280 to 395 ppm causing 0.8C warming been replicated?
Surely it’s been done because climate science is “real science”, right?
ROFLMAO
As AGW climatists continue to flail, their desperate aver to 95% is an admission that they knew what constituted actual significance all along; and, coming at a time when their credibility is absolute zero, this false confidence in their mad trope looks more like how a hoax dies.
Dennis, I guess you mean the bend. Webster thinks he knows what the shank angle is and that CO2 has pulled the hook, but without knowing the gap he is just floundering around and liable to get barbed up.
Webster, “The average temperature is 50% higher on land, SpringyBoy.”
That is not even wrong. The average absolute temperature on land is ~5C cooler than the average absolute temperature at the sea surface. The average SST is ~18.3 C degrees. Since land surface temperature is the average of the daily maxima and minima while SST is the average of the temperature below the surface, LST has much more variability and is dependent of the choice of smoothing and baseline. You keep taking the noisiest of the noise data and assuming it is perfectly reliable. The error margin, which is optimistic, for the satellite era is ~+/-0.125C and the pre-1950 era ~0.25C.
Now the land anomaly is ~twice the SST anomaly after season cycle removal, interpolation and averaging at contributes ~29% of the total “Global” temperature anomaly.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-5mVg9d-TpiE/Ukdq8lWIiMI/AAAAAAAAJtQ/I4hqEZL1ttA/w792-h512-no/alarmist.png
btw, what causes that SOI that you assume averages out to zero on any convenient time scale?
Cappy :
That’s what I meant to say, that the the increase in land temperature, in other words the anomaly, was 50% greater than the average and twice the SST, not the shorthand which was misinterpreted as an absolute temperature.
The SOI average is the same in 1880 as it is in 2010. That is why I say it is trendless and nearly stationary over time. This is very important as it blows HUGE holes in the denier arguments that this variability is responsible for ANY of the accumulated natural variability over the llast 130 years.
Webster, just because SOI appears to be trendless doesn’t mean it is. Despite what you believe, there is evidence of the 21 year Hale cycle in the smoothed data and the 11cycle in the noisy data. That means there is likely a solar component with an 8 to 11 year lag. About the same lag Schwartz estimated. If you want to try and fit, try and do it right.
Try Kopp, G. tsi with an 11 year trailing average.
http://lasp.colorado.edu/data/sorce/tsi_data/TSI_TIM_Reconstruction.txt
Here ya go Webster,
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-PSI-CONoyk8/Ukg6qSNIs3I/AAAAAAAAJto/vapTFPhIF38/w693-h515-no/combined+forcing+estimate.png
That uses TSI and assumes there is a fast response, atmosphere and a lagged response oceans plus a “global” CO2 impact of 0.8C with the usual volcanic noise. The lags could be tweaked, but with all the noise it is not much use.
Dallas – do you know *why* absolute land temperature is ~5C cooler than ocean temperature? It’s because the so-called greenhouse effect is mostly accomplished by the ocean which is an uber-greenhouse fluid. The ocean then warms the atmosphere including the atmosphere over the continents especially nearer to the ocean (continentality).
Greenhouse effect over land is much smaller because the greenhouse working fluid is a wispy atmosphere with very little heat capacity and even in that case the major player component is water vapor not CO2 in the current regime. CO2 becomes more important when surface temperature is well below freezing which drastically reduces partial pressure of water vapor.
Every observation makes sense in light of two major premises:
1) liquid water in the ocean is the major source of 33C greenhouse warming
2) greenhouse warming by atmospheric gases is insignificant except over dry land because downwelling IR, which will insulate rocks or ice, does not insulate water very well.
Dry land exhibits close to 100% Planck response while ocean only exhibits 30% which we can easily see from heat budget components in Physical Oceanography textbook kindly put online by Texas A&M University:
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/ocng_textbook/chapter05/chapter05_06.htm
See figures 5-8 (net thermal radition) and 5-9 (latent heat flux). Note that in the tropical ocean most of the action takes place thermal radiation is on the order of 60 W/m2 while latent flux is on the order of 160W/m2. Latent flux is the big Kahuna and without acceptance of that as fact and understanding of why it is what it is you end up flailing about making a fool of yourself like Paul Pukite does here.
Springer, ” It’s because the so-called greenhouse effect is mostly accomplished by the ocean which is an uber-greenhouse fluid”
WHAT! Are you saying the oceans are part of the green fluid effect? That’s crazy talk :)
Cappy, You plot rising temperature trends with no context, and then follow that with sciencey-sounding word-salad gibberish.
Webster, That was a quick example of how solar could have different impacts on different parts of the climate system. The oceans absorb solar and would have a longer lag with a higher efficiency. The atmosphere absorbs solar which would have a shorter lag and lower efficiency. It really should not require much explanation. Until you can comprehend that all forcings are not created equally, it would be a waste of time going into more detail with someone who fits an oscillation without considering that oscillation likely has a cause.
But don’t feel like the lone ranger, there are lots of people that forget that dT=lambda*d(F) is a gross simplification of a complex function.
Cappy said:
Thanks for the own goal. This got rid of even more of the ripple.
http://img802.imageshack.us/img802/8223/wud.gif
But like Hansen and others have said, this is a minor effect.
As the number of sunspots fall, solar radiation reaching Earth is reduced. While those reductions are tiny in absolute numbers, researchers have uncovered mechanisms by which the climate system can amplify the effect of those small changes. (see next thread)
The average temperature is 50% higher on land, SpringyBoy.
How quickly they forget. And BTW, there is currently no pause .
Web …”there is currently no pause”
I wonder if you could help me with the proper nomenclature. Since I am not a climate scientist, I would at least like to sound like one. Take a look at this graph from NASA and look at the far right part. Instead of calling it “that little almost looking like a fish hook doohickey” I wonder what the proper terminology is? Thanks in advance.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.pdf
dennis adams,
Happy that I can explain it to you
The current argument is that the variability of global temperature over short 10-20 year time-spans is connected to variability in SOI and in volcanic disturbances. This is demonstrated in the work of Kosaka and Xie[1] and what I have shown here:
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9159/hpi.gif
In short, the pause is not the signal but the noise. The real signal is being masked temporarily.
[1] Y. Kosaka and S.-P. Xie, “Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling,” Nature, 2013.
“In short, the pause is not the signal but the noise. The real signal is being masked temporarily.”
That’s less and less credible with each passing year of pause. Right now it’s something less than 5% credible as its occurence is, according to our best climate models, outside the 95% confidence bound. Ten more years of pause and your noise hypothesis is itself reduced to noise. LOL
Are you are saying that the Southern Oscillation Index is going to change from its mean index of 0 in the coming years? The following profile shows the effective temperature that the SOI contributes to the global average temperature over the years:
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/189/ijy.gif
This is a classical compensation term.
For the pause to continue, given that the GHG forcing continues to climb, is for the SOI to go more and more into a cool phase. Based on historical evidence over the past 130 years, are you willing to bet on it?
Or is this all too much over your head, SpringyBoy?
The multi-decadal phases are quasi equilibrium states. The current positive bias of the SOI is likely to persist for 10 to 30 years – based on the persistence of these patterns over 1000 years.
WebHubColonoscope
No. I’m saying that departures above and below the mean are not necessarily transfers from one existing reservoir to another, which would be a zero sum game, but could also be changes in the amount of shortwave energy absorbed from the sun.
Climate models don’t reproduce ENSO so there’s no hypothetical basis to assume it is or must remain a zero sum game. There is also no hypothetical basis to presume that, even if it’s a zero sum game, that there aren’t cyclic trends with periods lasting centuries required to zero it.
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/teleconnections/soi-s-pg.gif
Records only go back to 1950 by the way which is just a single cycle for the Atlantic Multidecadel Oscillation. Do you make a habit of characterizing things from a single sample? Even I was hesistant to say the AMDO was about to reverse in 2005 and I could see 2.5 cycles in the instrument record. As it turns out I was right and it did turn about, much to the consternation of the usual suspects and their sycophants such as Paul Pukite.
Thanks for playing. Better luck next time!
Judith
“increasing levels of shrillness on both sides of the political debate, with the ‘warm side’ steeped in moral panic and hyperbole”
It probably doesnt help to get more specific about one side. there and INFINITE amount of hyperbole on all sides. I know I counted. willard checked my work
> INFINITE
+1
+ 1 / 0
Nice try Pukite but 1/0 is undefined not infinity. I know for pedestrians like you separating the two concepts is difficult to impossible. I might suggest you repeat grades K-12 to find out where exactly you lost the plot. Maybe skip the repeat of kindergarten if you’re able to color inside the lines with crayon and take naps without throwing a fit.
This fine post was accompanied by a good quality of comments until a bad Appell spoiled the barrel.
Not at all. Cider and vinegar.
Skeptics and deniers can’t deal with simple first-order physical models of reaility.
“Bad Appell” :o)
Indeed, Faustino, it started so well:
Perhaps David’s presence does not appell to Denizens.
Willard
I said this to you, don’t know if you saw it
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/27/95/#comment-388710
tonyb
My response is here, TonyB:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/28/ipcc-diagnosis-permanent-paradigm-paralysis/#comment-389596
David’s presence is a logical fallacy called appell to ignorance.
Thank you for your response, TonyB.
Actually, TonyB, here’s what you said:
> He may have turned up on nicks previous thread but there was so much shrapnel flying around between denizens that I don’t think many people noticed him.
I don’t think this means “I don’t think so” or simply “no”. It’s more like a “but Climateballers” with an almost inaudible “no”.
You were making an excuse for Judy’s silence and you focused on your excuse instead of acknowledging Judy’s silence.
This does not put you into any position to epilogue, TonyB.
Please retract your words.
Willard
‘But climateballers?’ an ‘almost ‘inaudible no?’
I’m afraid I don’t begin to understand what you appear to be accusing me of. In good faith I have deliberately searched you out in order to offer to see what the circumstances of Betts appearance here was.
I cant begin to see that I was making an excuse for Judith’s silence. Over what? Why should I have even noticed much less thought it was significant?
I think the context was that I said that I regretted that we get few scientists of the status of Betts coming here which is possibly due to the food fights that go on.
Someone called Qing bin lu made a single comment here a couple of days ago. I don’t know if it was the scientists or some one with the same name but my only point I think was that it would be nice to have a forum where we can discuss matters with professional scientists.
I think you are reading far too much into casual comments and you seem to be accusing me of complex machinations that were simply not there.
tonyb
climatereason | September 29, 2013 at 11:06 am |
“I’m afraid I don’t begin to understand what you appear to be accusing me of.”
I don’t think even Willard understands what Willard writes. If he were a computer gibberish engine I’d say he was top of the line because it almost seems like a human intelligence is at work. But not quite.
David Springer
Help me out here.
What is a ‘climate baller’ and an ‘almost ‘inaudible no’ And what exactly is it I am being accused of doing?
tonyb
Live, from the internet, it’s willard morning coming down.
============
Willard
you said
‘I’m accusing you of being dishonest, TonyB.
You pretend having answered my question whereas I showed you that you did not.Thank you for playing dumb’.
I really resent that Willard
What question did you ask? Where have you showed I didn’t answer it? What on earth do you mean by ‘Climate Baller’ What is an ‘almost inaudible no’? What was Judith being silent about? What on EARTH are you talking about?
You are way over analysing my comment which was regretting that we do not attract top climate scientists to our discussions.
What do YOU think I was commenting on and before you accuse me of being dishonest you need to tell me in what way. In that respect writing in a more open fashion might help as you might know what such things as a ‘climate baller’ means but I certainly don’t.
Explain yourself or apologise.
tonyb.
KIm
You are good with words. Perhaps you can tell me why I am apparently being dishonest and can translate what Willard means by ‘a climate baller’ and an ‘almost inaudible no.’
Willard is completely baffling me with his comments. That’s all very well but I resent being called dishonest.
tonyb
Fix yourself @ SkS, hair of the dog.
===============
Tony, he’s bulked up with alarmist steroids; a self-destructive process. Have pity.
=========
TonyB,
Thank you for your concerns. You ask:
> What question did you ask?
I asked you if anyone answered Richard Betts’ question:
Do you recall if he got an answer, TonyB?
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/25/nic-lewis-vs-the-uk-met-office/#comment-387384
I have no reason to believe there is a misunderstanding about which question I did ask you.
I asked you that question on September 26, 2013 at 9:15 am.
You answered on September 26, 2013 at 1:01 pm:
He may have turned up on nicks previous thread but there was so much shrapnel flying around between denizens that I don’t think many people noticed him
September 26, 2013 at 7:56 pm, I replied with a comment that starts with this:
Thank you for making a sentence with “Richard Betts” in it, but I don’t think it answers my question.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/25/nic-lewis-vs-the-uk-met-office/#comment-387766
Fast forward today. On September 28, 2013 at 3:04 am, you tell me:
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.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/27/95/#comment-388710
***
I think this comment confirms the intent of your first answer. But “said I didn’t think so” is false, since you said “I don’t think many people noticed him”.
Your first response may imply that you think Richard Betts got not answer, but it does not say so.
Also note that your answer does not mention that Richard Betts got not answer from Judy.
***
Finally, note that most of your words refer to some “shrapnel flying around”.
This is an excuse, TonyB, an excuse for Judy not to have responded to Richard Betts.
A cheap excuse to switch the focus from Judy’s silence to what I refer as Climateball. If you find “schrapel flying” clear enough, I have no reason to believe you don’t get what is Climateball, TonyB.
You may ask yourself if Climateballers do not read comments made by Richard Betts.
***
Not only are you playing ungentlemanly, but you’re trying to start a conversation about me with Koldie and Big Dave.
I find that suboptimal, TonyB.
Please ask me to clarify what I mean by “suboptimal” and “ungentlemanly”.
TonyB,
Thank you so much for the compliment you made on another thread:
> Now you are being lucid.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/29/2-from-the-australian-financial-review/#comment-389903
I am afraid they are undeserved, since you say:
> So this is about you thinking that Judith evaded a question asked by Richard betts and that I was in some mysterious way complicit in it?
This is not remotely close to what I wanted to convey, which was that:
– you did not answer my question explicitly, but deflected on “shrapnel”;
– you reminded me of your response that I already refused;
– you asserted having answered my question, whence I claim otherwise;
– you tried to start a conversation about my lack of lucidity [1] with other Denizens;
– I find all this [2] quite suboptimal.
With your last comment, we can add:
– you reminded me of a response on a question to which you now claim having not recalled.
If my lack of lucidity [1] makes you to act like this, rest assured that I am deeply sorry. Please don’t hesitate to ask me any other question that could elucidate our matter at hand. Issues of suboptimality are very important to me, and I see no reason to retract anything, most of which has already been deleted anyway.
Thank you for your patience and for your overall concerns,
w
[1]: http://www.synonym.com/antonyms/lucid/
[2]: Deflecting, forgetting, stating untruthfully, and excluding me by way of an anacoenosis.
Willard
I am replying to your 9.37 as I hadn’t seen your 2.53 before composing my reply;
—- ——-
Willard
I tend to take blog posts at face value and respond accordingly. This is especially so if I am reading them on my i-pad which may have many merits but with its small screen does restrict my ability to easily see any broader context, especially as it has the annoying habit of dropping its signal frequently.
You often seem to deeply analyse comments and perhaps read a meaning into some that were not always intended. For example you say here;
“- you tried to start a conversation about my lack of lucidity [1] with other Denizens;”
No, I was merely asking them to translate your words as I thought I was being obtuse for not understanding ‘climateballers’ and ‘an almost inaudible no’. I still don’t know what you meant or what relevance you thought it had to my original passing comment that our food fights probably scare away the very people we might want to engage with .
I cited Richard Betts as an example who I saw briefly come and go on one thread. Whether he was making a comment or asking a question, who it was aimed at or what the subject was I don’t recall. My interest was that he had briefly appeared and I think that maybe I tried to ask him a question as his position at the Met office (who are geographically very close to me here) means I have a particular interest in his work. A far as I recall he did not respond to me or if he did I didn’t see it.
As promised I revisited Nic Lewis’s previous thread where I thought Betts comment appeared, then looked at half a dozen other threads, in the process reading some 3000 comments, but could not find it. The trouble is that Judith seems to be feeding denizens red meat virtually every day now and it is quite impossible to systematically go through the tens of thousands of comments in which Betts post could be hiding.
However, I did find one from you that I had not previously seen which perhaps lies at the heart of this;
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/25/nic-lewis-vs-the-uk-met-office/#comment-387766
“Thank you for making a sentence with “Richard Betts” in it, but I don’t think it answers my question.
My question is if Richard Betts’ question got answered. For you know that he asked a question the last time he commented here, right?
Please jog your memory. Many thanks!”
No, as far as I recall I wasn’t aware that Richard Betts had been here before and asked a question that apparently hadn’t got answered.
So, sorry Willard I can’t answer your question. I wasn’t evading it as I don’t recall seeing it. My interest was at a much more superficial level than yours in as much I see the occasional scientist passing through and would like them to engage, whereas in this instance, as far as I can gather, you perhaps think that Judith is trying to evade certain comments.
I am with her on this one as the sheer volume of comments (many highly repetitive) makes it impossible to keep track of each one or see its wider context. In my search I saw several directed at me that I hadn’t seen or answered, yours amongst them.
So it was unfair of you to accuse me of dishonesty. If you want to ask a direct question of me it might help if it was framed a little more clearly and a link to it would have saved me a great deal of time. There is really nothing more I can add Willard as I can’t answer your question, despite my best efforts.
tonyb
Willard
I have just looked at ‘climateballers’ which seems to be your own invented word.
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/54291162416
In this you appear to hold an entirely imaginary conversation with me.
You subsequently say; “If you find “schrapel flying” clear enough, I have no reason to believe you don’t get what is Climateball, ”
Having only just now discovered your meaning of the word (and still bemused as to how it is played or its purpose) I still don’t understand why my phrase ‘shrapnel flying’ means that I apparently-without even knowing its meaning- had somehow understood the rules of your Climateball game by employing the phrase.
‘Shrapnel flying’ merely means lots of comments flying around, some abusive or irrelevant.
As I said in my long reply to you the comment I made about Richard Betts has been way over analysed and I had no idea I was a contestant in your personal game.
tonyb
‘
TonyB,
Thank you for considering that it may not be a problem of lucidity. You now seem to posit that we’re having a failure to communicate. This failure to communicate may be explained by your artlessness, my analyses, and your iPad.
To this circumstancial evidence we can add the fact that you prompted me to look into a response to which I already answered about a question you do not recall, both details which have been revealed after you told me I made no sense to you, and asked the most upright Denizens to help you out.
In a word, there seems to be lots of things that escape you in our exchange.
***
Even finding back a comment seems difficult:
> As promised I revisited Nic Lewis’s previous thread where I thought Betts comment appeared, then looked at half a dozen other threads, in the process reading some 3000 comments, but could not find it.
Let me G that for you:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fjudithcurry.com%2F2013%2F09+%22richard+betts%22
There should be 4 hits. Then use CTRL-F and “richard”. You should be able to find it back in less than 30 seconds.
The main trick is to use the fact that you can search WordPress archives by chopping down the dates. Here’s how you could search for all the posts from Sept. 2012:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/09/
Hope this helps.
***
I thought I expressed myself candidly enough: I find all this (see also below) quite suboptimal. Do you understand what I am conveying with the word “suboptimal”? Even if you can’t pinpoint a specific meaning, I do hope you understand what I am expressing by that word.
The same applies to the word “Climateballers”. The only difference being that you may not even need to understand to whom this expression refers to make sense of what I’m saying. In other words, what I’m saying does not depend upon the meaning of “Climateballers”, inasmuch as “suboptimal” do.
***
I suggest we leave it at that, as you do finally offer me an honorable response:
> So, sorry Willard I can’t answer your question.
Thank you for this answer, although I hope that with the search trick I provided you could now answer it.
***
Here’s an excerpt from Richard Betts’ comment, BTW:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/15/leaked-ipcc-report-discussed-in-the-msm/#comment-380434
***
Have you ever seen the film called Gas Light? I’ve heard it was good. I might try to find it after my The Big Lebowski pilgrimage.
Auditing willard.
Following willards instructions it too substantially longer than 30 seconds.
Working from the bottom link first
I found a few questions by Betts
one posed in a tweet
and a few posed in the second post.
There tonyb posed a question to him as well.
i dont think richard betts answered tonybs question.
In any case it took 3 minutes ( hehe my new nexus 4 has a cool stopwatch) to search 3 of the 4 posts.
yes, questions go unanswered.
Appell is always interesting when he shows up. Let’s not spoil the healthy debate he causes. Just ignore his foibles.
Agreed. The exchange he inspired has been extremely interesting if not to say entertaining.
that can accurately account for the fast thermodynamic feedback processes associated with clouds and water vapor.
This will finally kill the Climate Industrial Complex dead. Once these processes are understood, you see how the planet actively manages heat, shunts heat to space on demand, and bypasses the majority of GHG’s in the process. I think this is why it is not actively studied when its impact is so huge and its effect so obvious. It must be that no one wants to be the first to piss in the gravy… No other reason makes sense.
Really? When has the planet “shunted heat” (whatever that means) to space “on demand” (whose demand?), and what evidence suggests that happens?
Convection carries latent heat into the stratosphere – where it is able to radiate into space.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewer-Dobson_circulation
The “space shuttle.”
“I think that the latest IPCC report (AR5) has truly sunk to a level of hilarious incoherence.”
— Richard Lindzen
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/9/28/lindzen-on-ar5.html
“Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis. The time for debate is over. THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED.”
— Al Gore (in 1992)
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=c47c1209-233b-412c-b6d1-5c755457a8af
” increasing levels of shrillness on both sides of the political debate, with the ‘warm side’ steeped in moral panic and hyperbole….
…expenditures in the bazillions,…
..difficult to obtain funding and get papers published by ‘gatekeeping’ journal editors) or at worst ostracized by labels of ‘denier’ or ‘heretic.’ ” -JC
bazillions??
Thankgod it’s a hyperbole free zone here, far away from the moral panic.
Judith offers us instead a decision paralysis paradigm, where we know nothing much and nothing with any great confidence.
And if there was never an IPCC – what then? I think the situation would be far worse than it is now in terms of having some kind of useful information for decision makers. You’d have a smorgasboard of climate scientists, where policy makers/politicans could just pick the choose the opinion that they found most to their liking. That happens to some extent now, but it would be far worse sans IPCC.
A smorgasboard of climate scientists, Michael?
You mean open -society data presenting papers
contesting observations ? Sounds like doing
science ter me, Michael.
Don’t care fer the existing closed – society set-up,
a consensus-ship-this-is-what-yer-need-ter-know,
serfs, from the Klimateriat-Kontrol-Centre-of-the-
I-P-C-C
bts
“You’d have a smorgasboard of climate scientists, where policy makers/politicans could just pick the choose the opinion that they found most to their liking. That happens to some extent now, but it would be far worse sans IPCC”
And you know this how? Oh yeah, this is what’s called ‘insightful analysis’.
Gazillions of climate scientists would have been more accurate.
Gazillions spending bazillions. Bloodly socialists.
John,
Because it happens a bunch in other fields – sarcastically known as ‘policy-based evidence’.
Ter repeat meself …
The IPCC is a flawed organisay-shun, an insider-decishun-making-
group from a self-selecting-circle of AGW environmentalists weighted
ter Greenpeace et AL with young unpublished researchers fast-
tracked ter Lead Authorship. Confirmau-shun-bias is built in. If yer
read Donna Laframboise and Ross McKitrick’s detailed document-
ayshun on the IPCC and the leaked Climate-gate emails… u know,
the whole-data-fudgin’, cherry-pickin’, gatekeepin’ sorry scenario,
then the scales should drop from yer eyes.
The IPCC should be put out ter grass … or worse. :)
beth-the-serf.
So true, Beth … but evidently there are none so blind as an appell who will not see (as we have seen with his channelling Willard in this very thread!)
Hilary
I’ll add a coupla lines to a comment i made re yr informative
analysis of the IPCC on ‘The View from Here.’
The IPCC…
Boundless hypocrisy
unbounded by constraints
financial or emissionary,
ignored by those who are
too blind ter see.
bts
Pingback: CBC finally drops IPCC-nik Andrew Weaver’s fake Nobel laurel | The View From Here
http://scottishsceptic.wordpress.com/2013/09/27/bob-carter-95-is-hocus-pocus-science
Bob Carter is another one of those crank Aussies.
He scores own goals and sheepishly avoids confronting the reality.
J. D. McLean, C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter, “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature,” Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 114, no. D14, Jul. 2009.
IPCC needs to apply itself more seriously to mitigation other than CO2 reduction. painting roofs white, heat reflective road surfaces, planting more trees, CO2 minimising crops, making clouds and rain, creating atmospheric dust, space sunshields, etc, etc.
blouis79
You recommend mitigation for a global warming problem that you refuse to admit is caused by the GHG effect ….
Whut’s up wid dat?
Let’s have a little more detailed look at the diagnosis:
Really? Is the observation that a human caused warming of more than 0.3 C over 60 years catastrophic? Are there other statements in IPCC reports that tell about confidence in catastrophic outcome? Some individuals have presented such conclusions but IPCC reports could be used as evidence against such interpretation.
I share the impression that a significant part of the insiders consider major changes in the approach essential.
Many people agree on the two above observations both among them who consider rapid action important and those who don’t.
How far I agree on that depends on how the words ‘can’ and ‘control’ are interpreted. I consider it almost certain that significant reductions in the ultimate cumulative releases would have a major effect in long term, but the sentence may be interpreted to refer to something that doesn’t have similar effects.
What will happen in Europe is far from clear.
How should the other side be described?
How large are the “sides” for which such characterizations are appropriate, majorities or perhaps few vocal individuals?
Really? Is that claim presented at such a level that the evidence for that is not strong?
There must be some truth in that, but as all similar cases both sides tend to contribute in build-up of the problems. It’s also clear that papers critical to earlier conclusions continue to be published in main journals of climate science.
How could this state of matter be improved? Stated in another way: What’s required from climate science to make in more capable in offering valid regionally important advice. Is the solution in still larger models of smaller grid cells? If not, then where?
These are issues where my views are very close to those expressed in the above paragraphs. Developing climate models does lead also developing more generally understanding of the climate system, but emphasis on production models takes a lot off from the efficiency of the process. Trying to build production models when the gaps in basic knowledge are too large is very wasteful.
Among modelers we have always many who try to maintain belief in the short term value of the model results. Here we have direct conflict of interest. Many other modelers have doubts on such near term applicability, but few of then are vocal about that – for understandable reasons. Even they may agree that modeling is useful for other reasons and worth the money spent, so why to rock the boat.
On the other hand we may ask, whether more resources would have been available for the more productive climate science, if less effort had been put in production models. The other alternative is that overall resources of climate science had been reduced as much or more than the waste of resources in unproductive work has been. That would have saved some resources for the society as whole, but on this level the saving had not been substantial. The most costly part of the science like satellite observations have their value in all alternatives.
You can almost hear the gears clanking up.
=====================
Au contraire, I can hear the kranks gearing up.
In political terms, AR5 was actually the incoherent and rambling suicide note of the IPCC.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/in-the-aftermath-of-ar5/
Pointman
I could have sworn the rambling was from the science-free blog that you linked to.
Perhaps you should have contributed to AR5. The end result couldn’t have been made any worse. Then again, perhaps you did …
Pointman
hey, assuming that the temperature pause is natural, what would have been temperature trend if CO2 emissions had been reduced significantly?
The temperature trend would have been exactly the same. The climate sensitivity of CO2, however defined, is indistinguishable from zero.
The temperature trend would have looked like the shaft of the hockey stick if we hadn’t started pumping out CO2 in the 1800’s
Because of the long sequestering time of CO2, even if we reduce CO2 considerably now, the temperatures will remain elevated.
well when you look at the scenariiproposed by ipccin in case world would have successfuly reduce cO2 emission …you can see a difference …despiite the long sequestring time of CO2, something i’d like to be more precisley defined too.
The IPCC is like g-d, if they didn’t exist we would have to invent them
Surface temperature increases over the last century along with sea level rise and ice melt would have prompted some scientific investigation even without a global assessment made by a UN body. If there was no global body sponsored by the UN it most likely that the local scientific investigations would result in some sort of ad hoc global assembly of the evidence.
However if, just hypothetically there were no IPCC, and the interface between science and policy was devolved down to the local level then it is possible to envision a scenario in which instead of a progressive wish for world government motivating the global body there would be local political motivations for the science/policy response.
In the US and OPEC the climate policy departments might find a scientific consensus that favoured an interpretation that AGW was minimal, and on balance beneficial
China and the developing world might form an alliance that held that the weather extremes and climate changes they were experiencing are the result of the first industrialised nations causing AGW and demand trade tariffs, carbon taxes and reparations for all climate mediated problems.
In the ensuing trade war, economic disruption and diplomatic antagonism there would no doubt be calls for an independent body to asses the scientific claims made by both sides……..
Prof Curry wrote: “so that individuals and institutions have become advocates; scientists with a perspective that is not consistent with the consensus are at best marginalized (difficult to obtain funding and get papers published by ‘gatekeeping’ journal editors) or at worst ostracized by labels of ‘denier’ or ‘heretic.’”
This is a very strong charge, one that the public will understand and will take Prof side on. Over the years I have read so many reports of this sort of behaviour.
Is there a database where examples and evidence has been put together in one place?
The reaction to Prof Curry’s statement will be to trash her reputation, and her statement, so it is going to be very important that the dangerous truths she has written about are easily accessible and verifiable to outsiders (especially journalists who do not know which side to believe).
On blogs I am often told that I believe in a conspiracy between 1000s of scientists who altogether want to con the world; I find it a difficult charge to counter, I say things like there has been group think, but I am still left to look like a loony. It is tactic Prof Curry needs to be waiting for and ready to counter.
Very nice Judith. Even in Sweden the intrerest about SPM has been a bit low. One nation wide newspaper (out of two) didn’t mention it at all. It published instead a analysis from Lomborg. IPCC do not have äny power any more, get rid of it.
Paralysis may be the right word. Once an idea is entrenched so solidly, its veracity ceases to matter. Adherence becomes a matter of habit and piety. One can ignore the IPCC and the klimatariat but not dismiss them outright – a perfect example being the new Australian government’s approach.
They may not be a close parallel to modern “climate action”, but the closest parallel might be the Crusades. Western governments participated for a complex of reasons; the genuine idealism and boredom of some chimed with the cynical ambition of others; there was unity of ostensible purpose along with disunity of interests (think EU squabbles and manipulation of carbon price); there was a massive investment of resources to unclear goals; and much of the action defeated the very purpose (sack of Christian Constantinople by Crusaders). The Templars are actually a pretty good parallel for Greenpeace.
The parallel will only go so far, but it’s worth remembering that while everybody, by the late Middle Ages, was avoiding another bloody Crusade at all costs, Crusade remained the stated ambition of all good, pious rulers and intellectuals. Crusade! Crusade!…but not right now.
Reduce emissions! Reduce emissions! Mr. Pachauri has had to charter a private jet to India for cricket practice – but as soon as he gets back to New York he’ll get right on to reducing those emissions. Soon, very soon.
mosomoso
Your parallel is very apt as Constantinople enables us to also see the great changes in climate that affected it and the various people from hot and cool lands that inhabited it during its 1000 year history. This from one of my earliest articles;
‘Some of the Roman climate references are fascinating. This observation from a series of cold winters -after many warm ones- around the 8th century in Byzantium (centred around Modern day Turkey)
“Theophanes’ account recalls how, as a child, the author (or his source’s author) went out on the ice with thirty other children and played on it and that some of his pets and other animals died. It was possible to walk all over the Bosporus around Constantinople and even cross to Asia on the ice. One huge iceberg crushed the wharf at the Acropolis, close to the tip of Constantinople’s peninsula, and another extremely large one hit the city wall, shaking it and the houses on the other side, before breaking into three large pieces; it was higher than the city walls. The terrified Constantinopolitans wondered what it could possibly portend.”
It would be remiss not to connect the Roman warm optimum and the series of savage winters recorded above that afflicted Constantinople, with the great medieval warming of Greenland and the age of the Vikings several hundred years later. This enables us to contemplate the astonishing notion of Romans and Vikings from respective warm periods co-existing in the same era, as Vikings guarded the capital of the Eastern Roman empire.
http://travdyn.wordpress.com/2008/05/21/the-little-known-tale-of-the-byzantine-vikings/
Constantinople was guarded by an elite mercenary squad of Russianized Vikings (who apparently were fond of the Mediterranean climate) named the Varangian Guard. According to a wonderful entry in this History of Warfare blog, (and we pick this story up in medias res)
In early 989 AD a Viking fleet arrived with the promised 6000 Norseman. A few weeks later they crossed the straits of the Golden Horn under the cover of darkness and took up positions a few hundred yards from the rebel camp. At first light they attacked, while a squadron of imperial flame-throwers sprayed the shore with Greek fire. Phocas’s men awoke to the terrifying sight of the Varangians swinging their swords and battleaxes. The result was a massacre. Basil with the aid of the Varangians soon crushed the rebellion entirely.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/14/little-ice-age-thermometers-%e2%80%93-history-and-reliability/
tonyb
tonyb, Have you been posting on Dr. Spencer’s blog? If not there is an imposter or someone with the same initials TonyB.
Nice.
So we have seen:
Analogized to Eugenicism
Analogozed to Nazism
Analogized to Lysenkoism
And of course, the run-of-the-mill comparisons to any concerns about anything that didn’t pan out. Ever.
But now we find out, that actually, the closest parallel is to the Crusades.
Glad we finally go that cleared up!
This discussion reminds me of a song from My Fair Lady. Dont give me “Words, Words, Words”. “Show Me”.
I have not seen a single suggestion of how, in practical terms, anyone has any idea of how we get rid of the IPCC.
Or any foresight about what would inevitably replace it.
Jim Cripwell
Step 1: Wait for 5 more years of “pause”
Step 2: Expose them as a bunch of clowns.
Step 3: Defund them
Time is NOT on IPCC’s side.
Max
An interesting thought here as a side benefit of wondering how much cooling and for how long will be enough to break the fever of catastrophism, that is, had warming continued would the alarmists have been able to continue the public hysteria of around half a decade ago?
Would the world have sensed the tremendous costs demanded by the alarmists and balanced that against the pitifully few damages of that warming? It seems the world would have done so and so it seems that the alarmists couldn’t have sustained the urgency, and would, even with warming, have had to depend upon increasingly imaginary climate and economic fear-mongering.
==================
If the billions that is being wasted in the fools errand (of changing the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere that is increasing because of the warming oceans, http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/compress:12/from:1958/normalise/plot/esrl-co2/compress:12/derivative/normalise/detrend:-0.3 ) is spent on sewerage systems in some of the capital cities of the developing countries, we could have saved thousands of life now and at the same time helped the environment by preventing sewerage going to the rivers and bringing them back to life with fish and bird life.
What a waste.
Girma, Yet you don’t even realize that all you are doing is demonstrating Henry’s Law regarding detecting outgassing sensitivity of CO2 to fluctuating sea-surface temperatures.
Plus you lie by detrending the CO2 data, thus obscuring the anthropogenic increase of CO2. That is despicable.
Girma is practicing the kind of pathetic science that his ilk of scheming deniers is renowned for in these parts.
Webby
You missed Girma’s point.
We are wasting our time, energy and money chasing the CO2 hobgoblin.
We could spend our time, energy and money much more constructively by improving the sewage systems of major underdeveloped cities.
You, Webby, are practicing the kind of pathetic pseudo-science that your ilk of scheming climate and peak oil doomsayers are known for in these parts.
Max
Max,
Don’t forget that the Wikipedia entry for DENIAL talks about the concept of psychological projection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial
Projecting your inadequacy to do any kind of interesting science onto me is worthy of a Freudian analysis.
Web:
The IPCC has acknowledged the following:
‘Models do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend… There is medium confidence that this difference between models and observations is to a substantial degree caused by unpredictable climate variability.’
Why not you?
For example: San Jose, capital of Costa Rica.
http://www.crhoy.com/aguas-residuales-de-san-jose-recibiran-tratamiento-hasta-el-ano-2015/
I have read the interminal discussions as to whether there is the science to prove that CAGW is right or wrong. CAGW is a viable hypothesis. No-one has the physics to prove that it is wrong. By the same token, no-one can prove that it is right. People like David Appel will ALWAYS be able to provide science to show that CAGW COULD be right. What he cannot do is to provide the physics that PROVES that it is right.
Proof is for liquor and maths
Its the Bayesian probabilities that matter, the IPCC says 95%
“95 percent”
This precise sounding figure is, interestingly, a subjective judgment arrived at by people who have an obvious vested interest. No CAGW, no reason for being, no reason for being, no more gravy train.
Since they don’t talk about the process, there’s no way to know for sure. But if it were any more rigorous than simply going around the room and voting, with likely much discussion, and negotiation, and arm twisting, it’s seems obvious they would say so. There are plenty of credible people outside the IPCC, and for all I know inside as well. who think that 95 percent number wildly inflated. Remember, the models are failing badly at this point. Another few years of pause, and the whole jig is effectively up.
izen
What “IPCC says” and what is actually true are two totally different things.
That’s the problem here.
Max
Kübler-Ross model; “five stages of grief”
What do you do when your God dies?
Denial — How accurate does a model have to be?; How “right” does a climate model have to be?; What data says this?; What is the statistical significance of that trend?; What about other components of the Earth’s climate system?;What does “pretty wrong” mean? I’ve read a lot of science textbooks, but have never seen that term in any of them.”; I know and/or have talked to many scientists who have served on the IPCC ARs. Are you implying that they are less than honest?; Absurd. Models aren’t going away — they are the only game in town, and not just in climate, but in all science; GISS’s E2 model does a pretty good job, except for the last decade; So you think that because climate models have not correctly predicted/projected a sliver of the climate system (the surface) for the last 15 years, since 1850, they are totally useless and should be completely disregarded?
Anger — If you don’t know how to properly cite scientific papers, learn it. This isn’t 7th grade. Science has standards. Use them; This tells me all I need to know about you. And your conclusions; So you think that because ONE result was faulty — in which the company withheld data — ALL results are wrong?; I have yet to see anything smart written by you Mosher, though clearly you are sure you are the smartest person in the room.; If you can’t provide any details, then admit it. But junk like your last reply doesn’t come close to being meaningful.
Bargaining — Define “wrong”; Which technical specifications of their equipment do you disagree with?; What does “pretty wrong” mean? I’ve read a lot of science textbooks, but have never seen that term in any of them.
Depression — (What do you think?)
Acceptance — To come.
Appell, don’t worry, there are plenty of other religions on the market, but I would steer clear of Hinduism, Jainism, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism on account of the discrepancy between their dietary restrictions and your calorific intake.
..as temperatures have declined and climate models have failed to predict this decline, the IPCC has gained confidence in catastrophic warming and dismisses the pause as unpredictable climate variability
That sounds like a politically charged bit of hyperbole. The average temperature of the last ten years is 0.13 degrees C above the average temperature of the ten years before it. In every ten year period out of the last sixty, temperatures have declined and climate models have ‘failed’ to predict this decline. But we’ve averaged more than 0.1 degree C (sometimes much more) in each of those ten year periods, and that rise was predicted better by the low-resolution primitive IPCC model runs than any other prediction.
What happens when you do high-resolution model runs?
Maslowski in 2007 showed for the Arctic that you show more significant changes to the ocean and sea ice, which besides explaining why warming of surface air is lagging is the worst possible outcome as warm surface air by itself is relatively benign, but a restructured ocean-ice boundary system will result in major changes to coastal and continental weather in the long run.
..substantial criticisms are already being made of the IPCC AR5 Reports as well as of the IPCC process itself; IPCC insiders are bemoaning their loss of their scientific and political influence; the mainstream media seems not to be paying much attention to the AR5 SPM; and even IPCC insiders are realizing the need for a radical change
Sounds like more politically charged hyperbole.
How can a criticism of something that doesn’t exist yet be substantial?
How can criticisms of processes from people who have never read the guidelines and who tell reporters they have no idea how the processes work be substantial?
IPCC ‘insiders’ have never had all that much influence in any sphere, what’s to bemoan? I’d think their complaints that people continue to flail in paralysis by analysis when the case for action is stronger than ever would be more worth paying attention to than any perceived megalomaniacal neuroses you imagine they might have.
As AR5 SPM didn’t exist until Friday, it’s a bit of a demand for impossible perfection to demand the MSM to pay much attention to it, what with world events being as they are otherwise, or haven’t you noticed that terrorists are invading malls and schools and chopping their hostages to bits alive in front of cameras around the world, while the US Congress is yet again voting to shut down the US government?
The IPCC is all about radical change; every report cycle learns from the past and from what is available in the wider world to improve its processes. Making much about this as if it’s the first they or you have heard of it tells your readers only one thing: you haven’t been paying attention and don’t know what you’re talking about.
..global CO2 emissions continue to increase at higher than expected rates and a growing realization of the infeasibility of meeting emissions targets
Hrm.. “..growing realization of the infeasibility..” why do the words politically-charged hyperbole leap to mind when one reads this phrasing? Meeting emissions targets has been known fail for three decades, because exactly of the politically charged hyperbole thrown in the road of acting to meet emission targets, and for no other reason. Telling obese people “just one little bite of cake” won’t hurt their diet is a sure way to prevent them from hitting their targets too, but it’s cruelly deceitful and manipulative.
..failure of the UNFCCC Conference of Parties to accomplish much since 2009 beyond agreeing to establish future meetings
Actually, other than completely failing to get action because of obstructionists and liars, UNFCCC CoP has achieved rather substantial signing of treaties and changing of practices and laws. We now, for example, know much more clearly where the obstructionists and liars are most active. That’s progress.
..Growing realization that you can’t control climate by emissions reductions
Sounds like politically charged hyperbole to me.
Who, anywhere, ever, claimed they could control climate?
Emissions reductions aren’t about control, any more than brakes on a car are for steering. Emissions reductions are about not crashing.
..European countries and Australia are backing away from their emission reductions policies as they realize their economic cost and political unpopularity
And yet, more countries every month act more than ever to find new ways to reduce their emissions from their previous planned levels. China, the USA, India, all announce significant policy shifts in this direction. I think your claim is just politically charged hyperbole.
..increasing levels of shrillness on both sides of the political debate, with the ‘warm side’ steeped in moral panic and hyperbole
Wait. When you say the ‘warm side’ does hyperbole, you make it sound like it’s a bad thing. Then why do you erupt in hyperbole with every breath?
And finally:
..after several decades and expenditures in the bazillions, the IPCC still has not provided a convincing argument for how much warming in the 20th century has been caused by humans.
Bazillions, huh? Is this bit of politically charged hyperbole because it sounds more morally panicking, or because you just don’t know the actual figures or how to find them out? Here’s a hint: it’s in their publications, in one of the sections before the one on their Uncertainty handling guidelines.
Attribution outlines in IPCC WG1 AR 5 SPM cover eighteen arguments, each one valid and backed by observations, and each one the simplest, most parsimonious of exception, most universal explanation for that data available; if anything, it errs on the side of least drama, and still remains stark and damning of current emission practices.
..the politically charged rhetoric has contaminated academic climate research and the institutions that support climate research, so that individuals and institutions have become advocates; scientists with a perspective that is not consistent with the consensus are at best marginalized (difficult to obtain funding and get papers published by ‘gatekeeping’ journal editors) or at worst ostracized by labels of ‘denier’ or ‘heretic.’
Huh. When you say politically charged rhetoric, you make it sound like a bad thing.. in a politically charged rhetorical way. Scientists with marginal, baseless opinions and bad methods and illegitimate reasoning seem out of step with the consensus, which is a good thing for a change. Imagine a scientific world where Popes like William Gray get shut down by organized close examination of data and reasoning; if only that meant that fundamentalists out-of-touch with how to handle data like Spencer and Christy lost their control over the satellites when proven to be using the bible to dictate how to interpret their data.
..decision makers needing regionally specific climate change information are being provided by the climate community with either nothing or potentially misleading predictions from climate models.
All predictions are potentially misleading. The best predictions are less misleading than.. oh, say, Dr. Curry, what was it you predicted before Sandy struck? Not the ‘prediction’ you made when the European weather gurus pointed out the blocking would prevent your earlier predictions from being even remotely possible, but the original ‘Sandy is nothing’ predictions? Would’ve been better had you said nothing, then, no?
Breath of fresh air. The deconstruction of the skeptical rhetoric is a job in and of itself.
Bart R
The thermometers out there (even the ones next to AC exhausts in the summer or heated buildings in the winter) tell us that the “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature” has not risen over more than a decade (in fact it has cooled slightly).
Anyone can play your silly “warmest ten years” game (or the latest IPCC “ten year averaging” shtick)..
Let’s look at the “warmest five years”.
The average HadCRUT4 temperature of the past five years (2008-2013) was 0.457C.
Over the previous 5 years (2002-2007) it was 0.493C.
So over a five year period the average temperature has dropped by 0.036C
If this trend continues to year 2100, it will be 0.6C cooler than today (and the entire 20th C warming will essentially have been reversed).
So much for silly “statistical analyses”
Max
manacker | September 29, 2013 at 1:42 pm |
A single data point is not a trend.
The data for five-year trends is not in your favor, as there are so freaking many of them we know the current one is nothing special, and the Bayesian prior for your “If this trend continues”, would lead us to suppose you are speculating in the realm of seventeen consecutive events each with a less than one in twenty chance based on current information.
That’s about one in 1,310,720,000,000,000,000,000.*
Which is still more likely than most of your claims, so keep up the improvement. On that trend, you’ll be worth reading in about 14 billion years.
*(Actually, the odds are much longer against your claim, but I’m erring in your favor because I can’t be bothered to type out that many zeroes.)
Bart’s bitter that he doesn’t have the Scrabble chips for ‘uncertainty’ and ‘attribution’.
===========
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“How will we finally rid ourselves of the IPCC?”
Erosion… When you see respected scientists like Judith, Von Storch, Pielke Sr. and others begin to move away one by one only the noisemakers remain and history tells us a foundation built on sand…….you know the rest.
This is a suitable fresh starting point for climate modelling:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/new-climate-model/
Not a scientist, but everything I read does not show global temps declining. What I see are:
1. Receding glaciers
2. Receding Arctic ice pack
3. Unexplained weather patterns… Strong hurricanes followed by no hurricanes. Early, late season tornadoes. Floods, droughts
4. A cargo ship traverses the Northwest passage.
5. Sea levels rising
In geologic terms, what happens today may not impact us until long after we push up flowers. But to deny change is occurring for political reasons is not right. We prepare for earthquakes by improving building standards. We can’t tell when the “big one” will occur.
This is not a “who” problem. It’s a “what to do” problem. We need to reflect heat back into space.
The globe is cooling, Peter; far more prudent to stash heat in the deep for use at the end of the Holocene, than to reflect it back out, gone forevermore.
===========
Peter, Did you see what SORT of a cargo ship it was that traversed the NW passage? It was ice hardened to the maximum Lloyd’s rating, and carried a trained Canadian ice pilot. Hardly just a cargo ship.
Yes, but never possible before. Am I wrong about receding glaciers and ice packs? Does that bear no significance?
Peter, Of course it was possible before. The Manhatten traversed the NW passage both ways, 50 years ago. The Russians have oiltankers which are almost icebreakers, and have operated in the Baltic for decades. In some 10 years, an iron ore mine on the NW passage should be producing 10 millions tons of ore per year.
If you build ships to navigate ice, you can traverse ice. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with CAGW.
Peter
Nobody denies change, rather it is sceptics who point out the earth is in a state of continual climate change.
Firstly not everywhere in the world is warming. Here is cet thought to be a reasonable proxy for northern hemisphere temperatures and the oldest data set in the world
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
Secondly the arctic melts on. Regular basis, it did so in the 1920 to 1940 period, around the 1820’s the 1730’s, the 1530’s and of course during the Viking period.
Glaciers have advanced and retreated a number of times during the last 2000 years, their current retreat began around 1750″
Sea levels were higher in roman times than they are today
Unexplained weather patterns are the norm, it is difficult to see a time tha can be described as normal. Extreme events were much more severe pre 1850 than today as I can testify having researched thousands of records back to the 12th century in such places as the met office library.
Looking at history our current climate is benign not savage.
Tonyb
Thx Tony. I can only base my observations on the satellite imagery available over the last 10-20 years. Of course, in geologic terms, insignificant. But the retreat of glaciers, except in Antarctica, seems drastic.
One third are growing. Ice is local, regional. Look at the polar differences in sea ice.
============
Peter, tell us what “weather patterns” you can “explain”? If rising temperature was responsible for unexplained ones, can we assume that there weren’t any weather patterns during the last ice age? Explain the causes for the extreme cold at that time!
Anyone who knows even a little bit about the history of this planet should know climate has constantly been changing. The environment has never been static and probably never will be. Weather has never been consistent or constant and there were far more drastic periods of temperature change in just the 1000 years before the 19th century when there was little to no industrialization. We had three periods of drastic cooling that caused a “little ice age” and then a period of drastic warming which ended it. Not to mention the evidence for far more extreme environmental changes before human civilization even began. It’s human arrogance to think that we have had any measurable impact on climate or that we could ever do anything to stop climate from changing to our detriment. History has shown that the climate is always changing and it will continue to change. The best thing to do is figure out ways to protect the populace.
If you actually cared about human lives, you would put the time, energy, and resources you have asked us to sacrifice in an effort to reduce our “carbon footprint” toward far more constructive contingencies. Creating emergency infrastructure and evacuation plans for coastal populations, hydroponics/aeroponics/hydroculture development to grow food in sheltered environments regardless of climate, and guarding against widespread damage to power systems and communications. Those are what would actually save lives when and if there is a large environmental disaster. It’s not a matter of prevention, it’s a matter of having contingencies.
there was two miles of ice on New York a short
time ago.
It was called the Pleistocene. Look it up.
‘The Laurentide Ice Sheet was a massive sheet of ice that covered hundreds of thousands of square miles, including most of Canada and a large portion of the northern United States, multiple times during Quaternary glacial epochs. It last covered most of northern North America between c. 95,000 and c. 20,000 years before the present day. At times, its southern margin included the modern sites of New York City and Chicago, and then followed quite precisely the present course of the Missouri River up to the northern slopes of the Cypress Hills, beyond which it merged with the Cordilleran Ice Sheet. The ice coverage extended approximately as far south as 38 degrees latitude in the mid-continent.[1]’
Wikipedia
This post has attracted many comments proposing abolition and/or defunding of the IPCC.
For the United States of America, a more direct approach would be to amend and correct the Clean Air Act (CAA). Specific exclusion of Greenhouse Gases from the definition of “air pollutant” would be a good start, and eliminate the economic threat of the EPA bureaucracy and the prospect of political control of 70% – 80% of our energy supply. To forestall end runs by the EPA, wording could be included to exclude precursors such as methane hydrate.
GHGs such as water vapor, methane and ozone are natural and essentially uncontrollable from this point forward. Nitrous oxide appears to be a byproduct of agriculture; only the Ehrlichs might wish to reduce that. Indirect effects should be excluded as a class. Should someone wish to challenge the proposed CAA amendment based upon “science”, nullius in verba.
The problem:
Justice Stevens. “MASSACHUSETTS ET AL. V. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY ET AL.,” April 2, 2007. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-1120.pdf
Page 04, 05 (Syllabus): #3. “Because greenhouse gases fit well within the Act’s capacious definition of “air pollutant,” EPA has statutory authority to regulate emission of such gases from new motor vehicles. That definition— which includes “any air pollution agent . . . , including any physical,chemical, . . . substance . . . emitted into . . . the ambient air . . . ,” §7602(g) —embraces all airborne compounds of whatever stripe.
…”EPA identifies nothing suggesting that Congress meant to curtail EPA’s power to treat greenhouse gases as air pollutants.”
Page 26 (Opinion): The statutory text reads: “The Clean Air Act’s sweeping definition of “air pollutant” includes “any air pollution agent or combination of such agents, including any physical, chemical . . . substance or matter which is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air.”
Nullius in verba indeed. Scientists are not unbiased as no person can ever be completely objective. They can be influenced by political ideology or faith (or the lack thereof) and the need to make money can greatly influence what train of thought they support.
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Yes, the IPCC needs to be replaced by a decentralized effort in which scientists compete with one another to get the right answers. Competition is the normal way of things in science as in most human activities. IPCC has replaced this with the tyranny of the consensus. It must go.
While it is true that the nearly 100% investment in models has tended to suppress the normal interplay between theory and observation, the models could have been employed far more wisely than they have been. When you look at the envelope of model projections for say global average temperature and compare them to observations, you will notice that a lot of models do very badly when compared to observation. But a few do rather well and some at least can’t be eliminated by the usual statistical criteria. Normally in science we would throw out the bad models, while keeping for now the ones that are close to observation. We would then try to find out what makes the better models better than the bad models. This is the research process that those of us who have worked in science are familiar with. But this is not what IPCC does. They keep ALL the models. All the models are combined into an ensemble with an average and a very wide envelope of uncertainty, as if the models differed from each other only because of some random effects (noise) . So in this way IPCC gets the “consensus” projection. It is no wonder that the envelope of uncertainty has not decreased in 30 years. But this process has worked for IPCC until now: the envelope of uncertainty is just not big enough to encompass observations anymore. This is where we are.
The fact is that different models contain different physics — their differences are not noise — and if the bad models were thrown out the way they should have been, we would be much closer to the right answer. But that would have led to a low climate sensitivity, which was always unacceptable to the consensus.
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IPCC is a corporation. For the progressives who hate corporations due to corruption, evil, greed, and the fact that they are too large for small business to compete with, here you are. You joined the green movement until a GREEN CORPORATION emerged with all the evils that you hated. They are corrupt, evil, greedy, and no honest scientist can compete with them. You asked for it, you got it. Soylent green, the green machine.
from the article:
“the politically charged rhetoric has contaminated academic climate research and the institutions that support climate research, so that individuals and institutions have become advocates; scientists with a perspective that is not consistent with the consensus are at best marginalized (difficult to obtain funding and get papers published by ‘gatekeeping’ journal editors) or at worst ostracized by labels of ‘denier’ or ‘heretic.’”
Dr Curry is not exaggerating. Her main concern is with the integrity of the process of climate research. For her valiant efforts, Dr Curry has been labeled as a “heretic” by Scientific American. Back in the day, this term was used exclusively to describe a person who did not accept all or part of a particular religious dogma.
It is ironic that Dr Curry has been ‘awarded’ the honor — or opprobrium — of this label, depending on one’s point of view. This single fact speaks volumes about the tolerance deficit of the wannabe Torquemadas within the climate research community. Global Warming/’Climate Change’ has become the preeminent secular religion of the 21st Century.
By the way, Dr Curry is always polite, which is more than I can say for myself.
Welcome on board Judy to the crew that calls a spade a spade. When a process is broken, its broken. The situation has been very clear since 2010, at least to me.
There is a point where your trust in the underlying science has to give way to the fact the institutional practice that is interpreting that science is not fair. The other day over at Steve McIntyre’s blog I called it a swindle, because that is exactly what it is, a direct manipulation of outcome regardless of inputs to a contrived end as desired by the controllers of the process. Maybe those controllers truly have our best interest at heart, but they are manipulating the science for a political ends and lying to us about it.
With global warming, we haven’t even established with certainty that there IS a problem, but the IPCC has been operating since 1990 under the mad assumption that there MUST be, we’ve only to PROVE it.
For future research I ask, has anyone ever *solved* a ‘wicked problem’?? As far as I know it remains an academic curiosity with no real world successes.
I’ve said more than once on this blog, when uncertainties are that steep, and science can’t deliver you the answers you might want, you have to find “other criteria” to make decisions. Maybe we can start talking about that means.
W^3
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w.w.wygart | September 29, 2013 at 11:20 pm | wrote:
“For future research I ask, has anyone ever *solved* a ‘wicked problem’??”
The answer to your question is a qualified yes. Small business people do it all the time. But instead of ‘wicked problem’, I prefer the term, ‘Black Box Problem’.
You have a black box, and it’s not delivering what you consider to be optimal output. Problem is: You’re not quite sure what’s in the box; so you engage in some nondestructive testing.
In separate experiments, you shake the box, poke it with a stick, run it under cool tap water, and curse at it. Then you observe the various outputs. Based upon the data, you formulate an hypothesis, and test it with a new experiment. Repeat as needed.
Dietrich Dörner has written a book about how people solve — and fail to solve — BBPs (my term, not his). It’s called The Logic of Failure.
One interesting result is that business people usually outperform university students.
Do tell: “… business people usually outperform university students.” For certain, G-d bless’em.
Larry,
I’m not sure that what you term a “black box” problem may not meet the definition Judy uses of a “wicked problem” or a “super-wicked problem”.
Judy’s definitions of the problem can be found here:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/03/11/messes-and-super-wicked-problems/
You may just be describing a “mess” in a dark room. If the problem can eventually be ‘solved’ using the types of statistics that presume the types of structured randomness found in games [or purely empirically] it seems to me that a “wicked problem” is not involved.
It seems to me that truly “wicked problems” are problems of the sort that are characterized by a type of unstructured and chaotic randomness, such as we find in life, that is very difficult or impossible to analyze using ordinary math or experiment.
W^3
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Judith Curry
Thanks for posting a succinct and accurate diagnosis of the cause of the current IPCC disease.
How we got where we are today:
Has IPCC outlived its usefulness?
With the publishing of its AR5 report, IPCC had a last chance IMO to regain the loss of general confidence and trust, which it suffered as a result of Climategate and the subsequent other revelations of impropriety, exaggerations and outright falsehoods supporting what became known as the “CAGW” premise, as outlined specifically in its AR4 report.
The “pause” and the many observation-based studies showing a much lower 2xCO2 ECS than previously predicted by the models cited by IPCC in AR4, gave IPCC the possibility for a paradigm shift to refocus away from its CAGW premise to one of reduced warming projections based on the lower observed CO2 sensitivity.
But the decisions makers in IPCC decided to play the “hard line”. Rather than reducing the projected effects of AGW in light of the new findings, IPCC chose to “hang in there” with its old paradigm by simply widening the CO2 sensitivity range and claiming greater “confidence” in its earlier claims.
This hasn’t played out yet, but IMO it is highly likely that the remaining shred of public confidence in IPCC and the “insider” climate scientists will now erode away, as critique of the AR5 report mounts over the next several months.
And if the “pause” of the past decade or more continues for another decade, as appears quite likely, it will be the end of the line for the CAGW premise – and (IMO) for IPCC itself.
Sic transit gloria.
Max
Per Aspergum Ad Astronishment!
============
Springy said:
He has to call upon the argument of long cycles, He lost that one, eh.
Ignore the millennial at your perennial.
=================
So cool.
Kim, may i post this in me 6th Edishun of Serf Underground?
Bien sur, toujours.
=======
Centennial too.
Et kim et Edim, ne jamais oublier la recherche du temps
perdu.
The precautionary principle itself is a catch 22 argument. It entails giving no proof the same standing as actually having positive proof. In essence it makes a negative a positive which we all know you can never prove a negative. By using this principle we might as well all just kill ourselves as chance living with possible threats that might harm us. Its actually created to let the nazis claim whatever they want and get away with it! Its use must be destroyed as its led to total destruction of the scientific process trying to create proof where none exists to begin with,hense the mountain of evidence we hear the nazis preach all over the place without actually being held to any proof at all!
The principle itself cannot stand, it means an end to all we hold dear TRUTH.
Without truth we have no meaning,we have no future,we have no life,no culture. We have only created hazzards that never existed,a culture defeated by fanaticism and led by radical nut cases passing laws based upon NOTHING! It gives basis to outlawing anything based upon nothing,it lowers the standard of proof in court to that of hearsay evidence to now convict!
How did it happen,quite simply ENVIROMENTALISM!
Precaution as Customary Law
The question whether the precautionary principle is a principle of customary international
law has received a great deal of attention, particularly since the principle’s inclusion
in the Rio Declaration.
http://www.ejil.org/pdfs/17/2/82.pdf
Rio Declaration on Environment and Development
The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development,
http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?documentid=78&articleid=1163
Having met at Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992,
Yes indeed the precautionary principle is an intregal part of GLOBA GOVERNANCE and well taking over the world! The UN must be destroyed……….If it lives we all die.
Epidemiologists Vote to Keep Doing Junk Science
http://www.manhealthissue.com/2007/06/epidemiologists-vote-to-keep-doing-junk-science.html
Epidemiologists Vote to Keep Doing Junk Science
Epidemiology Monitor (October 1997)
An estimated 300 attendees a recent meeting of the American College of
Epidemiology voted approximately 2 to 1 to keep doing junk science!
Specifically, the attending epidemiologists voted against a motion
proposed in an Oxford-style debate that “risk factor” epidemiology is
placing the field of epidemiology at risk of losing its credibility.
Risk factor epidemiology focuses on specific cause-and-effect
relationships–like heavy coffee drinking increases heart attack risk. A
different approach to epidemiology might take a broader
perspective–placing heart attack risk in the context of more than just
one risk factor, including social factors.
Risk factor epidemiology is nothing more than a perpetual junk science machine.
But as NIEHS epidemiologist Marilyn Tseng said “It’s hard to be an
epidemiologist and vote that what most of us are doing is actually harmful
to epidemiology.”
But who really cares about what they’re doing to epidemiology. I thought
it was public health that mattered!
we have seen the “SELECTIVE” blindness disease that
Scientist have practiced over the past ten years. Seems the only color they
see is GREEN BACKS, it’s a very infectious disease that has spread through
the Scientific community with the same speed that any infectious disease
would spread. And has affected the T(thinking) Cells as well as sight.
Seems their eyes see only what their paid to see. To be honest, I feel
after the Agent Orange Ranch Hand Study, and the Slutz and Nutz Implant
Study, they have cast a dark shadow over their profession of being anything
other than traveling professional witnesses for corporate hire with a lack
of moral concern to their obligation of science and truth.
The true “Risk Factor” is a question of ; will they ever be able to earn
back the respect of their profession as an Oath to Science, instead of
corporate paid witnesses with selective vision?
Oh, if this seems way harsh, it’s nothing compared to the damage of peoples
lives that selective blindness has caused!
The rise of a pseudo-scientific links lobby
Every day there seems to be a new study making a link between food, chemicals or lifestyle and ill-health. None of them has any link with reality.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/13287
The Climate change lie isn’t the only lie out there,the anti-tobacco plan of attack is what these climate nutz have been using of late to push their agenda and the use of epidemiology and its junk science results……..
This pretty well destroys the Myth of second hand smoke:
http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/28/16741714-lungs-from-pack-a-day-smokers-safe-for-transplant-study-finds?lite
Lungs from pack-a-day smokers safe for transplant, study finds.
By JoNel Aleccia, Staff Writer, NBC News.
Using lung transplants from heavy smokers may sound like a cruel joke, but a new study finds that organs taken from people who puffed a pack a day for more than 20 years are likely safe.
What’s more, the analysis of lung transplant data from the U.S. between 2005 and 2011 confirms what transplant experts say they already know: For some patients on a crowded organ waiting list, lungs from smokers are better than none.
“I think people are grateful just to have a shot at getting lungs,” said Dr. Sharven Taghavi, a cardiovascular surgical resident at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, who led the new study………………………
Ive done the math here and this is how it works out with second ahnd smoke and people inhaling it!
The 16 cities study conducted by the U.S. DEPT OF ENERGY and later by Oakridge National laboratories discovered:
Cigarette smoke, bartenders annual exposure to smoke rises, at most, to the equivalent of 6 cigarettes/year.
146,000 CIGARETTES SMOKED IN 20 YEARS AT 1 PACK A DAY.
A bartender would have to work in second hand smoke for 2433 years to get an equivalent dose.
Then the average non-smoker in a ventilated restaurant for an hour would have to go back and forth each day for 119,000 years to get an equivalent 20 years of smoking a pack a day! Pretty well impossible ehh!
Harleyrider1978, Second hand smoke is just one of the many alarms
There are Talcumosis, Silicosis, Herbalteaosis, Charboilosis, Carneosis, Fossilfuelosis, Nuclearosis, Someoneelsesideaosis, Porcineosis, Flatulosis, Climateosis, Seatrestraintosis and a new entry, SOIosis on the Scaredicrat radar.
Then they will tackle Harleycide, Equistriacide, Cheericide, Bullacide, Hockeycide, LaCrossicide, Footballicide, Rugbicide, Motorcrossicide, Soccericide and Crossthestreeticide.
All of these have to be eliminated if we want the maximum number of sardines packed in this can.
An oldie, but a goodie by Thomas Gold. He uses the herd instinct analogy, but it’s all the same.
http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_03_2_gold.pdf
“Once a herd has been established in a subject, it can only be broken by the
most crass confrontation with opposing evidence. There is no gentle way
that I have ever seen in the history of science where a herd once established
has been broken up.”
Shoehorn science:
“There is one more point that I should make. When in a subject a general
attitude or a viewpoint has become established, then it is very easy to obtain
funds to do work in that subject on the basis of what I call “shoehorn
science.” I think you will understand what I mean by that. If you make your
proposal which says: “I will demonstrate how this fact and that fact, that
apparently are difficult to see in the accepted framework, can be figured into
that framework,” they are all delighted to give you money. And by the time
that has gone on for a long time, so much work of the shoehorn kind has
been diligently done to force the facts into the pattern that is preordained,
that it then looks to many people as if it all was firmly established. What
happens is that they build a superstructure on what may be no foundation
-if I may invent a “Confucius say” sort of proverb, “Never judge strength
of foundation from size of building.””
Plus one fer insight and two fer proverb. So true.)
I am a student of kranks and krackpots and Thomas Gold is one of the all-time Chief Whackjobs.
He predicted the lunar lander would sink into the dust, and right before he died, he pushed his belief that fossil fuels were not of biotic origin. That is the abiotic theory of hydrocarbons that many of his followers have latched on to which would promise endless cheap oil.
EDim the krank references Thomas Gold the krank, they like to stick together
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gold
If Gold was a “Whackjob”, then what to make of you?
Confucius say:
Dairy farmer who have large manure pile not necessarily produce most milk.
(could also be a “Gold”en Rule)
For years many called on Dr. Curry and others to denounce the IPCC and I commend the net conclusion she demonstrates here. It still carries all the usual obfuscations and minimization of the actual AGW political movement and is at least 10+ years behind the most lenient of curves.
If you can’t directly identify the politics driving AGW you really can’t get to the truth of AGW. Dr. Curry remains a DENIER for the left-wing global establishment she continues to carry water for;
“the politically charged rhetoric has contaminated academic climate research and the institutions that support climate research, so that individuals and institutions have become advocates; scientists with a perspective that is not consistent with the consensus are at best marginalized (difficult to obtain funding and get papers published by ‘gatekeeping’ journal editors) or at worst ostracized by labels of ‘denier’ or ‘heretic.’”
Do you think? Were these “Tea Party” activists at the root of this behavior? You would never know by Dr. Curry’s formal statements. Dr. Curry has essentially “guessed” the right math conclusion but has failed to proof her work. She will garner consensus hate that serves the haters in the same way David Brooks serves the establishment at the NY TImes. Pick the weakest of arguments to vilify and preserve your core. Marginalize all real dissent with silence.
The IPCC stand on climate change has nothing to do with science gone awry. It is a cobbled up body of junk science to create a purpose for a political agenda, as embodied in the UN’s Agenda 21. They need an excuse for imposing this drastic program and saving the world, even from a false crisis, always sounds like a good thing to do. They even have the gall to say that, even if human activities are not warming the planet, we should consider anything done, however mistakenly, to be a good thing. Rriigghhtt! Ruin the world’s economies, lower our standard of living, prevent the undeveloped countries from developing, and imposing a totalitarian/communist one-world government to (not) save the planet is a good thing to do anyhow. Sure, it is, not!
Higley7 Im in Kentucky a tobacco growing state and now the miscreants have shut down our coal industry and its going to put 200,000 folks out of work at the same time ObummerCare is forcing businesses to cut folks down to working under 30 hours a week to avoid the fines imposed!
Its a glorious world these Green Regressive Assylum seekers have brought us!
We are blind if we still think that either extreme capitalism and extreme communism can improve things. But just pointing fingers will not do. We need a new synthesis, and some reasonable international initiatives are already on the table. The cacophony that seems to prevail in this blog is an obstacle to any effective dialogue pursuant to seeking the common good. With so much negative noise coming from either extreme, positive signals cannot be heard, let alone evaluated.
If you only had the two to pick from?
Extremely wealthy capitalists are generally more charitable than extremely powerful communists.
Having just the two extremes to pick from is no longer an acceptable dichotomy, as there are concrete initiatives for a new synthesis that deserve consideration. It is a false generalization to say that “extremely wealthy capitalists are generally more charitable than extremely powerful communists.” Human nature is the same everywhere. The “good” are not so good, and the “bad” are not so bad. Extremely wealthy capitalists are extremely powerful (to the point of creating wars to protect their interest), and extremely powerful communists are extremely wealthy (the “new class”). For heaven’s sake, can we start discussing positive ways to improve things, rather than just attacking the IPCC? They are human too!
Right!!! And pay the UN 1% of the take (per Agenda 21).
IPCC AR5 clearly shows how IPCC works. From the cover, these snippets:
“A report accepted by Working Group I of the IPCC but not approved in detail.” Means: all care but don’t blame us for any errors.
“The Report has to be read in conjunction with the document entitled “Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the IPCC 5th Assessment Report – Changes to the underlying Scientific/Technical Assessment” to ensure consistency with the approved Summary for Policymakers (IPCC-XXVI/Doc.4) and presented to the Panel at its 36th Session.”
Means: While this is a scientific report, the spin takes precedence over the science and we will massage the science to make sure it tells the right story.
“Publication of the Report is foreseen in January 2014.”
Means: So after everyone on earth has found all the mistakes in this report, we will fix them for final publication thus preventing future insinuations about our incompetence. And we don’t even have to acknowledge the help we got from the blogosphere.
Reading the summary of changes to the underlying Scientific/Technical Assessment clearly show how the tail wags the dog.
page 8 bottom re: Table SPM.2
“Assessment is in ES, but not in main text. Add at end of line: “In most land regions and in the near-term, the frequency of warm days and warm nights will thus likely continue to increase, while that of cold days and cold nights will likely continue to decrease.””
I also note page 2 re: SPM3:27 “Trends for short periods are very sensitive to the start and end years, For example, trends for 15-year periods starting in 1995, 1996, and 1997 are 0.13 [0.02 to 0.24], 0.14 [0.03 to 0.24] and 0.07 [-0.02 to 0.18], respectively.”
So if we all know that climate data is so extremely variable that cherry picking time periods can be used to manipulate the answer, there is surely no excuse for not using a standardized 30-year climate periods with fixed start and end dates. Any variation due to changing the start and end dates must surely be included as “scientific uncertainty”.
On the inside cover:
“Confidential – This document is being made available in preparation of WGI-12 only and should not be cited, quoted, or distributed”
The IPCC is not HUMAN its a political think tank tossed together to control a part of the world along with the rest of the crack pot progressive radical green movement. Its the second rounf of these progressives since 1900 when they first started this mess and FAILED!
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Reblogged this on pdx transport.
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Back in the 1950’s Greens wanted to get rid of the energy companies because they burnt fossil fuels without smokestack filters and powered cars without pollution control which did cause lethal smog and any idiot could see that had to change. At some point the Left realized it could use the Green Movement to get rid of the energy companies who were the foundation of the Western economies and therefore the Western Governments. This is the reality behind the IPCC “experts” and “scientists”.
There is a danger.
Most of this history is memory-holed and not open to discussion Tony. “Greens” are the well-intentioned good in this world, you sound like a greedy capitalist.
Now run along and recycle some compost or something.
Building on the outstanding success of the IPCC to date with the successful release of AR5 /sarc off
Scientists Call for Overhaul of IPCC
http://insideclimatenews.org/print/28213
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q
New IPCC the second worst idea in science history after the first IPCC that is.
I think we will truly understand the key drivers for Climate when we understand what causes the Ice Ages, major and minor.
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US President Eisenhower warned us about a “scientific-technological elite” challenging statesmanship reminiscient of today’s Climate madness
in the 35 seconds of his farewell 15 minute speech (from 10-30 to 11-05 minutes) see him at : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWiIYW_fBfY
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It seems that after having exhausted all other options Judith has, finally, decided to accept reality.
Claudius Denk
http://www.solvingtornadoes.org
What reality?
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Great insights Dr. Curry! I will reread that one many times as as the debate moves forward…
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