by Judith Curry
A fascinating hearing on the IPCC was held today by the UK Parliament Energy and Climate Climate Change Committee.
The link to hearing video is [here]. The witnesses:
- Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, Professor Myles Allen, University of Oxford University, and Dr Peter Stott, Met Office
- Professor Richard Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nicholas Lewis, Climate researcher, and Donna Laframboise, Author
I listened to the entire hearing this morning, I really didn’t have 3 hours to spare in today’s schedule, but I couldn’t resist. It was definitely worth listening to.
A quick reaction to the form (rather than the substance). I found this format to be much more illuminating and informative than the typical Congressional hearing in the U.S., where the members posture and pontificate and try to catch out the witnesses with ‘gotcha’ questions. By contrast the UK MP’s had really done their homework and asked very good questions, with a minimum of ‘gotcha’ type questions.
Blog articles are starting to appear on the Hearing:
- Bob Ward
- Paul Matthews
- RTCC
- Bishop Hill (mainly the comments)
The most extensive discussion is on RTCC which also includes tweets; the RTCC assesses the hearing from the ‘warm’ perspective. The best summary of the hearing I’ve seen so far is this comment from John Shade posted at Bishop Hill:
There was no knock-out punch from either ‘side’, so the contest has to be decided on points. Points may to some extent be in the eye of the beholder, but to my eyes, the 3Ls made at least a couple of dozen good ones, while the ASH team were largely, and not very convincingly, on the defensive. If the committee is a rational one, I think this hearing today will serve to have broadened and deepened their grasp of key issues, and to have shifted them away from the sort of dumb deference to the IPCC that has so disfigured such as the Royal Society in its political posturings for example. Both panels deserve our admiration for remaining courteous and to the point throughout. I think the hearing did credit to Parliament, and to the panelists.
Hoskins: Its not all natural and not all anthropogenic, which makes it difficult to understand. If I have a criticism of IPCC, it is the tendency to think that everything is forcing, perhaps an understimate of natural variability. Probably in the 1990’s natural variability enhanced the warming. Untangling these is the challenge.
Allen: An enormous amount of judgment goes into the climate models themselves. Some things I would rely on these models and for other things I wouldn’t. This is where expert judgment comes in. Climate models are useful for big picture estimates of warming over the coming century.
Hoskins: Among thousands of scientists you will get a range of views. For the vast majority of scientists, they are within the range of the IPCC assessments and projections. The climate system is very complex, and getting a consensus is not a natural thing for scientists. The policy makers want a consensus. The IPCC has done a remarkable job.
Hoskins: What we’ve seen from the models is circulation remains the same, but overall things get warmer. The challenge is now to understand the interaction of warming with circulations so that we can get regional climate change right, which is key for adaptation decisions
Hoskins: Science is full of probing and discussion, sometimes that gets into the media. There is general agreement on science, the question is what actions we should take. The IPCC gives a range, we don’t know all the details, lets move on to the next stage
Hoskins: there have been huge swings in climate in the past, but we were not around with our socioeconomic system, and the recent extremes are exposing our vulnerability to the environment. Keeping the environment within these bounds will allow us to continue our activities; exceeding these bounds will put major stresses on societies
Lewis: Observations point in one direction, model simulations point in a different direction towards substantially higher warming. Policies are based on projections of models. Models don’t reflect the current evidence including the reduction in aerosol cooling effect strength. If aerosol cooling is lower, then it follows that the warming is less from carbon dioxide. The model simulations used in AR5 predate this particular finding.
Lewis: The issue is how much warming to expect from the different scenarios. From my point of view, those projections are about 60% higher than they would be if they had sensitivity consistent with observations.
Lindzen: Previous panel says you can trace statements in the SPM to main report. That is probably true, although they allow the SPM to change the main document. 31 pages leaves a lot out. The issue is selection of statements. The omissions are significant.
Lindzen: You are asking a policy question and most scientists would like to avoid it. The range of uncertainties include the possibility that warming of 2C is a net benefit.
Lindzen: Whatever the UK decides to do will have no impact on your climate, but will have a profound impact on your economy. Trying to solve a problem that may not be a problem by taking actions that you know will hurt your economy
Lindzen: I think the IPCC assessment of natural variability is not adequate and there is not much argument about that. No models at present do an acceptable job on ENSO and the multidecadal oscillations. And also not the longer timescale circulations of the oceans on timescales of thousands of years. The fact that the system can change on its own is an important development in public understanding of climate change.
Lindzen: I think the IPCC assessment of natural variability is not adequate and there is not much argument about that. No models at present do an acceptable job on ENSO and the multidecadal oscillations. And also not the longer timescale circulations of the oceans on timescales of thousands of years. The fact that the system can change on its own is an important development in public understanding of climate change..
Lindzen: At this point, we don’t know what to do about it. We have certainty about adverse consequences of the policy options on the economy, but uncertainty about the impact of the policy options on the environment
JC’s pseudo transcript of the Hearing
Below is the complete set of written notes I took during the Hearing.
Question: what are the new things in AR5 relative to AR4
Hoskins: Better understanding of glacier mass balance, contributions to sea level rise
Stott: Further evidence that warming is unequivocal, and more evidence of the human impact, new evidence about the future, limiting warming requires substantial reduction in emissions
Allen: Focus on what we agree on. High level of agreement on the big picture. Skeptics are merely at the bottom of the range of projections (which is an improvement over previous skeptical situation say a decade ago).
Question: What is settled?
Allen: Nothing is ever completely settled, on the other hand disagreements are on the level of 20-30% or so, doesn’t make all that much difference to kinds of decisions we need to make
Hoskins: Mistakes will be made, we are always skeptical, IPCC not to be taken as the bible but it is the consensus view of a large number of scientists
Allen: The strength of the evidence lies not in the process of the report, but rests in the fact that results are reproducible. All the climate models show this, very difficult to construct a climate model that doesn’t show the anthropogenic impact. The data speaks for itself.
Stott: The controversy surrounding the paleo reconstructions plays a relatively small part in the overall assessment
Question: Policy makers don’t get beyond reading the summary for policy makers, are there any concerns about relying on the summary?
Stott: Statements in SPM are traceable back to the report, supported by a wealth of evidence.
Allen: Regarding lowering the lower bound of ECS. Scientists have pushed back aginst this, that is part of the process of scrutiny by scientists
Question: Scientists come across like politicians; some of this arguing seems to be for the sake of the argument.
Allen: Climate sensitivity is difficult to resolve. ECS is much less significant to the argument than TCR. A lot of the controversy revolves around ECS, a parameter that doesn’t matter very much. Sort of the Katie Price of climate, every body talks about it but no one can remember why they are talking about it. A certain inertia in the climate community re ECS.
Question???
Allen: There is no clear pattern of papers after the assessment that are in net higher or lower in terms of ECS
Hoskins: This is living science
Question: Related to aerosol forcing
Stott: The assessment takes into account our uncertainty in aerosol forcing.
Net cooling effect from aerosols.
Hoskins: Understanding the impacts from different aerosol types is an area of living science.
Question: Mentions stadium wave theory!!!!
Stott: Natural internal variability describes ENSO, multi-decadal variability. Investigated the null hypothesis that we can explain the warming by natural variability – we can’t. Timescales are important here. Natural variability does not provide the very long-term trends. Also patterns of warming low lat, high lat, allows us to distinguish between natural variability and anthropogenic forcing. Natural variations have always happened and will continue.
Hoskins: Its not all natural and not all anthropogenic, which makes it difficult to understand. If I have a criticism of IPCC, it is the tendency to think that everything is forcing, perhaps an understimate of natural variability. Probably in the 1990’s natural variability enhanced the warming. Untangling these is the challenge.
Allen: The uncertainty in natural variability is reflected in the range of uncertainty in future projections.
Hoskins: Climate change could cause a change in the natural variability. One can’t separate natural variability from climate change
Question: IPCC scales down future projection by 40% for 2016-2035, and why didn’t this make the SPM?
Stott: Scaling of 10%, related to comparison between model and current observations. All of this is fully described in the text of the Report.
Allen: Expert judgement summarized what they thought was most important.
Initialization is a key factor to better represent natural variability, which is constrained by observations. Expert judgment is based on a range of lines of evidence
Stott: Bringing models, observations and understanding together to interpret all this
Question: implications of using expert judgment vs models
Allen: An enormous amount of judgment goes into the climate models themselves.
Some things I would rely on these models and for other things I wouldn’t. This is where expert judgment comes in. Climate models are useful for big picture estimates of warming over the coming century.
Question: On longer timescales, the IPCC reverts to the model estimates.
Allen. The models are not assumed to be right; there is no particular evidence that models are too warm or too long on these timescales. IPCC gives likely confidence level for these long term projections; one in 3 chance that reality lies outside the model range.
Question: Swanson et al. finds greater convergence of models, but they agree less with observations. Natural tendency for models to agree with each other.
Stott: If you compare CMIP3 to CMIP5, more account for aerosol forcing in CMIP5 increases the spread. Comparison with surface temperatures is imperfect, since we are really concerned about imbalances in the energy balance over longer terms.
Allen: You have to choose which aspect of reality to compare the models with. Cites the recent Sherwood et al. paper. Elements of judgment in assessing which is most relevant parameter to compare with.
Question: Models that compared best with clouds (reference to Sherwood et al) compared worst with temperatures. Lower sensitivity to aerosols. If aerosols are less powerful than we thought, then CO2 sensitivity must be less powerful than we thought.
Stott: Models have a whole range of aerosol forcing,
Allen: Some of them match observations, others don’t.
Question: You have a new generation of models, why don’t they get aerosol forcing right?
Allen: the long time scale for climate model development and computer simulatiosn precludes the latest developments being incorporated into them on a short time scale. Allen has provided them with the climateprediction.net model to play with.
Question: The language of uncertainty concerns that the IPCC is confusing for the media and policy makers.
Hoskins: The IPCC tries to quantify the uncertainty.
Stott: summarizes the formal methods of uncertainty assessment in the report. States that the IPCC provides very clear guidance for characterizing uncertainty.
Allen: Its an assessment made on the lines of evidence on the probability of it occurring. It’s a reasonable effort at communication.
Question: Interacademy Council criticisms of the IPCC
Allen: IAC reinforced a direction that the IPCC was already going in
Question: which are main areas of uncertainty increase/decrease?
Stott: more evidence so ‘extremely likely’ more confidence that humans have caused the warming since 1950. Observational evidence for changes in temperature extremes and links to greenhouse gases
Allen: lower confidence on climate sensitivity, although it doesn’t make much difference for the futureprojections. The uncertainty ranges don’t always get smaller in the short term.
Hoskins: ECS estimates has stayed the same for decades. Provided the history of the more sophisticated models whereby uncertainty models could increase
Allen: discusses objective Bayesian methods; IPCC looks at all the published literature on sensitivity
Question: why increased confidence in attribution in light of the hiatus?
Stott: Oceans are warming
Question: Oceans are a symptom of warming; how does it increase confidence in the cause:
Stott: (describes the general attribution process)
Allen: Increased confidence in aerosol forcing increases our confidence in the total anthropogenic warming. We are more confident humans are not cooling the climate
Questions: Lower aerosol forcing implies smaller greenhouse effect
(not sure who?) By ruling out something that might compensate for the warming effect, you increase your confidence in the CO2 forcing
Question: If there is less human input to cooling, then less human input to warming
Allen: That uncertainty contributes to the uncertainty in future projections.
Question: given the increased confidence and consensus in the conclusion, is the economic case for mitigation stronger or weaker in AR5 relative to AR4?
Hoskins: Nothing has been found in the AR5 that goes against previous conclusions, we are conducting a very dangerous experiment
Allen: as long as emissions continue to increase, we are committing to future warming.
Question: even if the rate of emission stopped increasing, concentration would continue to increase.
Allen: until we bring carbon emissions to zero we will continue warming
Hoskins: Confirms that our target is well based
Question: to what extent does AR5 represent a consensus among scientists.
Hoskins: Among thousands of scientists you will get a range of views. For the vast majority of scientists, they are within the range of the IPCC assessments and projections. The climate system is very complex, and getting a consensus is not a natural thing for scientists. The policy makers want a consensus. The IPCC has done a remarkable job.
Allen: The IPCC discusses the range of opinions. The argument is where in the range of uncertainty does reality lie.
Hoskins: What we’ve seen from the models is circulation remains the same, but overall things get warmer. The challenge is now to understand the interaction of warming with circulations so that we can get regional climate change right, which is key for adaptation decisions
Questions: criticisms of IPCC in terms of it being political and overly burdensome for scientists. How has the IPCC responded to the IAC recommendations
Hoskins: Re the 26 IAC recommendations, 20 of them have been given a tick. As a result, the process is even more burdensome than before for the scientists. IAC criticisms of IPCC ‘head office’ have not yet been implemented.
Stott: It is hard work for sure. Some of the recommendations have been helpful. Re politicization: the SPM process the scientists have the final world, it is a very clear process to clarify the language for policy makers. It is not a political process it is a scientific process.
Allen: In the big picture the key thing to recognize that the strength of the evidence stands alone, it does not rely on the IPCC. IPCC process is so elaborate, it can detract from the evidence
Allen: strongly supports the Netherlands proposal for annual assessments on special topics. Finds this would much better reflect the progress of science.
(Question)
Hoskins: Science is full of probing and discussion, sometimes that gets into the media. There is general agreement on science, the question is what actions we should take. The IPCC gives a range, we don’t know all the details, lets move on to the next stage
Allen: If we are at the low end of the range versus the high range, we still need to reduce emissions by a challenging amount, so these uncertainties don’t matter for policy
Question: IPCC inaccuracies and exaggerations, e.g. Himalayan glaciers
Hoskins: The problems aren’t in WGI, but were in WG2 owing to the unavoidable use of grey literature for that subject area.
Allen: The error was pointed out by scientists, scientists are their own best policemen
Question: The IPCC makes a political not a scientific statement?
Stott: Describes the extensive review process, and the care taken to insure that the summary document represents the science. Scientists have the final word
Allen: You need that dialogue with the policy makers to make sure that the scientists that are correctly understood
Hoskins: The IPCC is for governments, there is a tightrope that needs to be walked. But as a lead author,he did not feel the weight of governments telling him what to say
Allen: at the level of individual chapters, there is no involvement of the governments at all
Question: Concerns that many of the authors are activists. Do you see this as a problem
Stott: There is a conflict of interest statement that we sign. We are first and foremost scientists, skeptical scientists. Our positions are based purely on the science.
Question: How to you insure that all perspectives are represented in the report
Allen: You draft the chapter, you send it out for review, then we go through all those review comments and make sure they are adequately addressed. This draws in comments from directions that we might not have otherwise considered.
Question: Hiatus in temperature, in conflict with the increase in confidence in attribution?
Hoskins: The models are not in the position to predict the hiatus, because of lack of initial conditions. You would not expect them to predict that behavior. You would hope that in long runs of the model they would show this, but models do not have enough of that kind of variability. That is a decadal prediction problem for which adequate initial conditions are not available
Stott: Not a huge amount of literature on the hiatus but that literature was assessed. We discussed possible contribution of internal variability, and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
Hoskins: In the late 1980’s, I said that we could see a decade of cooling, this is not unexpected, but climate models should not be expected to predict this.
Question: Climategate, Jones et al. not prepared to share their data
Allen: IPCC encourages sharing of information between groups, thanks to the IPCC there is a lot of sharing, which is unusual relative to some other fields. Climate science is remarkably collegial in this way.
Question: Why are we here? In previous epochs that has been large climate variability
Hoskins: there have been huge swings in climate in the past, but we were not around with our socioeconomic system, and the recent extremes are exposing our vulnerability to the environment. Keeping the environment within these bounds will allow us to continue our activities; exceeding these bounds will put major stresses on societies
Allen: Makes economic sense to contain it.
Panel II:
Question: Which conclusions from AR5 give you greatest cause for concern?
Lindzen: I don’t find much of concern about the content of the report, but I’m concerned about the translation. I don’t disagree with the argument for attribution. If man is responsible for 50% of the warming, that in itself doesn’t tell you the sensitivity is high. I find this finding inconsistent with catastrophe is around the corner. I don’t think the IPCC itself says that.
Lindzen: States his own experience with the ipcc in the TAR the pressures were never political, if there were any pressures it was against criticizing models. In the U.S. the reward for solving a problem is to have your funding disappear.
Lewis: Observations point in one direction, model simulations point in a different direction towards substantially higher warming. Policies are based on projections of models. Models don’t reflect the current evidence including the reduction in aerosol cooling effect strength. If aerosol cooling is lower, then it follows that the warming is less from carbon dioxide. The model simulations used in AR5 predate this particular finding.
Lindzen: The hiatus is completely consistent with nothing to worry about. Re sea level rise. My colleague Carol Wunsch feels you can’t say anything about that, since you have two different measurement systems that haven’t been fully reconciled, so we are not sure what is going with sea level. I don’t see much evidence that points to man doing something extraordinary.
Question: Are there any areas of climate science that are settled?
Lindzen: We understand that man should have some effect. We agree that climate changes. None of this tells you that there’s a problem. Sea level rise is not something we agree on.
Question: Turning to SPM, can policy makers rely on this?
Lindzen: How would you propose to use it? How would you translate it to policy? What in the present summary could you use for what policy?
Lewis: The issue is how much warming to expect from the different scenarios. From my point of view, those projections are about 60% higher than they would be if they had sensitivity consistent with observations.
LaFramboise: Concerns about condensing so much material into a 30 page summary, a lot of room for human judgment which is not science. More like a summary BY policy makers, the 4 day meeting with policy makers ‘behind closed doors’. So are we just to take their word for it that this is not influenced by politics? Potential for politics to influence the contents of SPM.
Lindzen: Previous panel says you can trace statements in the SPM to main report. That is probably true, although they allow the SPM to change the main document. 31 pages leaves a lot out. The issue is selection of statements. The omissions are significant.
Question: Are scientists protesting this?
Donna: Pachauri claimed that all references are from peer reviewed literature. This is clearly not true, but scientists did not step up and say this was incorrect. There aren’t a lot of checks and balances in the system, especially since the SPM engagement with policy makers happens happens behind closed door.
Lindzen. It says nothing overtly false. Its an approach that involved intrinsic compromise. Volunteer efforts, most individuals work on a small piece of the document. In practical terms there is a limit to how much time an individual scientist can devote to the IPCC.
Question: (can’t hear) They haven’t rerun the models with the new aerosol forcing, which would change the whole picture. Is there a sense that we mustn’t rock the boat or place too much weight on evidence that would decrease the concern?
Lewis: Too late to do anything about the models at that point. No intentional distortion by the models. There is conflicting evidence regarding sensitivity.
Question: Even though we are not certain we have to act on the side of caution.
Lindzen: Discusses short feedbacks. Defends his iris hypothesis.
Question: Are we going down the right road?
Lindzen: You are asking a policy question and most scientists would like to avoid it. The range of uncertainties include the possibility that warming of 2C is a net benefit.
Question: we want “science says . . .”
Lindzen: Scientists have their own interests. Whatever the UK decides to do will have no impact on your climate, but will have a profound impact on your economy. Trying to solve a problem that may not be a problem by taking actions that you know will hurt your economy
Lewis: AR4 – models and obs agreed, made the scientific basis for action relatively strong. In AR5 – the basis is decreased. Describes the climate sensitivity issue (Bayesian stuff,very technical). Most of the studies are not statistically sound.
Question: Is the IPCC assessment of natural variability adequate?
Lindzen: I think it is not adequate and there is not much argument about that. No models at present do an acceptable job on ENSO and the multidecadal oscillations. And also not the longer timescale circulations of the oceans on timescales of thousands of years. The fact that the system can change on its own is an important development in public understanding of climate change.
Question: Science is the best guess, we need to go with the best guess.
LaFramboise: If there is bias among the jurors, we need to throw out the jury and start again.
Question: You can add complexity to a model, but you can’t make the model ‘do things’. We like to think of progress as linear. But there has been no discernible increase in model skill. There are notable errors in describing today’s regional climate with models.
Question: Do you think climate models are reliable?
Lindzen: Of course not! If they can’t get today’s regional climate right, why should they be believed for the future.
Question: How significant is the 15 yr hiatus?
Lindzen: The IPCC speaks of attribution for the last 50 years. Before then, we are dealing with natural climate variability. Warming from 1919-1940 almost indistinguishable from the warming 1970-1998.
Lewis: Natural variability may account for a lot of this. In a long period, natural variability will hopefully cancel out
Lindzen: The longer this goes on, it will be harder to reconcile with anthropogenic forcing. There’s not much to say other than it wasn’t predicted
Lewis: Discusses model-obs discrepancy in the tropics for the past 25 years. This indicates the models are not to be relied upon
Question: Are you saying there is not human effect on climate?
Lindzen: Theoretically it should have some effect. That is not the same as saying it’s the major factor, not the same as saying high sensitivity, and not the same as saying there is catastrophe around the corner
Question: regarding explanations for the hiatus
Lindzen: Ocean heat sequestration is an opaque way of saying natural variability, that leaves the atmosphere and ocean out of equlibrium.
Lewis: Good ocean obs down to 2000m have only been in place since 2005. Cites Lyman and Johnson paper, says heat uptake is only half of what the IPCC says.
Question: Doesn’t hiatus imply late 20th century warming could have been enhanced by natural variability, does the IPCC make this point
Lewis: I don’t think the IPCC brings this out, rather it leans toward making the opposite point
Lindzen: mentions Swanson and Tsonis mentions half of the warming is natural internal variability, but this was not stressed in the IPCC.
Question: previous panel played down the importance of sensitivity
Lewis: (missed it)
Lindzen: Sensitive climates take longer to reach equilibrium than insensitive climates. For 70 years, high sensitivity climates won’t have much of the warming realized. Argues that you can pin it down to lower sensitivity values
Question: Miles Allen says there is wide agreement on the range of sensitivity, is that true?
Lewis: My estimate goes below the 1.5C bound of IPCC, and has very different central estimates (which is policy relevant in context of the economic models). The high tail is particularly important in economic models.
Question? Is the decade 2000-2010 the warmest decade in the historical record?
Lindzen: Of course it is.
Question: You say global warming has stopped.
Lindzen: If temperature was increasing until then, then it is the hottest decade so far. If you are saying you are taking the 16 yr smoothing average, then warming has continued. If you look just at the last 16 years, then there is no change. Nobody is saying global warming has come to an end. For the last 16 years, temperature hasn’t increased.
Question: Are you happy with the way the IPCC expresses uncertainty?
Lindzen: With regards to attribution, no I’m not happy, I don’t know how it was arrived at. I assume they wanted to express to the policy makes that they were very confident, increasingly confident. There is consensus on trivial things, but not things that are policy relevant. Majority view of climate scientists is that climate change is a serious problem.
Question: Striving for consensus: is it a risk of underestimating the problem?
Lindzen: Logically that’s possible but I don’t see any evidence of that.
Question: Would you agree that there is no scientific way to separate natural variation from anthropogenic?
Lindzen: A lot of effort has been put into it (e.g. fingerprint detection), but at the moment there is no successful way of doing this.
Lewis: The analyses of sensitivity that Lewis looks at assumes that all change is externally forced.
Question: Are solar cycles important?
Lindzen: It is pretty clear that actual solar variability is small. Cosmic rays etc may have an influence on the brightness of clouds that can amplify the impact of solar variability. It is an unknown.
Question Should the IPCC be disbanded?
Laframboise: The IAC review that finds significant shortcomings in every major step of the IPCC process. So there are serious reasons to question the IPCC conclusions. The review process needs to be external, independent of the IPCC. After 25 years, it would be very difficult to change the culture of the IPCC.
Lindzen: You are not dealing with a huge field of climate scientists. The IPCC is manpower intensive. 58% of the participants this time were new participants. In a small field you have to keep finding new people, and the meager credentials of some of the IPCC experts reflects the small size of the pool. The climate field isn’t as strong as some other fields
Laframboise: Scientists selected by governments to participate in the IPCC will be different if selected by VP Al Gore vs VP Richard Cheney. Myles Allen remarked that skeptics are involved at the review level, not in the writing. This makes a big difference.
Question: Some argue that this is the most scrutinized document in science
Donna: The reviewers can review whatever section they choose. There may be parts of the report that receive reviews from no one. The review process is haphazard.
Lindzen: Not a normal review when the authors get to decide whether to pay attention or not to the comments
Question: Would smaller more frequent reports help?
Lewis: Argues for the whole, integrative approach, so we can assess how the individual pieces fit and influence each other
LaFramboise: Focus on a few topics that are subject of controversy.
Lindzen: Reports are not currently useful since it is difficult to find things (lack of indexing)
LaFramboise: Concerns about activists (associated with green organizations) on WGII lead author list.
Question: can’t activists be objective?
LaFramboise: If the future of our children and grand children are at stake, we should make every effort to be objective
Lindzen: Author involvement in activism is not very healthy for the IPCC.
Question: we need a good mix of different people.
Laframboise: If you want the public to have confidence in a public body, the body should do its best to be objective
Lindzen: At this point, we don’t know what to do about it. We have certainty about adverse consequences of the policy options on the economy, but uncertainty about the impact of the policy options on the environment
Judith, thanks for that effort – you can get a new career as a reporter!
Lindzen provides a good working definition of societal insanity: Trying to solve a problem that may not be a problem by taking actions that you know will hurt your economy.
Go uncertainty!!
Judith Curry,
Excellent! Thank you. What fantastic summarising skills you have.
What Judith couldn’t do was to report the nuances of the questioning.
Yeo, the Chairman of the committee, is what we call a ‘trougher’, a politician who has used his position to benefit himself from the renewables’ boondoggle the fake IPCC ‘consensus’ was designed to achieve.
His response to objective science was the last redoubt of the corrupt warmists; to claim the past decade has been the hottest on record, then to imply it is the hottest ever thereby further to enrich himself and the many companies of which he is Chairman.
Happily, Lindzen was up to the task of countering Yeo’s bombastic attempts to shout Lindzen down. Yeo’s other approach was to get the ‘right words’ in the transcript so these could be used as quotes in further debates.
It was with great pleasure that I learnt recently of the campaign by his constituents to deselect him as their Member of Parliament. Yeo lives 120 miles away and hasn’t represented them for a long time.
AlecM, Thank you for that. Clearly, climate science and politics is still a very long way from being objective and rational.
Thank you for this encouraging news!
Sounds like a fair debate–can we have the U.S. national high school debate topic on climate change to let the kids try to sort it out for their parents?
Judith, from your notes that seems to have been a very worthwhile process, sensible questions and sensible responses. Score one for the UK political process.
+1,
Pity the poms can invade Australia and give us a respectable parliamentary system too. eh? :)
Peter – a first – I have two letters in today’s Australian! Neither on CAGW.
In over 30 years, I can only recall the Oz once printing two letters by one person on the same day.
Congratulations on two letters.
Wow. The editor must be getting old :)
Or perhaps that’s your ration of 2014
Faustino,
OT, but have you read: “Triumph of the Optimists“?
http://www.econ.uniurb.it/materiale/2781_triumph_of_the_optimists.pdf
You can see TOC, Chapter 1 and Chapter 4 here.
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7239.html
Queenslanders can get it online from the Qld. State Library if you are a member.
I’ve just started reading it. I only have it for 2 weeks, and fist impression is, it’s a reference I may have to have on my bookshelf.
So Faustino, whadd’ya expect, the-double-post-noble-award,lol?
Though haff’ta say a humble serf is not, 2x , un-impressed.
On yr letter re special dispensay – shuns and relatied ter this post,
serfs favour consistent – not – too – invasive rule of law fer ALL,
no special dispensations fer the able minded or the able bodied,
rule of law that doesn’t have loop holes fer bailing out large
corporations, ( too big ter fail, ) rule of law that doesn’t cave
in ter lobbyists or try ter pick winners, using the publick purse
ter subsidize inefficient businesses or academic enclaves …
think the Inquizi – shun.
Nor are serfs are not in favour uv all those other oh so compex
ordinances aimed at creating the nanny state, concentrating
power at the top, laws that check and bamboozle the citizenry,
control information dissemminated from above like the
top
– down
I-P-C-C,
set up by
guv – uh – mint
as a dissemminator
of ( preferred) :(
inform -or -dis –
inform-ay -shun…
Say, what do i know, I am but a serf.
Pleeze fergive the spelling mistakes, I am but a serf.
Peter, no, but I’ll read it.
Beff the serf, I’d say we are on the same page, but that might imply a more courtly ranking.
Hoskins: there have been huge swings in climate in the past, but we were not around with our socioeconomic system, and the recent extremes are exposing our vulnerability to the environment. Keeping the environment within these bounds will allow us to continue our activities; exceeding these bounds will put major stresses on societies
The clearest example I’ve seen of how the consensus of the Western AGW establishment thinks–i.e., “We will continue building its Tower of Babel until it falls down around us like a house of cards.”
I found this bit particularly amusing.
A model output is now data, and multiple runs show that the “experiment” is “reproducible” in a scientific context? It’s turtles all the way down!
Thinking of model output as data is really funny when the simulations had warming >4 times higher than actual over the last 15 years –i.e., there’s but a 1 in 500 chance the Left’s GCMs are actually looking at the same planet we live on.
It is our “socioeconomic system” a.k.a. wealth that makes us robust and resistant, and gives us ability to adapt to whatever may come. To interpret this as a weakness, as fragility is absurd. This is characteristic of the intellectuals’ inability to grasp the real world out there.
Well, at least we are part say there. First the warmists refuse to debate the skeptics, because all we give is disinformation. Now we have the skeptics and warmists in the same room, but not at the same time. What we need is a proper scientific debate on a level playing field, with real skeptics; not just lukewarmers. However, this is not going to happen in the near future, as the warmists have far too much to lose.
I notice no-one supported my claim that the climate sensitivity of CO2 added to the atmosphere from current levels, is 0.0 C to two significant figures, or one placed of decimals.
“I notice no-one supported my claim that the climate sensitivity of CO2 added to the atmosphere from current levels, is 0.0 C to two significant figures, or one placed of decimals.”
____
The reason for that lack of interest should be obvious.
R. Gates, you write “The reason for that lack of interest should be obvious.”
I suppose. It is just a pity.
I suggest you invite real skeptics. Those that believe in dousing (yup there is one of those) those that disbelive in radiative physics, (plenty of those), those who believe that the music of the spheres did it, those who believe magnetic fields explain it all, those who believe we are warmer because of excess heat from human activities, those who dont even believe you can measure temperature, those who believe god wouldnt let us hurt the planet,
those who believe the earths core dunnit, those who believe the earth is governed by a magical governor..
There is all manner of nonsense one could debate.
Today you get to join a debate.
to join that debate you have to agree to a couple things. Otherwise you are a nut and we have no time for nuts.
Notice how folks listen to nic lewis while they ignore or abuse you.
There are two explanations for that
A) everyone else is wrong
B) you’re a nut
The cool thing about arguing with nuts is they never get the fact that they are nuts.
Now you’ll deny that you are not a nut.
Mosher– you are responsible for fertilizing the nut Webby into thinking his salt model has any value.
Steven, you write “B) you’re a nut”
So, according to you, I am making progress. I used to be a moron; now I am a nut.
It is completely plausible that CO2 changes the trajectory through the attractor, but does not cause a shift to a new attractor. In fact, this seems like the most likely outcome. Thereby making the anthro impact indistinguishable from zero.
Ringo, I am a CSalty Nut that’s for sure.
The only thing I gravitate to is people that are willing to do some heavy lifting, like Mosh.
But guys like you that run off the mouth and can’t keep a beat, well you are good for some laughs.
Mosher you spend an inordinate amount of time verbally abusing Cripwell. Did somebody’s great grandfather give you an ass whipping when you were in college majoring in English or something?
Mosh is right. Invite them all and embrace their ideas one at a time. Add their theory in to the model and point out to them how much it adds to the signal. But will they be happy if their contribution doesn’t add up to the contribution of CO2?
Those that believe in science will accept it or at least try to work with it. But those with an axe to grind will accuse you of malfeasance.
That’s what separates a scientist from a poseur.
David, you write “Mosher you spend an inordinate amount of time verbally abusing Cripwell.”
Don’t worry about me. I have a hide like a rhinoceros, and I am old enough and ugly enough to look after myself. I seem to have got under the skin lf Steven Mosher and R. Gates. So I am making progress.
What we need is a proper scientific debate on a level playing field, with real skeptics; not just lukewarmers.
That debate has been taking place in scientific journals for over a century.
Stand-up debates on a stage are not how science is done, or communicated. Science requires careful, detailed evidence, not one-liners. It requires a slow, deliberate approach to evidence, not a couple of zingers.
This is why scientists rarely agree to a “debate” — their work has much higher standards.
David Appell | January 28, 2014 at 5:23 pm |
That debate has been taking place in scientific journals for over a century.
______________
Can’t decide if this statement results from naïveté or from an agenda. Did you read the Climategate emails?
What in the CG emails counters my claim? Nothing.
Let’s see…. boycotting journals, pushing editors out, fighting to keep papers out… yep, nothing to see here David.
k scott denison:
What editor was pushed out? Please give his or her name.
What paper was not published? Please give its title and authors.
David, start with email #2683 and follow the trail from there.
k scott denison: I don’t see any trail. So why don’t you lay it out for us? I don’t think you can….
David, too lazy to even search I guess. Or too motivated not to?
k scott denison: I knew you didn’t have an answer. But thanks for confirming it.
Here you go tubby
Mann
The skeptics appear to have staged a ‘coup’ at ‘Climate Research’ … My guess is that Von Storch [one of the editors] is actually with them (frankly, he’s an odd individual, and I’m not sure he isn’t himself somewhat of a skeptic himself) …
I think we have to stop considering ‘Climate Research’ as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. (1047388489)
HI Mark,
Thanks for your comments, and sorry to any of you who don’t wish to receive these correspondances…
Indeed, I have provided David Halpern with a written set of comments on the offending paper(s) for internal use, so that he was armed w/ specifics as he confronts the issue within OSTP. He may have gotten additional comments from other individuals as well–I’m not sure. I believe that the matter is in good hands with Dave, but we have to wait and see what happens. In any case, I’d be happy to provide my comments to anyone who is interested.
I think that a response to “Climate Research” is not a good idea. Phil and
I discussed this, and agreed that it would be largely unread, and would
tend to legitimize a paper which many of us don’t view as having passed
peer review in a legitimate manner. On the other hand, the in prep. review articles by Jones and Mann (Rev. Geophys.), and Bradley/Hughes/Diaz (Science) should go along way towards clarification of the issues (and, at least tangentially, refutation of the worst of the claims of Baliunas and co). Both should be good resources for the FAR as well…
>>So while our careful efforts to debunk the myths perpetuated by these
>>folks may be useful in the FAR, they will be of limited use in fighting
>>the disinformation campaign that is already underway in Washington DC.
>>Here, I tend to concur at least in sprit w/ Jim Salinger, that other
>>approaches may be necessary. I would emphasize that there are indeed, as
>>Tom notes, some unique aspects of this latest assault by the skeptics
>>which are cause for special concern. This latest assault uses a
>>compromised peer-review process as a vehicle for launching a scientific
>>disinformation campaign (often viscious and ad hominem) under the guise
>>of apparently legitimately reviewed science, allowing them to make use of
>>the “Harvard” moniker in the process. Fortunately, the mainstream media
>>never touched the story (mostly it has appeared in papers owned by
>>Murdoch and his crowd, and dubious fringe on-line outlets). Much like a
>>server which has been compromised as a launching point for computer
>>viruses, I fear that “Climate Research” has become a hopelessly
>>compromised vehicle in the skeptics’ (can we find a better word?)
>>disinformation campaign, and some of the discussion that I’ve seen (e.g.
>>a potential threat of mass resignation among the legitimate members of
>>the CR editorial board) seems, in my opinion, to have some potential merit.
>> (1051202354)
Phil Jones
I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor’ – a reference to Chris de Freitas, who had handled the two papers (1047388489)
The other paper by MM is just garbage – as you knew. De Freitas again. Pielke is also losing all credibility as well by replying to the mad Finn as well – frequently as I see it.
I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !
Cheers
Phil (1089318616)
Tom Wigley
I know about what Matthews has done. He did so without contacting Sarah
or me. He uses a statistical emulation method that can never account for
the full range of uncertainties. I would not trust it outside the
calibration zone — so I doubt that it can work well for (e.g.)
stabilization cases. As far as I know it has not been peer reviewed.
Furthermore, unless he has illegally got hold of the TAR version of the
model, what he has done can only be an emulation of the SAR version.
Personally, I regard this as junk science (i.e., not science at all).
Matthews is doing the community a considerable disservice.
Tom.
PS Re CR, I do not know the best way to handle the specifics of the
editoring. Hans von Storch is partly to blame — he encourages the
publication of crap science ‘in order to stimulate debate’. One approach
is to go direct to the publishers and point out the fact that their
journal is perceived as being a medium for disseminating misinformation
under the guise of refereed work. I use the word ‘perceived’ here, since
whether it is true or not is not what the publishers care about — it is
how the journal is seen by the community that counts.
I think we could get a large group of highly credentialed scientists to
sign such a letter — 50+ people.
Note that I am copying this view only to Mike Hulme and Phil Jones.
Mike’s idea to get editorial board members to resign will probably not
work — must get rid of von Storch too, otherwise holes will eventually
fill up with people like Legates, Balling, Lindzen, Michaels, Singer,
etc. I have heard that the publishers are not happy with von Storch, so
the above approach might remove that hurdle too (1051190249)
Thanks Doc. Was just confirming David’s bias.
k scott denison: You completely failed to back up your assertion. (I knew you couldn’t.) Where I come from, that means they are still false.
Askig again:
* What editor was pushed out? Please give his or her name.
* What paper was not published? Please give its title and authors, and the journal to which it was submitted..
Jim Cripwell | January 28, 2014 at 4:29 pm |
David, you write “Mosher you spend an inordinate amount of time verbally abusing Cripwell.”
Don’t worry about me.
—————————————————————————
I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about Mosher. He obviously has a gross personality defect and needs professional help.
@Jim
“I notice no-one supported my claim that the climate sensitivity of CO2 added to the atmosphere from current levels, is 0.0 C to two significant figures, or one placed of decimals.”
Well, DUH!
Do you suppose that an official ‘Climate Scientist’ is going to say or imply anything that may be construed as questioning ‘The Prime Axiom of Climate Science’?
Not if they want to keep their ‘Climate Scientist in Good Standing’ photo ID and ‘Team Membership Card’. For additional details, ask Dr. Curry.
The fact that your claim is supported overwhelmingly by actual, measured climate data is of no importance to ‘Climate Science’. If the empirical data is in conflict with the ‘Prime Axiom’, the conflict is resolved in the traditional ‘Climate Science Way’: the data is ‘adjusted’ until the conflict becomes support.
David Appell, Just as murder is a crime it is also a crime to conspire to commit murder. Likewise, just because they didn’t succeed in getting Von Storch “pushed out” they certainly tired as evidenced in the CG emails. Just as it is wrong to “push out” an editor, it is wrong to conspire to do so. So I take it you believe there was nothing wrong with such unethical behavior. That says a lot about you character, “but thanks for confirming it”.
As is said in parliament, the first three witnesses were very economical with the truth. Misleading parliament is a very serious offence.
I quote from Myles Allen “This is where expert judgment comes in.”
The motto of the Royal Society is Nullius in Verba. What part of this includes “expert judgement”? The fact that the AR5 conclusions that matter, are based on expert judgement, and not empirical data, just demonstrates that none of the warmists are talking science, physics.
Yes, expert judgement about…wait…nothing. When you admit that your models and your theories do not support the policy conclusions that you want, what do you do? Too bad you cannot call Ghostbusters. Alarmists simply turn matters over to the intuitions of experts. There is no question that the intuitions of experts do not amount to science. Because intuitions of experts do not amount to science and because those intuitions are all that Alarmists have then consensus of experts is consensus about nothing.
Yes there are a few gaps, possibly JC is being kind to the MPs. the meeting is well worth watching. Lindzen was the star performer. Many of his replies shocked the MPs out of their complacency, they were rarely grateful for his frankness, total disbelief at times. They were at time insulting to Laframboise. The inbuilt hate by MPs of journalists was revealed by their snide remarks about her using this opportunity to plug her book. Some of the comments by MPs were revealing. We must be seen to be doing something. Chairman Tim Yeo ( trougher ) as he is known for his outside & conflict of interests, revealed his agenda, his desperation for the gravy train to continue, resulted in repeated interruptions & short row with Lindzen, Lindzen had to correct him.
“Whatever the UK decides to do will have no impact on your climate, but will have a profound impact on your economy. Trying to solve a problem that may not be a problem by taking actions that you know will hurt your economy” – Lindzen
Great to see scientists taking Judith’s advice and sticking to their area of expertise.
Boy, Judith’s gonna really go to town over this kind of BS!!
Indeed. Can’t have any of that “activists” now can we?
And I live the tireless and careful consideration of uncertainty.
Apparently Mr. Monster took a nap when Lindzen was speaking.
I have to agree with mikey and joshie, on this one. Judith must take responsibility for the scientists who are not following her advice and she must punish the miscreants severely. Did I do good, boys?
You do realize that is EXACTLY the position of parents who do not vaccinate their children against childhood diseases?
If the parents of one child refuse it, on the grounds that there is an actual risk, then there is no problem, as the ‘herd immunity’ will mean that the child is never exposed to an infected child. However, when larger numbers of parents refuse it, then the risk of an outbreak increases, as the pool of children who can become infected and infectious increases; look at how polio has started to surge in areas where Imams have decried vaccination.
Either we do not have to worry about atmospheric CO2 or we do. If we have no worries, all well and good. If we do have to worry, then we are all in it together and the ‘we are only a little nation’ doesn’t cut it.
MOPO is that CAGW is bollocks, but that is an opinion. Like NASA worrying about asteroid impacts, having Bruce Willis and his team as Plan-B, is rather a good idea.
As Plan B, the rapid decarbonization of >50% of the economy is pretty easily doable, mass produce Westinghouse AP1000’s at $7 billion a pop and using liquefied natural gas in its large vehicle fleet would replace >50% of the US’s CO2 emissions for less than Obama’s ‘startup’ package.
I wouldn’t mind us doing Plan B anyway, for a variety of economic and environmental reasons.
Based on performance of carbon markets and the rising cost of energy in the UK, one doesn’t need to be much of an expert to reach the same conclusion.
Doc,
That we are not following your Plan B is evidence those sounding most alarmed about global warming have other motivations in play.
Or can’t do arithmatic.
Doc,
Normally I follow your arguements closely and usually agree but in this case you are assuming too much. First of all, Fujikima (sp) shut down the nuclear option in most of the world except China and Georgia. Maybe France will keep nuclear but Japan will move to something else. On the other hand, in 100 years when the sea level actually goes up the 7 to 14 inches science will have advanced tremendously. Fusion power, desalination plants on the coast, hydrogen fuel cell cars, solar where the sun shines at reduced PV costs and lots of unknown unknowns. Remember that we had just begun to fly in airplanes and drive cars 100 years ago and science accelerates faster than sea level rise. So not much to do for the next 50 years until we can see real data based trends. It would be great to send more sampling to the oceans depths and figuring out the caused of El Nino, southern oscillation. Also PDO and AMO causes and predictions. Plenty to do for now without massive dislocation of the existing economy.
Scott
Doc,
there is a funny read here regarding immunization and climate change:
http://theconversation.com/climate-and-vaccine-deniers-are-the-same-beyond-persuasion-22258
I think the author glosses over the obvious point that most vaccine deniers tend to be alternative-life style hippies who worry about the environment, plastic, etc..
oh well
As for bruce willis plan b, not such a good idea:
http://theconversation.com/best-way-to-stop-a-killer-asteroid-form-a-committee-19642
Scott, it is just a matter of political and public will. If you give three choices;
1) The end to the industrial age and mass death.
2) Thermogeddon and mass death.
3) Nuclear power and a continual rise in living standards.
Call me Dr. Suspicious, but I can see 3) being the most popular choice.
That the majority of Thermogeddonists do not lobby for nuclear power makes me wonder at to their motivations and plans for humanity.
I rather like my species and am quite comfortable with the current, and projected, population levels. I would like the vast majority of the worlds population to be as wealthy and healthy as I am, which mean energy and growth.
are you seriously suggesting that Bruce Willis couldn’t save us?
Come on man, next you will suggest that he isn’t suing Apple on our decedents behalf.
Doc,
False choices.
1. massively restrict carbon emissions by relying on solar, wind and ocean thermal at massive increased costs. Causes energy to be rationed and reduces human comfort in termperature control.
2. Heavy movement to nuclear energy in the face of EIS opposition and court cases but delays cause 50 years to significently build out the infrastructure of nuclear energy.
3. muddle along with some increased energy costs in California and the east but reduce costs in Texas and the south. Economic progress migrates to those locations. In 100 years fusion, economic solar, hydrogen fuel cells, desalination plants resolve the problem by advances in science and engineering
Scott
Don,
There’s no ‘responsibility’ for Judith, but given her strident stand on scientists commenting outside their expertise, and on policy, I was just a little surprised Judith wasn’t taking poor Richard to task.
not-IPCC dogma trumps, I guess.
@ Doc
“That the majority of Thermogeddonists do not lobby for nuclear power makes me wonder at to their motivations and plans for humanity.”
Wonder no more, Doc. The ‘sustainability’ crew, 100% of whom are fully on board the ongoing CAGW train wreck in progress, makes no bones about their belief that the maximum ‘sustainable’ human population is somewhere between 0.5 and 1.5 billion or their intention to ‘achieve’ that level by any means possible. Worldwide regulation of ACO2 is high on their list of ‘means’. They are fully aware of the implications of reducing ACO2 by 90+ %–and are charging full (solar generated) steam ahead.
Remember Prince Philipp’s quote in multiple venues, all wildly applauded by the Greens and CAGW’ers (but I repeat myself):
Reported by Deutsche Press Agentur (DPA), August, 1988. (one of many)
“In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”
They aren’t kidding.
When CAGW activists predict widespread mortality due to heat, they seldom mention mortality from cold and energy taxes. (Carbon-based fuels provide 70-80% of the U.S. energy supply per NASA.) I have posted the following U.K. references before, but I think they bear repeating.
Cadman, Emily. “UK Sees Steep Increase in Winter Deaths.” Financial Times, November 26, 2013. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/763fcb26-5681-11e3-ab12-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2luySfQ2W
“Last year’s cold winter saw the number of excess winter deaths jump by nearly a third, according to official data.
“The Office for National Statistics estimates that there were 31,000 excess winter deaths in England and Wales in 2012-13, a rise of 29 per cent on the previous year.
“Last March was the coldest since 1962, with an average temperature of 2.2°C, and the second coldest since 1910.
“The majority of the excess deaths, 25,000, occurred among those aged 75 or above.”
Nelson, Fraser. “It’s the Cold, Not Global Warming, That We Should Be Worried about.” Telegraph.co.uk, March 28, 2013, sec. elderhealth. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/elderhealth/9959856/Its-the-cold-not-global-warming-that-we-should-be-worried-about.html
“No one seems upset that in modern Britain, old people are freezing to death as hidden taxes make fuel more expensive
“The government’s chief scientific officer, Sir David King, later declared that climate change was “more serious even than the threat of terrorism” in terms of the number of lives that could be lost. (2003)
“Since Sir David’s exhortations, some 250,000 Brits have died from the cold, and 10,000 from the heat.”
Wonderful work, Dr. Curry. Thank you so very much. I do agree with your stated views on the conference.
Three big take-aways:
1. The debate/conversation has most definitely changed. The fact that Alarmists are being polite to the extent of not using “denier” is a huge change.
2. Lindzen, once again, demonstrates that he is the scientist in the room. Here is how you test that claim. Ask yourself who would you rather have as a dissertation adviser? Lindzen asks far too many substantial questions.
By contrast, the Alarmists make very clear what would satisfy them.
3. Lindzen says:
“I think the IPCC assessment of natural variability is not adequate and there is not much argument about that. No models at present do an acceptable job on ENSO and the multidecadal oscillations. And also not the longer timescale circulations of the oceans on timescales of thousands of years. The fact that the system can change on its own is an important development in public understanding of climate change.”
Natural variability is in the debate/conversation now and it will grow much larger. We are going to hear a lot more about the Stadium Wave hypothesis. By the way, sceptical blogs are the main reason that we are now hearing about natural variability. The Stadium Wave hypothesis can open the eyes of many scientists. Great work, Dr. Curry.
With respect to the point on aerosols; what is the best dataset available for the levels of global (and hemispheric aerosols) over the last 30 years or so?
Try search engine with “atmospheric radiation measurement aeorosol”
That should give you a web page with a USA government facility phone number. If you get a page which says “warning warning” make sure you read what it says.
“LaFramboise: … a lot of room for human judgment which is not science”
IhopeJudith’s sumary is wrong.
If she did say that, she really is an idiot.
Why? Do you see it as a scientific problem? I see it more as a management problem, organizing the proper work flows, dealing with budgets, schedules, and trying to get people to improve their social skills.
Too funny.
“To some extent in the eye of the beholder”????
Really? To some extent?
Maybe he could have just said:
“Points may to some extent be in the eyes of the beholder, and the fact that I only awarded points to one side is purely coincidence.”
Ya’ just gotta love the climate ward.
Ooops. I meant that you gotta love the climate wars, but climate wards is a pretty damned good Freudian typo.
Holy sh!t!- – ‘climate ward’ it is!!!!
Some of the inpatients are terminal.
Well, the impatience is terminal.
==========
“Ya’ just gotta love the climate ward.”
Too funny, for once I agree with Michael… See Joshua, you are finding common ground.
Perhaps because you’re writing from a ward… maybe not so Freudian…
Naturally, we feel skeptical about our uncertainty when there is so much we could doing–should be doing. Unfortunately, as Lindzen reminds us, We have certainty about adverse consequences of the policy options on the economy, but uncertainty about the impact of the policy options on the environment.
Repeat the quote from John Milton in 1640;
“Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinions in good men is but knowledge in the making.” Got to add good women especially Dr Judith Curry.
Thanks so much for your hard work and making this open forum for discussion and discovery of the climate issues.
Lindsen makes wise comments that the steps taken in UK won’t impact the climate there but will hurt the economy. Not very settled science.
Scott
To point what what should be obvious: It’s quite encouraging that skeptics are now getting a seat at the table, including here in the U.S. This is progress ladies and gentlemen, major progress, despite the contemptuous rantings of “skeptical warmists” like R. Gates.
+1
Lindzen was interesting. He more or less said, we don’t know much, what we do know doesn’t raise any red flags, we should pay attention to what is happening, we should relax and come back in forty or fifty years and see if we’ve learned anything different.
I’ll go along with that.
Seems to me the warmists case continues to shrink by the day. Their most potent argument from a PR perspective is the grossly misleading claims about this and that year being the xth warmest “ever,” conveniently forgetting that it’s all about trends, and the spectacular failure of the models on which this whole house of cards is built.
If we get actual cooling, it will be the death knell for what the esteemed Harold Lewis called “the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.”
You can’t get “actual Cooling” from the instrumental record all the time the warmists have control of it. At some point in the future maybe with enough cooling practically everyone will realise that the instrumental record does not match reality, but I doubt it.
@ A C Osborn
“You can’t get “actual Cooling” from the instrumental record all the time the warmists have control of it.”
Exactly. It doesn’t matter what the thermometers read; it does matter who reads them.
Another restatement of the political observation, oddly enough by the Patron Politician of the CAGW-ers:
It’s not the people who vote that count, it’s the people who count the votes.
They AGW alarmist says an hour into it that the situation has changed since the 90s. We arguing whether we are at the top of the range or at the bottom of the range but no one is arguing that the climate is not changing at all. So, who are all of the people who in the 90s were busy claiming climate doesn’t change at all…? That is such a ludicrous statement to make.
“That is such a ludicrous statement to make.”
Listen to Obama tonight, as he ludicrously calls for a renewed focus on “battling climate change,”
I didn’t think it was possible for the U.S. government to come up with anything more disastrously ill advised as its “war on drugs.” But the “war on climate change” is even more absurd, and potentially even more dangerous.
The Left’s war on climate change is doublespeak for the Left’s war on capitalism.
So, is the pause / hiatus a plateau within an upward trend, or the peak of a cycle?
If as many scientists believe, decades of global cooling are ahead — as a result of a quiet sun, the hiatus would be at a top of the top of a global warming trend.
In the Black Sheep pub on Camberwell road watching Liverpool v Everton. Will get back 2 u sooooon.
I hope you are a Liverpool supporter. :-)
When people address the issue of why carbon dioxide levels go up AFTER temperature then we shall begin to make progress.
That is well known and explained. It doesn’t really apply to the questions today or are you claiming that the smokestacks at the coal power plants don’t force CO2.
There’s no such thing as real expertise or certainty when it comes to the economy. The closest we’ve got is George Soros, who’s made billions betting against “experts”.
And to make money as he has, you only need to bet on the occasional thing you’re sure about, not make good predictions about anything people want to know about.
There are several sources recognizing that the reduction of uncertainty in Soros’s trading is due to currency market manipulations. You can always beat gaming experts if you rig the game. Jim Kramer admitted on cable news that he manipulated stocks. He beat the experts too.
If “experts” in economic policy, or any other government policy, can’t rig the game to work the way they want while allowing for all sorts of opponents with other agendas who have a level (game-rigging) playing field with them, then they have no right to be called “experts”.
IOW, economic politics is a very complex non-linear system many of whose individual actors are just as smart, and have the same toolbox(es) as the “experts” trying to control it.
For the US audience it is worth saying that the debate is much less politically polarised in the UK than in the US. The chair of the committee Tim Yeo who had quite a fight with Lindzen is a conservative, while the sceptical Graham Stringer who brought up the Himalayan glaciers IPCC error is a member of the Labour party.
Which makes all the stuff about ‘ideology-driven scepticism’ or whatever dumbass phrase the sociologists have come up with even less credible when viewed from UK.
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Nicholas Lewis makes it pretty clear that the IPCC’s global warming alarmist meme is in its entirety, the result of the use of the “subjective Bayesian method,” which entails the use of “subjective assumptions.” And, it was equally clear that committee had zero idea what he was talking about and had no inclination to inform themselves about it.
I dislike the arguments about the small effect of one country’s ‘mitigation’ vs the economic cost. It should be the effect if most of the world did something similar or of the countries who might do the same. Of course the cost ratio shouldn’t change so it isn’t entirely reductionist – and supposedly the entire Kyoto protocol if accomplished wouldn’t have been detectable at the century’s end so it seems it certainly wouldn’t change anyone’s conclusions.
Here is an economist view on the problem
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-24/the-mother-of-all-collective-action-problems.html
I think the real problem is that the benefits of burning fossil fuel are so high. Plus the same people who are so concerned about warming are against any obvious solution, like nuclear power.
“I dislike the arguments about the small effect of one country’s ‘mitigation’ vs the economic cost. It should be the effect if most of the world did something similar or of the countries who might do the same.”
The hearing was held by a branch of the UK government, to help decide what legislation to pass in the future. To suggest that the UK should pass legislation that will devastate its economy, because if every other country did the same stupid thing it might help the climate, is exactly what the CAGW advocates of decarbonization are selling.
It’s refreshing to see the argument made openly for a change.
The Kantians charge in where consequentialists fear to tread.
Sems to bear no relationship to anything that I have posted.
Rob: Do only that which you would will that everyone else do–Kantian universalism. Leads to some funny ideas like never lying even to save victims from criminals, etc.
Rob
Planet earth is governed by 200 independent nations with different goals that are often in conflict. Imo it is highly unrealistic to believe that these 200 nations will see the issue the same way. These nations will not be impacted the same way. Some will gain benefits while others may suffer harms. The only thing all nations can do to minimize the harms to their citizens from adverse weather is to construct and maintain a robust infrastructure
Yeah, I wouldn’t make the calculation for every country, at the absolute most optimistic the Kyoto countries plus half the rest. But the fact that Kyoto was signed and a number of countries actually tilted at that windmill shows that the one country assumption isn’t any more valid than believing every country would do the same.
Judith (or someone knowledgeable),
I watched the whole thing and caught every word.
I was mystified by Myles Allen downplaying the importance of climate sensitivity (both TCR and ECR), asserting that there were other more important or more relevant “lines of evidence” for policy makers regarding anthropogenic influence on the climate.
To my mind, climate sensitivity has always been the main measure of whether there is a concern, and I was surprised to see it down-played. But I am struggling to believe that the 1st panel would be so wilful as to deliberately downplay it in order to hide the suggestion of low sensitivity and the implications for policy. There may be other reasons why uncertainty surrounding it might be unhelpful to policy makers in determining whether there is something they need to act on, such as other “lines of evidence” that indicate there might be something to gauge the scale of the problem. I just didn’t hear what they might be – that is to say, downplaying it felt unjustified to me.
I’d be interested to know if there are any arguments that support viewing metrics other than sensitivity in gauging the degree of the problem human emissions may cause.
I think the issue is that sensitivity is a rather nebulous and contrived variable when used as a diagnostic. Myles is saying there is no real need to calculate this, just look at the climate model projections. The issue is that climate scientists have done the big sell on sensitivity, and it is now the key parameter in models of the social cost of carbon, economic models, etc. As a scientific topic, I think the climate science community would do well to rethink the whole idea of sensitivity. This will undoubtedly confuse the economists and policy makers tho. A wicked mess.
Gauging the problems we may cause….other than the TCR….I would take a closer look at the scenarios. I realize this isn’t really a climatology issue, but the scenarios drive the models (there’s a huge volume of traffic discussing TCR, but I don’t see much discussion about the scenario development methods….my opinion? They have a huge opportunity for improvement).
Nor is there much discussion regarding how the IPCC chose the forcing goal each RCP was to achieve, and then an effort was made to arrive at the target forcing chosen by the IPCC. Unfortunately these scenarios are non sense. And to make things worse, they feed RCP8.5 to the media with the label “business as usual”.
Judith, you write ” Myles is saying there is no real need to calculate this,”
No-one, and I mean no-one, has ever calculated climate sensitivity. All anyone can do is estimate it.
yes this is the problem
Agnostic, you write “But I am struggling to believe that the 1st panel would be so wilful as to deliberately downplay it in order to hide the suggestion of low sensitivity and the implications for policy”
Boy, are you naïve. Of course that is exactly why the panel down played the issue. Don’t you know that ANYTHING is justified in furtherance of The Cause.
Judith, you write “yes this is the problem”
But it is not a new problem. If it is obvious to me, then it must have been obvious to climate scientists 40+ years ago.
Thanks for your reply. Well, given that the climate model projections require sensitivity as a parameter, or can be derived from parameters that constitutes its output, I am still a little unclear as to why it can’t be used as a metric for determining the extent to which we should be worried about emissions causing GH gasses to rise in the atmosphere.
Leaving that aside for the moment, what else are we supposed to use to gauge the severity of the problem, or indeed if there is a problem at all? The models don’t agree with observations, and as Hoskins pointed out that maybe because at the time of the FAR where we take the starting point from, they were too simple to account for much of the variability. But that is something that could be said at any point when they don’t agree. So how can we tell that climate scientists have a sufficient handle on the climate and anthropogenic influences to justify policy decisions?
My biggest misgiving is that consensus climate science believes it has correctly and completely accounted for all the natural factors that influence climate (as indicated by prof Stott). When you look at centennial variability nothing occurring now seems inconsistent with it.
The models don’t agree with observations,
Actually, the models do agree with observations, like NASA’s E2 model:
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-useful-paper-on-one-models-results.html
The deviation from the CSALT model comes only in recent years:
http://contextearth.com/2013/10/26/csalt-model/
which is why people have reached the conclusion that the ocean is lately taking up more heat than before.
This kind of finding is *exactly* how modelers make progress. It’s how ALL science makes progress — it explains observations until the explanation fails, then it works to understand the failure, and then to modify its model.
This is the history of science. It’s no different here.
Everyone has always said there will be “surprises” along the way. This is one such surprise. In this case, it happens to mean surface warming is slightly lower than expected. Theret’s no guarantee the next “surprise” will be in the same direction.
Trenberth on the Two Pauses:
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2014/01/trenberth-on-two-pauses.html
Agnostic, you write ” So how can we tell that climate scientists have a sufficient handle on the climate and anthropogenic influences to justify policy decisions?”
First, climate scientists do NOT have a handle on the climate. Second the empirical data shows that we can tell that they do not have enough science to justify policy decisions.
Ag I believe that Lindzen made the point that if climate sensitivity is low <2 degrees per doubling, then the difference between TCR and ECR must be very small and changes in temperature seen quickly, whereas if climate sensitivity is high then it will take a very long time to reach 'equilibrium'. You can see this if you have a look at [CO2] and Temp; with a high 'lag' you can support a high ECR; but a high ECR demands a long lag, so we are already the 'Walking Dead'.
Jim Cripwell says: “No-one, and I mean no-one, has ever calculated climate sensitivity. All anyone can do is estimate it.”
That’s progress. Thank you Jim! Why don’t we all just admit that this is an estimation problem with non-experimental data, and get on with the business of asking questions about the robustness of the estimates, reasons for (and likely directions of) bias in the estimates, and so on.
Jim Cripwell says: “No-one, and I mean no-one, has ever calculated climate sensitivity. All anyone can do is estimate it.”
What do you think is the difference, Einstein?
BTW, what is your result for climate sensitivity?
Judith wrote:
As a scientific topic, I think the climate science community would do well to rethink the whole idea of sensitivity.
What does this mean?
Rethink it how?
How have YOU rethought this concept, in whatever way that means?
To me it seems inpossible to understand where you stand on anything — everything is wrong, it seems, but you don”t say how to make it right (nor make it right yourself).
Go to this link, it will give you all the posts on Climate Etc. related to sensitivity:
http://judithcurry.com/category/sensitivity-feedbacks/
Your hysteria and biases prevent you from understanding where Judith stands, davey. Calm down and open up your little mind.
Socialism doesn’t work.
Of course it does, in many countries around the world, including the US.
That’s never going to go away, but what will go away is socialism for the rich and for corporations, who right how have free reign to pollute as much as they want, and alter the climate as much as they want.
That’s now in the process of ending, but syncophants like Gary won’t go willingly. But they will go. They are already going, each and every day, and they know it. So do you. And so do I.
The tragedy is that they picked the wrong side all along.
Not even interested in realizing that there is no “missing heat”?
http://contextearth.com/2014/01/25/what-missing-heat/
It’s set up perfectly as a climate science homework assignment.
David Appell. In this video you can get an idea about “rethinking climate sensitivity”. At the end, questions & answers:
The problem I see is the constant changing of the metrics. First it was the surface temperature … until the message of surface temp was not so good. Then, it was climate sensitivity … but only if we like the message. And, so on. Doesn’t look too serious, looking from outside.
David Appell you write “What do you think is the difference, Einstein?
BTW, what is your result for climate sensitivity?”
I spent many weeks having a handbag fight with Steven Mosher when he claimed that there was no difference between an estimate and a measurement. I have no intention of discussing the difference between a calculation and an estimate with you. If you don’t know there is a difference, then you don’t understand Physics 101.
I have given my estimate of CS many times. Since there is no CO2 signal in any modern temperature/time graph, there is a strong indication that the climate sensitivity for a doubling of CO2 from current levels is 0.0 C to one place of decimals or two significant figures.
He had to down play it, because even the IPCC is revising it down, away from “Catastrophic”.
David,
You link to two models.
Are there not 40 + models in use? It appears the majority of them are not trending well with observed data. Doesn’t that imply scientists should be weeding out a significant number?
I was quite amazed when I saw the heading and read this thread. Prof Lindzen being interviewed by a UK parliamentary committee. Nothing short of amazing and the clearest indication yet that something is starting to stir at the highest levels of UK government. My guess is that the edifice of disinformation and fraud has begun to crack and there will be major changes here after the next election.
I don’t know how many here saw the blatant Nutty piece in the Guardian recently, (Puff Piece) where he compares Lindzen to Mann. The intent being to portay Lindzen as a second rate scientist. Made comments, got the usual flaming from the Pavlovian attack dogs dept in the process, despite many agreeing with me.
Agnostic:
Doesn’t make sense does it ?. If the climate sensitivity value, estimated or not, is used as an input parameter to the models, yet it “doesn’t matter”, then how can the model output mean anything at all ?. Perhaps someone can explain ?
David Appel:
Socialism
>>> Of course it does, in many countries around the world, including the US.
Well at least we know what the real agenda is now. Nothing to do with science at all, is it, David ?.
Please keep up the good work here. It will make a difference. An oasis of calm and reason in a sea of chaos…
“But I am struggling to believe that the 1st panel would be so wilful as to deliberately downplay it in order to hide the suggestion of low sensitivity and the implications for policy.”
“Sentence first — verdict afterwards.” Queen, Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
David Appell | January 29, 2014 at 1:16 am | “Socialism doesn’t work.”
Mussolini advocated socialism when young, found it didn’t work, and invented fascism. That did work until he ran out of assets. He then invaded Albania and Ethiopia.
Learn from history. The following has some interesting contemporary parallels: Johnson, Dr. Paul M. “Fascism.” A Glossary of Political Economy Terms – Facism. Accessed April 30, 2012. http://www.auburn.edu/~johnspm/gloss/fascism
You can also consult wikipedia for “fascism” aka Corporatism and Corporate State. It is not inherently nazism.
Excellent post
Lindzen said the following “The hiatus is completely consistent with nothing to worry about. Re sea level rise. My colleague Carol Wunsch feels you can’t say anything about that, since you have two different measurement systems that haven’t been fully reconciled, so we are not sure what is going with sea level. I don’t see much evidence that points to man doing something extraordinary.”
I take that to mean the newer system is more accurate and has a trend since 1979 that is higher than the much older system with a lower sea level rise rate.
That does not mean the same thing as saying the sea level rise rate has accelerated since 1979. It just means we have a newer more accurate system. Reconcile the two systems and see how the rate has been for the last 150 years, then we might have something worthwhile.
Lindzen said the following “The hiatus is completely consistent with nothing to worry about.
Which is baloney — Lindzen of all people should know better.
Lindzen would have, I suspect, made the same claim in 1975. So would most deniers here.
Yet we had 0.6 C of warming since then. Who here would have predicted that in 1975? And on what grounds? Almost no one.
“I take that to mean the newer system is more accurate and has a trend since 1979 that is higher than the much older system with a lower sea level rise rate”
No. Unless you run the two systems at once, and have identical changes with both systems, a validation procedure, then you cannot compare the two data sets.
As the two methodologies measure quite different things, this process could take some time.
David, according to woodfortrees we’ve had 0.4C of cooling since 1998. Did you predict that?
k scott denison: We certainly have NOT had 0.4 C of cooling since 1998, and if WFT says that it is wrong. (Can you calculate for yourself?)
Here is the linear temperature change I find since 12/1998:
GISS: 0.13 C
HadCRUT4: 0.11 C
NCDC: 0.10 C
all with a 95% OLS C.L. of about 0.06 C.
That’s warming, not cooling.
It is consistent with “nothing to worry about.” That is a true statement. What you object to are the inferences that the benighted might draw from such a statement.
David, go take a look at the WFT temp index. Peaked in 1998. Down 0.4 since then. Don’t shoot the messenger if you can’t take time to look at the data.
(ps – I might just be yanking your chain for your obviously cherry-picked comments.)
k scott denison wrote:
David, go take a look at the WFT temp index. Peaked in 1998. Down 0.4 since then.
That is not how temperature trends are determined.
Are you at all familar with statistical analysis? I honestly can’t tell.
k scott denison: And even using your dumb, unscientific method, temperature change since 1998 is of order 0.0 C, not -0.4 C:
GISS, 1998 to 2013: -0.01 C
HadCRUT4, 198-2013: -0.04
Learn to think before you blindly accept another’s results.
Let’s see… peak anomaly is about 0.6… today is about 0.2… 0.6 minus 0.4 is…
Correction… 0.6 minus 0.2 is…
Doc
You are right. I was clumsy in how I was trying to say what I believe you are saying. That is why the two systems need to be reconciled. My basic point was that just because the newer system shows a higher rate does not necessarily mean the more recent rate is higher than what was shown under the old system.
k scott denison wrote:
Let’s see… peak anomaly is about 0.6… today is about 0.2… 0.6 minus 0.4 is…
Temperature changes aren’t calculated from the most recent peak. If so, IT WOULD ALWAYS BE COOLING, unless every year was warmer than the one before.
This is a distressing lack of science on this blog.
@david appell
Perhaps we have had 0.6C since 1975.
But what effects have you seen that mean we should have worried about it?
If we hadn’t created vast legions of employed climatologists all with a ready-made solution but looking for a problem to attach it to, would we even have noticed?
I think Lindzen has just justified all the climate scientists who have spoken out as advocates on policy.
If Lindzen can do it without murmur from climate skeptics then they are going to have a tough time on their hands next time they complain other climate scientists are doing it.
You have a point, in a way. But since when does anything Lidnzen says matter in your world?
The funny thing is that I have little philosophical problem with Hansen’s preferred policy CONDITIONAL on the diagnosis that Urgent Mitigation makes sense. There are some practical issues (such as the need to regulate current light-water nukes more rationally, not just research new designs, as well as the need to figure out tariffs on imported CO2-intensive goods). There are some political concerns about opening the door to massive rent-seeking with respect to offsets and such and about getting rid of redundant pollution controls and gas-mileage standards. And Hansen’s idea of rebating the take on a CO2 tax back to the public, which I kind of like for political economy reasons, might be worse in the short run than cutting other taxes on capital investment and labor.
But I could live with the general thrust of such a policy if it didn’t seem completely stupid (compared to watchful waiting and allowing decentralized adaptation) conditional on the evidence to date, and if there were some reasonable prospect of preventing circumvention by other nations. In other words, while it would be stupid and wasteful to engage in Urgent Mitigation, if you were going to do it Hansen’s advocated policy isn’t a bad start.
A null hypothesis of “no change” does not require a detailed technical explanation, and therefore no extraordinary skill. It can be understood by a truck driver.
mhart: Why wasn’t the null hypothesis true in 1975?
lolwot, do you understand the distinction between first-best and second-best? E.g…. Given that my counterpart is nuking me, my best reply is to nuke him back, even though I don’t think we should be using our nukes at all? There… How hard was that?
Lindzen is the anti-advocate. Eat your heart out. The pause and Lindzen is killing the cause.
Maybe some ground rules would help in this area. Active researchers still involved in producing scientific reports on which policy is based should not be advocating. Anyone not active in such research should be given more latitude. For example James Hansen should not have been out protesting/advocating as head of GISS but now it would be fine for him protesting and advocating all he wants.
Sundunce,
Now that Pete Seeger has died, let’s remember what his sociology professor told him at Harvard:
“Don’t think that you can change the world. The only thing you can do is study it.”
The jury is still out on that one.
Define natural variability. Are changes in the emission modes of the CO2 molecule natural variability? If such changes are a function of temperature, as we would expect,, and temperature in turn is a function of CO2 concentration, where does that leave co2 emission mode change? In models, emission mode change would be a significant non-linearity that could account for both the present hiatus and the 1940 one as well.
Judith, your coverage of this hearing uncovers another attempted goalpost move by the ‘ASH’ team. Nic Lewis among many others has falsified past IPCC predictions of ECS. So now the ‘ASH’ team asserts to Parliament that ECS is not the correct metric ( despite all previous IPCC pronouncements) and the correct metric is TCR!? AGW is Again hoisted on its own petard.
Where did “Nic Lewis” do what you claim? Paper? Link?
David Appell
Link to Nic Lewis study
http://www.webcitation.org/6DNLRIeJH
Max
David Appell
Here is a better link to that Nic Lewis study
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00473.1
Other recent studies, which come to the same general conclusion as that of Nic Lewis (i.e. IPCC estimate for ECS is too high):
Recent studies on 2xCO2 ECS
Lewis (2013) 1.0C to 3.0C
Berntsen (2012) 1.2C to 2.9C
Lindzen (2011) 0.6C to 1.0C
Schmittner (2011) 1.4C to 2.8C
van Hateren (2012) 1.5C to 2.5C
Schlesinger (2012) 1.45C to 2.01C
Masters (2013)* 1.5C to 2.9C
* not yet published
The average range of these recent studies is 1.2°C to 2.4°C, with a mean value of 1.8°C, or about half of earlier model-based predictions cited by IPCC.
Max
manacker: Oh, Nic Lewis is just a blogger. I thought you were referring to a real scientific result. Never mind.
manacker: Is your list a complete list?
Because it seems biased towards the low end.
Are you leaving any estimates of ECS out?
Because I know I’ve seen many much higher than this.
Nic Lewis published his results recently. It is not something I pay much attention to. I agree with Michael Ghil that sensitivity is γ.
http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/tcd/PREPRINTS/Math_clim-Taipei-M_Ghil_vf.pdf
Thanks, Rud, saved me the effort. After decades of everything being based on ECS, now suddenly the goalposts have shifted and it’s all about TCR???
In AR5 there is a subtle change to the definition of TCR. In AR5 reference to “year 70” has gone: “The transient climate response (units: °C) is the change in the global mean surface temperature, averaged over a 20-year period, centred at the time of atmospheric carbon dioxide doubling, in a climate model simulation in which CO2 increases at 1% yr–1. It is a measure of the strength and rapidity of the surface temperature response to greenhouse gas forcing.”.
I note that in the TCR definition CO2 is increasing exponentially, whereas in the real world the increase is fairly linear, and at a rate which is already well below 1%pa and is very much lower than 1% of doubled CO2. I also note that by the time CO2 concentration does double (if it ever does) we will have used so much fossil fuel that exponential (or maybe any) growth will be highly unlikely.
manacker: your list is nothing but names and years. That’s not sufficient for me to look up these papers.
Please provide complete citations.
I got 1.7 as well; can I get my big oil cheque now?
http://judithcurry.com/2013/05/16/docmartyns-estimate-of-climate-sensitivity-and-forecast-of-future-global-temperatures/
Mike Jonas wrote:
…note that in the TCR definition CO2 is increasing exponentially, whereas in the real world the increase is fairly linear.
Actually, it’s not, especially when you include non-condensing gases other than CO2.
The forcing for both methane and NO2 increases like the square root of their concentration:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/aggi.html
This, combined with CO2’s increase, gives a forcing that is increaing lineary with time:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/aggi.html
Not that this does not include black carbon, one of the top three climate forcings.
In reply to my “…note that in the TCR definition CO2 is increasing exponentially, whereas in the real world the increase is fairly linear” David Appell Jan 28 8:22pm said “Actually, it’s not, especially when you include non-condensing gases other than CO2”.
The IPCC definition says “CO2 increases at 1% yr–1”. That’s exponential.
Maybe you misunderstood my comment – “the increase is fairly linear” referred to CO2 (pretty clearly, I think), as did the IPCC definition of TCR. Neither my comment nor the IPCC definition referred to any other gases.
Right. So your own example shows that CO2e is increaing exponentially (1%/yr), not linearly. Q.E.D.
Jonas, You are wrong and Nic Lewis is wrong.
Don’t make assumptions on what the CO2 is doing. Just measure it.
Then take the log, plot it out against the temperature anomaly and you can read the TCR right there. It will come out to about 2C.
Ask some smart skeptics such as DocMartyn or Clive Best if you have trouble doing this.
David Appell Jan 28 10:12pm says “Right. So your own example shows that CO2e is increaing exponentially (1%/yr), not linearly. Q.E.D.”. Balderdash. That’s not from me, it’s from the IPCC definition of TCR.
WHUT Jan 29 2:51am says “Don’t make assumptions on what the CO2 is doing. Just measure it.”. Take a look at the measurements eg. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ – they show just what I said Jan 28 7:10pm, namely that the CO2 increase is “fairly linear, and at a rate which is already well below 1%pa and is very much lower than 1% of doubled CO2”.
Jonass,
The TCR is above 2C if you would care to look at the data:
http://imageshack.com/a/img203/4765/ra5.gif
It is really not that difficult to measure CO2 climate sensitivity
Nic Lewis bafflegabbed the UK Parliament.
@webbie
For perhaps the first and last time, I agree with you 100%. Don’t get used to the idea, tho’
Sensitivity is not a hard problem. As you say …plot the temperatures against the CO2 concentrations and bingo! – there’s your answer. A decent O level physics or maths student should be able to do it as one question on a 5 question paper.
Rather begs the question of why we’ve spent about $100 billion and employed hordes of climos on a fruitless attempt to come up with a purely theoretical answer via models when pencil and paper will do it better for a few cents and 30 minutes invested.
Maybe McDonalds weren’t hiring and this was a way to downplay the unemployment stats?
WHUT – TCR cannot be measured. It is defined in the context of CO2 rising by 1%pa. CO2 does not rise at 1%pa, therefore there cannot be any measurement of TCR. The diagram you linked is a calculation of TCR based on model assumptions. Those assumptions do not include any natural factor, for example the fact that a warmer ocean emits more (or absorbs less) CO2. TCR has therefore been calculated incorrectly (if you doubt that, consider this: if CO2 were not a greenhouse gas at all, you would still get a positive value for TCR from that method).
@mike jonas
All you have shown is that the definition you have chosen to use is not a practically useful one to anybody.
Webbie’s method is perfectly good at coming up with useful numbers for everybody other than the most ivory-towered theoretician.
David Appell
You ask if the list of studies I cited is “a complete list”.
No.
It’s just a list of the more recent studies (since 2011), which are (at least partially) observation-based.
Max
Judith: In 1975, what would Lindzen have said he expected for surface temperature change by 2013?
What would you have predicted?
Would either of you have predicted a rather large change, 0.6 C (the observed amount)?
If so, on what basis?
Why would you have expected such warming up to about 2000, but nothing since then?
Wally Broecker in 1975 combined natural variability with CO2 – a remarkably accurate estimate of CO2 in the atmosphere at 2010 – to give some 0.8 degrees C increase in temperature.
But then he got the natural variability wrong after 1976 – natural variability added to temperature after 1976 and are acting in the opposite direction since.
Another remarkably silly question from Appell – you have to wonder why these people do not focus on the main game.
Generalissimo Skippy: You didn’t answer the questions.
What denier, in 1975, would have predicted 0.6 C of warming by now, and the hiatus?
Most of us would have made no prediction at all, seeing as how we believe unpredictable natural variation dominates. To a skeptic, climate is a roulette wheel. Indeed let’s take that analogy further.
A guru predicted a run of red and you are the gambler who bet heavily on that result. And it payed off for a while since there was a short run of red. But the wheel has been producing a lot of black recently and you are now hurting. The guru is off muttering incoherent excuses in the corner while the skeptics are all saying, “See – told you not to listen to that crazy old man”. Your response is effectively, “Hey – at least he made a prediction – what did YOU predict”. Clearly you have learned nothing.
Ian: So you think climate changes for no reason at all, on a global basis, for almost 40 years now?
Where does that energy come from?
Appell, ” Has Obama done something outside his constitutionally permitted powers?
If so, what?
Has anyone ever noticed Appell’s MO. He is a failed physicist who is left to asking questions with rather obvious answers. He is not, and has never been sincere. I suggest no one reply to his inanities. All should remember this is a Mann apologist, with his rotund mouth permanently attached to Mann’s Gluteus maximis just like a lamprey eel.
“Bob” clearly can’t counter my arguments.
DA
Can you provide a reference to show that these questions are in any way relevant?
Can you provide a reference to show that these questions are in any way relevant?
No — they are obviously relevant.
What denier would, in 1975, have predicted 0.6 C of warming by 2013, and why?
And why would they have predicted a hiatus for the last 10 years?
I didn’t ask for your opinion, I asked for a reference.
Appell – I was reading the first IPCC report around 1990 doing a masters in environmental science. I doubt really that many realists had given it much thought before that – certainly I hadn’t. I accepted the principles – with quite significant reservations about regional rainfall in my own little neck of the woods. This revolved around rainfall regimes that I had been studying – following Australian geomorphologists – since 1988. The question in my mind was whether the 1976/77 “Great Pacific Climate Shift” would turn around once more or was this a new regime of more frequent and more intense El Nino. The answer is that it has indeed turned around since the 1998/2001 climate shift – and there is no possible mechanism for global warming driving both cold and warm decadal regimes in the Pacific. Over the past 15 years it has become apparent also that the mechanics driving these abrupt changes involve dynamical complexity.
Regardless – these regimes add to and subtract from global surface temps – and the data suggests ocean temps as well through cloud radiative forcing. Something that Wally understandably missed in 1975.
What is increasingly unclear is the point of any your comments on ‘realists’.
Wow you got a master’s? Good boy! Impressive, very very impressive….
I bet your mom was proud.
David Appell | January 28, 2014 at 9:40 pm |
““Bob” clearly can’t counter my arguments.”
Appell clearly doesn’t have any arguments.
Appell – I thought it was more the more the geomorphology that would impress – but I realize now that I was confusing you with someone who had a background in the natural sciences.
Other than that – your pointless snark merely suggests that you have no substantive response.
David when we start at 1980 GISS shows temperature anomaly change at 23.6S-90S to increase from +.4C to +.4C for a net +.07 warming. At 23.6N-23.6S it changes from +.22C to +.52C for a +.30C net warming. At 90N-23.6N it goes from +.02C to +.82C for a net warming of .8C. This averages out to +.30C increase from 1980 to 2013. You say the anomaly change was +.6C from 1975 to 2013 so what do you think caused that .3C spike from 1975 to 1980?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.B.gif
David:
>>> What denier, in 1975, would have predicted 0.6 C of warming by now, and the hiatus?
…and the point being ?…
The hiatus is 17 years. But, as Linzen pointed out when asked about it, there is no line to be crossed — only that as more time that goes in becomes increasingly inappropriate to impute a high human contribution.
But, we really have more than 20 years (e.g., 21 and 38 years) –i.e.,
Lindzen: The IPCC speaks of attribution for the last 50 years. Before then, we are dealing with natural climate variability. Warming from 1919-1940 almost indistinguishable from the warming 1970-1998.
,The hiatus is 17 years.
Says who? The linear OLS surface warming I find for 17.0 years is
GISS: 0.13 C
HadCRUT4: 0.09 C
NCDC: 0.08 C
each with a OLS 95% CL of 0.06 C.
The hiatus is:
If you use HadCRUT4 and work the current trend of slight cooling backward, it switches to slight warming before late 2000.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2000.9/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2000.9
So, theoretically, the period of “slight cooling” (hiatus?) has lasted 13 years to date (or all of the 21stC, so far).
Max
PS If we continue another few years at the 2012/2013 level, this will add to the length of the hiatus not only in the future years, but could also add in the earlier years.
So, theoretically, the period of “slight cooling” (hiatus?) has lasted 13 years to date (or all of the 21stC, so far)
It’s easy to find similar periods in the past. So what’s your point?
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2014/01/trenberth-on-two-pauses.html
… and, 1940 to 1970
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1940/to:1970/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1940/to:1970/trend
David Appell
“So what’s your point?”
Just that the current HadCRUT4 “hiatus” is 13 years and growing.
Please provide HadCRUT4 data for earlier “hiatus” periods since 1976 (when the mid-century cooling cycle ended) that have lasted this long.
Thanks.
Max
The significant issue is the climate shift in 1998/2001.
e.g. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130822105042.htm
Appell is down in the weeds. Look at the overall. Something has changed. Eyeball it. You dont need a statistician to verify that something changed back then.
Max wrote: Please provide HadCRUT4 data for earlier “hiatus” periods since 1976 (when the mid-century cooling cycle ended) that have lasted this long.
Sure — that data is here:
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2014/01/trenberth-on-two-pauses.html
c kid wrote:
Appell is down in the weeds. Look at the overall.
Can you calculate, or not?
I can. The linear changes are as I quoted.
Do you have different numbers? Or do you just not like mine?
“The significant issue is the climate shift in 1998/2001.”
____
Not really. Natural variability is to be expected and is the norm. How is this now “the” significant issue? Only for those who would like to focus on short- term variability against the backdrop of the long-term more significant forcings.
Michael Mann’s edge is that there was no climate before America — no MWP and no LIA — just runaway global warming because Americans drove SUVs. But now the message has gotten more complex–e.g., climate changes, all global warming can be explained by natural causes, and many scientists foresee years and perhaps decades of global cooling ahead. Pushing fear of America being responsible for heating the globe is making school teachers look like they’re taking us for fools to achieve ideologically-motivated objectives or they are just superstitious idiots.
Michael Mann’s edge is that there was no climate before America — no MWP and no LIA
What proof do you have that the MWP was global?
Science 1 November 2013:
Vol. 342 no. 6158 pp. 617-621
Pacific Ocean Heat Content During the Past 10,000 Years
Yair Rosenthal, Braddock K. Linsley, Delia W. Oppo3
Abstract
Observed increases in ocean heat content (OHC) and temperature are robust indicators of global warming during the past several decades. We used high-resolution proxy records from sediment cores to extend these observations in the Pacific 10,000 years beyond the instrumental record. We show that water masses linked to North Pacific and Antarctic intermediate waters were warmer by 2.1 ± 0.4°C and 1.5 ± 0.4°C, respectively, during the middle Holocene Thermal Maximum than over the past century. Both water masses were ~0.9°C warmer during the Medieval Warm period than during the Little Ice Age and ~0.65° warmer than in recent decades. Although documented changes in global surface temperatures during the Holocene and Common era are relatively small, the concomitant changes in OHC are large.
Er, you misspelled ‘burning’.
==================
David
Stand 3 inches from Monet’s Bain a la Grenouillere and see what you see. Now move back 10 feet and look at the overall. Get the picture now? Look at the big picture and dont get hung up in the minutiae. Things have changed and it doesnt take a lot of calculations to know that.
You don’t have any calculations, so you can’t see any of it.
Until then, your comments are scientifically meaningless.
David Appell | January 28, 2014 at 7:52 pm |
“The linear changes are as I quoted.”
You do understand that
“Linear Trend” = “Tangent to the curve” = “Flat Earth”
don’t you. A Linear trend is only valid for the range it is expressed over. It cannot be used to determine values outside of that range. As the above summarises.
David Appell | January 28, 2014 at 11:18 pm |
“What proof do you have that the MWP was global?”
It’s the same as the proof that C02 emission caused global warming from 1980 – 2000.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111
Does it look reasonably global?
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2013/04/21/blogs/dotkaufman.html
The 1998/2001 climate shift is a critical moment. It is in the data associated with an increase in cover. These decadal regimes last for 20 to 40 years – so the mainstream science suggestion is the likelihood of no warming or even cooling over another decade or three.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ProjectEarthshine-albedo_zps87fc3b7f.png.html?sort=3&o=53
‘Earthshine changes in albedo shown in blue, ISCCP-FD shown in black and CERES in red. A climatologically significant change before CERES followed by a long period of insignificant change.’
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandlaken2013_zps3c92a9fc.png.html?sort=3&o=76
This is the hiatus since 2002 – and it is happening despite the prevarication and obfuscation.
David:
>>> your comments are scientifically meaningless.
Why am I starting to get the impression that your coffee disagreed with you today ?. Calm down a bit, it’s s debate, not a willy waving contest.
Sense of humour can be a good indicator of intelligence and there seems to be a lot of it here. Lose it at your peril :-)…
It’s just a superstition –i.e., global warming alarmists must never admit a fact that is inconsistent with their beliefs or they stop being frogs.
Judith Curry
Thanks for a very good “interim report”
Am hoping there will be a final report with a transcript of all the questions and comments for the record, but your summary is very helpful.
Looks like it was a useful exercise and it is very interesting that the British Parliament has used a balanced mix of participants for the panels.
Max
PS – BTW In your lead-in you have duplicated Lindzen’s comment on natural variability.
So Lindzen is absolutely certain about what the future holds for economics but physics is uncertain in the future. Strange.
Not strange, because we’ve already seen what subsidies to renewables are doing / have done to the economies of Spain, Germany, and UK–and we can easily extrapolate what a continuation of those subsidies will do.
Lindzen: It is a very opaque way of saying internal natural variability is the reason, to say the heat is hiding in the ocean…
I loved that, Simple but true statement :-)
Yes – thank you for mentioning it. The best line for me.
“Climate sensitivity is difficult to resolve. ECS is much less significant to the argument than TCR.”
First it was the hockey stick, proof that present warming was “unprecedented”.
But then came Steve McIntyre, and paleo-climate became unimportant to the CAGW movement.
Then it was the surface temperature records, reported far and wide as “global average temperature”.
But then came the hiatus, and the “GAT” became unimportant.
Then it was the models that showed we were going to burn the planet to a crisp.
But then came the “hiatus”, and did to the reputation of GCMs what it did to GAT.
Then it was Arctic ice, the clearest evidence of thermageddon.
But then the ice began to rebound, and Arctic ice became unimportant.
The last redoubt of CAGW alaremism was always climate sensitivity, the gold standard of thermageddon science. It was the metric that showed beyond a doubt that AGW was C.
But then the “hiatus” went on, and on, and on, and climate sensitivity became “much less significant to the argument than TCR”.
I can’t wait to see what happens if we ever actually measure ocean heat content.
+ 10,000
Shoot, we don’t need no stinkin’ legislative hearings in the U.S. any more. Our dear leader has decided he will rule by the pen and the telephone. No need for that cumbersome democracy stuff, or those irritating voters.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/podesta-obamas-warmed-executive-action-will-use-it-climate-change-and
“‘If he believes, and the Justice department believes, he has the authority to make progress, to strengthen the middle class, give people opportunity in this country, he will take it, Podesta said.”‘
So Obama and Eric Holder will now determine on their own the limits of presidential power.
Whew! That’s a relief.
Our dear leader has decided he will rule by the pen and the telephone.
Has Obama done something outside his constitutionally permitted powers?
If so, what?
Astonishingly I find myself in agreement with David Appell. I know! I almost can’t believe it myself!
If you prefer the way a parliamentary democracy works then maybe you should look at trading in your powerful elected king (aka president) for a much more accountable prime minister.
President Stompy Foot.
H/t AC.
====
David Appell,
Are you calling the president a liar?
But my own examples:
Vetoing portions of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) after it was passed by the congress and signed by him.
Changing the waiver requirements for welfare entitlements enacted by congress, and signed into law by a Clinton.
Granting political amnesty to millions of illegal aliens under the pretense of “prosecutorial discretion”.
Making ‘recess” appointments while the Senate was in session.
Refusing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in the courts.
That’s a start. Can’t wait to see what he does next.
The best thing about American progressives, once they get power, they forget the lies they told to get it, and start ruling based on their actual ideology.
The President’s job is to enact and enforce laws. That’s what he’s doing.
“The president’s job is to enact laws….”
Spoken like a true legally and historically illiterate progressive.
I know you guys don’t think much of the Constitution, but you might want to read it at least once. Start with Article I.
Wow, just beyond belief.
GaryM, Senate Republicans have come up with a new health care plan, an alternative version of Obama Care, which is a better deal for insurers.
Yes, the President’s job is to enact and enforce laws.
This is Civics 101.
Max_OK,
They have come up with their own, less intrusive version. But I have already made the point on some conservative blogs that Republican central planners are no better than Democrat central planners.
Don’t wait for me to defend their “me tooism”.
GaryM, Senate Republicans have come up with a new health care plan, an alternative version of Obama Care, which is a better deal for insurers.
Because protecting corporations is far more important than protecting individual Americans.
DA got an A in Foolishness 101.
===========
The President enacts laws by majority vote. Dontcha love democracy?
=====================
DA got an A in Foolishness 101.
The level of scientific discourse on this site is abysmal.
Your political discourse is top drawer.
==========
Obamacare was designed to essentially destroy the health insurance industry, to make way for socialized (aka single payer) healthcare.
But don’t expect me to defend the GOP establishment’s efforts to bail them out. Crony capitalism is a progressive mantra, in both parties. You call it “state run capitalism”. We call it the big money donors of the GOP ‘leadership”. They’re the same thing, for the same purpose, in both parties.
Obamacare was designed to essentially destroy the health insurance industry, to make way for socialized (aka single payer) healthcare.
Proof?
Just for Dave Appell:
United States Constitution:
Article I, Section 1:
All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.
There, now you have actually read a small portion of the Constitution, once. Don’t worry though. I don’t expect you to understand complex legal terms like “all” and “legislative”.
Yes — as I said, it’s the Preident’s job to enact and enforce the laws passed by Congress. Which is what Obama is doing.
The Congress can pass other laws any time they want to. So far they have not.
Like it or not, Crony Capitalism exists. GaryM advocates a kind of capitalism that doesn’t exist. We could call it Fantasy Capitalism or Fantastic Capitalism.
David, the President made recess appointments that odds are will not be found constitutional. The Supreme Court was very skeptical during oral arguments.
Re: recess appointments — big deal. So have past presidents. So go ahead and sue him. Hurry.
Recess appointments during the George W. Bush administration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Recess_appointments_during_the_George_W._Bush_administration
Don’t need to, someone else already has. And the impact to his agenda, unions, etc. will be big when the Supreme Court strikes down his appointments. You see, the President doesn’t decide when the Senate is in recess. The Senate does.
Have Presidents made recess appointments, yes, stipulated.
Was the Senate in recess when the current President acted? No.
So,yes, he has done something unconstitutional.
By all means, keep focused on the picayune. That way you can evade responsibility for anything.
So violating the constitution is picayune? Honestly, that’s a frightening attitude.
“GaryM advocates a kind of capitalism that doesn’t exist.”
Of course I do. I don’t know anyone alive who advocates for the system we have now.
Of course, many of you are advocating a kind of economic system that did exist – in Germany, Italy and Japan in the 1930s and 40s. But that’s your problem.
“Yes — as I said, it’s the Preident’s job to enact and enforce the laws passed by Congress.”
So you have no idea what the word ‘enact’ means. Got it.
False. The President enacts the laws. Others whine about it. It’s been going on since this country’s foundation.
The word you are looking for is “executes”. The president executes the laws the congress enacts. Like I said, legal and historical illiteracy.
Want some links to some online dictionaries?
David’s hole is so deep I believe he’s found China.
==========
The word you are looking for is “executes”.
How long have you been a pedant?
By the way, the period goes inside the quote, mark not outside it.
Nope, not there yet; his shovel just struck a huge nugget of irony.
============
Yeah, you’re right on the period. But still illiterate on law and history.
Yeah, you’re right on the period. But still illiterate on law and history.
Hardly. It’s the job of the Executive branch to implement laws. Which is what it’s doing. Whether you like it or not.
When the only implement you have is a shovel, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
============
Re post by GaryM on January 28, 2014 at 10:48 pm
“GaryM advocates a kind of capitalism that doesn’t exist.”
Of course I do. I don’t know anyone alive who advocates for the system we have now.
______
Well, now you know one, me. I have done well practicing capitalism in the system we have now. I’m sorry if you haven’t.
I think I also would do well in your fantasy version of capitalism if such a system exited, but would you? If aren’t succeeding now, why would do any better under Fantastic Capitalism? What I’m suggesting is your problem may be you rather than the economic system.
Max_OK,
I don’t know what delusions you have about me. And I don’t much care. But see, I am not a progressive like you. It is not irrelevant to me what happens to the millions of people doing without because vain progressives like you have no idea how much damage your vanity politics are doing to normal people.
You remind me of a progressive professor I had in college. He explained to me how much better it would be for me to vote for a Democrat. I told him he was right, and I was still favoring the conservative candidate at the time. He was baffled. Like you. He couldn’t understand someone who didn’t just talk about crafting a system for the benefit of all as a political ploy, while really only caring about self interest.
Later, at 24 I had my own small roofing company in California. Reagan and Volker were wringing Carter’s stagflation out of the economy. Building stopped, and so did my small business. I never had a word of complaint, and voted for Reagan again in 1984.
Progressive like you will never understand the thought process.
David Appell,
Maybe you can enact one for me.
Little snarling davey further endears himself to the audience afforded him on the blog of a hated heretic. You don’t really have to put up with us, davey. You could start your own blog. Or maybe you have one already that is so low that it’s off the radar. Did I get my punkuation OK, davey?
GaryM, because you complain so much about are economic system, I just figured you weren’t financially successful. But now you tell me you complain because the system isn’t fair to the poor, and your dream is for the poor and everyone else to stop voting for Democrats and mainstream Republicans, and vote instead for candidates who embrace a fantasy economic system.
Well, GaryM, do you see anything that makes you think your dream will become realty?
maxie, maxie
Gary’s dream will come true the same night the dream of substantive CO2 mitigation becomes reality.
Max_OK,
The type of capitalism I support made the U.S. the freest, richest, most just, most generous, most powerful country in the history of the planet. It was never perfect, and it is being dismantled by people, like you, who don’t have a clue what they are doing.
Free markets, tempered by the Judeo-Christian ethic, produced wealth that helped even those in third world countries rise. China’s vaunted growth (from wide spread destitution to wide spread abject poverty) is only as a result of access to capitalist markets, and the implementation of some free market principles.
My ‘dream’ is to stop wannabe progressive central planners from undoing what was built over hundreds of years. And yes, I do see hope for that in the future. The coming collapse of Obamacare; the impact reality is having on post-modern climate science; the coming economic implosion in the BRIC and PIIGS countries; the awakening of the European people to the real anti-democratic intent of the Eurocrats, all have the potential to open the eyes of millions of people who were conned by the lies of progressives.
Socialism doesn’t work. Fascism/state run capitalism can only work for a time before it becomes despotism. The only question is how much damage you all will do before reality steps in.
Freest? The US isn’t even in the top 10:
http://www.heritage.org/index/
But by all means, feel free (ha ha) to think you’re superior because your country dominates others.
The coming collapse of Obamacare,
Delusional.
I’ve love to see a chart of your backwards crab walk since October, when I’m sure you thought Obamacare was history, to now, when it’s clear it’s not going away, nor should it, and that in fact it’s helping millions of people who before now didn’t have access to the health care system.
People like you love America, except for actual Americans. Like I said, delusional.
Gary is lamenting the fact that we have slid down the ladder of economic freedom, davey. You need to slow down and think before you blurt. You are really a spectacle, dude.
Re post by GaryM January 29, 2014 at 12:59 am
GaryM’s dream of the way capitalism should be:
“Free markets, tempered by the Judeo-Christian ethic …”
I’m sorry GaryM, but I fear you are a sap.
Max: +1 again.
Wow Maxy and Appell – it just goes to show the dearth of comprehension of capitalist systems – and of their founding contribution to prosperity or how critical free markets are to the preservation of individual freedoms.
Frankly I doubt that Maxy is anything more than an indulged second or third generation little rich kid – little culture and much crassness. If it is all not just the elaborate fantasy world of a 15 year old.
Free markets – as we keep saying – requires the rule of law to function properly. It was John Locke – a founder of the Scottish Enlightenment and thus the American way of life – who said that without law there can be no freedom. Law is founded on Judeo/Christian precepts for the very good reason that this is the basis of western civilization.
The evolution of these laws is a social contract forged in the vagaries of democracy. This is the way it works – Maxy’s fantasies about laissez faire capitalism – something that was always an object lesson rather than a practical proposal – notwithstanding.
Maxy’s usual response would be to call John Locke a fuddy duddy. Oh the sophistication of this discourse.
I didn’t know John Locke was a Free-Market Fruitcake. I though he was an armchair capitalist who spent most of his time with his head in the clouds. Thinkers are OK, but
I prefer doers like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Those two would have laughed their butts off at GaryM’s fantastic notion of capitalism.
As I say – sophisticated discourse is at something of a premium with Maxy.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/
http://mongolianmind.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/two_treatises_of_government-by-Locke-116-pp.pdf
http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=99156
David Appell | January 28, 2014 at 11:04 pm |
“By the way, the period goes inside the quote, mark not outside it.”
FYI the comma goes after the pause, not before it. LOL
David, for future reference:
enact: make (a bill or other proposal) law. [This is reserved for Congress]
implement: put (a decision, plan, agreement, etc.) into effect. [This is what the executive does… he/she “executes” the enacted laws.]
It’s not pedantic to know the difference as enact and implement are apples and oranges as opposed to Macintoshes and Granny Smiths.
Re Generalissimo Skippy’s post on January 29, 2014 at 3:02 am
Skippy, I’m afraid your hero John Locke was a hypocrite. He was against slavery but invested in the slave trade. Locke was a defender of property rights, but evidently thought it was OK to steal the land of Native Americans because they weren’t using their land the way he would use it.
“Critics point out that John Locke invested in the English slave-trade through the Royal Africa Company. Also, Locke helped draft the Fundamental Constitution of the Carolinas, which created a feudal aristocracy and left slaves under the complete control of their masters. Beyond that, some people believe that Locke’s statements regarding unenclosed property helped justify the Native American displacement. These critics often accuse him of hypocrisy, since his major writings oppose slavery and aristocracy.”
http://onlinephilosophyclub.com/jo
BTW< George Washington was different than Locke on slavery. George was against slavery but bought slaves so people even meaner than Martha wouldn't get them. Too bad he didn't also buy land from Native Americans to prevent Europeans from stealing it.
@ David
“Has Obama done something outside his constitutionally permitted powers?
If so, what?”
Well, yes. Here is one person’s list, certainly not exhaustive, but representative:
http://www.redflagnews.com/opinion/obamas-impeachable-offenses-updated-by-michael-connelly-jd-carrollton-tx
Unless your list of his constitutional powers includes ‘Ignore or change by decree any act of congress that does not agree with ‘How I want to do things’, listing his unconstitutional acts would essentially be an open ended task. It’s not like he just does one or two, then gives it a rest for a few months. Yesterday it was announced that he had raised the minimum wage for all federal contractors to at least $10/hour, although it is unclear to me exactly which clause in the Constitution gives him that authority.
John Locke 0n slavery –
‘ Slavery is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man, and so directly opposite to the generous Temper and Courage of our Nation; that ’tis hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less a Gentleman, should plead for’t.’
etc. etc.
There was a one line comment on Locke’s statement that freedom can’t exist without laws. This was the critical point.
On slavery of course – anti slavery was championed by religious types and Whigs in the UK and US – which morphed into Republicans in the US under Lincoln.
But the discussion was on markets and not on the inconsistencies of John Locke – if in fact they have not been overstated for whatever reasons. His influence on the Declaration of Independence is far more significant for the US and the world.
Lindzen: There’s virtually no policy that beats doing nothing for 50 years.
The only good climate policy is a dead climate policy.
That’s easy for him to say. He won’t be around in 50 years.
Your offspring will build statues in your memory…
+1
JC SNIP
He’s standing on the corner of La Futura and Isanow!
Judith,
I am a little older than Obama. But I don’t know what that means in concrete terms. At the peak of my faculties – and even my foot is healing very nicely?
Regardless ageism – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageism – is offensive in the same way that sexism or racism is.
It is enough to get serial offenders banned on many sites. Please deal with this.
I am going through now and deleting comments; one person so far has landed in moderation
Thank you Generalissimo Skippy and Judith.
Max_Callow, Cub Reporter: “That’s easy for him to say. He won’t be around in 50 years”
No, likely not. And yet your foolishly ignorant insistence that us old folks don’t give a rat’s tail about future generations is as offensive as it is false.
“curryja | January 29, 2014 at 8:56 am |
I am going through now and deleting comments; one person so far has landed in moderation”
You left the arguably offensive comment that was called to your attention in place. Are we to assume that kind of crap is approved language?
Send me an email if you spot an offensive comment, with the comment link and the text of the comments. ~ 500 comments per day and I don’t spot everything
Well, it was the comment that clearly lead to the comments you deleted. And it’s still right above us as we speak. Anyway, whatever. I won’t be sending any emails complaining about any comments. I grew up in a federal housing project in Detroit with the brothers, so I can take it as well as put it out. You do with it as you see fit.
I moderate from a dashboard that brings the comments in time order, so I don’t spend time on the actual threads
Little Donnie lost his big boy pants
I always wear my big boy pants, howie. It’s necessary with my stature, 6’4″, 228.
I was not complaining about what little dumb maxie posted, just trying to get clarification. I wanted to know if it’s OK with Judith to denigrate old folks, or if maxie was getting some sort of special dispensation because he is a fool.
Where I come from and where I been-service with Army Rangers and other organizations tasked with chasing down and dealing with killers-we did our best, at risk to our own lives, to do our business man-to-man and keep women, children and old folks out of the fray. Maybe I am just old fashioned, howie.
pokerguy (aka al neipris) said on January 29, 2014 at 11:40 am |
Max_Callow, Cub Reporter: “That’s easy for him to say. He won’t be around in 50 years”
No, likely not. And yet your foolishly ignorant insistence that us old folks don’t give a rat’s tail about future generations is as offensive as it is false.
_______
If it’s false why is Social Security know as a third-rail, something politicians get ZAPPED if they touch ?
If the elderly are concerned about future generations, why aren’t the majority of recipients and soon-to-be recipients of Social Security willing to have their benefits reduced to lighten the burden on young workers who are paying into the system?
Detroit Don’s way of conceding my point. Thank’s Don.
It is time to bury the Left’s O-L-D way of thinking that humanity is a mistake…
Your parents must have been unkind to you, maxie. That would at least partially explain one of your more loathsome personality disorders.
Don, I apologize if I have offended you. I thought you enjoyed the banter. Your remarks amuse me, and I thought mine amused you, but apparently I was wrong.
I believe my parents did the best they could with what they had. I have no complaints about their parenting.
Isn’t it absolutely stunning what Nic Lewis has already achieved ?
Not only did he force the IPCC into that embarrassing corner of avoiding a central estimate of the most important climate parameter at all,
now he even motivated British MPs to look into Bayesian Mathematics !
Wonderul achievement. Imagine Barbara Boxter or Al Gore doing this. Absolutely impossible. So big thanks and merits also to these British MPs who still have some democratic spirit hardwired in their brains.
That means nothing less, than these MPs no longer believe what their experts say and want to check by themselves. Huge success for citizen science and democracy.
yes.
he followed moshers rulz
1. DROP the stupid skeptical arguments. They waste your radical potential
This means dropping sun nut arguments, c02 is a trace gas arguments,
Dragon slayer arguments, about 80% of the arguments at WUWT.
2. FOCUS on the KEY: How much warming? where the real debate is
3. Work from within the existing social structure of science. That means doing peer reviewed science. You can still criticize the structure, but you’ll
do better being inside the tent. This undermines and destabilizes the us/them dynamic.
“LaFramboise: If there is bias among the jurors, we need to throw out the jury and start again.”
______
Preferably with a jury of libertarians like LaFramboise who fear climate science conflicts with their ideology.
I hope there will be a transcript.
LaFramboise’s effort is bound to be the usual polemical hilarity.
These are basics in democracy. Telling, that Greens can’t even agree on that.
framboise does not seem to consider the possibility that the LaFramboise is comically naive. Her idea of a good scientist is one who believes he can find buried gold using a pointed stick. She was critical of the IPCC for excluding Mohner.
I apologize for my inconsistent spelling of LaFramboise. It would be a lot easier for everyone if she changed her name to “framboise.”
Whatever happened to “the science is settled”?
Who, specifically, says “the science is settled?”
You can easily google ‘science is settled’ or ‘science is clear’ from about every leading politician and/or their so called “scientific” adviser.
Al Gore, Obama, Merkel, Cameroon, ..
‘Climate change is a fact’, and by God, he’s right.
====================
“Who, specifically, says ‘the science is settled?’”
Obama did, tonight, in his SOTU campaign speech.
What did Obama mean by “science?” (i didn’t watch the speech.)
So you’re saying no scientists are saying “the science is settled?” Huh?
The SOTU transcript is here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/02/12/remarks-president-state-union-address
It does not contain the word “settled.”
Apple says “What did Obama mean by “science?” (i didn’t watch the speech.)”
Too bad, because of course he devoted ten minutes of his address to explaining what he means when he says “science.”
Can you be any more foolishly disingenuous?
I doubt Obama devoted 10 minutes to the definition of “science.” I don’t think you’re telling the truth.
“Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science — and act before it’s too late. (Applause.)”
If I was trying to inspire lemmings.
He didn’t say, The science is settled.
However, was tonight’s climate message strong or just a required nod to some in his party?
He mentioned jobs, jobs, jobs, but that was just standard fare. He has a point I think. If we can sell windmills to other countries. But if they don’t make economic success, that would just seem to a short term thing subject to a collapse of demand.
Appel lying
“It does not contain the word “settled.””
SOTU:
“The shift — (applause) — the shift to a cleaner energy economy won’t happen overnight, and it will require some tough choices along the way.
But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact. (Applause.) And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did. (Cheers, applause.)”
See the word settled.
Lesson.
never trust Appell.
If the science isn’t supposedly settled, then what are we denying?
“Climate change is a fact.”
IN the words of the equally feckless Dan Quayle: “”What a terrible thing to have lost one’s mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is.”
Observations suggest a sensitivity of 2.3 C per doubling since 1958, which is 50% above Nic Lewis’s estimate and rather within the IPCC TCR range, so when he brings up observations, he is on shaky ground.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1958/mean:12/plot/gistemp/from:1958/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/from:1950/scale:0.01/offset:-3.3
False. No one knows the aerosol forcing over that time period, so a calculation of climate sensitivity is impossible.
David, well a lot seem to think it is negative, so this would be a lower estimate of the sensitivity. On the other hand that may be offset by other GHGs bringing it back down. Lewis suggests it is not much at all, which means aerosols don’t help him either. Anyway 2.3 explains the observations more than 1.5. That was the point.
False again. No one knows the aerosol focing over the last several decades, so estimating climate sensitivity from surface temperature data is impossible.
David Appell, are you suggesting no one knows the sign of the aerosol forcing change since 1958? Some suggest the air is cleaner now than in the 60’s or 70’s, but the late 50’s was just the beginning of the global dimming phase, and it is not likely we are cleaner now than then given the jump in fossil fuel usage by a factor of four and its global spread.
Don, yes I have seen before that Appell is a loose cannon, but in this case he has a point. The linear increase of temperature with CO2 at 1 C per 100 ppm as graphed could be a coincidental correlation, and 55 years of temperature and CO2 together can’t be used for future guidance. I disagree with this view.
Jim D: This isn’t complicated. You have to know more than the sign of aerosol forcing to calculate climate sensivity — you have to know its time series.
Jeez. Come on, this is obvious….
David Appell, you don’t have to know the whole time series, just the difference between the endpoints. This is a transient sensitivity we are talking about. Take the end-point temperature and CO2, you get 2.3 C per doubling. Aerosols and other GHGs have effects too that may modify this as do the sun and natural internal variations.
False — the functional form of the aerosol forcing is obviously important, no less than is the full time series of CO2, CH4, ozone, or any other forcing. It matter not only how much aerosols were emitted, but when.
Take the end-point temperature and CO2, you get 2.3 C per doubling.
False — you are assuming a certain functional form for CO2(time). In this case, exponential, I believe — I’ve done this calculation myself. It simplifies significantly if you assume an exponential relationship for CO2(t), and in that case you’re right, climate sensitivity depends only on the endpoints.
Another point though is that you’re only calculating the transient climate response, not the equilibrium climate sensitivity. There are slow feedbacks your method doesn’t capture.
David Appell, aerosols have a very quick effect on climate, witness volcanoes. Unlike CO2 it is their emission rate that is their forcing, not their time-integrated emission because they are short-lived in the atmosphere. We could reduce aerosol emissions now, and the climate would warm quickly in response to the new low rate. Reducing CO2 emission is less effective, and won’t cool, as the CO2 stays around.
David Appell, no, for CO2 the end points define the transient sensitivity. If CO2 goes up from 315 to 395 ppm in the period I showed and the temperature rises 0.74 C as in that period, that is a sensitivity of 2.3 C per doubling. It doesn’t matter how fast the CO2 rose, and neither end is in equilibrium. This is what transient means.
Jimmy is more right than davey. Nic Lewis actually knows what he is doing. End of story. Boa noite.
This is how it is done: Take the global temperature time series starting from way back in 1880 and attribute all the fluctuations to natural phenomena, whether it is volcanic aerosol forcings or SOI or TSI variations. Then you compensate the temperature by subtracting out these natural fluctuations from the time series. You eventually get a curve that looks like this when plotted against the log of CO2 concentartion:
http://imageshack.com/a/img823/7237/wif.gif
The slope of this curve is the TCR.
Now, I realize there is a difficulty in being able to distinguish between the various flavors of GHGs and of the compensating man-made aerosols, but this is as good as it is going to get with the empirical observations that we have.
BTW, this is a TCR of 2.1 C which is close to the value that JimD mentioned. It also shows that Nic Lewis has criminally low-balled his estimate. Too bad for the UK Parliament.
You don’t have a clue, webby. Here is Nic Lewis with a thorough analysis of the TCR issue:
http://climateaudit.org/2013/12/09/does-the-observational-evidence-in-ar5-support-itsthe-cmip5-models-tcr-ranges/
Educate yourself, webby. Stop the clowning.
You have to admit that Nic Lewis did us a favour with his work on CS – with his taking the lower road whenever there was a judgement call required in calculations, he has given us a hard lower bound of CS that can’t be reasonably argued against.
Let’s call it the ‘clown line’ – anyone arguing for CS below that, eg Lindzen, are just having a laugh.
That is a completely misguided estimate.
Nic Lewis says the TCR is 1.3C.
But he bases it on an estimate defined as “TCR represents the increase in 20-year mean global temperature over a 70 year timeframe during which CO2 concentrations, rising throughout at 1% p.a. compound, double. “
The problem is that we do not have a situation where the CO2 concentration rises at the rate he refers to. So Nic Lewis appears to have fantasized a scenario and made up his own numbers to go along with it.
In reality, the CO2 rises at the rate that people are combusting fossil fuels at. So what we do is measure that CO2 over time and measure the global temperature over time and then calculate the transient climate response directly.
This is not hard to do and one can do it on the back of an envelope if you have a few temperature and CO2 numbers.
I have gone the extra yard and removed the natural fluctuation factors and then regressed from this chart:
http://imageshack.com/a/img823/7237/wif.gif
Nic Lewis knows he did a baaaad thing in his analysis.
A 1% rise is 4ppm rising exponentially – it probably overstates the case. Webby’s superficiality never ceases to amaze.
At any rate – sensitivity is γ – http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/tcd/PREPRINTS/Math_clim-Taipei-M_Ghil_vf.pdf
So how can Nic Lewis calculate a sensitivity for a scenario that doesn’t exist?
The CO2 isn’t growing at a rate of 4PPM per year (the 1% increase per year). It is more like 2 to 3PPM in recent years.
Did Nic Lewis make the bonehead mistake of assuming that it was 4PPM/yr instead of an average of 2.5PPM/yr ?
That would knock his sensitivity from 2.1C down to 2.1 * 2.5 / 4 = 1.3C based on just the ratio.
I bet that is it.
The problem with Nic Lewis own estimate is that it’s based on the Objective Bayesian Analysis. The word objective means here that the the prior is fixed based on a formal rule that fixed before knowing, how it will affect the result. The method could be called blind Bayesian analysis as the scientist has chosen to be blind on all case specific aspects that affect the choice of the prior. There are cases, where this is an essential advantage, most obvious cases are such where:
– It’s known in advance that the resulting prior is not badly wrong.
– The same method is used repeatedly to resolve issues of the same nature.
– The analysis is used to resolve issues where conflict of interest is involved and it’s more important that the result is repeatable and uniquely defined than that it’s as correct as possible.
In science the goal is to find as correct an answers as possible. Climate sensitivity is also a single parameter, not a member of a large set of identically defined parameters that vary from case to case.
The Objective Bayesian analysis is not superior to other ways of choosing the prior. It’s not either uniquely defined even when the choice is restricted to Jaynes’ prior, because Jaynes’ prior is unique only when the set of possible empirical observations is discrete (genuinely discrete not forced to discrete set of values).
Lewis either does not understand these basic issues or knows them but doesn’t care in his testimony.
Pekka,
Is you background and knowledge of the relevant statistical methods as strong as Nic Lewis’s?
Peter,
I know enough to be sure of what I wrote. All that can be read from literature related to the objective Bayesian analysis. including writings by statisticians supportive of the use of such analysis, where it’s applicable.
Oh for God’s sake. He has no idea of standard methods and pontificates endlessly.
‘The temperature change at any time during a climate change integration depends on the competing effects of all of the processes that affect energy input, output, and storage in the ocean. In particular, the global mean temperature change which occurs at the time of CO2 doubling for the specific case of a 1%/yr increase of CO2 is termed the “transient climate response” (TCR) of the system.’ http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/345.htm#fig91
The ECS then includes the temperature after the increase is stopped.
As for blind Bayes.
Recent estimates of climate evolution over the coming century still di er by several degrees. This uncertainty motivates the work presented here. There are two basic approaches to apprehend the complexity of climate change: deterministically nonlinear and stochastically linear, i.e. the Lorenz and the Hasselmann approach. The grand unification of these two approaches relies on the theory of random dynamical systems. We apply this theory to study the random attractors of nonlinear, stochastically perturbed climate models. Doing so allows one to examine the interaction of internal climate variability with the forcing, whether natural or anthropogenic, and to take into account the climate system’s non-equilibrium behavior in determining climate sensitivity. This non-equilibrium behavior is due to a combination of nonlinear and random effects. We give here a unified treatment of such effects from the point of view of the theory of dynamical systems and of their bifurcations. Energy balance models are used to illustrate multiple equilibria, while multi-decadal oscillations in the thermohaline circulation illustrate the transition from steady states to periodic behavior. Random effects are introduced in the setting of random dynamical systems, which permit a unified treatment of both nonlinearity and stochasticity. The combined treatment of nonlinear and random effects is applied to a stochastically perturbed version of the classical Lorenz convection model.
Climate sensitivity is then defined mathematically as the derivative of an appropriate functional or other function of the systems state with respect to the bifurcation parameter. This definition is illustrated by using numerical results for a model of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation.’ http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/tcd/PREPRINTS/Math_clim-Taipei-M_Ghil_vf.pdf
There is not a snowball’s chance that we can integrate all competing influences – including dynamical shifts emerging from couplings of many processes – over half a century let alone many centuries.
Nic Lewis is utter nonsense – that I have not even bothered reading. But the musings of Cheech and Chong here make at least an amusing slapstick comedy.
Peter,
Another point. All scientists who have serious interest in statistical methods surely know about the objective Bayesian analysis, but very few use it. Technical complexities are not the only reason for that. Among statisticians working in other fields of application its value is subject to continuing disagreements. Even the strongest supporters agree that it cannot be judged to be more correct than other approaches. It’s superior only in the sense that it leaves less space for subjective choices, or more stated more accurately it makes it often more likely that several analysts make the same subjective choices.
In the particular case of Nic Lewis’ analysis the objectivity is true in the sense that the result is not dependent on the detailed choice of parameters used to describe climate sensitivity, aerosols, and heat transfer to deep ocean as long as the model used in support of the analysis is exactly the same, and those three factors are the three factors taken into account. Modifying the model in any other way than by an transformation in expressing those same three factors could change the result, and so would a nonlinear change in the way the empirical data is used in the model. Such an objective Bayesian analysis is independent on transformations in the space of parameters, but dependent on transformations in the space of empirical data. (Some very specific transformations in the space of empirical data would not change the results, but most transformations would.)
To explain more concretely the this particular case I show here Fig. 4 of Nic Lewis. This figure tells about the prior produced by his approach. This particular form is the outcome of (all taken from his paper)
1) Selecting MIT 2DCM as the model.
2) Using as data
– surface-air temperatures from four equal-area latitude averages for 5 dedades
– deep-ocean temperatures expressed by a trend of 0-3-km-deep-layer pentadal averages
– upper-air temperatures at 8 standard pressure levels on a 5 degree grid.
3) assuming that the values of the data could a priori have any value according to certain distributions
The outcome presented in Fig. 4 is dependent on all assumptions of the listed type. Switching to a different measure for the deep-ocean warming might change the outcome, even when it’s uniquely related to the selected one. Similarly any other change in the assumptions is likely to change the outcome. Switching to another climate model might change it strongly.
“Objective” means that the prior is fixed by choices of the above type rather than by something directly related to the climate sensitivity, effective diffusivity or aerosols.
Concerning Nic Lewis.
Does he not even look at the empirical data on Temperature vs log(CO2) ?
This is what it looks like:
http://imageshack.com/a/img703/790/8p1k.gif
To be helpful, I plotted Nic Lewiis’ TCR of 1.3C per doubling of CO2 alongside the data.
Anyone with half a brain can see that it is way off the trend of at least 2C for TCR.
What is wrong with these people?
David Appell says (at January 29, 2014 at 1:03 am):
False again. No one knows the aerosol focing over the last several decades, so estimating climate sensitivity from surface temperature data is impossible.
This is a very interesting claim. Maybe this is what Judith means by rethinking the whole concept of climate sensitivity.
Even if we waited around until CO2 hit 560 ppm (doubling from 280 ppm) and actually measured the average global temperature (at that time) and subtracted the average global temperature from when CO2 was 280 ppm (1880 or so I think) – I don’t think there would be an overwhelming consensus that this number (whatever it turns out to be) is an accurate measure of climate sensitivity.
It should be – because this is how it is defined.
But I bet that when that day arrives – people from both sides of the issue will merely point to variables (other than CO2) which have changed between the start date and the end date.
Some might point to the difference in land use, some to aerosols, some to black carbon, some will point to the suns magnetic field, or cosmic rays, or ice cover, . . . the list will go on and on.
If you cannot hold all other variables constant between the start date and end date, and only allow CO2 to change from 280 to 560 ppm, people will say we have not accurately measured climate sensitivity.
So what then is the point of the definition of climate sensitivity. We cannot measure it until we hit 560 ppm – and even then everyone will quibble with the observation when it is made.
Now being a skeptic – I predict that the measure climate sensitivity (when we hit 560 and can measure it) will turn out to be around 1.5C or less. I also predict the actual measurement will not matter one whit.
The forcing from aerosols affects the estimation of TCR, Ocean diffusivity has also some effect on it but more on ECS. Estimating all these from the data rather than externally form some other information is the basic idea of both Nic Lewis’ analysis and of the earlier analyses of Forest et al.
Making the analysis based on the objective Bayesian approach was a reasonable step. The referees of Journal of Climate had also that view when they published the paper. I don’t object on any of that, the only thing I object to is the idea that the objective Bayesian analysis would be a fundamentally better choice than the use of other priors. It’s one of many alternatives and should be valuated as such.
My own view is that Lewis’ prior is for climate sensitivity closer to what I would choose as an subjective prior than the uniform prior of Forest et al, but I cannot tell whether I would agree on his results for aerosol forcing or ocean diffusivity. The priors for these parameters affect the posterior distribution for ECS. The discussion in Lewis’ paper is not sufficient for judging that, and I don’t know of any other analysis either that would resolve the question. Judging the suitability of his prior would require more analysis on those lines. Stating that it’s “objective” is of little value in that.
Pekka,
Don’t make things too complicated. Just look at the T vs CO2 data.
I get the GISS data from WoodForTrees
and I get the CO2 data from ClimateExplorer
This is what it looks like:
http://imageshack.com/a/img203/4765/ra5.gif
To be helpful, I plotted Nic Lewiis’ TCR of 1.3C per doubling of CO2 alongside the data.
You must be able to see that Nic Lewis TCR=1.3C is way off the trend of TCR=2.2C.
This doesn’t do any of the defluctuation of natural variation that I do in the CSALT model. In that case I get TCR=2.1C
http://imageshack.com/a/img823/7237/wif.gif
WHUT,
Otto et al paper does the comparison of ln(CO2) and warming over a longer period. Nic is one of the authors, but certainly not with a status to influence much the other scientists. Their result is between his and yours.
The highly regarded climate scientists who participated in that simple study had surely reasons for doing it exactly as it was done. It looks reasonable to me as well. The only minor issue that I have with that study concerns the way they combined all decades used to form a single average rather than using them with weights that reflect the statistical weight they have in standard approach for combining evidence from several points.
Pekka,
Yet, they also completely screwed up how to do OHC
http://contextearth.com/2014/01/25/what-missing-heat/
So
1. They don’t know how to do OHC diffusivity
2. They don’t know how to handle the “missing heat”
3. They don’t know how to model natural variations
4. Thus they can’t get TCR close to right
Nic Lewis and his team don’t know what they are doing, that much is clear.
WHUT,
The problem is that “knowing how to model natural variability” means forcing a soltuion that the data cannot really support. It leads to a too narrow a range and may well introduce significant bias.
Pekka, have you read the presentation and discussion of Nic Lewis’s TCR analysis on CA? Perhaps it would clear up some issues you have. And thanks again for being a light in the darkness.
An interesting offering on Nic Lewis’ Bayesian analyses, with somewhat more credibility in its explicit prior selection criteria.
http://globalchange.mit.edu/files/document/MITJPSPGC_Reprint_13-9.pdf
Don,
Do you mean the Dec 9, 2013 post? It does not discuss the Bayesian analysis at all, only makes on one paper the statement
without further justification of that claim.
Nothing more on Bayesian analysis in the discussion.
Sorry, Pekka. I thought there was discussion in the extensive comments. Maybe I saw it somewhere else. Will try to look fir it.
Too bad that they do not understand how to model natural variability using simple thermodynamic approaches.
They are left with substandard solutions such as Nic Lewis’ swag
A Bayesian analysis completely fails if any of the analyses contributing as new knowledge is physically incorrect. And it looks as though 2 out of his 3 contributing analyses are worthless.
Not bad, barty. It’s plausible. And they got the low end right.
‘False again. No one knows the aerosol focing over the last several decades, so estimating climate sensitivity from surface temperature data is impossible.”
False.
What do we know about cloud radiative effects?
http://www.benlaken.com/documents/AIP_PL_13.pdf
AMOC?
http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/10/1619/2013/osd-10-1619-2013.html
The seeds of ice recovery contained in climate signals propagating across the planet?
http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/10/1619/2013/osd-10-1619-2013.html
Time integrated variability in the Pacific – especially going forward and subject to abrupt change with little understood control variables.
e.g. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130822105042.htm
The problem is far from one of not understanding sulphates.
Webby
You need to do a better job of reading Nic Lewis’ paper.
Let me quote from the abstract (bold face by me)
It’s ECS Lewis is writing about, Webby.
And his mean value is about half of that predicted by the models cited by IPCC.
Max
“improved” is however only his personal opinion.
Lindzen brings up the damaging the economy meme without specifying exactly what policy he is talking about and how exactly it will damage the economy. He has something in mind, but is not telling. He needs to put numbers in so that people can study them, and support or refute them, otherwise it is just all talk. This is a common problem with this argument. It is very skimpy on numbers. Does decreasing building energy usage and increasing fuel efficiency damage the economy, or save money for most people? Why are these not worthy goals to have?
Well jimmy, many of the Eurocrats seem to have learned from bitter experience that green subsides and mandates are schemes that have stunted economic growth. The natives are shivering and restless and the worried pols are retreating from the failed schemes, jimmy. Or are you in denial on that unpleasant reality?
DM, so can you help out with stating which policy Lindzen was talking about, or is your guess as good as mine? Could he possibly be just using a strawman policy from his own imagination that no one has suggested? So far what we see is energy efficiency, switching from coal to gas and promoting alternative energy technology, not favoring importing oil, so which of these will damage the economy and how much?
Lindzen, likes to get attention by going against mainstream science. Years ago he made news claiming second-hand smoke isn’t harmful. Now he’s doing the same about global warming. If he weren’t so old ( he’s in his 70’s) he probably eventually would find something new to be skeptical about to get attention.
Many who post at here at CE may identify and empathize with Lindzen. I suspect there are a lot of old guys here who
seek attention by being contrary.
I will help you, jimmy. I am not consumed by anger and hostility, like little davey. Google Europe retreats from green agenda, or something similar.
maxie, maxie
You forgot to mention that Lindzen has tobacco stained fingers and he took 47 dollars and 62 cents from an alleged fossil fuel interest back in 1967. you are low class, maxie.
As more than one scientist has said, Lindzen has made a career out of being wrong. It’s a career, but it’s still wrong.
Substitution of more expensive energy sources for less expensive has a negative impact on productivity and GDP by definition. Less is produced at a higher cost. This includes efficiency measures that are more expensive than the savings.
At the national and global level this translates into increasing pressures on already marginal populations. One of the reasons why maximum economic growth is the sine qua non of global development this century. This is econ 101.
Now we may talk about externalities but neither the costs or benefits of energy substitution are well defined so it is somewhat moot.
Efficiency is not the appropriate goal – cost effectiveness is. In the short term – there are better approaches involving a multi-gas strategy. In the longer term the goal is accelerated technological innovation. Always easier in a strong economy.
If you want to dispute fundamental economic principles you will need much stronger argument than these jimmy dee.
Externalities are not moot. They are costs we all pay. Fossil fuels cost at least $120 B/yr, according to a 2010 NAS study. Generating power by coal costs more than its added benefit.
These fuels have to go.
DM, so you are suggesting that Lindzen is assuming that the US will follow Europe, and that it is clear that Europe’s problems are energy-related but will be cured by importing more, not less, fossil fuels for the rest of the century?
Externalities are moot as neither the benefits or costs are known at all well. There are obviously costs in scrapping existing infrastructure and building new that could amount to many trillions.
Decreasing productivity and GDP through higher energy costs – econ 101 remember – has an impact on human lives as well. A balanced account is required and we are nowhere near understanding what this is.
Externalities *already* have a cost, through higher health costs and ecosystem damages. A 2010 NAS study found that the external costs of fossil fuels in the US was at least $120 B/yr, or at least $400 per person per year.
That’s a lot of money, and it easily makes up for slightly higher costs of wind, solar, and nuclear power.
In the US gas is some $65/MWhr, wind is $86, solar PV is $108 and solar thermal much more, nuclear is some $108.
Wind and solar are far from base load capable.
Americans use some 14 MWhrs of electricity each – do the math.
And liquid fuels remain a problem.
As I said – we are not opposed to accelerated technological development. In fact glowingly in favour. However – fantasy economics is far from an acceptable substitution.
…14MWhrs each per year…
Max_OK, Citizen Scientist | January 29, 2014 at 1:14 am |
“If he weren’t so old ( he’s in his 70′s) he probably eventually would find something new to be skeptical about to get attention.”
Why not go for: Male, White and Old to get all prejudices lined up in a row!
David Appell | January 29, 2014 at 1:21 am |
“As more than one scientist has said, Lindzen has made a career out of being wrong. It’s a career, but it’s still wrong.”
In your humble opinion as well no doubt.
They aren’t known, and that makes them moot?
Interesting logic.
Seems to me that the fact that they aren’t known means that the potential for externalties to either cost more than they benefit, or benefit more than they cost, needs to be part of the risk assessment. Difficult to do, certainly – but if someone like Lindzen speaks with certainty about the cost of certain policy options, he is doing an invalid risk assessment (on top of being an “advocate” in an area beyond his expertise – and we all know that Judith really, really, doesn’t like that because it destroys science and reverses the enlightenment).
Lindzen has written much that has turned out to be wrong, but it’s actually good for science that we have scientists who are not afraid of making such errors in search of weaknesses in main stream thinking.
Considering the fog of hidden data and methods that has been that practice until now, a few false starts are likely to be the case.
Hypothesis proposed and refuted is hardly bad science, it is progress.
Curiosity, not dogma is by far the best course.
Max OK, “Lindzen, likes to get attention by going against mainstream science. Years ago he made news claiming second-hand smoke isn’t harmful.”
Max, even though I detest smoking, Lindzen is right. The data on second-hand smoke is very weak, dubious, and would not withstand a proper audit. It is clearly political.
Skippy,
I have to take issues with your numbers. They appear to be the averages of plants in existence (I am not sure, however). I believe that for the purposes of this discussion the numbers for new plants would be more applicable. I do not know these numbers so I used a source http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf
Your conclusions are (I think) still validated, but some of the technologies (especially solar) have different prices. This may be because this report makes solar more expensive because of load considerations? It would be much easier to compare if you would quote your source. The report I quote is a year old (and if they do this yearly possible outdated).
Bob, my experience with second-hand smoke tells me it is harmful. I find the odor offensive and it makes me cough. I’m sure glad it’s banned in public places.
We know animals have good survival instincts. if you blow cigarette smoke in the face of a dog or cat, they turn and run. What does that tell you?
Tony – my numbers come from that same EIA page. I rounded them down to whole dollars – other that that they should be exactly the same as the source – which I have linked to on perhaps a dozen occasions.
Prediction of future climate states is impossible – and PD’s are only theoretically possible. And I have a number of sources from the IPCC to Wally Broecker. Here is one of my favourites.
‘‘Prediction of weather and climate are necessarily uncertain: our observations of weather and climate are uncertain, the models into which we assimilate this data and predict the future are uncertain, and external effects such as volcanoes and anthropogenic greenhouse emissions are also uncertain. Fundamentally, therefore, therefore we should think of weather and climate predictions in terms of equations whose basic prognostic variables are probability densities ρ(X,t) where X denotes some climatic variable and t denoted time. In this way, ρ(X,t)dV represents the probability that, at time t, the true value of X lies in some small volume dV of state space.’ (Predicting Weather and Climate – Palmer and Hagedorn eds – 2006)
So the so called damage function of climate change is unresolvable. There are obviously health costs of fine particulates – but there are also implications for populations in declining productivity and GDP. I have done risk assessment and studied environmental economics – and with such imponderables the chances of detailed risk assessment reliably informing policy is zilch.
In an in principle risk assessment – low probability and extreme consequence events determine the overall level of risk. Climate is wild after all – and it seems imprudent to change the composition of the atmosphere with little idea of consequences.
The logical response is maximize social and economic development in a global multi-objective and multi-gas strategy in ways that build societal resilience to whatever the vagaries of climate brings. We have certainly not seen the anywhere near the limits of what natural climate extremes can bring in the past century – regardless of anthropogenic influences.
The other logical response is the accelerated technological development pathway.
The MPs were a dumb as stones.
Yeah davey, those studies are very useful. Did they say anything about nukes? If we don’t start using nuclear power in large quantity we will be back to digging in coal mines firing up the coal plants, when the oil and gas runs out. You seem to be the Chicken Little type who is more scared of nukes than AGW. What say you little loquacious one?
Read up on what I gave you and figure it out yourself, jimmy. I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself.
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Below 1.5C?
BWAHAHA, that is false.
Easy for you to say, webby. Maybe the MPs will invite you yammer about your SEASALT BS at the next climate hearing. We are getting really tired of it here. Is your fan Dennis still waiting for you, back at your nothing blog?
WHT presenting to Parliament! Now that WOULD be interesting (and very unlikely).
In my opinion, Professor Hoskins is inconsistent in his reasoning when he (A) agrees with Professor Allen about reducing GHG emissions to zero and when he assumes (B) the feasibility of maintaining our socioeconomic system”.
Assuming the following attributions are accurate, and I believe they are consistent with the overall testimony of Prof. Hoskins, I present exhibits A and B. in support of my assessment.
Exhibit A. Question: Even if the rate of emission stopped increasing, concentration would continue to increase.
Allen: until we bring carbon emissions to zero we will continue warming
Hoskins: Confirms that our target is well based
Exhibit B: Hoskins: there have been huge swings in climate in the past, but we were not around with our socioeconomic system, and the recent extremes are exposing our vulnerability to the environment. Keeping the environment within these bounds will allow us to continue our activities; exceeding these bounds will put major stresses on societies
My assessment:
Professor Hoskins may be an expert in mathematics as applied to the atmosphere, but it is obvious he knows too little about “”our socioeconomic system” to be relied upon for public policy decisions that impact the economy of the UK or any other country.
Since the 1930’s, before emissions had any measurable impact, if any, we have experienced little increase in temperature, a small fraction of one degree Celsius. Thus his reference to “recent extremes” must refer very little change at all in climate. Otherwise, he is conflating extreme weather events with climate. Either way, his approach contains inconsistent reasoning.
Furthermore, our knowledge of history tells us that our socioeconomic system is more able to cope with environmental shocks that at any time in the past, mainly because we rely on energy from fossils fuels.
If Professor Hoskins were to run for my village council I would vote that he be appointed to check the village accounts, which requires some mathematics, diligence and a lot of personal integrity. However, if he were to run for Parliament I would not vote for him. He appears to be well-meaning gentleman completely out of his depth in his knowledge and approach to our socioeconomic system.
The first panel pretended to be experts without being able to demonstrate any particular expertise. They cannot explain the pause because according to their dominant CO2 scenario it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. When pressed they clearly just made stuff up; talking about a wealth of evidence or models that require manmade warming to fill the gap between reality and natural variability. The former refers only to evidence of warming by whatever source, not manmade warming, and the latter argument is now out of date because the models cannot match reality without adding back in the natural variability that was previously assumed to be declining.
The bottom line is that there is no scientific way of claiming any manmade warming now because the researchers do not really have a clue about what drives global temperature. The climate models are utterly inadequate for both attribution and policy. without the models all we have is a gentle, beneficial warming of 0.6K/century and no ascary scenarios at all.
But, thankfully, James has it all figured out.
Just as low pass filters of 15 years on the data to date shows, a nice cyclical type behaviour with a long term trend of ‘down into the Little Ice and back’ to add to the mix :-)
Do we know (or can someone point me to) where the transcript is/ will be, as I think it may be very useful to quote from later :-)
The transcript will appear on the committee’s web site.
The link will be this (currently empty).
The main link for the inquiry is here.
At the bottom you can get the written evidence or the oral evidence.
Paul: Thanks. I suspected it was going to be there. Judith has done a wonderful job above but I really want the official source when it becomes available. Much more authoritive and less subject to challenge :-)
Something I found to be very hopeful is the list of questions they are trying to address. If you click on Paul’s link, then on the “New inquiry: IPCC 5th Assessment Review”, and then scroll down to “Terms of Reference” you will find these questions. This is, in my opinion, a very pointed set of questions that political bodies should be asking in order to determine actions (including none). It looks like this committee is taking their job very seriously and assessing all of the evidence.
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Also, the whole thing is now on youtube.
Thanks again for the url. Now all we need to do is index out the relevant time offsets to the ‘good bits’ :-)
Awesome!
Donna L – as nutty as I expected.
“The IPCC reports are not peer-reviewed”. Really?
“It’s a criminal trial!” (the IPCC reports, that is! )
“I’m not explaining my self very well” ( Oh yeah!)
You have to feel sorry for the poor bloody British taxpayer footing the bill for Donna to waffle on.
Judy – the best bit was after the meeting when I spoke to Tim Yeo, the chairman. I briefly went over some charts and images relevant to the easterly wave/altantic warming zone (AMO) issue which he accepted easily, then demonstrated how the Nile flood had fitted into the picture historically. Which he again accepted. £90k he does not have to process the meteorological link but was ok when I asked if he could force a meeting between me, Dr Gadien and the met office. Once this meeting happened the whole CC circus will be wrapped up. Watch this space. /
Conor. Who is Dr. Gadien?
Dr Alan Gadian – Leeds Uni. Climate modelling group. Passed editor of the RMetS journal.
Yeo understood that? Astonishing!
If you really want the Committee to get it then I suggest you send it to Graham Stringer (Lab,) or Peter Lilly (Con), preferably both..
I was able to point to a specific part of the eastern equitotial Atlantic using both refined SST data (Hadisst1) as wellas satellite images of easterly wave stratocumulus cloud in the same timeframe. They both match up even enough for a politition to grasp. Then the SST variability in this zone was charted along with GISS global temp data to show this same compatibility. From there a chart showing inverted SST in the zone against sub Saharan rainfall and Nile flow data. Bite sizes, user friendly info with simple explanations got the message across effectively enough. Previously all of the cc, S&T plus environment MPs had been contacted, but no reply from Lilly despite many efforts. Stringer was more encouraging. Anyway Tim is the man and I expect usefull progress with him putting his shoulder to the wheel.
Great summarizing job Judith!. Let’s focus in:
Lewis: “Models don’t reflect the current evidence including the reduction in aerosol cooling effect strength. If aerosol cooling is lower, then it follows that the warming is less from carbon dioxide”.
Hoskins: “Understanding the impacts from different aerosol types is an area of living science”.
Lindzen: “With regards to attribution, no I’m not happy, I don’t know how it was arrived at”.
Judith, you can very easily explain this issues related with aerosols and attributions, by using the writing #1 I sent you (“Anthropogenic attribution the Monte Carlo confusion”).
Whoever suggested that man-made aerosols are the issue has really steered these skeptics in the wrong direction. Hilarious to see an incompetent such as Nic Lewis giving his “expertise”.
Bayesians hate Nick Lewis because Bayesians have no respect for objectivity.
My respect for Nic Lewis is high (at the level of my respect for Judith Curry). And, despite I do not share his vision 100%, there are many other “experts” that seem to have much less idea of what is going on in climate debate.
Talking about Lewis’ IPC0017 document, his mistake is that he does not set accurately the problem: as the “theorem of simulation” guaranties that statistical techniques (e.g., maximum likelihood, bayesian method, …) can be well applied in monte carlo techniques; the problem is not with those bayesian techniques, but with the aerosol forcing models. This “area of living science” means that IPCC can manipulate all that in order to attibute humans the cause of climate change.
In summary: Lewis tends to say also what I have just said (in his section 8) but he fails when saying “Inappropriate statistical methodology”, because the method is all right; but nobody can add the weight of two potatoes if one of them is measured and the other weight is invented.
Another interesting issue to discuss:
At time: 9:50:40, this approximate question is asked to panel 1: Does anthropogenic warming due to CO2 emissions has more impact in climate change than natural internal variability?.
Stott’s approx. ans.: In decade timescales climate can warm or cool due to oscillations (natural internal variability). But these decade timescales do not provide the long term warming due to green house gases.
Hoskins’ approx. ans.: Natural variability and anthropogenic warming are entangled. In decadal timescales natural variability is dominant giving cooling and warming (e.g., in the ’90). But based in the hundred year period’s observation (and with a very strong theoretical basis), we are seeing the fingerprint of what we think is the anthropogenic warming in central timescales [hundred year periods].
But Judith, this is strongly false. With the writings (#2: “Climatic models, used by IPCC and called CMIP5, are not reliable” and #3: “Appropriate timescales in climate change debate”) I sent you, it can be very easily refuted the above “consensus” statements by Stott and Hoskins.
Tsonis and Swanson:
Fig. 3.
Observed GISS 21-year running mean global mean surface temperature (heavy solid), along with that temperature cleaned of the internal signal, which is the mean over the eight active models of Fig. 1A (dashed). The cleaned global mean temperature warms monotonically, and closely resembles a quadratic fit to the observed 20th century global mean temperature (thin solid). The standard deviation of the cleaned temperature from the quadratic fit is 0.03 °C compared with 0.06 °C for the observed.
Tsonis has said the current period of flat surface air temperatures will last until 2030, and that there may actually be cooling.
My comment was not in your direction. Let’s wait and see if we can discuss about this in JC’s blog.
Judith,
This paragraph is in there twice near the top. Lindzen: I think the IPCC assessment of natural variability is not adequate and there is not much argument about that. No models at present do an acceptable job on ENSO and the multidecadal oscillations. And also not the longer timescale circulations of the oceans on timescales of thousands of years. The fact that the system can change on its own is an important development in public understanding of climate change..
“No models at present do an acceptable job on ENSO and the multi-decadal oscillations.”
But a simple low pass filter at 15 years does :-)
You know, Month-Year-Decadal = stop band, Climate = pass band.
The problem with electrical engineering solutions, and I know IQ studies have shown EEs to be the smartest of the engineers ;) , we are not dealing with signal and noise, the noise is the signal. These patterns are not perfectly repeating. The tides change every year by some tiny amount as the Moon moves further from the Earth, never to come back, and the Earth continues its slow wobble, and the closest and further points from the Sun change by a quarter day a year. With all of these simple orbital factors, with the variations in the output of the Sun unrelated to anything happening on Earth, the problem just cannot be simplified. Never mind the sloshing about of the oceans and winds and the now not understood activities of the clouds.
Well there does appear to be a fairly consistent ~60 year pattern to the high resolution data to date.
Now that could easily be 50 + 60 + 70 in a 1:1:1 half cycle random mix.
Plus Weather. Trying find that with an FT or similar approach on the length of data we have.
The problem is that the supposed signal only started around 60 years ago. By the time you start applying filters for 15 years, 60 years 70 years – you’ve obliterated the signal. Also the data doesn’t reliably go back far enough for such a filter to settle down and behave itself. With the amount of data we have what you are mostly going to get is a bunch of filter artificats.
Ian H | January 29, 2014 at 1:54 pm |
“The problem is that the supposed signal only started around 60 years ago. By the time you start applying filters for 15 years, 60 years 70 years – you’ve obliterated the signal.”
So why not a simple binary chop instead then? Above 15 years = Climate, below 15 years = ‘noise’.
Just like the broadband/telephone filter to connect to the Internet.
Simple, engineering solution.
And I can see the signal back to the 1800s or so with just that concept.
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/richardlinsleyhood/OLSalignedAnnualtrends_zps5603d308.png
Mosher stated:
There is all manner of nonsense one could debate.
Today you get to join a debate.
To join that debate you have to agree to a couple things.
Denk:
Such as?
admission ticket:
1. C02 causes warming
2. Humans have increased C02
The people who dont get invited to the debate are folks who FOCUS on
1. noaa data is a fraud
2. C02 is only a trace gas
3. the sun/planets cause everything
4. we cant talk about things that arent measured precisely
5. the climate is chaotic, we cant say anything
6. its a green conspiracy.
7. human emissions dont add any C02.
8. models arent science
and other stupid skeptic arguments.
The debate is getting settled politically because far too many skeptics on the right failed to show up with the best argument. Instead they shot their load on tangential issues.
Put another way: Heartland/cato/exxon would have done better to focus their dollars on the Nic lewis type of “skeptic” as opposed the fred singer tim ball steve goddard types. Better to fund somebody who understands the real questions rather than the tangential ones.
Mosher, on #1 you forgot “all other things being equal” on the end.
1. CO2 causes warming, all other things being equal.
Fixed.
“1. C02 causes warming”
Mosher,
#1 is not a scientific statement. It’s a slogan. So please dispense with any pretense that your debate would be scientific.
Andrew
Steven, you write “and other stupid skeptic arguments.”
You missed one “stupid” argument out. Namely, the empirical data shows that the effect adding more CO2 to the atmosphere from current levels is completely negligible.
Mosher – so we are to ignore the fact that our climate is a massively complex, chaotic, non-linear, coupled system? Ignore that we do not fully understand how all the separate parts operate individually, and, therefore ignore that we have even less understanding of the effects of all those separate systems interactions. We can ignore that we don’t know that we’ve even identified all the possible variables that affect climate? In your opinion, specious as it is, all we need to agree to is that man’s miniscule contribution to a trace gas acts as THE climate control knob because it can be shown in a lab environment, where all other variables are held constant, to absorb and radiate a small amount of IR. And you say it is the skeptics who are nuts.
Another way to word your #1 Mosher would be:
1. CO2 has been shown, in a laboratory, to have certain properties that, if scaled to the atmosphere without any counteracting phenomenon, would cause warming.
So take your pick. But as others have noted, one really should be precise and not use “CO2 causes warming” which is both a dogmatic and non-scientific statement.
Steven Mosher,
noaa data is not a fraud but has it been adjusted to within the error bar of the increased temperature. Pielke wrote some time ago that human impacts on temperature resutl from replacing natural cover with asphalt and airport jet exhausts. Is there a tracking of original measurements with adjustments?
Scott
@ Steven Mosher
So, we are going to have a debate.
Motion: Anthropogenic CO2 is causing the temperature of the earth to rise, with every degree of rise resulting in damages in the trillion dollar range. (“every degree in climate sensitivity is a trillion dollar cost issue,”)
Proposition team: you, josh, fan, and WHT.
Opposition team: Jim, Gary M, wag, and Richard LH
Oh wait; according to the terms of the debate (admission ticket:
1. C02 causes warming
2. Humans have increased CO2)
, it won’t take place unless Jim, Gary, wag, and Richard agree going in to accept the Motion as axiomatic.
Well, at least the debate should be short:
Referee: Reads the Motion
Proposition team: “That’s right!”
Opposition team (according to the rules (admission ticket) of the debate:) “Sure is!”
Proposition team: “Yay! We won! Lets all go have a brewski–or three; losers pay.”
Climate Science in action.
Jim Cripwell
Don’t know about that, Jim, but the statement below is certainly true:
But empirical data is not that relevant to mosh.
He’s a model guy.
Max
“Lindzen: If temperature was increasing until then, then it is the hottest decade so far. If you are saying you are taking the 16 yr smoothing average, then warming has continued. If you look just at the last 16 years, then there is no change. Nobody is saying global warming has come to an end. For the last 16 years, temperature hasn’t increased.”
______________
Why did Lindzen choose the last 16 years? Why not the last 17 years, the last 15 years, or some other period? I think because 1998 is the sweet spot to start from if you want to say “temperature hasn’t increased.”
In the linked graphs of UAH temperature the OLS line for the 1998-2013 slopes up less than the OLS lines for the following periods: 1996-2013, 1997-2013 , 1999-2003, and 2000-2013.
I don’t know if any of the temperature increases in these five periods are statistically significant, but the longest (1996-2013) would seem the most likely to be or at least come the closets. Is there really a good reason for choosing 1998-2013 rather than 1996-2013?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from/plot/uah/from:1998/trend/plot/uah/from:1997/trend/plot/uah/from:1999/trend/plot/uah/from:1996/trend/plot/uah/from:2000/trend
Max OK.
That was a good plot. is there any with longer time scales, say to 1850 or like tonyb and long slow thaw?
My worry is the change in past temperatures by adjustment from corrections. Seems like the UHI would cause temps in poorly located areas to read low. Now we pay more attention to location with pavement or airports. Instead they lower deeper past temps and raise recent ones and the adjustment seems of a similar magnitude of the increase.
By the way, please stop the agism comments you seem to favor. Insulting and useless.
Scott
Scott, the UAH temperature data are satellite based.
According to NOAA, in 1960 atmospheric CO2 was 317ppm and in 2010 it was 392ppm. That is an increase by a factor of 1.00425 per year. At this rate, in 50 years (when many commenters claim our fossil fuels will run out) CO2 levels will be up by 24%; in 100 years (when many other commenters claim our fossil fuels will run out) CO2 levels will be up by 52%; and in 163 years CO2 levels will have doubled. You can only believe there is a looming catastrophe if a) you believe that man is responsible for 100% of the CO2 increase (that is in serious doubt), b) an increase of up to 2.0 °C is not beneficial (there is much evidence that it is beneficial), c) over the next 100 years there will not be any major advances in energy production (now we can switch to nuclear within 10-20 years), and d) man can realistically do anything to effect global temperatures (the US EPA estimates proposed CO2 restrictions costing tens of trillions of US dollars would reduce global temperature by 0.006 °C. http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=57cadd3c-afb0-4890-bae5-3d6a101db11f )
While as an engineer I appreciate the 2.3 °C vs. 1.3 °C per doubling of CO2 debate, from a policy standpoint it is distinction without a difference.
‘While as an engineer I appreciate the 2.3 °C vs. 1.3 °C per doubling of CO2 debate, from a policy standpoint it is distinction without a difference.”
every degree in climate sensitivity is a trillion dollar cost issue, more or less.
Further, the real question on the table is this..
1. Do we have time for a bridge fuel ( GAS) to the future or
do we have to switch rapidly to renewables
The switch time is a function of sensitivity.
If the sensitivity is lower you may buy yourself decades years to switch from coal to gas and then phase gas out as renewable become more cost effective. If the sensitivity is higher your switch time becomes shorter and
it would not make sense to invest in a fossil fuel infrastructure ( gas plants) that would have to be mothballed before their service life was up.
There are three experiments going on
A european one: switch now
An american one: bridge with gas
A chinese one: pour on the coal.
Europe is switching? to what? Teslas powered by French nuclear power plants?
A chinese one: pour on the coal.Perhaps they plan on using coal as a bridge fuel.
Sorry…
Perhaps they plan on using coal as a bridge fuel.
Mosher – care to share how you arrived at “every degree in climate sensitivity is a trillion dollar cost issue”? Can you point to any proof of damage caused by AGW? Here, I’ll help you a bit on that one.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Steven Mosher | January 29, 2014 at 1:51 pm |
“The switch time is a function of sensitivity.
If the sensitivity is lower you may buy yourself decades years to switch”
At an increase by a factor of 1.00425 per year in 100 years CO2 levels will be up by 52%; and in 163 years CO2 levels will have doubled. (Reference PMHinSC | January 29, 2014 at 1:08 pm|). This suggests we have at least a century (not decades) and possibly 2 or 3 centuries if man if not responsible for 100% of the CO2. And if the US EPA numbers are correct (proposed policies would reduce global temperature by 0.006 °C) reducing man made CO2 is a very expensive exercise with almost no return. And if you believe we will be running out of fossil fuels within a century the problem will self correct before manmade CO2 doubles.
“1. Do we have time for a bridge fuel ( GAS) to the future or
do we have to switch rapidly to renewables?”
Good thing the warm have answered this definitively. They are willing to wait forever and they care not a bit about whether the things they wait for have any impact whatsoever on global CO2 emissions. When the warm become actually concerned about carbon, it could be an interesting issue. Meanwhile they’ll fly to various exotic locals in an annual half-hearted effort to define, much less address, “sustainable” and “climate justice.”
Mosh
Huh?
Where’d you pull that number out of? (pardon the ending preposition)
Let’s say ECS is between 2C and 4C
And TCR = 60% of ECS or between 1.2 and 2.4C
and CO2 increases from 396 ppmv today to 650 ppmv in 2100
We arrive at 0.9C warming with a TCR of 1.2C (ECS = 2C)
And 1.3C warming with a TCR of 1.8C (ECS = 3)
Both are still well within the “net beneficial” warming range of 2C.
And if ECS is 4C, we have a TCR of 2.4C, and warming by 2100 of 1.7C (still within the beneficial range), 0.4C warmer than with an ECS of 3
So how could a 0.4C warming cost humanity $1 trillion?
Come back down to Planet Earth, Mosh.
Max
manacker,
Mosher tried to pull that one out of his backside once before. When asked to substantiate it he couldn’t; so, as per usual, he resorted to the abuse and bullying strategy instead answering the question.
Peter Lang | January 30, 2014 at 4:55 am |
“manacker, Mosher tried to pull that one out of his backside once before. When asked to substantiate it he couldn’t; so, as per usual, he resorted to the abuse and bullying strategy instead answering the question.”
Nature abhors a vacuum so let me try to answer the question.
According to the US EPA the relationship between reduction of global temperature and US dollars is less than 0.001 °C per trillion dollars. Therefore any number is a valid number and it can be spent on anything and the effect on global temperature will be the same.
Heat emissions from our energy use are four times the amount that can be accounted for by the actual rise in atmospheric temperature. Models that do not include heat emissions are not worth anything. No amount of discussion about the “climate sensitivity to CO2” can change that.
Didn’t you see the announcement, philo? They are going to start next week incorporating heat emissions in all the GCMs. You can relax now.
“Lindzen: The IPCC speaks of attribution for the last 50 years. Before then, we are dealing with natural climate variability. Warming from 1919-1940 almost indistinguishable from the warming 1970-1998.”
_________
Yes, but the rate of warming from 1919-1940 ( a 22-year period) also is almost indistinguishable from the rate of warming from 1975-2013 (a 38-year period). Why is the latter almost twice as long as the former?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/plot/gistemp/from:1919/to:1941/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1975/trend
MAx ok,
thanks that is the graph I wanted to see.
Scott
Tsonis is the go-to guy. the dashed line is the AGW portion of the 1919 to 1940 period.
It looks to be around 35% to 50% of the warming.
As for your second question? Because they talked themselves out of the PDO, and into the AMO.
The Tsonis climate shifts are around 1910, the mid 1940’s, the late 1970’s and 1998/2001. These are – for good reason – at inflection points in global temperature trajectory.
The dashed line in the other study used the mean of 8 models presumably cleaned of the internal signal. It provides an indication of the residual from whatever cause.
It should be remembered that the 20th century pattern is not a template for the 21st century.
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/38/16120.full
For 84 years it was a promenade, and suddenly the PDO did a dosido.
We have been through this before. We are talking about more or less upwelling – in the positive state in which it stayed to the late 1990’s less upwelling.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/jisao-pdo
But it is a Pacific wide system – let me Google that for you.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=interdecadal+Pacific+oscillation+
ENSO stayed predominantly positive as well until 1998.
I don’t know what you are trying to prove JCH – but it is getting a little tedious.
You are funny. You link to a graph that shows the PDO trending down in since 1983-85.
What am I trying to prove? Nothing. The data says it trended down after 1983 to 1985.
You are apparently trying to prove it did not trend down. Did a waiter at the Great Western slip some LSD into your Foster’s?
You don’t like, find data that does what you want.
You could do what Tsonis did, which was switch to a mirage: the AMO.
Blue is more cold upwelling – red is less. This is how the regimes are defined – but if want to make up your own story go ahead.
http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/files/pr176.pdf
Tsonis used a network model to examine dynamic relationships between global indices – focusing on the NH. The precursor to the stadium wave concept and one which demonstrated dynamical complexity in the climate system. It is not one index or another but how these interact as indicators of underlying processes and connections.
Anastasios Tsonis, of the Atmospheric Sciences Group at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and colleagues used a mathematical network approach to analyse abrupt climate change on decadal timescales. Ocean and atmospheric indices – in this case the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation and the North Pacific Oscillation – can be thought of as chaotic oscillators that capture the major modes of climate variability. Tsonis and colleagues calculated the ‘distance’ between the indices. It was found that they would synchronise at certain times and then shift into a new state.
It is no coincidence that shifts in ocean and atmospheric indices occur at the same time as changes in the trajectory of global surface temperature. Our ‘interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Tsonis said.
Four multi-decadal climate shifts were identified in the last century coinciding with changes in the surface temperature trajectory. Warming from 1909 to the mid 1940’s, cooling to the late 1970’s, warming to 1998 and declining since. The shifts are punctuated by extreme El Niño Southern Oscillation events. Fluctuations between La Niña and El Niño peak at these times and climate then settles into a damped oscillation. Until the next critical climate threshold – due perhaps in a decade or two if the recent past is any indication.
This wild flailing about of yours without much understanding of the concepts and methods is very unedifying.
Well – this is the pdo link -http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/
try again – http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/
JC SNIP:
1900 to 1940
1940 to 1983
1883 to present
Which looks like this: a complete break in pattern in 1983.
The PDO could be overdue to go positive. La Nina dominance has reloaded the oceans with energy. Whether you want to or not, natural variation may be about to bend you over and force you to kiss your a-holyish reputation goodbye.
I have a hypothesis. The more damage one of JC’s posts inflicts on the alarmists, the more responses they will make to it.
This one could have amputated a leg.
Mosher stated:
There is all manner of nonsense one could debate.
Today you get to join a debate.
To join that debate you have to agree to a couple things.
Denk:
Such as?
Mosher stated:
admission ticket:
1. C02 causes warming
Denk:
So, in order to have a fair trial the defendant must sign the confession.
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I am surprised that people do not realise that when the British government holds an inquiry, it does so with prior knowledge of an intended outcome. Don’t be bluffed by this UK Parliamentary Hearing on the IPCC. It is meaningless. It will amount to nought!
The British parliament introduced a Climate Change Act based on the IPCC’s ‘gold standard science’ … the settled incontrovertible consensus science. Does anyone really believe politicians will now risk being ridiculed for the mess now being experienced in the UK from numerous green policies and decisions?
When UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, recently and wrongly told his parliament that Britain’s floods are due to global warming (tell that to the residents of flooded Somerset who know the floods are due to green policy decisions made 18 years ago), you can bet your last dollar, this inquiry is a waste of time and money.
I am embarrassed for reputable individuals like Richard Lindzen and Donna Laframboise for having indulged in this British political quackery!
I feel a bit slow and apologetic about my earlier comments. The sceptics at the review did prevent the emissions mob from running off with the dun-deal cc thing as had happened too often. They did force the polititions to seriously address the issue in the clear light of day. They did exposé the weakness in the IPCCs cliches and sound bites. Ultimately they did make far easier for me to get through to Tim Yeo, the E&CC chairman, about other climatic matters of real consternation. Ultimately Prof Lindzin’s comment, which at first was taken with distaste may hold sway at the end: “the economic cost of advancing the emissions policy, may not be justified in light if the emissions embargo which will have insufficient benefits to justify itself”, or there abouts.
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A 2000 page report is not informative: no person I know of can read and digest it in any meaningful sense. Hence SPM is the only thing that tells us what they are doing. What they are doing is more of the same, reaffirming their belief that greenhouse warming is here and we must fight it. For them, “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia.” That is complete nonsense. Warming is not unequivocal because there has been none for the last 16 years. This is “unprecedented over decades to millennia” all right but in the sense they imply. I don’t know about millennia but going back to the eighties and nineties there was another such hiatus of 18 years, This one was covered up by the IPCC with falsified warming. Doing research for my book “What Warming?” I exposed this fakery and put a warming about it into its preface. Two years later, GISTEMP, HadCRUT3, and NCDC suddenly decided not to show it any more. They secretly aligned their data with satellites that do not show this warming and said nothing about it. I thought that this resolved it but strangely enough, while HadCRUT3 fixed theirs, HadCRUT4 is still showing the old version. The relationship of this fake warming to Hansen’s 1988 presentation to the Senate also must not be ignored because he claimed that May 1988, in the middle of this period, was the peak of global warming. Remember that according to him there was only a one percent chance that this warm peak could happen by chance alone? It would not do to find out later that there was no peak, so fix it up, boys. This is just one example of skullduggery I know of. There may be more, so be suspicious of their claims.
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Just watching the video now. The panel asking the questions are very sharp, and seem to fairly put both sides to the test. At the beginning of panle 2, the questioner in the center (maybe the chair) really challenged Donna LaFramboise on her view that the SPM was politically distorted relative to what the scientists had in their chapters. If that is so, why didn’t the scientists who put in all that hard work object to the SPM? There was no sign anyone objected to the SPM, including the first panel, completely defeating her point. Lindzen tried to offer it was a lot of work being a scientist on the IPCC, and maybe they were just too tired by then. The MP then said, OK, maybe you want a quicker shoddier report, which Lindzen had to back off from. Good exchange. One of many.