by Judith Curry
The WG2 Report will be officially released on Monday. Here is what people are saying about a leaked version of the Summary for Policy Makers.
Donna LaFramboise has made available the latest version of the draft Summary for Policy Makers of the WG2 report that is currently being discussed in Yokohama (note: informed by Twitter that the SPM and full Report have just been approved).
The AR5 WG2 SPM has some startling differences and substantial additions relative to the AR4 version, and is in many ways a much better report. However, the AR4 WG2 Report is a low bar indeed, with the infamous Himalayan glacier error, and the substantial criticisms leveled by the IAC regarding treatment of uncertainty.
Chris Field, WG2 co-chair, has made this statement, excerpts:
The report itself is scientifically bold. It frames managing climate change as a challenge in managing risks, using this characterization as a starting point for two of the report’s core themes. The first is the importance of considering the full range of possible outcomes, including not only high-probability outcomes. It also considers outcomes with much lower probabilities but much, much larger consequences. Second, characterizing climate change as a challenge in managing risks opens doors to a wide range of options for solutions.
One of the things I like most about the report is that it combines cold, analytical realism, with a careful look at a broad range of possible solutions. This mapping of not only the serious and admittedly sometimes depressing “problem space” but also the exciting and potentially uplifting “solution space” allows the report to assess not only the impacts and challenges but also the opportunities and synergies. Truly, much of the material in the WGII report is as much about building a better world as it is about understanding serious problems.
Overviews
The best overview that I’ve seen so far is by Fred Pierce: New UN Report is Cautions on Making Climate Predictions. Excerpts:
[C]areful readers will note a new tone to its discussion of these issues that is markedly different from past efforts. It is more humble about what scientists can predict in advance, and far more interested in how societies can make themselves resilient. It also places climate risks much more IPCC cautious predictions firmly than before among a host of other problems faced by society, especially by the poor. That tone will annoy some for taking the edge off past warnings, but gratify others for providing a healthy dose of realism.
The draft agrees that “climate change will amplify existing stress on water availability in Africa” and will “very likely” reduce cereal crop productivity. But this time the discussion is not about how big or small those reductions might be, but on how African farmers might cope with less water, through terracing and agroforestry for instance.
Asia has fallen into a similar forecasting limbo. Last time, the IPCC warned that there would be less water in most Asian river basins and up to a billion people could experience “increased water stress” as early as the 2020s. This time, “there is low confidence in future precipitation projections at a subregional level and thus in future freshwater availability in most parts of Asia.” Last time the IPCC predicted “an increase of 10 to 20% in tropical cyclone intensities” in Asia. This time it reports “low confidence in region-specific projections of [cyclone] frequency and intensity.”
But it asks us to be grown-up about the uncertainties involved in what plays out when. “Responding to climate-related risks involves making decisions and taking actions in the face of continuing uncertainty about the extent of climate change and the severity of impacts in a changing world,” the draft report says.
The 2007 report was almost all about the impacts of climate change. Most of this report, and in particular most of the summary for policymakers, is about resilience and adaptation to inevitable climate change.
Central to that new take is setting climate change in a context of other risks, uncertainties and mega-trends such as poverty and social inequality, urbanization, and the globalization of food systems. What some call “climate exceptionalism” — the idea that climate change is something of an entirely different order to other threats faced by the world — has been rooted out. Here climate change is painted as pervasive, since nobody can avoid it wholly, but as usually only one among many pressures, especially on the poor.
Some nightmare scenarios are robustly defused. Past IPCC reports have warned that there might be as many as 50 million “climate refugees” around the world, who will flee drought, rising tides and spreading deserts. This report is set to dismiss that idea.
The report may irritate politicians in poor countries who look to blame climate change caused by the rich world for the ills of their people and want to demand reparations. But it may also dismay those who want to cite other factors to “prove” that climate change is never to blame. The world is more complicated, the scientists who prepared the draft conclude. The lesson of their report is that climate change will be implicated in a vast array of global ills, but it will rarely be the sole cause.
Spiegel Online has an article: UN Backtracks: Will Global Warming Really Trigger Mass Extinctions? Excerpts:
Global warming is said to be threatening thousands of animal and plant species with extinction. That, at least, is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been predicting for years.
But the UN climate body now says it is no longer so certain. The second part of the IPCC’s new assessment report is due to be presented next Monday in Yokohama, Japan. On the one hand, a classified draft of the report notes that a further “increased extinction risk for a substantial number of species during and beyond the 21st century” is to be expected. On the other hand, the IPCC admits that there is no evidence climate change has led to even a single species becoming extinct thus far.
The policy implications of this report are discussed in an article by Andrew Lilico entitled Climate change: the debate is about to change radically. Excerpts:
If the leaked draft is reflected in the published report, it will constitute the formal moving on of the debate from the past, futile focus upon “mitigation” to a new debate about resilience and adaptation.
The new report will apparently tell us that the global GDP costs of an expected global average temperature increase of 2.5 degrees Celsius over the 21st century will be between 0.2 and 2 per cent. To place that in context, the well-known Stern Review of 2006 estimated the costs as 5-20 per cent of GDP. Stern estimates the costs of his recommended policies for mitigating climate change at 2 per cent of GDP – and his estimates are widely regarded as relatively optimistic (others estimate mitigation costs as high as 10 per cent of global GDP). At a 2.4 per cent annual GDP growth rate, the global economy increases 0.2 per cent every month.
So the mitigation deal has become this: Accept enormous inconvenience, placing authoritarian control into the hands of global agencies, at huge costs that in some cases exceed 17 times the benefits even on the Government’s own evaluation criteria, with a global cost of 2 per cent of GDP at the low end and the risk that the cost will be vastly greater, and do all of this for an entire century, and then maybe – just maybe – we might save between one and ten months of global GDP growth.
Whereas previously the IPCC emphasised the effects climate change could have if not prevented, now the focus has moved on to how to make economies and societies resilient and to adapt to warming now considered inevitable. Climate exceptionalism – the notion that climate change is a challenge of a different order from, say, recessions or social inclusion or female education or many other important global policy goals – is to be down played. Instead, the new report emphasised that adapting to climate change is one of many challenges that policymakers will face but should have its proper place alongside other policies.
Our first step in adapting to climate change should be to accept that we aren’t going to mitigate it. We’re going to have to adapt. That doesn’t mean there might not be the odd mitigation-type policy, around the edges, that is cheap and feasible and worthwhile. But it does mean that the grandiloquent schemes for preventing climate change should go. Their day is done. Even the IPCC – albeit implicitly – sees that now.
Ramping up the alarm
So if you are a ‘climate realist’ and this sounds too good to be true, hang on, efforts are being made to ramp up the alarm.
The first article out of the post was an article by the Independent, with the alarming title: Official prophecy of doom: global warming will cause widespread conflict, displace millions of people and devastate the global economy. Richard Betts aptly tweeted that the Independent article was ‘cringeworthy.’
The WG2 has been amping up the alarm in its successive drafts, which has been discussed in posts by Donna LaFramboise and Paul Matthews. WG2 author Richard Tol is not happy how this is evolving, see articles by BBC and Reuters.
JC reflections
While I have yet to read the entire WG2 Report, the message that I am getting is there is a great deal of uncertainty in the attribution and future projections of climate change impacts, and that the threats on the timescale of the 21st century are not existential. The economic loss analysis discussed Lilico’s article reflects a stunning change from Nicholas Stern’s analysis; I suspect this will be the most hotly debated aspect of the WG2 Report.
The ‘message’ has shifted from documenting dire impacts, to finding solutions that integrate with broader societal challenges. This is a welcome change. Will the UNFCCC shift away from mitigation towards adaptation, and Andrew Lilico suggests? In light of the challenges of attributing and projecting climate change impacts, does the UNFCCC’s Warsaw Loss and Damage Mechanism make any sense? Richard Tol recently tweeted the following:
Bidding war in IPCC WG2 plenary: My country is more vulnerable than yours! We deserve a bigger share of the UNFCCC Adaptation Fund!
A logical conclusion from the WG2 Report seems to be that attribution of extreme damages and losses to AGW is not very useful. Regarding adaptation, a focus on the complex, interrelated issues facing developing countries and reducing extreme weather event vulnerability in developed countries is more fruitful than fostering a climate for corruption in terms of development and expecting that mitigation is feasible and will solve the world’s problems related to climate and extreme weather.
And where does all this leave climate science? Well this was the topic of the recent UK-US Workshop on Climate Science Needed to Support Robust Adaptation Decisions, see especially Part V Broadening the Portfolio of Climate Information (which includes my presentation).
Bottom line: I am intrigued to read the full WG2 Report, it sounds like they have done something different this time, and are moving in what I regard as the right direction.
UPDATE: my BBC Radio 5Live interview will be 7:30 a.m. UK time, 2:30 a.m. Atlanta time.
Does the scientific method allow scientists to be “moving in what I regard as the right direction”?
Scientific Method is just fine. Problem is, they had not been using it. They substituted the Consensus Method for the Scientific Method, but they forgot to acknowledge the substitution.
Time will determine if they are on a better track. It sounds better so far.
CLICK….Top headlines pretty much all about alarmism, time running out, human extinction, etc.
Herman, you write “Scientific Method is just fine. Problem is, they had not been using it. ”
CAREFUL!! You will have Steven Mosher, John Carpenter and Jim D, telling you that it is not necessary to use the scientific method to show that adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes a huge rise in global temperatures. There are lots of other scientific approaches which are just as good as the scientific method, and which prove the warmist case.. If you believe them; which I don’t.
My own studies of the archaeology of past cultural “failures” suggests a common pattern (often explicitly mentioned in the research I read): a culture will continue to increase, in size, population density, or usually both, pushing the limits of its host ecosystem to support it. As it does so, it becomes progressively more vulnerable to changes in climate, primarily those that affect the agricultural processes it depends on.
Since any scientific study of the history of climate demonstrates that such changes will occur sooner or later, any society that continues to progressively push the limits of its ability to extract resources from its host ecosystem will eventually suffer a catastrophic impact from such a change. The sooner it happens, the more likely the culture is to survive and learn from it, rather than suffering total collapse and/or being overrun by younger, more flexible neighbor cultures.
AFAIK ours is the first culture with a science that studies the economics of prior cultures, so ours is the first that can learn from such studies, although many in the past were able to reference mythic and epic stories of their own predecessors. It would seem a robust conclusion, based on our culture’s science, that a widespread focus on adaptation to climate change would substantially mitigate the risk from it.
This conclusion is independent of any attribution of such changes to human activity. Personally, I suspect that some of the major climate changes of the past were at least contributed to by human activity. For instance, the introduction of “domestic” goats and sheep in what became the Sahara Desert may well have exacerbated a natural cycle of partial desertification. Widespread erosion in the Eastern Mediterranean could also have contributed to climate changes that occurred at such times.
The climate system is a very complex non-linear system, apparently demonstrating spatio-temporal chaos or something functionally similar. In many such systems, tiny changes in the boundary conditions can be magnified tremendously, sometimes pushing the system from one “meta-stable state” to another.
Nature, of course, is constantly introducing such changes. For instance, tectonic processes can remove whole mountains, dam large rivers or remove existing dams, open or close available routes for ocean currents, and the like. Changes to ecosystems can produce relatively sudden changes to the moisture response of large areas of land.
And such ecosystem changes aren’t necessarily just in response to external factors. Many of the major clades of existing plants and animals posses specific reproductive adaptations that can function to magnify the natural effect of rare types of beneficial mutation into the sudden appearance of new “species” that can destabilize major ecosystems, or groups of ecosystems.
The most evident example of this is the way many angiosperms posses symbiotic relationships with insects allowing pollen (microspores) to be distributed very widely, especially following the appearance of new successful phenotypes. Other examples can be found, especially among those same insects.
“Anthropogenic” changes to the climate, and ecosystem relationships in general, are simply one more source of such change that already has many sources. Adaptation to such changes is best considered independently from the source, especially since such “scientific” ability to analyze and attribute changes to sources is still at a very primitive level.
Attribution, at our current level of scientific understanding, is little more than looking for scapegoats, with little or no capability to do anything useful in response to any specific risk.
Rigorous honesty is basic to the scientific method.
Is being somewhat less dishonest “moving in the right direction?”
Jim
There is no “scientific method”. Science, in all its forms, (be it data science, economics, operations research, experimental science, observational science, computer science) has tools or methods. Note the plural. They all aim at explaining and predicting, but depending on the field the tools can change. If you want to understand science Scientifically you must start by observing science. You start by observing what scientists actually do. If you cherry pick your observations ( say only look at sciences which use controlled experiments) and draw your conclusions from cherry picked data, then you ironically will use an unscientific method to explain the scientific method.
If you say ” I was taught this in college” then you use an unscientific method to explain the scientific method. That’s even funnier.
If you say “this philisopher said X” then that’s even more hilarious.
The English word “Science” comes from the Latin “Sciencia”, which meant ROUGHLY “knowledge”. Some (semantic) evolution since then…
Steven, you write “There is no “scientific method”.”
As usual, you misquote me. I did NOT write “scientific method”, I wrote “THE scientific method”. I google “The scientific method”, and get 93,500,000 hits. Everything from dictionary definitions, to learned scientific treatises, and everything in between
What can I say on a blog? “The Scientific Method” is a completely standard thing that everyone who has completed Physics101 knows all about. Yet, you Steven, can blatantly write as if there is no such thing as “The Scientific Method”. Sometimes I wonder what makes you write these sorts such things.
“There is NO “scientific method”.
When was it removed from politically correct speech?
AK | March 30, 2014 at 10:12 am |
My own anecdotal experience with failures of societies is that the causes are often cultural. Companies which grow too fast to manage properly, companies which have corrupt or incompetent management, countries where the cultural traditions are not ready for democracy. And so on. It’s the internal limits you have to watch out for. The biggest fear is not the biggest threat.
@Diag…
Good point. One of the biggest contributors to the loss of resilience in such societies appears to be the growth of an “entitled” leisure class in positions of authority. Such a class has strong incentives to go into denial over the possibility that the simple mechanisms they’ve memorized might not be sufficient in the future.
The progression, as I understand the theory (of which I’m pretty skeptical), is that as population density grows and innovation allows more productivity per land area at the cost of lower productivity per labor hour (i.e. labor intensive agriculture), a “managerial class” arises to administer the allocation of labor. When the labor-intensive methods involved begin to bump into limits, the “managerial class” is already too rigid in its lines of authority to consider radical changes. At this point, the culture moves into a somewhat static state, waiting for some disaster that causes the established “system” to fail. Then, catastrophic failure and/or revolution.
The biggest reason for my skepticism is that this so closely follows a pretty standard Marxist line, which in turn is probably nothing but a 19th century rationalization of socialist ideology. But the fact that scientists are using a Marxist model doesn’t necessarily mean their science isn’t right, at least as a first approximation. Look at Darwin.
“There is no ‘scientific method’…
…
If you say ‘I was taught this in college” then you use an unscientific method to explain the scientific method.'”
There is no scientific method, but there is an unscientific method?
I swear, sometimes Mosher just sits down and types sh*t just to start an argument, on which he can take both sides.
The scientific method is to have a Theory built on previous theories, and to have Evidence that it works. This is where AGW is. A lot of skeptics think you need proof, but actually, look it up, you only need Evidence in science. Proof is for mathematics.
“AK | March 30, 2014 at 10:12 am |
My own studies of the archaeology of past cultural “failures” suggests a common pattern (often explicitly mentioned in the research I read): a culture will continue to increase, in size, population density, or usually both, pushing the limits of its host ecosystem to support it.”
I think it’s due to crazy ideologies and pseudoscience.
Germany was growing power until Hitler came along. Russia was very impressive nation before Marxism.
One can’t say China failed as world superpower, due overpopulation.
Nor one say China high population would be factor in preventing it becoming major world power in the future.
It’s under population in the future is getting threat.
And to assume the US is overpopulation is just stupid- and is an example of destructive ideologies because lots people can imagine the US as being over populated.
Thank you, Professor Curry, for allowing a discussion of the “scientific method,” and thank you, Steven Mosher, for pinpointing its absence in the tale of AGW.
Jim D. you write “The scientific method is to have a Theory built on previous theories, and to have Evidence that it works.”
Not quite. The evidence MUST be measured. If you don’t have measured data, it may be some sort of science, but it is NOT using The Scientific Method.
Jim Cripwell, not this again. The temperature is measured. I don’t know what you think it is. Measurements are evidence. The evidence supports the theory.
GaryM
There are scientific methods.
so obviously you can pick a method that is not in that collection.
That would be an unscientific method.
The problem is that people have tried to model everything on the narrow fields of experimental physics. They have tried to argue that there is one and only one method and anything that diverges from that method is “unscientific”. Instead, if we observe what people in the sciences actually DO, we see behavior that ranges from the very narrow ( experimental physics) to the more broadly defined “observational sciences”
To be sure, we might argue that one science is more certain than another.
But the notion that there is a black and white line between “hard science” and “soft science” doesnt seem supported by the evidence. The evidence
the actual observations of what scientists do, suggests that a theory of science ( what is science) needs to be expanded beyond the narrow view.
for example, take operations research. We almost never do experiments.
why? well take a very famous example. building the B2. The b2 was built to prevail in a certain scenario. A deep strike through the fulda gap.
That was simulated but never tested. Our simulation tests took days. No way could we actually test or measure it.
“hey Russia, our science says we have a plane that can penetrate your defenses. can we please test that and make some measurements about how many planes you actually can shoot down. Our models say 3%. but unless we actually run an experiment we dont know” .
However broadly we define science and its methodS ( plural) there still remain other methods which are not in the class. like reading entrails.
like listening to god.
read harder
Hop on Mosher’s merry-go-round of denial of service.
There is no scientific method.
Science is what scientists do.
Scientists are those who do science.
Once he’s denied you any language, then he comes with the Mosher stories.
He’s a scientist.
jimmy, jimmy
If you want to persuade billions-and-billions of people that energy poverty is good for them, then you need convincing evidence. It ain’t happening.
Pause killing cause. Sorry, jimmy.
Jim D. You write “The temperature is measured.”
Correct. But climate sensitivity has NOT been measured. Until climate sensitivity has been measured, the hypothesis that adding CO2 to the atmosphere from recent levels causes global temperatures to rise to levels that are excessive, has not been tested by The Scientific Method.
Steven, you write “They have tried to argue that there is one and only one method and anything that diverges from that method is “unscientific”.”
Sorry, you are wrong. There is only one The Scientific Method, which has been followed by physicists ever since the time of Galileo and Newton. There are other scientific approaches which can be used to solve problems where The Scientific Method cannot be applied.
Whether you are prepared to admit it or not, the approach used by the warmists to test the hypothesis of global warming, or whatever you want to call it, is NOT The Scientific Method. Whether it matters that The Scientific Method has not been used is a different issue, which it would be nice to discuss. But this discussion cannot take place until we agree that, to date, the IPCC reports of WG1 are NOT based on The Scientific Method..
Steve Mosher,
Write better.
This Report is based on the IPCC’s fake physics which no professional scientist or engineer accepts because it purports ~40% increase of atmospheric warming compared with reality, biased to the lower atmosphere.
In thermodynamic terms it is a ‘perpetual motion machine of the second kind’, the lower atmosphere using its own internal energy to cause itself to heat and expand, imaginary ‘positive feedback’.
To create this fantasy, the models use 3x exaggerated GHE, a bad mistake by Hansen’s group in 1981, not picked up in peer review. The final part of the fraud is c. 25% extra cloud albedo in ‘hind casting’ to offset imaginary temperature rise.
In reality, there is no significant CO2-AGW. There was AGW from a different cause, but it saturated about 2000. The World is starting to cool as we enter the new Little Ice Age. Pray for cheap gas reserves to keep us warm for the next 50 years…..
The focus of the discussion in the report is “moving in the right direction”. This statement says nothing about research. It’s a report and NOT a scientific paper.
Jim Cripwell, the climate sensitivity is the theory. You don’t measure a theory, you measure the evidence for the theory. There is measured evidence that supports the theory, which is the temperature rise for a CO2 rise.
Ignorance is rampant.
Climate sensitivity is a metric. Like weight or height.
JIm D. you write “You don’t measure a theory, you measure the evidence for the theory”
“Curiouser and Curiouser”, said Alice (Lewis Carol). Apparently you can ESTIMATE climate sensitivity, but you cannot MEASURE climate sensitivity. And I was told that estimates and measurements are the same thing. I know this business that estimates are the same as measurements is a load of scientific garbage, but your logic is strange indeed.
Jim Cripwell, you can’t measure a theory. You can estimate its accuracy from measurements of other things like temperature and CO2 which can be measured.
Mosher is an english major and must have slept through science classes in primary school. Of course there is a scientific method.
DS says “Climate sensitivity is a metric. Like weight or height.”
No, it has a theoretical range of values, and experiments can help to refine it. Other areas of science have had similar uncertain ranges that are only improved by measurement.
No, climate sensitivity is a metric. It’s characteristic of something just like temperature and pressure and characteristics of something. Jim D is scientifically illiterate for sure and likely not above average in anything requiring knowledge and critical thinking judging by what he writes here.
Jim D. you write “No, it has a theoretical range of values, and experiments can help to refine it. Other areas of science have had similar uncertain ranges that are only improved by measurement”
Sorry to be blunt, but you are writing complete and utter scientific nonsense. We can measure global temperatures. We can measure how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere. In theory, we can measure how much temperature rises in response to a rise in Increased levels of CO2. So, in theory, we can measure climate sensitivity.
In practice, things are different. Since we don’t know all the causes of natural variability, it is impossible to know how much of any rise in global temperature was actually caused by the rise in CO2 levels. So, in practice, we cannot measure climate sensitivity. We cannot do controlled experiments on the earth’s atmosphere.
Sometimes I wonder why I bother.
Jim Cripwell, now you are just making statements that I agree with. In theory we can measure climate sensitivity, but so far, and until that point, it is just a theory, which is what I have been saying all along. First you have the theory, then you have the measurement, which can be evidence for or against the theory, but can’t refine it beyond a certain point because it is not a controlled experiment. This is how science works. You don’t always have controlled experiments, but that doesn’t stop you having theories that can be tested against those observations that we have already.
Jim D’s scientific illiteracy is now in evidence by his conflation of hypothesis with theory. A series of science teachers in Jim’s primary education failed him. Or rather they failed to give him failing grades…
DS, it is a lot more than a hypothesis because paleoclimate evidence plus recent observations have already supported the effect of changing CO2 on the surface temperature. Current sensitivity is 2 C per doubling just from recent temperatures, 4 C or more from the Ice Age to Holocene rise, etc. It is also a theory because it follows from the same physics that explains why the surface temperature is 33 C warmer than without GHGs. If you want to deny all the evidence, sure you can. It’s a free world.
David Springer says:
“Climate sensitivity is a metric. Like weight or height.”
This is only true if you don’t care that all the other forcings and feedbacks might have changed while CO2 doubled from 280 ppm to 560 ppm.
If you require that only CO2 double and everything else stay the same – you cannot measure climate sensitivity.
So I think it is more like momentum, which is computed from measurements of mass and velocity (p = mv). But with people fighting over the accuracy of your measurements of mass and velocity.
The other way I would describe the difference between a hypothesis and theory is that a hypothesis is just tested to be true or false. A theory is tested to refine it. AGW is in the theory stage, because all we are doing now is refining the sensitivity that scientists are already very sure is between 1.5 and 4.5 C per doubling.
@Mosher. I’ll Play. :-)
In English the term “God” is both a generic and specific term. It generically refers to an ultimate reality/creator AND specifically refers to the Christian version thereof (vs. Allah, Buddah, Shiva, etc.).
We have The Scientific Method – generic and specific. Sure, we can say that all gods are “God” – and that any definition of God will not contain all gods. AND, you (Mosher) do not believe that all gods are equal – that all methods of science are equally valid (as evidenced by your many arguments). Hence, this idea of “Validity” (by any other name smells just as sweet) is the real (generic) god of science – at whose alter you worship. (Me too.)
Sure, the comment that provoked your response was simplistic, hence your response (with some spicy postmodernism built in). AND – the question I would ask is not “What is THE scientific method” but “what are the methods of science which can be validated, with increasing integration and precision?”
And, with this question – some methods are better (more valid, more righter – more scientific-ier) than others, yes? And to attempt to generalize a principle into “THE Scientific Method” is a useful hueristic around issues threatening to disrupt the political/economic/environmental system in which we swim …
Come on Steve – throw The Scientific Method (specific) a bone!
Steven Mosher
Huh?
(You’re probably right if you add “involved in the AR5 WG2 report.”)
But, hey, Mosh, scientists outside the climate field have been following the “scientific method” for centuries.
And it works (check Feynman for specifics).
Max
Jim D
Your point is:
AGW is a “theory”, while the “CAGW” premise of IPCC rests upon a “hypothesis”.
Let’s drill down a bit on that statement.
The mechanism for greenhouse warming has been established and quantified experimentally in the laboratory.
Whether or not this mechanism works in our climate system to result in a perceptible warming of our climate has neither been validated (nor falsified) by empirical scientific evidence (Feynman), so AGW is still an untested hypothesis.
This is the position of the rational (or scientific) skeptic (such as Jim Cripwell), who insists that a hypothesis be verified following the scientific method.
Mosh skirts the issue by simply proclaiming that there is no scientific method.
CAGW as outlined specifically by IPCC in its AR4 and AR5 reports, including this latest version, is even more speculative.
You can make statements until you are blue in the face, Jim.
It will not change things.
The only thing, which could move AGW from the “hypothesis” stage to the “theory” stage is to be validated by empirical scientific evidence or to successfully withstand scientific attempts to falsify it, following the scientific method.
And CAGW (the basis for the new AR5 report) is even further from being validated
You’re not there yet, Jim.
But keep trying.
Max
Question: Do rocks on the surface of a distant planet obey the law of gravity?
Literal Answer: We don’t know for sure.
Common Sense Answer: Yes.
Climate skeptics refuse to budge from the unproductive literal answer. As if there is no knowledge favoring a particular answer.
manacker, while I would agree that CAGW is not a scientific term and can’t be classified as even a hypothesis, because who knows what the “C” is defined as, but AGW is a theory. The reason is it that part of it gives a predicted range of sensitivity, and measurements are ongoing to test it and refine this sensitivity in the real world. Note that ECS is only part of AGW, and AGW is only part of the climate-forcing mechanism that is a broader theory, including volcanoes, natural variability, the energy balance, ocean heat content, Milankovitch theory, etc. Skeptics want to parse out manmade CO2 as something special, but it is hard to untie it from the underlying physics of climate forcing that has been going on throughout paleoclimate.
Jim D
Agree that CAGW is more of a “premise” than a “theory”, but let’s use the commonly accepted definition: i.e. the definition as specifically outlined by IPCC in its AR4 and AR5 reports.
One could just as easily refer to AGW as a “hypothesis”.
This is all well and good, Jim, but AGW (i.e. whether or not added GH gases from human emissions, principally CO2, are causing a perceptible change in our planet’s climate) is still an open question, until it is validated (or falsified) by empirical physical data following the scientific method.
Is the current pause despite unabated human GHG emissions and concentrations reaching record levels a “falsification” of AGW?
If the pause continues for another one or two decades despite continued unabated human GHG emissions would that constitute a “falsification” of AGW?
Or could the pause be attributed to natural factors, which have overpowered the AGW warming effect?
And, if so, how do we know that these same natural factors have not been the principal cause for past warming?
These are all open questions, and until they are answered, we have to conclude that AGW is still simply a hypothesis, which is supported by laboratory data validating a mechanism, but which has not yet been corroborated by empirical testing.
But I think we are debating semantics here, and that is always a slippery slope.
Max
lolwot
No problem with gravity on other planets. Unlike the case for CAGW, we have pretty good empirical evidence of this.
Max
I think Mosher meant to say “there is no single scientific method”
Any student of Einstein knows that his theories were firstly and lately verified not by performing controlled experiments, but by observation of real events in real time.
http://edn.com/electronics-blogs/edn-moments/4415308/Einstein-s-theory-of-general-relativity-is-tested–May-29–1919
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_Cross
I say there is more than one way to skin a cat, Rutherford calls it stamp collecting, but in the end there is more to science than misinterpreting Feynman and Popper.
Love it, bob; the upside down varve is a rare and valuable misprint.
==========
Bob, you write “Any student of Einstein knows that his theories were firstly and lately verified not by performing controlled experiments, but by observation of real events in real time.”
Of course. Data does not have to come from controlled experiments. However, a sine qua non for such data to be of use, is that it must not be contaminated; the observed data must be the equivalent of a controlled experiment. In the case of Einstein, and the position of stars behind the sun, these conditions were met.
In the case of observed data with respect to global temperatures, we simply do not know all the causes of natural variations, their magnitude, and their time constants. Until we have much more information of natural causes, we cannot use observed data to give us any sort of an idea what the value of climate sensitivity is. All such data can do is give some sort of estimate of a maximum value.
So Jim,
I find your comment a fine example of backpedaling.
The gist of it, as I understand it, is that if the data were pure enough and we knew all the things that affect the global temperature, then we could measure climate sensitivity.
Which is 180 degrees different from what you have been spouting all along.
busted again.
Bob, you write “Which is 180 degrees different from what you have been spouting all along.”
If I have done so, it was not done deliberately. Whether I have been at fault, I don’t know, but if I was, what I have now written is what I believe to be true. So far as I am concerned, I have always been consistent. However, I know from experience that when writing on blogs, it is exceedingly difficult to write something that someone cannot misinterpret what is written. This happens to me all the time. I don’t necessarily write things that are pedantically correct, and people read into what is written what I didn’t intend.
So might we agree that AGW is a scientific theory that makes a prediction about climate sensitivity, that can in theory be quantified fully, but in practice, we can only use existing measurements as evidence for it, and to refine its limits, which currently stand between 1.5 and 4.5 C per doubling.
Jim D. you write “So might we agree that AGW is a scientific theory that makes a prediction about climate sensitivity, that can in theory be quantified fully, but in practice, we can only use existing measurements as evidence for it, and to refine its limits, which currently stand between 1.5 and 4.5 C per doubling.”
We agree no such things. We agree AGW is a theory, but CAGW is a hypothesis. In theory, the value of climate sensitivity can be measured; with current technology, this is not possible. However. my position is that we cannot use existing observations to estimate the value of climate sensitivity, we can only estimate it’s likely maximum. There are currently guesses at to what it’s actual value is, and these range fro indistinguishable from zero to several degrees Celsius.
Jim Cripwell, CAGW is not even a hypothesis, because that requires a test that gives a yes/no answer. In this case the question would be: Is the global warming catastrophic? Not so easy to answer with yes or no, so not a hypothesis. In the case of AGW, the question is not whether added CO2 is causing any warming (answered yes by anyone with any credibility), but exactly how much, so that puts it past the hypothesis to the theory stage.
Jim D. you write “Is the global warming catastrophic?”
This is the problem. We agree that AGW is a theory. Now we need a term that both sides can agree on, which means that as you add more CO2 to the atmosphere, global temperatures rise but the rise is not going to cause any problems. I believe CAGW is suitable; clearly you don’t. What term do you suggest?
Jim Cripwell, the word “catastrophic” is not quantifiable. To have a yes/no answer you have to define it better. Is it only catastrophic if sea levels are rising ten meters in the 22nd century, or if global average temperatures rise 4 C by 2100? How about regional effects? Can it be catastrophic in one populated region to count, or does it have to affect everyone? These are the questions I have with CAGW. It has no specific meaning, making it not even a hypothesis.
Jim D. You write “Jim Cripwell, the word “catastrophic” is not quantifiable.”
Fair enough, but you have not answered my question. If you are not in agreement with the use of the word catastrophic, what word do you suggest? We need to distinguish between small changes in temperature caused by AGW, which we agree occur, and large changes in temperature, where we disagree. You don’t like CAGW. What do you like?
FAQ 3.1: How will climate change affect the frequency and severity of floods and droughts?
[to be placed in Section 3.4.9]
Climate change is projected to alter the frequency and magnitude of both floods and droughts. The impact is
expected to vary from region to region. . . . .
(Skip to the last words)
(limited evidence, high agreement).
(limited evidence, high agreement).
That was their words, I did not make that up.
That summarizes the whole IPCC AR5 WG2 Report really well.
Jim Cripwell, AGW covers the sensitivity range of 1.5-4.5 C per doubling. We don’t need anything else. At one end it is less of a problem than at the other, and the middle (3 C per doubling) gives some idea of what CO2 levels to avoid. The more relevant number for catastrophism is the warming amount or sea-level rise. Many would agree that 4 C is far worse than 2 C, but again it is subjective and regional, and depends also on precipitation and is a gradual scale that probably is even harmful to some at 1 C. Greenland could be doomed to melt already, since it probably wasn’t glaciated last time we were much above 400 ppm, but that would add its 7 meters over more than a century. Does that mean it is already catastrophic at 400 ppm? I don’t know where to draw the line.
Jim D. you write “Jim Cripwell, AGW covers the sensitivity range of 1.5-4.5 C per doubling. We don’t need anything else.”
No wonder we don’t agree. So far as I am concerned, AGW means a climate sensitivity of less than 0.1 C. So no wonder we are having a dialogue of the deaf. I will continue to use CAGW to mean any value of climate sensitivity that is greater than 0.5 C.
Jim Cripwell, the difference is that AGW is supported by theory and evidence comes from proxies such as paleo data, models, correlations, all of which you have to throw away as coincidences for your sensitivity. Yours can’t explain paleo temperature, the rise since the last Ice Age, or the current rise, so the data all goes against it, and it has no explaining power or evidential support, making it a non-theory. A prediction over multiple decades from any starting date since 1960 with your non-theory would have underestimated the actual rise by a lot, mainly because the dominant changing factor since then has been CO2. Here for example is one of those pesky correlations you can’t explain with your theory, while people with more objective minds might say these things look related to a first approximation, and we know one of them is controlled by emissions, but the other seems to be varying with it.
http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~emamajek/images/co2.jpg
There are all sorts of correlations. Warmist oversimplification is a psychopathology.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Wong2006figure7.gif.html?sort=3&o=209
Jim D. I would love to debate your precious ideas, but this is not the time. I suggest you believe what you want to believe, and I will do likewise. In the end, Mother Nature will decide who is correct.
Jim Cripwell, OK, but bear in mind that it is the theory that fits most facts that wins if you want to compare two mutually exclusive theories with each other.
Jim D:
Does this ‘debate’ start to seem like a pointless language-game yet?
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
Jim D. you write “Jim Cripwell, OK, but bear in mind that it is the theory that fits most facts that wins if you want to compare two mutually exclusive theories with each other.”
Not quite. It is the hypothesis which fits the hard, measured, preferably replicated, experimental data that wins.
Jim Cripwell and Jim D
I’ve been following with interest your recent debate regarding whether or not “CAGW” or “AGW” is a theory, a hypothesis or a premise.
IPCC has defined a scenario in its AR4 and AR5 reports. This scenario is pretty specific on AGW impacts and effects, as we see from the AR5 WG2 report just released. The premise is that all sorts of bad things are likely to happen to humanity and our environment as a result of future anthropogenic greenhouse warming (with very few good things resulting).
This premise is commonly referred to as “potentially Catastrophic Anthropogenic Greenhouse Warming” or “CAGW” for short, although IPCC itself avoids the use of the word “catastrophic”.
This premise is based upon the hypothesis that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would result in global warming of between 1.5C and 4.5C when the greenhouse effect has reached “equilibrium”.
This hypothesis is based on predictions made by model simulations; more recent studies have been made, which are at least partially based on actual observations; these show that the new range is likely to be on the low end of the IPCC range, between 1.2 and 2.0C.
2C warming has been arbitrarily set as a “limit” which should be held (mostly by politicians, rather than climatologists). However, it is not real clear whether or not this means 2C above today’s temperature or 2C above an arbitrarily selected fictive temperature which supposedly occurred in the year 1750, ostensibly prior to the start of the Industrial Revolution. This latter definition does not make much sense, since we are arguably no worse off today than we were 263 years ago, as far as climate is concerned (the “global warming” over that period is guess-timated to have been around 1C).
A study by Richard Tol suggests that the past warming has been beneficial. It also suggests that the next 2C warming above today’s temperature is likely to be beneficial for humanity on balance, and additional warming only becomes a net problem somewhere around 2.5C above today’s temperature.
A major portion of the net problem is related to higher energy costs, so that if these can be kept low, the temperature limit would actually be higher.
So we now see what the “limits” for the “CAGW” premise actually are.
Let’s stick with Tol’s estimate that up to 2C above today’s temperature, warming is beneficial and after 2.5C it becomes detrimental.
We then have the point at which added warming begins to be detrimental on balance at 2.5C above today’s temperature.
Using a business as usual scenario with no “climate initiatives”, it is likely that we could reach atmospheric CO2 concentrations of no more than 700 ppmv by 2100. This could be reduced by around 100 ppmv by aggressively pursuing a few major “no regrets” decarbonization initiatives:
– Replace most future coal-fired plants with nuclear or (where low-cost natural gas is abundant) with natural gas
– Replace conventional automobiles with hybrids
– Replace Diesel-fueled heavy transport with natural gas
– Implement energy savings investments: building insulation, waste recycling, etc.
– Install solar panels or wind turbines for local or domestic use where this makes economic sense.
With these few concerted “no regrets” actions, cumulative worldwide CO2 emissions to year 2100 could be cut by 1,600 billion tons (out of 4,800 billion tons) and atmospheric CO2 could be reduced by around 100 ppmv.
For the “equilibrium” warming to begin to become problematic, the 2xCO2 ECS would have to be:
Between:
2.5C * ln(2) / ln(700 / 395) = 3.0C
And:
2.5C * ln(2) / ln(600 / 395) = 4.1C
Or 3.55C±0.55C
This is well above the latest (partly) observation-based estimates.
IOW the “C” has been removed from the IPCC “CAGW” premise, without even getting into the discussion surrounding the “AGW” hypothesis, itself.
Rejoice!
Max
manacker, no, the 2 C is above pre-industrial conventionally. You are the only one using your definition which simply ignores pipeline heating, and therefore underplays the warming. Given that, and simple correlation that shows 1 C per 100 ppm (transient), 2 C is reached at 200 ppm added or 480 ppm total (more like 450 ppm if you use the log formula). 700 ppm gives you 4 C (using a mid-point 3 C sensitivity) and is a likely unmitigated value by 2100. Potentially there are enough fossil fuels for 1000-2000 ppm depending on how hard we want to try to find them, mine or tap them and separate them. The 4 C (700 ppm) target, which is not a good target at all, already requires leaving more than half the known remaining fossil fuels in the ground. To keep it at 2 C requires more like just using 25% of them. I personally don’t think 450 ppm is possible, but climate stabilization at 500 ppm is, which is just over 2 C.
Jim D
The “convention” to which you refer is purely hypothetical and arbitrary.
The Tol study is a but more practical than that.
It states that the next 2C warming above today’s temperature is likely to be beneficial, and that detrimental results begin around 2.5C above today’s temperature.
So it is silly to arbitrarily set a hypothetical limit at 1C colder than today. Makes no sense whatsoever, Jim. (That would simply add another 1C to Tol’s temperature limits.)
The rest of your comment is pure conjecture. 700 ppmv is a reasonable “upper limit” for BaU – and this could be reduced by around 100 ppmv by the no-regrets actions I listed.
That’s it, Jim.
“Leaving fossil fuels in the ground” is pie in the sky thinking unless a new economically competitive and environmentally acceptable alternate for fossil fuels is discovered and developed. This could happen of course – and, in fact is very likely to have happened before the year 2100 as a result of human ingenuity reacting to economic pressures.
So you can consider 700 ppmv an upper limit for BaU, 600 ppmv a reasonable estimate if “no regrets” initiatives are pursued and some even lower value if a new alternate energy source is developed
And these levels are unlikely to result in temperatures that could be detrimental to humanity on balance, as I have shown you.
As I said before, Jim, rejoice! The end is NOT near!
Max
Jim D
A question:
Where did you pull that 1C warming per 100 ppmv added CO2 out of?
Aren’t you aware that the relationship is logarithmic?
[Se my comment for the correct calculation method.]
Max
manacker, 1 C per 100 ppm comes from the best fit to the Keeling CO2 data with global temperature, so it is observation-based. Yes, it is really logarithmic, but the linear fit works well enough up through 700 ppm, which is the relevant range for policy. Reaching 700 ppm by 2100 would be pretty bad if we are still emitting at high rates and on the way to 1000 ppm in that next century. You want to bet the world on Tol. Did Tol consider that interior continents are warming twice as fast as the global average, and that is where a lot of crops are grown? If he overlooked that, would he have made a fatal error for the part of humanity that believed him? Did he consider the recent studies where even with more rainfall, soils could still dry out with more heat? Things to consider and ask Tol about. You may find that he just invokes the uncertainty monster, which won’t be very reassuring, as it never is.
Jim D
I am fairly sure that you are astute enough to realize that what you just wrote is rubbish:
And this “simple correlation” is valid over the next 300 ppmv CO2 added.
This means the 2xCO2 transient climate response would be:
3 * 1C * ln(2) / ln (700 / 400) = 3.7C
Ouch!
That’s twice the already exaggerated value used by IPCC!
Get serious, Jim. Your “simple correlation” is just a bit too “simple” for me..
Max
Max,
To the extent that the term “CAGW” could be used to describe the IPCC’s view of the likely outcome of human GHG emissions it is not a “premise” it is a conclusion.
Pure advocacy. Not science.
Right, not all of it sounds better.
Right. And wtf does “The report itself is scientifically bold.” mean?
It reads like Kurt Vonnegut.
A warmer world sustains more total life and more diversity of life. A warmer world is net beneficial, a cooler one net detrimental. Man seems unable to change climate at a catastrophic rate, but Nature can.
Ready for AR6, no attribution necessary, either to warming or to me.
================
There are two temperatures at which photosynthesis stops, so we need to keep the temperature between those two extremes.
As you say, there is more life and diversity in the Sahara desert.
Bob Droege
Yeah.
Especially now that it appears to be greening as a result of higher CO2 levels
Max
bob droege
During the Ordovician Period, CO2 was at around 4,200 ppmv and temperature was around 10ºC warmer than today. Land plants evolved and flourished during this period.
At the end of the Ordovician there was the “snowball Earth” period, when temperatures dropped to several degrees colder than today, resulting in mass extinctions, despite an atmospheric CO2 level of over 4,000 ppmv (or 10x that of today).
The Carboniferous was another period of rapid plant growth, with modern plants evolving and thriving. The average temperature was around 8ºC warmer than today and CO2 was at around 2,500 ppmv.
So it looks like plants like high CO2 and do well at temperatures well above what could ever be reached by AGW.
Max
Max,
You don’t know statistics and you know nothing of the evolution of plants.
There were only primitive plants during the ordovician period, such as algae as well as fungi. There is no fossil evidence for land plants during the period, what do you say about absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
What you and I would recognize today as plants didn’t evolve until the Cretaceous period and didn’t become dominant until even later.
It is the Sahel that is greening, the Sahara, not so much.
No matter the level of CO2, photosynthesis slow down above 35 C and stops completely by 45 C.
I look forward to the ‘analytical realism‘. But I am very skeptical, after 25 years of extremist alarmism, advocacy, and ridiculous policy proposals . These were stridently advocated by scientists who know next to nothing about policy analysis – such as carbon pricing, renewable energy and nuclear energy. It’ll be very interesting to see if they keep pushing the irrational policies they’ve been advocating for the past 25 years.
Worth bearing in mind that few people will actually read the report, most will read/hear about it from journos, some of whom will cherry-pick to turn it into the report they wish would have been written.
Agree.
@Springer put a link to google search “un climate report” above. When I clicked on it, The top 15 results were all variations on “We’re screwed!”
The public debate will soar above this report – cherry picking its alarmist aspects and ignoring the rest. AND, the scientists and scientific among us that take such things seriously will change the underlying “consensus” more towards Bjorn Lomborg.
That is a good thing.
Sounds like more of the Left ideologues pushing their agenda to implement what they reckon is best for all of us. – carbon taxes, more taxes, more government, Global governance, global police and global armies to enforce the will of the Left. What’s changed?
Left-wing “intellectuals” seem to be enthralled with the idea that the UN, as a centralized government, would have the power to implement world peace, cure hunger, and prevent war; among other noble goals. But in their blinkered focus on the “good” that could be achieved, they blissfully ignore the likes of Putin, Mao Tse-tung, Hitler, and the long list of brutal dictators that have murdered millions and enslaved billions. This blindness begs explanation. How can supposedly smart people turn a blind eye to this danger?
@ jim2
“This blindness begs explanation. How can supposedly smart people turn a blind eye to this danger?”
They are NOT turning a blind eye to the ‘danger’. For them it is a ‘feature’. The ‘smart people’ who invented CAGW and who are pushing all the ‘solutions’ regularly advocated and defended by their acolytes here on Climate Etc. are in fact COUNTING on it.
AR6? Kim. Hope that it never happens. The IPCC has exceeded its usefulness and has little to add in a field that seems to be losing credibility by the hour amongst policy makers and the citizenship in general.
The true believers are still throwing themselves, and urging the guilty masses, under the juggernaut. The frenzy is awesome.
=================
I wonder if the contrast between the moderation of the actual report, and the alarmism of the spin will be enough to be widely instructive. Like a failing clutch, this one is smoking.
Nature, toddling tortoisely out of bed, watches Narrative wearing out its boots.
==================
The science mocks them so they lather on the fear and guilt. Painting a lily, gone to seed.
=========
I look forward to seeing the evidence for that. I am skeptical. Richard Tol’s paper suggests to me that global warming would be net beneficial to about +3C above preindustrial. http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/climate_change.pdf . Furthermore, if we could get over our anti nuke fears and allow the world to have cheap energy, warming would be net benefical to even higher temperatures, because the domiating negative is the projected high cost of energy – with the projections based on the assumptions of running out of fossil fuels and implementing renewabl energy and similarly high cost energy sources.
Well done Bjorn Lomborg!
So Peter, in this statement we see the UN broadening it’s “preview” so to speak. It sees this as a chance to insert itself into issues other than climate change. The UN is a threat to independence and freedom.
I agree. That is their main agenda. Always has been.
Preview should have been purview.
Wrong, j2; they’re gonna enforce the ideal, average temperature for all. Climate justice, dontcha know.
==============
@Lang +1
kim
You’ve hit the nail on the head!
What we need is globally enforced climate equality!
Max
The bottom line here is that neither “climate change” nor any other ills of individual countries are the business of the inept, politically motivated UN. Each country must decide what it wants to do in the way a adaptation. As long as people are giving any credibility of any kind to the UN, it will strive to build power. It is a political organization and that’s just what they do.
All climate is local, as is adaptation to its change.
=============
Consider your version of WG2 adopted in in this locality kim. Admirably concise, Lots to do but no excuse for arbitrary exercises of power from the centre to skew those decisions. Which is why yours is not the version at the centre. But even there humanity it seems reemerges.
lolwot
It hasn’t warned over a degree over the past `160 years. (Observed fact).
“But it will!” cries lolwot.
Huh?
Are we to believe that lolwot has a magic 8-ball that can foresee how our planet’s climate is going to change?
Hardly.
Max
It would be good if Dr. Curry banned the use of the 1984ish term, “Climate Change.” They obviously mean global warming. Climate Change could just as easily produce more rain in Africa, not less. Idjits.
I usually use the term AGW to refer to what the IPCC has historically called ‘climate change’
There’s insight into the rhetorical confusion right here in River City.
===========
“Climate Change could just as easily produce more rain in Africa, not less. Idjits.” – Jim
That is the point Jim.
It will produce more and less. Wanna bet?
============
Michael – the bigger point is that climate is changing and always has. The meaning of the term is utterly trivial.
The world hasn’t in the past suddenly shot up multiple degrees in a matter of centuries. So things are certainly very different this time.
It hasn’t shot up multiple degrees now either so at least for nonce things are indeed still the same.
lolwot has Marcott dross weighing smoothly around his neck.
===============
“The world hasn’t in the past suddenly shot up multiple degrees in a matter of centuries. So things are certainly very different this time.”
Uhmm – the world still hasn’t “shot up” multiple degrees.
Or even 1 degree?
But it will Al Bedo, unless we cut emissions now.
Even lukewarmers understand it will warm up that much if we don’t.
No lukewarmers don’t understand that and the supporting observations for AGW are growing weaker not stronger. Moreover the evidence that warming is beneficial, no matter what’s causing it, is beneficial not detrimental.
Both “Climate Change” and “Global Warming” are 1984ish. It’s anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
Jim2
Africa warm period caused more rain and resulted in lakes and rivers in the current Sahara desert. One has to look at the rock paintings of hippo and alligators plus the grass lands to see what a warmer world brought Africa at one temperature above the present. Have not seen an analysis of the future movement of rain belts and greening of the Siberia and far north.
Scott
AGW may be the most 1984-ish of the trio. Lol.
lolwot has described what happens when modern recordings have been grafted onto paleo reconstructions, we get hockey stick blades because the shaft has been drawn up to conceal natural variability and this type of “science” is most certainly unprecedented!
(this ended up in the wrong spot)
l
olwot
It hasn’t warned over a degree over the past `160 years. (Observed fact).
“But it will!” cries lolwot.
Huh?
Are we to believe that lolwot has a magic 8-ball that can foresee how our planet’s climate is going to change?
Hardly.
Max
This is getting a bit tricky for those who want a separate pot of money to deal with climate change. If, as some say, existing weather-related disasters (hurricanes, droughts, etc) are due to CC then the existing relief efforts for such disasters are already dealing with CC.
So, to simplify, lets stop arguing CC-vs-weather and just continue dealing with the weather. Anyway, disasters will get worse mainly due to population changes, apart from the question of climate tipping points.
That’s true. A rich population will lose more in a disaster than a poor one. So, to mitigate losses …
There also needs to be discussion on human biases affecting discussion of costs, risk, and uncertainty. There are many biases that simply don’t apply to this scenario. There are also many benefits that will go un-noticed.
And, on another side there is more to adaptation than reducing risks and cost. Turning a change from cost to benefit can often be achieved with the most modest bit of ingenuity.
The IPCC: a parasite in search of a new host. Good luck! (NOT!!!)
The new emphasis on adaptation reflects the fact that since the AR4 came out the UN climate change apparatus (UNFCCC) has created the global adaptation fund, which now has to be funded by the developed countries. Follow the money.
See http://www.climatefundsupdate.org/listing/adaptation-fund. They have received about $200 million but they want $100 billion a year or so.
I don’t see where the US is funding this. Is there a pea underneath a thimble somewhere?
http://www.climatefundsupdate.org/listing/adaptation-fund
They are getting small money from CDM but little if any from the US as far as I know. Thus the WG2 SPM and report are part of the find raising effort.
Well if we switch focus to adaptation that funding would need to increase. Carbon polluters would have a responsibility on this matter. After all we are adapting to changes caused by carbon emissions, so it should be the emitters who pay.
“funding would need to increase”
You don’t say?
Andrew
@ lolwot | March 30, 2014 at 12:01 pm |
Well if we switch focus to adaptation that funding would need to increase.
*****
Bollocks. There is no reason to do this through the UN.
Actually, it’s a twofer: 1. Less money wasted arguing about attribution and blame for what has to be done anyway. 2. Fewer lost opportunities chasing quixotic mitigation hobgobble hallucinations.
============
“However, the AR4 WG2 Report is a low bar indeed, with the infamous Himalayan glacier error”
A single paragraph in a 3000 page report, the history of which is laid out here:
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2010/02/anatomy-of-ipccs-himalayan-glacier-year-2035-mess/
What high standards Curry sets. Can her own work withstand such penetrating scrutiny?
Hoo doo you wanna believe.
=======
A single paragraph?
That’s like a skeptic arguing Co2 isnt important because its a trace gas.
it is not the quantity of errror.
read harder. think harder.
Think harder yourself, Steven. Any expectation that a multi-volume, multi-author work produced on a deadline can be completely free of errors and blunders is entirely unrealistic. The fact that many of the opponents of AR4 focused on this single error showed just how weak the rest of their case was.
“That’s like a skeptic arguing Co2 isnt important because its a trace gas.”
Steven,
It isn’t like that at all…
Apples and Oranges.
It wasn’t a single paragraph. It was the work on which it was based was grey literature, the document wasn’t wasn’t peer reviewed, the statement used as a highlight, then when the error was pointed out; the people who found it were rubbished as not knowing what they were talking about. Now it has been found to be indefensible, it is dismissed as a single error, so ‘move on, nothing to see here”.
Unfortunately, there is a history of similar occurances and almost certainly, this document will have similar “single paragraphs”. What do those 500 authors do, if they do not audit their work?
The best road to adaptation is building a robust economy. That means having access to abundant, reliable, and affordable energy, and in today’s world, that means fossil fuels, plus nuclear if rationality ever prevails. While this report may be moving in the right direction, my bet is the enviro’s will double down on their dire predictions and will be aided greatly by the MSM in attempting to discredit what they don’t like about the report and selectively emphasizing what supports their agenda. Truth will eventually seep through, but not without a crescendo of screaming coming from the left.
“Truth will eventually seep through…”
_____
The only truth is what will actually happen in the future and be experienced in the daily lives of people around the world. Even science’s explanations of those events as they happen or the historian’s accounting are not “truth”, but already filtered through their narrow perceptions of that truth.
R. Gates
Not usually the case, but I agree with you on “truth”.
Max
Barnes
The definition of “truth” notwithstanding…
It appears to me that this whole AR5 WG2 exercise is a prelude for standing in line with outstretched hands waiting for the rich industrially developed nations to pay the poor ones some “adaptation” money (which will very quickly end up in a few private bank accounts on the Bahnhofstrasse or Cayman Islands).
But maybe I’m just a bit cynical.
Max
It’s a naughty world, full of “uncertainty”, where climate is nothing but change. Maybe we should pin down all roofs in tropical zones, reforest watersheds, not build nukes on unstable ground and refrain from dumping building rubble in the mouth of the Hudson. No argument about any of that sort of thing, and hang the expense!
Let’s do it for the humans, whether through charity, governments or that market thingummy that is suddenly so popular with the New Class and the Posh Left. Horse-sense, good will and hard industrial wealth can do wonders. (I’m told those heatwaves in pre-sewage Europe were unspeakable – though most people were too sick or dead to speak.)
But I am also wondering if management-speak, buzz-words, academese and fashionable babble aren’t more a part of the “problem space” than the “solution space”.
One, two.One, two. And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker snack,
Watch out! Beware the Slithy Toves!
+100 to @BTS for her collective works.
I have always wondered why people build in a flood plain, or on a cliff next to the sea. They know (or should know) their risky selection. What is even worse is the Federal Government selling them an insurance policy so when the inevitable happens, the said government picks up the tab for rebuilding -over and over again. If they are doing that now, what will they do to ‘adapt’?
Or near a river that could flood. Or in a country/state with earthquakes. Or within 1,000 miles of a supervolcano caldera, or anywhere near where hurricanes or typhoons occur.
Doesn’t that rule out everywhere?
Jeffrey, you write “I have always wondered why people build in a flood plain, or on a cliff next to the sea. ”
I suggest you look at just one example of many; the Red River (of the North) in Manitoba, Canada. The people who live there know the river is going to flood, and have spent the money to prevent damage when the floods occur. Towns south of Winnipeg all have ring dikes around them, and when the flood comes, the whole town is evacuated, except for a few emergency people who remain for security. In Winnipeg, itself, they have built the “big ditch” round the city, too bleed off excess water. A short distance downstream from Winnipeg is Lake Winnipegosis. Towns between Winnipeg and the lake are fully protected.
If it is a good place to live, with lovely farmland, where one can make money, people are going to live there.
Emerging land on deltas subject to powerful storms, and varying productivity at the edges of deserts are built in mechanisms for human tragedy; fertile floodplains another.
You figure out a better way to eat. Try not to blaspheme Cows, Peace Though They Milk.
================
“It also considers outcomes with much lower probabilities but much, much larger consequences.”
Dinosaurs are coming back and they will stomp on you!
Sunshine, after the spring thaw, the river floods into…wait for it….the flood plain. You can build on high ground, but you chose the flood plain because it is so beautiful, except when the basement is full of water. I have never actually counted, but I would say the building sites could be on 90% of the land – stay away from the marshes and tide lands – that’s where the dinosaurs roam.
Overall, the AR5 WG2 report will elicit a big collective yawn once the initial and perfunctory round of expert interviews with the usual suspects has died down. A great collective sigh of relief will be going up for those who thought they might be on tap for the economic costs of climate change. Now, if these early reports are to believed, those economic costs are going to be relatively small anyway, of likely to be solved through a higher sea wall or better flood control (even though, of course the models can’t accurately predict the future). It seems skeptics like the uncertainty monster as long as that monster’s claws are dull or only cut one way (i.e. toward lower impact from increasing GHG’s)
I wouldn’t trust the “early reports”. Remember this is denier talking point territory. How many times have they reported stuff falsely?
“Trial of the century” anyone?
Lolwot – how many of the AGW cult’s catastrophic predictions have come true? Seems to me your batting average is indistinguishable from 0, much like the effect of Co2 on climate.
Catastrophe is something that is danger of happening if CO2 is left to soar out of control Barnes.
For successful predictions look at the warming since the late 80s. Warming was expected and warming was what happened (and will continue to happen).
Skeptics like things that are supported by reliable data.
In order to accept that:
Humans are the cause of climate change, and
That climate change must be “net negative” and
That these negative potential results would be avoided if CO2 reduction measures were adopted……
Requires not just a suspension in the use of valid science, but of common sense.
R. Gates
Agree.
But I also think it will elicit some panhandling of poorer nations to get some “adaptation” money from the rich, industrially developed nations.
As long as this money really goes into an “adaptation” fund, to be used if and when it becomes apparent that “adaptation” to a potential climate challenge could really become imminent, that’s OK.
If it just goes into some ruling thug’s Swiss bank account, that’s not so good.
And I agree with what some others here have written: the best initial “adaptation” investment is to lift the inhabitants of these poor nations out of poverty by making sure they have access to reliable, low cost energy.
Max
Accepting economic/scientific/moral policies from libertarians/Ayn Randians is like accepting medical/scientific/moral policies from Seventh Day Adventists and Christian Scientists … everyone sees these policies are just plain dumb … except for the true believers!
The denialist true-believers will just plain hate the IPCC AR5 WG2 report … needless to say.
The world ponders!
And yet they don’t hide their data…………because science!
FOMD (a.k.a. John Sidles outside the pulpit) is the L. Ron Hubbuard of Climate Scientology.
Can I get a hallelujah, brothers and sisters?
I’d say Gore is the L. Ron of Climatology, but he hired his Dianetics out to Spencer Weart.
More like the “Ronald MacDonald” of the climate world.
I told you so, I told you so, na-na na-na na-na.
Now that the message is changing towards adaptation from mitigation, it is time to change the people making the message as they, in their seats of authority, would have to confront themselves. Not a very likely thing to happen, especially to back-track on their alarmism.
From futile mitigation to dollars and cents adaptation. What a concept. Political issues for politicians with which to grapple. Do you think there could be some movement on adaption strategies? The conservative stick in the mud foot dragging Republicans in Congress where better at gauging a nonsense idea than pie-in-the-sky Democrats wanting to shape human kind into their own image.
Back-tracking will take some time and effort. As it is, every forward looking township supervisor is still looking how to craft rules and regulations about where to place a 500 foot windmill, rather than rewriting rules and regulations where developers can build roads over sand dunes; setbacks and locating developments near wetlands and flood plains; berms and barriers to reduce traffic noise. All rather mundane. Hardly world shattering. Where to locate the library, buying books and computers, staffing with volunteers and a paid librarian. Walkable communities. These are the issues that effect every day life of all the township residents. These issues haven’t been placed on hold, rather, they have taken a back seat to the alarmists who begin the township meetings with wild-eyed latest calamity that has befallen someone, someplace in the world made worse and will become worse in the future because of our insensitivity to the plight of others, by driving our cars, turning on our lights, heating our homes.
To change the tenor and tone of the conversation. To change the conversation from mitigation to adaptation, we need to change from whom we are getting our information, change some of the facilitators who carry in their hearts, the drumbeat of mitigation. They need to go.
Societies have adapted since our emergence from the slime of the distant past. Adaptation is what we do. Focusing on adaptive strategies and at what cost really is the consensus.
To make them plastic enough to be moulded, the melting temperature of their knowledge must be lowered.
=======================
“I told you so, I told you so, na-na na-na na-na.”
_______
My suspicion is that it will turn out to be extreme irony if the release of the AR5 WG2 report turns out to be the bright spot in 2014 for AGW skeptics. There are strong signs it could be another interesting year where big climate stories make frequent headlines.
@RGates – there is a difference between a bright spot and a light at the end of the tunnel.
“Mark Lewis | March 31, 2014 at 1:55 pm |
@RGates – there is a difference between a bright spot and a light at the end of the tunnel.”
——–
Indeed, sometimes that light is a train’s headlight fast approaching.
What’s a big climate story? Oh yes, arguing weather.
Is that bright light a clunky little weather local, or a massive climate express. I think it might, I think it might.
===================
“IPCC AR5 WG2”
A meaningless string of characters.
Andrew
“…most of the summary for policymakers, is about resilience and adaptation to inevitable climate change.” That is just the problem. There is no inevitable anthropogenic climate change. Climate change, such as it is, is all natural and it makes sense to be resilient. But none of it is caused by carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. You should know enough science to understand that if seventeen years of rising carbon dioxide levels have not caused warming you can assume that carbon dioxide does not cause any warming, period. The Arrhenius theory of greenhouse warming that IPCC uses is proven just plain wrong by this observation. The correct greenhouse theory is the Miskolczi greenhouse theory (MGT) which explains why the addition of carbon dioxide to atmosphere does not cause warming. There is an even simpler way to convince yourself of this fact. The greenhouse effect that is said to cause warming is the enhanced greenhouse effect, that part of the greenhouse effect caused by the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Just take it from there and forget all other theories. If true, the enhanced greenhouse warming should follow the atmospheric carbon dioxide change. And that change is reflected accurately by the Keeling curve. Simply compare the shape of the Keeling curve with the shape of the global temperature curve and you will see that they absolutely do not correspond. There is one additional test you can perform, and that is checking when a warming starts and when it stops. There are several warming periods that have a well-defined beginning. Among them is the early twentieth century warming that starts in 1910. There is the Arctic warming that starts in 1900. And there is a step warming of 1999 that follows directly after the super El Nino of 1998. To start an enhanced greenhouse warming you must add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere at the exact same time when the warming begins. Checking the Keeling curve and its extension from Antarctica we find that no additional carbon dioxide entered the atmosphere either in 1910, or in 1999, or in the year 1900. This immediately rules out carbon dioxide as the cause of these three warming incidents. There is one more diagnostic you can use. Since greenhouse warming involves absorption of infrared radiation by greenhouse gas molecules the only way you can stop it is by removing all the greenhouse molecules from air. That is, remove the gas or somehow block the absorbing structure of its molecules. The early twentieth century warming stopped abruptly in 1940 and was followed by World War II cooling. The 1999 step warming raised global temperature by a third of a degree in only three years and then simply stopped. The Arctic warming stopped in 1940, went into a thirty year cooling mode, and then restarted in 1970. All of these maneuvers are totally impossible for greenhouse warming to perform if the amount of carbon dioxide in air does not abruptly change at those dates. And the Keeling curve assures us that they did not. Particularly difficult to explain is the on again — off again — on again pattern in mid-twentieth century. This is not rocket science, it is basic climate science that anyone can understand who is not a pseudo-scientist interested in saving his grants and his job. The greenhouse theory of anthropogenic warming is dead. It is time to dismantle the machinery built up to “study” it and start reversing the damage done by the irrational climate policies it has led to.
“And there is a step warming of 1999 that follows directly after the super El Nino of 1998.”
_______
The El Niño actually covered 1997 into 1998 (actually peaked in Dec. of 1997) and the spike in tropospheric temperatures occurred in 1998. The “step warming” notion is a myth.
The long term forcing form the continual rise in GH gases over the past several centuries is an external forcing that will exist as a background signal amongst the foreground noise of shorter-term natural variability. GH gases never sleep but ENSO and PDO’s come and go. If you want to measure AGW by the rather poor proxy of tropospheric temperatures, than use decadal averages at least as a somewhat honest proxy.
Religious dogma. Not science.
To the extent that basic thermodynamics is “dogma”…then yes. But more and more accurate measurements of a larger and larger part of the climate system would indicate that this “dogma” seems to hold up well to measurements.
“Measurements” that are actually model outputs based on obsolete models created by people who (understandably) didn’t understand how spatio-temporal chaos works, and promoted by people who (through culpable neglect) still don’t understand how spatio-temporal chaos works.
A. A. Would you consider what the overwhelming evidence of it all points to.
–that the mechanism of warming by greenhouse gases, as currently understood in light of quantum mechanics is not dead, but quite insignificant compared to so many natural and unknown factors.
Each model is its own hypothesis. You and I and everybody else reading this have paid to see how each institution handles uncertainties and yet we are only allowed to see the product and not the input.
At Least, I as an American taxpayer have not been able to ascertain the
input. Maybe those of us among the elite can.
President Eisenhower warned of the dovetail between the science world (not only climate) and the government. (in the United States) The science world seems to be quite homogenous. Lack of transparency has fostered universal skepticism. However, in the world of Climate Science, regardless of how many contortions are made, the proof will eventually be in the pudding. We will be burning witches for only so long.
Completely wrong AK. Our ability to actually measure directly large changes in major climate energy reservoirs has never been greater– far from perfect or complete, but better every month.
Nonsense! You’re only measuring one specific temperature at one specific place and time. Many times, but the model(s) used to extrapolate from those measurements to “major climate energy reservoirs” involve a host of unwarranted assumptions.
Arno Arrak: Simply compare the shape of the Keeling curve with the shape of the global temperature curve and you will see that they absolutely do not correspond. There is one additional test you can perform, and that is checking when a warming starts and when it stops.
That isn’t evidence for much of anything. Even simpler non-linear dissipative systems with continuous input produce oscillatory and other non-intuitive responses. For a short introduction, I recommend the final chapters of the book “Modern Thermodynamics” by Kondepudi and Prigogine.
R. Gates: Our ability to actually measure directly large changes in major climate energy reservoirs has never been greater
Yeh, well it’s still inadequate to the task of evaluating the potential CO2 impacts on heat transfers.
Of course AK, sensible heat or “temperature” is only one way among dozens of forms of energy in the climate system, and the thousands of measurements of it made daily at all levels of hydrosphere and atmosphere gives us a better and better estimate of the comings and goings of energy in the system. Fake-skeptics hate this fact.
Arno Arrak: Simply compare the shape of the Keeling curve with the shape of the global temperature curve and you will see that they absolutely do not correspond. There is one additional test you can perform, and that is checking when a warming starts and when it stops.
——
The really big thing that Arno fails to mention is that the flux of sensible and latent heat is more important to tropospheric temperatures than anything else on sub-decadal scales. The majority of energy in the atmosphere had to pass through the ocean first. Fake-skeptics hate this fact.
And every one of those “measurements” is of one value at one point in space at one point in time. Then you use a model that tells you how to extrapolate from those scattered measurements to the behavior of the entire continuum. A continuum that undergoes wildly non-linear variations on a centimeter scale.
The majority of the energy flows through the system are vertical. Incoming Solar SW, outgoing IR and reflected Solar SW. And that latter term depends on cloud conditions that vary (as linked above) on a centimeter scale.
Your claim that we can get “a better and better estimate of the comings and goings of energy in the system” is entirely dependent on your obsolete models, which are based on assumptions that have been demonstrated not to be warranted by recent research in “chaos theory”.
R. Gates: Fake-skeptics hate this fact.
One of these days could you quote a “fake skeptic” exactly so we have an idea how you know stuff like this?
“Our first step in adapting to climate change should be to accept that we aren’t going to mitigate it. We’re going to have to adapt. That doesn’t mean there might not be the odd mitigation-type policy, around the edges, that is cheap and feasible and worthwhile.”
The above it most certainly true. Perhaps a new consensus is developing?
Wasn’t it fun adapting to the temperature rise since the depths of the LIA, and of the Holocene? What was that? A coupla degrees?
Now, to increase the likelihood of further blessings, wouldn’t it be wise to figure out who to thank for this beneficence?
===============
Adaption from a governmental policy perspective means far more than worrying about temperature as an area’s population changes or is planned to change over decades.
Funny – when I first started studying this back at TAR-AR3 – the WG2 report and spokespeople basically said – “mitigation would be great, but the real work/opportunity is adaptation.” Perhaps the signal is just peeking more through the noise?
Both the final draft SPM taken to Tokyo and all draft chapters of WG2 have been available for some time. I have studied them closely ( but narrowly) for an essay I am writing on extinctions and biodiversity. It appears there has been a near complete climb down from AR4 4.4.11. It will be interesting to see what the final politically inspired SPM says, because endangered polar bears, penguins, and pikas have been potent fund raising symbols for many of the CAGW NGO advocates.
Warmer is greener,
And we are to thank;
By how much I dunno,
Don’t take to the bank.
===============
“If the leaked draft is reflected in the published report, it will constitute the formal moving on of the debate from the past, futile focus upon “mitigation” to a new debate about resilience and adaptation.”
In other words the debate is moving into the Lukewarmer position
On the science side, WG1, the debate is moving toward the Lukewarmer position.
On the Policy side the debate is moving toward the Lukewarmer position.
We’ll wait while you guys catch up to to the citizen scientists.
Time to reprise ‘lukewarming cooler’; is there enough chalk?
========================
“moving toward the Lukewarmer position”
Which also means it’s moving toward the Denier position.
Andrew
I’ll believe policy is shifting more to the middle when subsidies are discontinued for wind, solar, and biofuels.
Heh, moshe, remind Muller et fille that lukewarming implies reconsideration of attribution. Well, try, anyway.
===========
It’s really stoopid to assume that such positions have only one dimension.
No andrew.
The “D” position isnt even in space and time. You dont move toward being crazy, you are teleported there, as you well know
“The “D” position isnt even in space and time”
You sound erroneously certain of this. Better check your estimates again and make some adjustments.
Andrew
Kim.
been there . done that. moved on.
In the end the attribution argument is a side show. it does not matter.
1. we are not prepared for the weather of the past, much less the future
2. We have many good reasons other than climate change to move away
from fossil fuels. get started already.
Long ago Tom Fuller was bugging me to do the Lukewarmer policy book.
after a couple sentences I said all that needed saying.
you remember that scene in Mr Robinson?
“Plastics”
Its like that: prepare for weather, move toward fossil free.
That’s all the policy you need.
Mosh
Your 12.37
Agree with all your comments. Moving away from Fossil fuels will take time however as we need realistic, reliable and cheap alternatives .
tonyb
We don’t need to move away from fossil fuels to move toward other energy sources.
@ Steven Mosher | March 30, 2014 at 12:37 pm |
2. We have many good reasons other than climate change to move away
from fossil fuels. get started already.
******
And one good reason NOT to move away from fossil fuels right now is that we have abundant, cheap natural gas – not to mention gasoline for our cars and diesel for our trucks. (And power plants.) Until we have a source of CHEAP energy, we need to truck on as before.
“Its like that: prepare for weather, move toward fossil free.”
I am English and always prepare for weather. I would love us, the Western World, to move from using fossil fuels, but the Greens will not allow us to.
I am about to stop being lukewarm about being a lukewarmer and fully commit. Is there a secret handshake? Do we get one of those little plastic decoder rings? Maybe a beanie with a propeller on top? I hope there isn’t a blood oath. Anyway Steven, I knew the lukes would win out. I have been halfway with you, all the way.
@ Steven Mosher
“2. We have many good reasons other than climate change to move away
from fossil fuels. get started already.”
Actually, there are zero good reasons, including climate change, to move way from fossil fuels unless there is something to replace them with that can supply base load power 24/7/365 and fuel our transportation system, all with the economy and convenience of fossil fuels. Or better. Got any ideas?
Yes and if the pause lasts another 14 years the debate will move from teh lukewarmer position to the denier position. And then if starts warming up again the process will reverse. History repeats itself.
Global warming of Western academia is pure, unalloyed existentialism in that fear about it exists before our understanding of it.
+1
Key Risk
“Reduced biodiversity, fisheries abundance, and coastal protection by coral reefs due to heat-induced mass coral bleaching and mortality increases, e.g., in coastal boundary systems and sub-tropical gyres (high confidence)”
Adaptation Issues and Prospects
• Evidence of rapid evolution by corals is very limited. Some corals may migrate to higher latitudes, but entire reef systems are not expected to be able to track the high rates of temperature shifts.
• Human adaptation options are limited to reducing other stresses, mainly by enhancing water quality, and limiting pressures from tourism and
fishing. These options will delay human impacts of climate change by a
few decades, but their efficacy will be severely reduced as thermal stress
increases.
So much for adaptation.
A
socialist shillshill for a socialist agenda frantically searches for rationalizations for a failing meme.I tell you what will happen AK.
You deniers and your sympathizers will try to paint a rose colored tint to the IPCC report for a few months, the same approach you make to certain court cases.
But in reality the rest of the world simply will neither listen or share your delusion.
Humans are changing the climate. It’s unprecedented. Most people in the world aren’t as irresponsible as you to think you can just deny the science and it’ll go away.
Whistling past the graveyard. The rest of the world is already getting set to do nothing. All the alarmism in the world won’t accomplish your socialist goals. Which, I notice, you haven’t even bothered to deny.
I haven’t bothered denying your conspiracy ideation because it’s ludicrous
Key Risk
“Distributional shift in fish and invertebrate species, and decrease in fisheriesy catch potential at low latitudes, e.g., in equatorial upwelling and coastal boundary systems and sub-tropical gyres (high confidence) ”
• Evolutionary adaptation potential of fish and invertebrate species to
warming is limited as indicated by their ongoing latitudinal shifts.
• Human adaptation options: Large-scale translocation of industrial
fishing activities following the regional decreases (low latitude) vs.
possibly transient increases (high latitude) in catch potential; Flexible
management that can react to variability and change; Improvement of fish
resilience to thermal stress by reducing other stressors such as pollution
and eutrophication; Expansion of aquaculture ”
This sounds brilliant, except it kind of skips over the part about “distribution shift in fish and invertebrate species.” which sounds a lot more serious than just an issue for “fisheries”. Might want to focus on the upheavel a bit more!
So a few beaches that have gotten rich from tourism go broke. Others will take their place.
Not to minimize the risk, but IMO the risk to ecosystem stability directly from increased pCO2 is probably greater than that from “global warming”, or even ocean acidification. None of those risks justifies raising the price of energy.
Want to suggest options that don’t? Or are you too locked into your socialist agenda?
It is foolish AK to rely on adaptation when you don’t know what you will be adapting to. The changes in climate that are in the pipeline are already stacked. By the time people realize adaptation isn’t enough it’ll be too late. It’s like suddenly finding a BP blowout x10 and discovering that human technology just can’t fix the situation.
More religious dogma. Apocalyptic prophesy now.
A1 AK.
Go fer it.
A serf.
UPDATE: my BBC interview will be 7:30 a.m. UK time, 2:30 a.m. Atlanta time.
Can you tell us which radio/TV station?
BBC Radio 5Live
Key Risks
“Reduced crop productivity with strong adverse effects on regional, national, and household food security, also given increased pest and
disease damage and flood impacts on food system infrastructure (high confidence)”
Adaptation Issues and Prospects
• Technological adaptation responses (e.g., stress-tolerant crop varieties,
irrigation)
• Enhancing smallholder access to credit and other critical production
resources; and diversifying livelihoods
• Strengthening institutions at local, national, and to regional levels to
support agriculture and gender-oriented policy support
The lower the price of energy is kept, the better off will be women. And man. And beast. Also the lilies in the field.
=============
tell that to the people made homeless from hurricane katrina
lolwot: tell that to the people made homeless from hurricane katrina
You are not claiming, I hope, that the hurricane was caused by anthropogenic CO2. One of the major lessons of Hurricane Katrina was that you shouldn’t build a straight shipping channel from the ocean to a city that is below sea level. Other lessons: move the school buses out of low-lying terrain; install the backup generators and communications equipment where they won’t flood during a flood; build the levees to specs, instead of cutting corners; don’t deforest the areas between the sea and the city. Lots more lessons rank way high above reconsidering CO2.
Your post illustrates a common blind spot: most of what needs to be done needs to be done no matter what the role of CO2. Moving away from practical solutions to probable problems in an attempt to forestall CO2-induced global warming will have a huge human cost in the recurrence of these natural disasters. In response to warning about drought, Californians have built wind farms and solar farms while continuing to neglect the flood control/irrigation system that was built by previous generations. It was a mistake that other regions and populaces should not follow. With or without CO2 induced warming, there will be floods in California that overwhelm the levee system, unless Californians get busy and re-invest in it.
The markup of the report first says, Observed impacts of climate change are widespread and consequential. The final revision changes “consequential” to “substantial.” So, they actually game some thought to this sentence.
Aside from the obsequiousness of pretending we all know and agree on what ‘climate change’ is supposed to mean (especially in the context of a hiatus in global warming), the only observational evidence for this statement is an increase in the number of doomsday articles in the Huffington Post.
Key Risk
Increased risk of heat-related mortality (high confidence)
Adaptation Issues and prospects
• Heat health warning systems
• Urban planning to reduce heat islands;
• Improvement of the built environment; Development of sustainable cities
• New work practices to avoid heat stress among outdoor workers
Or…just don’t produce a stupidly hot world.
“Or…just don’t produce a stupidly hot world.”
lolwot, with the respect due to one human being from another. You’ve gone off the rails, son.
Andrew
no offense andrew but id have to question your intentions there
lolwot: Adaptation Issues and prospects
• Heat health warning systems
• Urban planning to reduce heat islands;
• Improvement of the built environment; Development of sustainable cities
• New work practices to avoid heat stress among outdoor workers
Those are good ideas with or without CO2 involvement in climate change. It would be a shame if they were neglected so that there could be more wind farms and solar farms. Time, attention, capital and labor are always in short supply; they should be invested in something other than reducing CO2 output.
“sustainable” is a chimera: almost everything except large dams and such will be rebuilt multiple times in the next 200 years, whether sustainably built or not.
Matthew
Looks like the kariba dam may need to be rebuilt or very substantially strengthened after a life span of only 60 years
https://www.newsday.co.zw/2014/03/21/newsday-editorial-dont-fiddle-kariba-dam-wall-crisis/
Tonyb
tonyb: Looks like the kariba dam may need to be rebuilt or very substantially strengthened after a life span of only 60 years
It’s probably not the only dam. I exempted dams because, on the whole, they’ll last longer than airline terminals, roads, office parks, and most everything else.
And given scarce resources, it would be better to strengthen kariba dam than build windfarms and solar farms nearby. Solar farms and wind farms probably need to be replaced more often than fossil fueled power plants.
Put the Kool-Aid down and back away lolwot…
“no offense andrew but id have to question your intentions there”
Just tryin to help. There are better things you can do with your time than to try and prevent the production of an imaginary world that’s “stupidly hot.”
Andrew
yes perhaps i could whine about some socialist conspiracy and from that decide that the world can’t be warming and we will be better off just adapting to the warming.
Actually, you could just start by considering that every prediction of global doom throughout history has been wrong. You think you are the first person who’s going to get it right?
Andrew
Whether or not the world is warming, the climate’s going to change. It always has before and there’s no reason to think it won’t again. Adaptation is the only solution.
OTOH, the process of finding scapegoats is certainly older than the bible, probably older than humanity.
NOT TRUE! Take a look at the prophesies in the “Gospels” of Mark, Matthew, and Luke (somewhat). While they were a bit allegorical, they make a pretty good description of the Year of the Four Emperors. In many ways, it was the “end of the world” those people knew. (But notice that life went on.)
“But notice that life went on.”
You are agreeing with me.
Andrew
Not really. My point is that a continually increasing requirement for adaptation is highly toxic to socialist ideology. Socialism depends on already knowing the technical solutions to problems. When society has to depend on people with technological skills, such people have other means to achieve social status than manipulating their social environment.
This is anathema to socialists. That’s why the apocalyptic prophesies are essentially true for them.
You have it so backwards Awful Andrew.
The point is that proving the consensus view of global warming as incorrect would amount to the biggest fail in scientific history.
If the view of AGW as being caused by CO2 is wrong, this would rank as the biggest bone-headed mistake that scientific consensus has ever produced .
Nothing would even come close, especially considering the analysis capability that we have at our disposal and that this is a very direct effect, and not something like the Big Bang theory, many times removed from everyday experience.
So this is not about predicting global doom, but about getting the science correct. And I really doubt that some two-bit internet hustler named “Bad Andrew”, who has never written more than two-lines in a comment, could overturn consensus science via a rhetorical rejoinder.
“If the view of AGW as being caused by CO2 is wrong, this would rank as the biggest bone-headed mistake that scientific consensus has ever produced.”
So be it. Let’s get it corrected and move on to something real.
Andrew
Not really. Most parts of the theory were in place before any real investigation of “chaos theory” was made. The fact that this very new field has implications to an
olderobsolete paradigm doesn’t make the older one a “bone-headed mistake”. Just wrong.You really don’t get it, do you?
This is something that involves more that just to “move on”.
If AGW is proven wrong, it involves changes in our understanding of scientific principles such as radiative forcing and thermodynamics.
This is likely not going to happen.
Like I said, if AGW theory as it stands is not real, an entire infrastructure of science goes down the drain with it.
You can not name a scientific theory that has crashed and burned like that.
The odds are against you, and your strawman of moving on will not hold true. We will be stuck investigating climate science for years and years and years,
This must really pain you to no end, Bad Andrew.
“If AGW is proven wrong, it involves changes in our understanding of scientific principles such as radiative forcing and thermodynamics.”
Close but no cigar. Most likely it involves changes in our understanding of hydrologic forcing and thermohaline dynamics.
AK,
Chaos theory is a perturbation on overall AGW forcing. Chaotic variations are small change compared to what CO2 is doing to the climate.
Try again.
“If AGW is proven wrong, it involves changes in our understanding of scientific principles such as radiative forcing and thermodynamics.”
Well that’s just absolute nonsense.
Climate is not just the product of radiative forcings and thermodynamics. The bulk of the projected catastrophic warming is claimed to be from feedbacks.
CAGW could be completely wrong just by getting one of the feedbacks wrong – clouds, water vapor, etc. Not to mention, you don’t know all there is to know about the current forcings, the thermodynamic impacts of the interactions of the various elements of the climate, and, well, probably a million other variables, some of which you don’t even know you don’t know.
On the other hand, as an example of why the CAGW consensus is really a blind leap of faith, your comment is right up there.
More religious dogma. And denial.
“Like I said, if AGW theory as it stands is not real, an entire infrastructure of science goes down the drain with it.”
Uh huh. Sure thing.
Andrew
WebHubTelescope: If the view of AGW as being caused by CO2 is wrong, this would rank as the biggest bone-headed mistake that scientific consensus has ever produced .
Yes it would. Indeed, some claim already that it has been. You can see some of the mistakes along the way that have already been made, like calculating “equilibria” for a system that never has an equilibrium, and then jumping to a conclusion about what the “equilibrium” calculations imply for the actual system. Then there was jumping to a conclusion of what the H2O feedbacks would be; and ignoring the non-radiative heat transport from the surface to the troposphere. How such a large number of presumably bright people could for so long have ignored the limits of knowledge is a mystery.
You seem to want to imply that, because it “would rank as the biggest bone-headed mistake that scientific consensus has ever produced”, it therefore can’t have been a mistake.
WebHubTelescope: If AGW is proven wrong, it involves changes in our understanding of scientific principles such as radiative forcing and thermodynamics.
That’s not true. People have jumped to conclusions based on a superficial understanding, before studying the energy flows in the climate system in sufficient detail. If AGW is proven wrong, all that will be lost will be a few exaggerations and simplifications.
“If AGW is proven wrong, it involves changes in our understanding of scientific principles such as radiative forcing and thermodynamics.”
Not at all! In your understanding, yes.
So GaryM is for continued funding of climate science to get these numbers correct. They won’t get corrected on their own, that’s for certain.
Own goal.
That’s what I mean. I look at the consensus science and see nothing egregiously wrong. Yet AK can see everything wrong but can’t articulate the problem except to say the solution is chaotic.
Sure. I am certain that the aggregate of scientific understanding hasn’t made a mistake. It’s never happened before on this scale.
Look at it this way, if the consensus science is proven wrong, everyone will be at Edim’s door asking for help to figure out how nature works. And then we will ask Marler if Edim has exaggerated a little bit.
That’s because these two guys understand everything and can overturn textbook science on their own. Their intuitive knowledge is just that special.
No, what I am saying is that the more recent study of “chaos theory” has demonstrated that many of the assumptions “consensus science” depends on are unwarranted.
As for “articulate the problem”, it’s been articulated here many times, often using quotes from peer-reviewed research. You dismis it because you don’t understand it.
Sure it has. Just look at Newtonian physics. Or pre-Plate-tectonic geology.
“So GaryM is for continued funding of climate science to get these numbers correct. They won’t get corrected on their own, that’s for certain.
Own goal.”
WHUT makes a ridiculous statement about climate science; I demonstrate that it’s ridiculous; and WHUT interprets that as my endorsing spending billions more on the ridiculousness.
And they wonder why no rational person wants to let them get anywhere near running the energy economy.
Who said anything about that? My premise was that a theory as significant as AGW has never been overturned in modern day science.
Gary the lawyer offered this advice:
I assumed this meant that he thought more work needed to be done, not that it was disproven. The key word he used was “could”.
So I took him up on it by suggesting that further research will be needed to nail these effects down.
That’s all there is to it, climate science as in every other endeavor scientific discipline keeps grinding away, no matter that certain people don’t like that fact.
So many ways ter be confused, be it math challenged
or be it myth challenged – you – know – who – you – are.
No, I understand it very well. Take the ENSO Southern Index Oscillations for example. There is evidence that this is not a chaotic waveform but aperiodic with a specific forcing function that generates what appears to be an unpredictable output:
http://contextearth.com/2014/02/21/soim-and-the-paul-trap/
Once this output can be predicted based on the chosen forcing, we can place limits on the size of its effect.
Please tell me that you understand how to solve the wave equation given a periodic (caused by tides, etc) modulation.
I do.
I made the point that this was in modern times. Newtonian physics was not proven wrong, but corrected for relativity,
The plate tectonics is an interesting situation. If that is the best you can do, that is pretty insignificant. A small gaggle of geologists were arguing over that, not the scores of people that depend on the weather and climate for making it through their lives.
I still want to know the massive fail resulting from bad scientific research in the last 100 years.
Can’t do it because science is built up from a foundation and if one piece is wrong, the entire structure could collapse. So that if AGW was wrong, then all the corrections that satellite engineers make to allow for the absorption of CO2 would be wrong. And the use of CO2 in smelting furnaces would need to be reconsidered. And CO2 infrared laser theory would need to be reworked from scratch. That is how deep the theory goes.
You can’t just broad-brush this away by claiming “religious dogma. And denial.” That is pretty darn funny, AK.
WebHubTelescope: There is evidence that this is not a chaotic waveform but aperiodic with a specific forcing function that generates what appears to be an unpredictable output:
http://contextearth.com/2014/02/21/soim-and-the-paul-trap/
That’s good work. I am glad that you posted the link again today. I think you should publish is so that we grandstanders can compare it to the work of Ghil and Dijkstra. The next questions are: (1) How will it compare with out of sample data of the future; (2) how will it change with more CO2 in the atmosphere. Also, is it compatible with equilibrium?
WHT stop it
“There is evidence that this is not a chaotic waveform but aperiodic with a specific forcing function that generates what appears to be an unpredictable output:”
ah, aperiodic means chaotic.
You can put a specific forcing function in by all means.
It is still a chaotic waveform around your new axis.
Your specific forcing function has a shape , that of the forcing function but it is still an unpredictable output:
ie it is chaotic.
What I am solving is a wave equation modulated by a periodic function.
This exhibits an aperiodic structure that repeats at some point but that period is long enough that it is not seen in the time interval of interest. Thus it is not a chaotic function.
So you are wrong #1.
Another type of function that is aperiodic is a bound random walk. This is also not chaotic.
So you wrong #2.
Prior to relativity is was believed that the relative velocities of inertial frames of reference were additive. Prior to quantum mechanics it was believed that energy was transmitted in waves. Prior to chaos theory there was no coherent theory of weather and climate. These are the three great ideas of 20th century physics.
I hold grave doubt that webby understands any of them.
I suppose I need to return my PhD thesis on the quantum effects used in electron diffraction.
The fact is that our current climate of 33C above that expected for a non-GHG atmosphere is predicted without invoking any chaos arguments.
Own goal on your part. You lose. Over and over, you lose.
Then webby might understand the revolution that ensued? No? Webby scores so many own goals I suspect him of secretly playing for the other team.
The 33 degrees is neither fixed nor steady – it changes chaotically as albedo changes in response to shifts in ocean and atmospheric circulation. Weather and climate are chaotic in the technical sense of complexity theory – this is not the dictionary definition.
The 33C warming is locked in by non-condensing CO2 which pulls along water vapor for the upward GHG ride.
As we pump more CO2 into the atmosphere the temperature continues to creep upward.
There is no alternative theory to this that has pulled any weight.
All the deniers should be happy with their consolation prizes of picking up scores of awards in the 2014 Bloggies.
That’s all they got.
The 33 degrees C is a combination of some 60 degrees C greenhouse gas warming and 30 degrees C convective cooling – predicated on a constant albedo.
You can see the latter with Steffan-Boltzmann.
Stefan-Boltzmann equation,
S (1-a)/4 = σT^4
S is the solar ‘constant’, a is albedo and T is temperature.
Plug in some numbers and you get T – 255 degrees K at the surface. Combine it with an estimate of the global average surface temperature and you get the canonical estimate of combined greenhouse gas warming and convective cooling.
Albedo varies from 0.5 on a snowball Earth to 0.25 on a blue-green planet. Thus 33 degrees is a misdirection – utterly useless in understanding the causes of real planetary temperature changes – the natural causes of which are most notably albedo feedbacks.
Even in modern times – albedo changes as feedbacks of ocean and atmospheric circulation changes seem to dominate changes in Earth’s energy budget – from the available satellite data.
This is just one more thing that webby denies and substitutes his own reality.
Lookie here.
The Aussie accepts that GHGs can contribute 60C of warming, modified by -27C of lapse rate feedback.
Yet he refuses to believe that a doubling of co2 will lead to further warming.
What grade does he get on the final exam? F.
Deliberate contrarianism.
WebHubTelescope: That’s because these two guys understand everything and can overturn textbook science on their own. Their intuitive knowledge is just that special.
Nearly everything I cite is in textbooks and peer-reviewed articles: an example in this thread is the thermodynamics textbook by by Kondepudi and Prigogine. I do not aim to overturn textbook science, but I do point out contradictions, science ignored by AGW promoters, and claims without evidence.
WebHubTelescope:The Aussie accepts that GHGs can contribute 60C of warming, modified by -27C of lapse rate feedback.
Yet he refuses to believe that a doubling of co2 will lead to further warming.
That’s simple restatement of the lack of stationarity of the climate system: going a little ways forward is not the simple reversal of going a little ways back; or put differently, doubling the CO2 concentration is not the reversal of halving the CO2 concentration.
“Refusing to believe” a hypothesis that has no evidentiary support or stringent testing to back it up is the appropriate belief stance. What is certain about the climate is that “governing” or “descriptive” accurate laws are not known. So the quantitative effect of doubling CO2 is not known, only the hypothetical effect on the hypothetical equilibrium.
Additional warming is by no means certain – especially over the next few decades. That really is the point that webby can’t or won’t see. It is an epic fail unfolding like a slow motion train wreck.
WHT
“Another type of function that is aperiodic is a bound random walk. This is also not chaotic So you wrong #2.”
of course it is chaotic if it is aperiodic. That is what the random in random walk refers to.
If you insist on adding in conditions like “it is bound” all you are doing is limiting the area the chaos can act in.
Its the old Brownian motion in a teacup, the patterns are chaotic, random or aperiodic, they are all the same thing.
“I suppose I need to return my PhD thesis on the quantum effects used in electron diffraction.”
Please do. it was probably very good, unlike your current attempt to redefine the English language.
On the other hand – chaos in climate is completely deterministic. Go figure.
I figgered it six by seven ways and eternally come up with the same answer.
==========
But your answer is a meanderic number ,so we need to know your reference frame.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/Simple_Magic_Cube.svg/644px-Simple_Magic_Cube.svg.png
Angech
Quit trying to redefine scientific terms. The entire physics discipline of statistical mechanics, which includes Brownian motion and other forms of random walk, was devised without having to invoke chaos.
In the 1920s, a bounded variation of random walk dubbed as the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process was used to model a number of phenomena. The O-U process is often characterized as Red Noise.
I would suggest that you take up some technical writing courses. No, that won’t help, as your lack of scientific knowledge will further muck things up.
Angech
“Quit trying to redefine scientific terms. The entire physics discipline of statistical mechanics, which includes Brownian motion and other forms of random walk, was devised without having to invoke chaos.”
A dynamical theory of Brownian motion in this form is deterministic in nature.Stochasticity creeps into the picture through the Fluctuation term of Langevin equation which represents the coarse-grained, e#ective force of the molecules. Invariably, the theory treats the Fluctuating force as a Gaussian distributed stochastic process, while it leaves open the question of whether the intrinsic dynamics of Brownian motion is “chaotic” or not. One may perceive from the writings and thoughts of Maxwell that
the microscopic dynamics is indeed chaotic [5].
The discovery of chaotic phenomena is the third major breakthrough in the 20th century physics.
Sorry WHT you are persistently wrong.
Your attempts to drag meaning out of chaos are like the monkeys on the typewriters, made worse by defining non chaotic bounds.
When you define what you want to find before you find it you will find it but you will find what you found is not what you were looking for.
copyright angech.
aperiodic has and will always mean chaotic in the English and scientific language as we know and define it.
Who cares what James Clerk Maxwell perceives as chaotic or non-chaotic?
He does not have the last word on the subject, considering that many scientists came after him to firm up stat mech.
Aperiodic and quasiperiodic crystal lattices are interesting. These are non-chaotic. Remember what I got my PhD in?
AngieBaby, Like most of your Aussie denier buddies, you are not going to win this one.
Nonlinear phenomena characterize all aspects of global change dynamics, from the Earth’s climate system to human decision-making (Gallagher and Appenzeller, 1999). Past records of climate change are perhaps the most frequently cited examples of nonlinear dynamics, especially where certain aspects of climate, e.g., the thermohaline circulation of the North Atlantic ocean, suggest the existence of thresholds, multiple equilibria, and other features that may result in episodes of rapid change (Stocker and Schmittner, 1997). As described in Kabat et al. (2003), the Earth’s climate system includes the natural spheres (e.g., atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere and geosphere), the anthrosphere (e.g., economy, society,
culture), and their complex interactions (Schellnhuber, 1998). These interactions are the main source of nonlinear behavior, and thus one of the main sources of uncertainty in our attempts to predict the effects of global environmental change. In sharp contrast to familiar linear physical processes, nonlinear behavior in the climate results in highly diverse, usually surprising and often counterintuitive observations, so it is important, before embarking on the discussion of data, that we agree on a few basic characteristics of nonlinear climate.’ http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/pdf/pep/Rial2004.NonlinearitiesCC.pdf
There is a need to understand what characterises chaotic (in the sense of complexity theory) systems. Climate time series may be aperiodic but is better described as non-stationary.
WHT I have already won, you are just very slow in realising it.
When you attack one Aussie you attack them all
You can put your chaos in boxes, you can put them in sacks, you can chain them and bind them and in the darkness (New Zealand ) find them , you can put them in lattices or lettuces (and you have)
But, and listen carefully, if it is aperiodic it is chaotic, like a snowflake, no two alike now and forever.
You can take your lattice and bounds and functions and give then a shape but that shape only holds the chaos and aperiodicy in a shape it is not the chaos, now do you get it.?
A. No
Try the map is not the territory, or take some aspirin for me.
AngieBaby,
Figures that it would take an American to solve the Aussie’s ENSO puzzle. It’s aperiodic but straightforwardly modeled as a tidal forcing on the wave equation.
As usual – theoretically improbabe assertions of blogospheric science combined with world class witlessicisms.
All this is, is an attempt to save the cause in the face of the “pause.”
“The ‘message’ has shifted from documenting dire impacts, to finding solutions that integrate with broader societal challenges.”
Translation – if we can’t gain control of the entire energy economy through decarbonization on the threat of thermarmageddon, maybe we can at least get control of most of it through adaptation by threatening war and pestilence.
“… characterizing climate change as a challenge in managing risks opens doors to a wide range of options for solutions.
…
Truly, much of the material in the WGII report is as much about building a better world as it is about understanding serious problems.”
Thank God we have climate scientists who, when confronted by the ever widening divergence between reality and their embarrassingly bad GCMS, can so seamlessly switch from merely predicting temperature to “building a better world.”
The new IPCC slogan: “We may not be able to predict climate worth a damn, but we can still run the world better than you can.”
more conspiracy theorizing.
” if we can’t gain control of the entire energy economy through decarbonization”
Listen to yourselves. How would decarbonization cause anyone to “gain control” of the entire energy economy?
If anything decarbonization will decentralize the energy market.
I do sometimes wonder how many of you guys are entirely motivated by some kind of red dawn 1980s cold war view of the world. Them commies are comin’ to get you and the first defense must be to stop the IPCC! Thus climate change cannot be a problem because you can’t admit that.
Elon Musk and his socialist car company.
lolwot,
Gee, why would anyone think that a call for global decarbonization, through government mandated taxes, redistribution of income, emissions controls, shuttering of whole sectors of the energy economy, and government choosing economic winners and losers through crony-socialism, had anything to do with gaining control of the economy?
No one who has been conned more thoroughly by the genuine progressive leaders/activists, than their default progressive drone sycophants.
More straw men.
It wouldn’t. You either didn’t bother to read what he wrote, or you’re deliberately distracting attention from it.
Decarbonization could be used to ‘“gain control” of the entire energy economy’, as an excuse for centralized power. Especially if a false sense of “urgency” can be instilled. That’s why anybody who claims to support decarbonization but refuses to consider a strong role for remediation deserves to be considered a socialist shill.
Seriously what does “gaining control of the economy” even mean?
it’s just some fake scare like saying “THE COMMIES ARE COMING!”
Governments already tax. Banks are massive. Emission controls already exist on countless products.
Who benefits from this already?
All that will happen is fossil fuels are sooner deprecated and better fuel sources take over. The economy will still be the same. You’ll have to find some other imaginary threat for those commies to be plotting.
Soviet Russia? North Korea?
AK,
Illinois, California, New York….
You say my views are based on socialism.
However ironically I think it is YOUR views that are shaped by socialism. You are so scared of the socialist bogeyman that you’ve let it shape your views on the science of climate change.
It’s only natural therefore to imagine that someone like me who disagrees with you on the science must be a socialist.
I think this phenomenon is called projection.
“>Seriously what does “gaining control of the economy” even mean?
>>Soviet Russia? North Korea?”
Right because if polices were enacted to expedite the transition from a fossil fuel based energy system, we would turn into the Soviet Union or North Korea.
That makes so much sense you win. I give up, I can’t compete with logic like that.
Another straw man. It’s your choice of “solution” to the “problem”. You’re just trying to distract attention from that fact. In fact, the whole “denialist” meme is a straw man, just trying to distract attention from your real agenda.
Else why aren’t you willing to discuss remediation, and its implications?
“All this is, is an attempt to save the cause in the face of the “pause.””
+10
Did everyone miss Matt Ridley? Even though his article has been prominently featured at WUWT? http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303725404579460973643962840?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303725404579460973643962840.html
R. Gates, “Indeed, one El Niño proves nothing related to AGW, but generally speaking high temperature global average (sensible heat in the troposphere) will almost always hit decadal highs during an El Niño.”
Maybe. But if el Nino behaves differently, and the climate response is different during different weather regimes, it would suggest that there was widespread mis-attribution of feebacks to AGHG forcing.
R. Gates’ observation deserves a comment-thread of its very own!
AGW-Gets-Real: 2014’s Denial-Busters
• 2014: Svalbard busts all-time high-Arctic heat-record!
• 2014: Super-El-Nino will bust global temperature records!
• 2014: Mann busts “Stadium-Wave” decadal-statistics analyses!
Conclusion 2014 == “game-over” for climate-change denial?
I am now patiently waiting to read R. Gates scathingly skeptical explanation to fan that an El Nino, super or otherwise, proves nothing as far as CAGW.
Be gentle with him R. Gates, be gentle.
Who’s denying climate change?
Last season was climate hysteria games, but we’re on to realism now.
Oh please! Think Progress? If that was a newspaper I wouldn’t line a birdcage with it, Romm being so objective and all that. You think Mann has improved his math and statistical skills? And like always, a record warm temperature is always global warming/climate change but record cold and snow are only weather. You should stick to worshipping Hansen.
Fan
I am unsure what you think you are proving with the Svalbard airport link.
It shows a record back to 1900 but the airport was only established in 1964 . Observations were previously taken in a more rural area than the airport has now become. Taking temperatures at an airport and a rural site is comparing apples and oranges.
Tonyb
Fan
Your second link about an el niño busting temperature records is pure supposition at this point. By the way the article points to possible temperature records in 2015 not 2014
Tonyb
Fan
Not for the first time you have posted a link that leads to the wrong article. Your third link about dr Mann merely leads back to the rather inadequate article about svalbard airport. Is that the best you can do today? Come on, have a strong cup of coffee and have another try to prove its game over.
Tonyb
“I am now patiently waiting to read R. Gates scathingly skeptical explanation to fan that an El Nino, super or otherwise, proves nothing as far as CAGW.”
_____
Indeed, one El Niño proves nothing related to AGW, but generally speaking high temperature global average (sensible heat in the troposphere) will almost always hit decadal highs during an El Niño. The flux of sensible and latent heat from the ocean to the atmosphere peaks during El Nino’s and thus sensible heat in the tropsphere peaks. We troposphere dwellers get all excited during these periods as it of course is where we live. But really, to make any sense out of tropospheric tempertures as a proxy for the energy being stored in the climate system, we do need to look at decadal averages, and when doing so we see that each decade for the past 3 or 4 has been warmer than the previous. The bottom line: an El Niño in 2014/2015 by itself will tell us little about AGW, except to the extent that it adds to the decadal average and insures that 2010-2019 is warmer than 2000-2009. Of course the fake- skeptics have locked themselves in to looking almost exclusively at tropospheric sensible heat, and so, an El Niño in 2014 will have them crying: “Just wait until the next La Niña!”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL059233/abstract
You are entirely right TonyB, and I hereby acknowledge and apologize for this mistake!
A corrected (hopefully!) link is to this week’s Mann, Steinman, Miller Geophysical Research Letters article “On Forced Temperature Changes, Internal Variability and the AMO“ (2014).
Conclusion Statistical climate-models that are only-children of P-values perish by Bonferroni corrections!
Fan
Unfortunately the dr Mann article is behind a pay wall.
A few days ago i think I saw that Judith said that she or dr wyatt will be publishing a rebuttal here?
Tonyb
“But really, to make any sense out of tropospheric tempertures as a proxy for the energy being stored in the climate system, we do need to look at decadal averages, and when doing so we see that each decade for the past 3 or 4 has been warmer than the previous.”
Now that strikes me as a bit of an understatement. It seems to me that 8 of the last 9 decades have been warmer than the decade before it.since 1910. Even in the period of cooling from 1940 to 1970, two of those four decades were warmer than the one preceding.
It’s just one of those handy catch phrases, like “the warmest decade since [fill in the blank], that really tells you nothing more than that the Earth’s climate continues to warm from the little ice age.
But hey, it sounds like it means something.
http://betterfigures.org/2012/09/15/decadal-temperatures/
“It’s just one of those handy catch phrases, like “the warmest decade since [fill in the blank], that really tells you nothing more than that the Earth’s climate continues to warm from the little ice age.”
——
It is a sure sign of true denialism in full spring bloom when the late 20th century warming is attributed to LIA recovery. This is classic– thanks for the example.
Here, let me fix that for ya:
It is a sure sign of true warmism in full spring bloom when the early 20th century warming is attributed to LIA recovery and the late 20th century warming in not, with no evidence whatsoever for the distinction.
There. That’s better.
In the temperature record at Svalbard Airport you can see the UHI effect of the building of the Svalbard Satellite Station and roads connecting it to the airport and Longyearbyen; the the Svalbard Satellite Station is right next to the airport.
Svalbard (in February) is a windy place (4.8 m/s). And elementary thermodynamics tells us that it would take more than sixty kilowatts of solar energy input, per linear meter of Svalbard runway, distributed over a 10-meter surface layer of air, to boost Svalbard’s temperature record by one degree C.
Dude, Svalbard in mid-February is dark 24×7.
The requisite solar energy just ain’t there.
So now’s a good time to admit that UHI claims in regard to Svalbared-in-February are just plain thermodynamic nonsense, eh DocMartyn?
R. Gates, “Indeed, one El Niño proves nothing related to AGW, but generally speaking high temperature global average (sensible heat in the troposphere) will almost always hit decadal highs during an El Niño.”
Maybe. But if el Nino behaves differently, and the climate response is different during different weather regimes, it would suggest that there was widespread mis-attribution of feebacks to AGHG forcing.
Svalbard Airport. As the name suggests, the station is situated at Svalbard Airport (Svalbard lufthavn in Norwegian station lists), which is located near the outer part of Adventfjorden, a branch of Isfjorden (Fig. 1).
Measurements began in August 1975 using an MI-33 screen, which is the standard Norwegian screen for harsh weather conditions (Nordli et al. 1997). The station is still in use (see Table 1). The temperature measurements have been undertaken in the same screen from the start of the measurements to 5 October 2010, when the screen was changed to pattern MI-74 and relocated to a site further away from the runway of the airport (see Supplementary file). This was done in order to prevent thermal influences on the measurements associated with the area cleared for airport purposes. The sparse grass growing near the previous site of measurements was replaced by sand and, in late July or early August 2010, covered with asphalt.
http://www.polarresearch.net/index.php/polar/article/view/21349
LOL … and so, DocMartyn, how much did solar/UHI effects contribute to Svalbard’s record-setting heat observed during February’s endless Arctic night?
Everyone knows the scientific answer (in the Arctic night, solar/UHI effects are thermodynamically negligible!) … it’s the exhibition of denialist cognition that’s notable!
Comments on comments on comments is boring. Why listen to what a self-employed photographer and opinion columnist has to say about http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/ before reading it for yourself?
Do you decide what food to eat by smelling someone else’s excreta?
Many of the simple errors of fact contained in these secondary tertiary sources and comments on them are corrected in http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/images/uploads/IPCC_SREX_fact_sheet.pdf and it’s a 20-second read.
Why waste your time reading mistakes made by opinionated zealots with terrible track records on truth and logic?
This comment on comments on comments on comments, on the other hand, was scintillating.
GaryM | March 30, 2014 at 1:18 pm |
As was yours.
But the exception proves the rule.
I wouldn’t believe what I wrote about SREX before reading SREX for myself; why should I expect you to?
Bart R,
You state the exception proves the rule. I would respond that your rule is worthless if you need to prove it by demonstrating it doesn’t apply.
Now it appears you may think that the fact that temperatures are not rising is merely the exception to the rule that global temperatures rise as CO2 content rises, which proves the rule. Therefore, temperatures that are not rising prove that temperatures are, in fact, rising.
Am I right, or am I merely the exception to the rule, which of course shows that I am right.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Barty is a just little wind up agitator.
“. It is very likely—90 per cent
to 100 per cent probability—that heat waves will increase in length, frequency, and/or intensity over
most land areas. ”
Yikes. I hope they didnt use models to make that determination because models SUCK at replicating the past heat waves. SUCK worse than SUCK.
A heat wave is a local event. The scale is subgrid. The existence of real heat waves depends upon parameters that the models dont even come close to capturing.
Steven Mosher | March 30, 2014 at 9:41 pm |
Why don’t you ask them how they determined that figure?
http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/images/uploads/SREX-All_FINAL.pdf
In many (but not all) regions over the globe with sufficient data, there is medium confidence that the length or number of warm spells or heat waves3 has increased. [3.3.1, Table 3-2]
..
____________
3 See SREX Glossary for definition of these terms: cold days / cold nights, warm days / warm nights, and warm spell – heat wave
..
Models project substantial warming in temperature extremes by the end of the 21st century. It is virtually certain that increases in the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes and decreases in cold extremes will occur in the 21st century at the global scale. It is very likely that the length, frequency, and/or intensity of warm spells or heat waves will increase over most land areas. Based on the A1B and A2 emissions scenarios, a 1-in-20 year hottest day is likely to become a 1-in-2 year event by the end of the 21st century in most regions, except in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, where it is likely to become a 1-in-5 year event (see Figure SPM.4A). Under the B1 scenario, a 1-in-20 year event would likely become a 1-in-5 year event (and a 1-in-10 year event in Northern Hemisphere high latitudes). The 1-in-20 year extreme daily maximum temperature (i.e., a value that was exceeded on average only once during the period 1981–2000) will likely increase by about 1°C to 3°C by the mid-21st century and by about 2°C to 5°C by the late 21st century, depending on the region and emissions scenario (based on the B1, A1B, and A2 scenarios). [3.3.1, 3.1.6, Table 3-3, Figure 3-5]
..
As an illustration, projected patterns (in the magnitude but not the sign) of changes in annual heat wave length were shown to be highly dependent on the choice of index used for the assessment of heat wave or warm spell duration (using the mean and maximum Heat Wave Duration Indices, HWDImean and HWDImax, and the Warm Spell Duration Index, WSDI; see Orlowsky and Seneviratne, 2011), because of large geographical variations in the variability of daily temperature (Alexander et al., 2006). Similar definition issues apply to other types of extremes, especially those characterizing dryness (see Section 3.5.1 and Box 3-3).
..
One example of positive feedback between two extremes is the possible mutual enhancement of droughts and heat waves in transitional regions between dry and wet climates. This feedback has been identified as having an influence on projected changes in temperature variability and heat wave occurrence in Central and Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean (Seneviratne et al., 2006a; Diffenbaugh et al., 2007), and possibly also in Britain, Eastern North America, the Amazon, and East Asia (Brabson et al., 2005; Clark et al., 2006). Further results also suggest
that it is a relevant factor for past heat waves and temperature extremes in Europe and the United States (Durre et al., 2000; Fischer et al., 2007a,b; Hirschi et al., 2011). Two main mechanisms that have been suggested to underlie this feedback are: (1) enhanced soil drying during heat waves due to increased evapotranspiration (as a consequence of higher vapor pressure deficit and higher incoming radiation); and (2) higher relative heating of the air from sensible heat flux when soil moisture deficit starts limiting evapotranspiration/latent heat flux (e.g., Seneviratne et al., 2010). Additionally, there may also be indirect and/or non-local effects of dryness on heat waves through, for example, changes in circulation patterns or dry air advection (e.g., Fischer et al., 2007a; Vautard et al., 2007; Haarsma et al., 2009). However, the strength of these feedbacks is still uncertain in current climate models (e.g., Clark et al., 2010), in particular if additional feedbacks with precipitation (e.g., Koster et al., 2004b; Seneviratne et al., 2010) and with land use and land cover state and changes (e.g., Lobell et al., 2008; Pitman et al., 2009; Teuling et al., 2010) are considered. Also, feedbacks between trends in snow cover and changes in temperature extremes have been highlighted as being relevant for projections (e.g., Kharin et al., 2007; Orlowsky and Seneviratne, 2011). Feedbacks with soil moisture and snow affect extremes in specific regions (hot extremes in transitional climate regions, and cold extremes in snow-covered regions), where they may induce significant deviations in changes in extremes versus changes in the average climate, as also discussed in Section 3.1.6. Other relevant feedbacks involving extreme events are those that can lead to impacts on the global climate, such as modification of land carbon uptake due to enhanced drought occurrence (e.g., Ciais et al., 2005; Friedlingstein et al., 2006; Reichstein et al., 2007) or carbon release due to permafrost degradation (see Section 3.5.7). These aspects are not, however, specifically considered in this chapter (but see Section 3.1.7, on projections of possible increased Amazon drought and forest dieback in this region). Chapter 4 also addresses feedback loops between droughts, fire, and climate change (Section 4.2.2.1).
Well, hey. They _did_ use models, among other resources, cited in 3.1.4 and 3.1.5.. which sort of impeaches your assertions about models being so terrible, as the models appear to be in broad agreement with actual observation and well-understood physical mechanisms.
Some of those other resources include:
Gershunov, A., D. R. Cayan, and S. F. Iacobellis, 2009: The great 2006 heat wave over California and Nevada: Signal of an increasing trend. Journal of Climate, 22, 6181-6203
Lau, W.K.M. and K.-M. Kim, 2011: The 2010 Pakistan flood and Russian heat wave: Teleconnection of hydrometeorologic extremes. Journal of Hydrometeorology, doi:10.1175/JHM-D-11-016.1.
Bart”
“In many (but not all) regions over the globe with sufficient data, there is medium confidence that the length or number of warm spells or heat waves3 has increased. [3.3.1, Table 3-2]”
PLease note i was talking about their prediction of increase.
Stay on topic.
However, I’ll go look at their historical data and find 4 problems with it
in 15 seconds
Hint: heat waves are not determined only by temperature.
there are
1. wet bulb
2. rh
3. wind
4. air mass class\
5. season
6. demographics
7. cloud cover
There actually is a proven system for detection. I can assure you they didnt use it to do their historical studies.. because that exact study with that exact system is being shopped around looking for funding.
and the actual data sources you need are not publically available. Im hoping to be the first to actually use them.
wish me luck.
here is a hint. high temperatures do not a heat wave make.
you need a whole series of conditions including a vulnerable population.
Steven Mosher | March 31, 2014 at 12:57 am |
You’re branching to a new and different series of questions than, ‘did they use models?’
At least you’re actually coming fairly close to citing the original source, since the document itself agrees with you about the complexity of identifying extreme weather patterns.
However, you don’t need _all_ of the metrics to determine if a heat wave has happened. You could, for example, use the metric of the vulnerable population dying off en mass from heat-related effects. One simple measure, confirmable by others but not requiring them all.
This overcomplicating issues thing you do when you lack sleep.. has it become perpetual? We worry for your health.
Uh, if we’re going to segue from decarbonization, which is global, to adaptation, which is local, who needs the IPCC?
The IPCC actually muddies things up with the Warsaw mechanism
You’re late
I wonder what the chances are of a delay and another re-write given the response the “leaked” SPM is getting so far? It’s supposed to be released tomorrow, but I bet cell phones towers are glowing red across the globe….
Check this out:
Bloomberg’s Hidden Legacy: Climate Change and the Future of New York City, Part 1
The plans they had crafted over the past five years were only the beginning of what NYC needed. Sandy showed them they had to do much more, much faster.
By Katherine Bagley and Maria Gallucci
Nov 18, 2013
Global warming experts around the world say New York City’s plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and safeguard itself from the perils of climate change are a model for other cities. But most Americans, including New Yorkers, know little or nothing about this achievement, or that it was driven by Michael Bloomberg, who next month ends his third term as New York’s mayor. Bloomberg’s Hidden Legacy: Climate Change and the Future of New York City helps fill that gap.
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20131118/bloombergs-hidden-legacy-climate-change-and-future-new-york-city-part-1
Irony. Sandy type storms caused by cooling (or lack of warming) and historically common. Developement during an especially benign time lead to a lack of resiliant development and preparedness:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/05/some-thoughts-on-cooler-weather-patterns-in-relation-to-tornadoes-and-hurricanes/
This increased gradient creates instability and the jet stream swings further North and South as opposed to its more West – East path during warmer periods. According to the season, blocking highs may develop with colder, drier, air penetrating further South and warm moist air reaching further North. There can be enormous temperature and humidity contrasts in the narrow boundary between these masses as warm air is sucked in from the Gulf. Conditions along such a boundary are ideal for developing the wind shear necessary for the tornado swarm development seen recently in Oklahoma.
The blocking highs also push hurricanes to the east so that hurricanes like Sandy are more likely to occur.
Note that Sandy was not a powerful Hurricane in fact it came ashore as a tropical storm. The big storm surge was the result of its long path over open water while a real cooling signal was seen in the development of blizzard conditions in the NW quadrant. This classic weather pattern is shown for today 6/02/13 in Figs 1 and 2 and occurs more often during a cooling phase of the PDO and is often triggered by an E Pacific La Nina cooling, as seen in the 6/01/13 SST anomaly map Fig 3 (h/t to The Weather Channel).
As some eagerly await WG2, the Fifth Prophesy, the Warmers co-religionists and natural allies pipe up:
Rowan Williams warns of climate catastrophe
The former Archbishop of Canterbury argues that Western lifestyles bear the responsibility for causing climate change in world’s poorest regions
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/10732121/Rowan-Williams-warns-of-climate-catastrophe.html
We should adapt to the realities of climate science by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. That’s one type of adaptation that makes perfect sense.
And if, by some miracle, we do manage to cut emissions by, say, 50% within the next year or two, exactly how much time is that going to buy us?
Iolwot
According to scientists the temperature is locked in for the next thousand years and nothing we can do now will affect the rise that is in the pipeline.
Are you aware of the affect on temperatures that reducing emissions will then make at some time in the very far future?
Tonyb
As long as you don’t raise the price of energy.
The issue is adaptation, and how the IPCC has now moved away from mitigation towards adaptation. Reducing CO2 emissions isn’t adaptation, it’s mitigation.
The IPCC make it clear that they don’t know how climate will change, and in particular they don’t know how it will change by region or by locality. Since virtually all adaptation is by locality, the IPCC report is singularly unhelpful. However, since any change in climate is likely to unfold only over many decades, the sensible approach surely is to keep an eye on how climate progresses (warmer, cooler, wetter, drier, etc, and of course higher or lower sea level) and to plan and act accordingly. [But note that nearly all adaptation needs to be for weather not climate.]
It may be worth noting that precipitation increases with warming (that’s generally agreed, Clausius-Clapeyron and all that, and it’s in the computer models, though not enough), and that warmer + wetter + more CO2 = more food production. Food production has increased markedly over the last few decades, mostly due to technological advances of course, but the climate would have helped. One of the advantages of adaptation over mitigation is that you don’t have to know decades in advance how the climate will change, you can wait to see which direction it moves in. That means that if the world now starts cooling as many expect, adaptation can work for that too. One problem that may have to be faced is more difficult food production in some parts of a cooler drier world.
“The first is the importance of considering the full range of possible outcomes, including not only high-probability outcomes. ”
Ahhhh… is the precautionary principle* about to rear it’s ugly head again?
I can hardly bear to read.
(*Aka “You must do what I say and act now upon the worst possible scenario that can be conjured up, irrespective of it being somewhere between ridiculous and ludicrous.”)
Global cooling?
A troll’s primary job is making an interesting discussion uunreadable.
aaron | March 30, 2014 at 5:06 pm | Reply
“A troll’s primary job is making an interesting discussion uunreadable.”
Good comment.
Now can you tell us what in this thread is “interesting discussion” and please identify the trolls.
ENSO discussions are interesting.
http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/images/uploads/SREX-All_FINAL.pdf
Figure SPM.2 | Adaptation and disaster risk management approaches for reducing and managing disaster risk in a changing climate. This report assesses a wide range of complementary adaptation and disaster risk management approaches that can reduce the risks of climate extremes and disasters and increase resilience to remaining risks as they change over time. These approaches can be overlapping and can be pursued simultaneously. [6.5, Figure 6-3, 8.6]
Every one of these six adaptation and disaster risk management approaches and their 6! (that’s 6x5x4x3x2=720 for the math challenged, kim.. and beth.. and you know who you are) interactions is more costly than timely mitigation would have been. Who’s going to pay that cost?
That’s a cost to me. Should I be expected to pay because someone else burned something using my air?
Bart R,
The answer to your question is yes.
Whether we like it or not, we usually have no choice but to pay for the actions of others in one form or another. If you are concerned – I assume your indignation is insincere, but correct me if I’m wrong – then you are free to sequester enough of the common air to ensure that nobody else burns any of yours.
I wish you the best of luck with your solitary and slightly odd existence in the future, cut off from contact with the rest of humanity. It will no doubt give you solace realising that you will not have to worry about anybody consuming your precious air. I would ask you to let me know how you get on, but you would have to pay for the resources involved – including any additional air consumed. I sense you are disinclined to contribute to the less fortunate members of society, so I fully understand if you don’t wish to respond.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Mike Flynn | March 30, 2014 at 8:43 pm |
Maybe in Communist countries like Australia ‘we’ all pay for everyone else’s benefit (Ayn Rand would love you); but in Capitalist America, people pay their own way.
And it’s the government’s job to catch the sneak thieves and fraudsters who steal what isn’t theirs without paying for it.
Bart R,
It might have escaped your notice, but Australia has a right wing government, and the USA a left wing government – correct me if I misunderstand.
Your Capitalist America seems to be paying its own way by racking up a 17 trillion dollar debt. I believe quite a lot of this has been borrowed from the Capitalist bastion known as the Peoples Republic of China, supposedly run by the Chinese Communist Party.
I find it hard to believe you are not the recipient in some way of the funds made available by the Chinese Communists, but I believe you if you say it is so.
The world is a funny place. Change and uncertainty seem to be unchanging and certain. The future is still unknowable, as far as I know. Believe what you will. I am encouraged that you do not expect me to pay for anything to do with the effects of the non existent global warming.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Mike Flynn | March 30, 2014 at 11:03 pm |
Yes.
You misunderstand.
Australia has whatever it has, and no one really cares. It’s on the far side of the world, and upside down: what passes for left and right there, whether the side of the road you drive on or your politics, foreigners to Australia ought consider themselves inadequate to the task of describing for an Australian, so I’m not going to tell you what it is Australia has.
However, I can give you some general principles: a right wing government is one that decreases needless regulation, decreases subsidies and support to private ventures, decreases spending programs that interfere in an individual’s free choices, and supports Capitalism by maintaining a Market where buyers are fully impacted by the cost of what they get and sellers cannot earn excess profits by non-Capitalist manipulation of the Market. Does that sound like what you have?
Meanwhile, the US Government is comprised of many houses, and the balance of power under perhaps the most conservative president in a century is to the Right in many ways far more than any period in US history, according to many observers of such thing, no matter what party the President represents, or what you believe of their wingyness.
More guns have passed into private hands both in absolute and relative terms under the current president than under any three other presidents you could name. Protectionist international trade policies? Yup. Withdrawal from foreign adventure? Yup. That’s all Right Wing stuff.
You stand corrected, Comrade.
Much as any two r@bid we@sels – not naming any names here – might deserve each other – the rationalisations for a fading middling power characterized more by its failings than its successes is too funny by far.
More guns are an Obama triumph, the failure of foreign adventures are a strategic victory, spending far in excess of tax revenues is fiscal restraint, agricultural and industry subsidies and trade restraints are the epitome of pure capitalism. I would suspect deliberate irony but this is Bart talking. Is he capable of irony and would we be able to distinguish it against the noise?
Bart R,
Are you reading the map upside down?
The rest of your ideas seem to suffer from the same defect. Possibly you have been working too hard in the Department of Alternate Reality.
I suppose this another of your examples of the exception proving the rule.
Possibly the fact that the US Government pays Russia around $70 million dollars per ticket to get into space really proves the rule that the US doesn’t need Russian assistance. Or maybe that using Russian built rockets to place satellites in orbit proves that the US really doesn’t need them.
Possibly the fact that the globe is not increasing in temperature proves the rule that it is!
I hope you continue your blissful existence in your perfect world.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Mike Flynn | March 31, 2014 at 1:51 am |
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:191/mean:193
As I said. The only way to contend “..that the globe is not increasing in temperature..” is to read the graph upside down.
As for your fascination with irrelevant comparisons involving the USA, I can only conclude it’s from lack of familiarity with America. Which would be understandable coming from someone who’s on the far side of the planet from everything he talks about.
There are risks and uncertainties with having “experts” attend conferences and produce reports which tell you there are risks and uncertainties of various ranks, degrees, species etc, so you need to prepare for when things get bad (or whatever).
The biggest risk is that of having to pay for the obvious twice. You pay for the predictable conclusions of “expert” committees, and then you still have to find money to do all those obvious but expensive things you knew you should do before the experts went a-conferencing.
The greatest uncertainty lies in the experts’ more specific advice and warnings: you end up worrying about coming disasters in an order dictated by intellectual fad. Uncertain means uncertain, guys. Don’t go all Bayesian on us now. I’m sure there’ll be drought and flood in my neck of the woods soon. I don’t know which will come first, but I can always use a good dam. Humans (and beavers) are like that. It’s what we do. We dam. We also clear and burn off ahead of big fires, quite naturally, without being told. We see the woods, we see the trees. And in a prosperous industrialised world we won’t need to strip hillsides and burn every twig.
But do you really think an IPCC report (like a Bloomberg “vision” for NY) isn’t going to mix in the old messianic with the new and improved “practical”? Do you really think a few concessions to “mitigation” are going to stop them sucking carbon money into those black holes they call, for mystifying reasons, “green solutions”?
“uncertain means uncertain”. Great comment.
re experts : a while ago, the head of a major oil company was asked whether the oil price would go up or down. The reply was “It will go up. And it will go down. But I don’t know in which order”.
The IPCC is no further ahead than that. We can all adapt to a changing climate, just as we adapt to a changing oil price. Prediction is for gamblers.
It may be premature to say mitigation is dead. The WG3 report due out in two weeks is all about mitigation.
http://www.ipcc-wg3.de/news/ipcc-media-advisory-ipcc-working-group-ii-and-working-group-iii-reports
Contents
http://www.ipcc-wg3.de/.files/WGIII-Outline-AR5.pdf
The report itself is scientifically bold.
Wow! Whoa! Scientifically Bold!
No, there is little actual science in this report. This report is still based on Flawed Consensus Climate Theory and Flawed Consensus Climate Model Output.
There is no science in this.
Actually, that is bold, and foolish, and stupid, and wrong and not supported by actual data.
I am in shock.
James Lovelock: environmentalism has become a religion
Scientist behind the Gaia hypothesis says environment movement does not pay enough attention to facts and he was too certain in the past about rising temperatures
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/30/james-lovelock-environmentalism-religion
LOL … and Climate Etc readers are *SHOCKED* that denialists are cherry-picking newspaper commentaries by 94-year-old scientists whose best work was done fifty years ago!
Say, ain’t this the same James Lovelock who was the first to measure polar CFC concentrations, wrongly concluding that “CFCs pose no conceivable hazard”?
Seriously, DocMartyn, if that’s the best literature that climate-change skeptics can cite, ain’t it evident (to everyone who has a grain of common-sense!) that denialism is doomed?
Say, ain’t this the same James Lovelock who was the first to measure polar CFC concentrations, wrongly concluding that “CFCs pose no conceivable hazard”?
he was correct insofar as the chemistry equations did not work (neither molinas or rowlands worked either )without the addition of two other mechanisms.
Your homework is to tell us what the mechanisms are.
Ah, so James Lovelock goes under the bus.
LOL … James Lovelock never even got on the bus!
Which is getting to be a mighty fast-rolling & science-respecting bus!
The really funny thing is that FOMD has had to throw his hero Hansen under the bus for saying the same things about the environmental movement as Lovelock. To wit, religious obsession with renewables and reduced energy use and nuclear phobia.
Pingback: The IPCC releases its advice on “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”. To be attacked from both sides. | Fabius Maximus
The WG2 Report will be officially released on Monday.
The release is here
http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/
From the Fred Pierce “overview” cited in the head post:
“Central to that new take is setting climate change in a context of other risks, uncertainties and mega-trends such as poverty and social inequality, urbanization, and the globalization of food systems. What some call “climate exceptionalism” — the idea that climate change is something of an entirely different order to other threats faced by the world — has been rooted out.”
———————————————————————–
What nonsense. Far from “poverty and social inequality” being a risk, uncertainty or mega-trend, more people are being lifted out of poverty today than ever before in our history. And it’s no thanks to the UN, which opposes ideologically unsound power sources and gives money to corrupt governments, either.
Urbanisation and the growth of global food systems not only are a consequence and also a cause (in a sort of continuous loop) of more people having a better life, they again are no business of the UN.
They just cannot resist trying to meddle in everything, and what Pierce seems to be illustrating is that the climate scam is just another arrow in their collective quiver – which we knew already.
climate change friends and advisors HELP ME on this DAN BLOOM asks re recent AP story that mocks global warming issues as a mere “game” WTF? your opinion? tell me
Shame on AP reporters SETH BORENSTEIN inm DC and KAORI HITOMI in Tokyo whose bylines appeared on Ap story online for for ending their very important and good climate story with a mockery of serious issue by writing in last graf: ” So far, the scientists have not come up with the next step, common on Facebook pages: The interactive quiz to determine which global warming problem you most resemble.” WTF? That is funny? Mocking the serious issues confronting humankind
by adding that last graf that lowers the discussion to trendy Facebook list trend and asking which global warming problem the reader most resembles?
I wrote to Seth and he apologized and said he was jetlagged and wishes he never added the last graf. but it went on the wire worldwide now and the climate denialists are eating it up: “see” they say ” even AP mocks global warming as a mere trendy facebook list game and of course climate change is a hoax.”
Thanks AP for being a professional wire service. NOT.
re http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2014/03/30/2003586877
The IPCC just ran up the white flag. By focusing on resilience and adaptation, they’ve effectively said about costly CO2 mitigation measures – fuggedabout it – it won’t make a real difference and/or can’t be realistically done, so stop worrying about it. Even better, the IPCC has moved the narrative from imposing costly, wasteful and ineffective EPA-style CO2 suppression policies as justifiable mitigation measures, and shifted the emphasis onto working towards resilience and adaptation policies which will only be implemented on a local level subject to town, city, county and state entities, and managed and controlled by agencies elected/selected by local participatory politics. The IPCC has effectively pulled the plug on any the justification for EPA’s regulatory and economy-crushing over-reach.
And as the BRICS and the rest of the developing world go hell-bent-for-leather on development and crank up their fossil-fuel and associated CO2 generation, they’re gradually going to be perceived as part of problem by all parties and will steadily lose any moral authority to demand reparations from the West. As for the Adaptation Fund, America will use our own AF called “Foreign Aid” and will tailor our contributions to specific projects that we, not the UN, deem aid-worthy, if we do at all.
And we can respond to anyone spouting on about “tipping points” or “we’ll have to do something drastic now or it will forever be too late!” with a simple statement: “YOUR heartthrob, the IPCC, says it’s too late to worry about tipping points and we must instead focus on adapting to any tipping points rather than trying to prevent them, (assuming they even exist)”. The urgency for immediate and drastic action has now evaporated.
There are still a lot of political skirmishes to be fought on the climate front, but the skeptics are now winning. Effectively, la guerre est fini!
That may be worse if the ‘Agenda 21′ gets its way
UNEP “LOCAL AUTHORITIES’ INITIATIVES IN SUPPORT OF AGENDA 21”
http://www.unep.org/Documents.multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=52&ArticleID=76&l=en
UN “INSTITUTIONAL ASPECTS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN AUSTRALIA”
http://www.un.org/esa/agenda21/natlinfo/countr/austral/inst.htm
ICLEI ‘Local Governments for Sustainability’. Check out how many state, county, cities and local councils in your country are signed up:
http://www.iclei.org/iclei-members.html
USA: 48 atates
Canada: 29 cities and towns
Australia: 78 cities, towns, shires and local councils.
Check out your country and check out their aims and goals.
We ain’t out of the woods yet.
Well stated Jerry !
You might want to wait for the WG3 Mitigation report due out this month before jumping to that conclusion.
I think the IPCC just put their foot in it.
As Fred Pearse says, summarizing an IPCC point:
“Average yields of major grains could fall by up to 2 percent a decade from here until the end of the century, it predicts. With demand for food crops likely to rise by 14 percent a decade, that sounds a daunting prospect…”
This IPCC position, if accurately re-stated by Pearce, could prove to be a major quickly-debunked claim, if either food crops have kept pace with demand over the last couple decades, and/or if grain crops increase by 1.0% per year in the very near future to keep pace with demand.
Actual crop yield goes up and up and up and up.
IPCC alarmist forecasts go down and down and down and down.
They don’t know that more CO2 makes green things grow much better. I don’t think they even suspect.
@Steven Mosher, computer models DON’T do science.
Think Harder
Climate is ultimately complex. Complexity begs for reductionism. With reductionism, a puzzle is studied by way of its pieces. While this approach illuminates the climate system’s components, climate’s full picture remains elusive. Understanding the pieces does not ensure understanding the collection of pieces. This conundrum motivates our study. Marcia Wyatt
Climate is ultimately a single immensely complex system with parts that interact at all scales. This creates variability across time and space. Variability that is by the nature of a dynamically complex system abrupt and an emergent property of the interactions of oceans, atmosphere, cyrosphere and biosphere. The various ocean and atmospheric ‘oscillations’ that characterize the system can be seen in this conceptualization as nodes of chaotic oscillation overlying the underlying system.
The stadium wave is therefore an exact conceptualization of the system – and an attempt to trace the underlying morphology. It is not the first and will not be the last effort at mapping the system – it is as I say a conceptually exact description and the mapping will become more precise over time. It is for example an extension of the ideas and math of synchronised chaos. Standing against this exact conceptualization is to resist the tide of science – something that the piety of a King Canute would caution against.
Against this background the idea of ‘forcings’ driving more or less coherent changes in the system is seen as fundamentally inadequate – to be replaced by the idea of small changes initiating new ocean, atmosphere, snow, ice and ecological states as tremendous energies cascade through powerful sub-systems. Each of these emergent, multiple equilibrium states results in changed global energy budgets through changes in albedo. Thus the idea that these ‘forcings’ accumulate in nature is moot as the system is ‘reset’ on decadal and longer timescales.
What ‘forcings’ represent in this more precise conception of climate – the better description of the nature of the system that science strives for – is ongoing changes in an input that theoretically lead to increased instability in the chaotic system. What this means for sensitivity and predictability is not an open question. There is nothing to suggest that either is either a meaningful metric or quantifiable.
The suggestion is that changes in trends or extremes of temperature or precipitation are not detectable against natural variation over decades to centuries. Chaotic variability means perhaps that we can never realistically make that distinction. Yet the theoretical increase in instability remains. Quite the conundrum.
Example of, cold, analytical realism: all global warming can be explained by natural causes. The climate change problem may not be global warming but fear of it.
@ Wagathon
Exactly!
I have ALWAYS considered CAGW to be an existential threat. Not because of any anthropogenic influence on the ‘Temperature of the Earth’, but because of the progressive/liberal/socialist/green/communist/Marxist/Democratic/euphemism du jour political policies that are being inflicted upon us citing CAGW as justification.
IPCC should change to IPHC [for human change] nil to do with the climate.
Many bloggers here and people elsewhere are concerned about environmental change, what we are doing to our cities, countryside, seas and people.
Much of it is good, but we are like bacteria in a petri dish, fast outgrowing our known resources and everyone wanting a slice of the pie.
Hard decisions might be taken but rarely are.
It is more likely that people in countries with the push, USA, Russia, China and India will try to keep control of their resources while the rest of the world hungers round the table for a scrap.
War and famine are most likely to determine our future as usual.
The Climate debate is used by a lot of people to push their own agendas.
We are not able to double up indefinitely and the specter of a decent CO2 rise is absolute rubbish, To double it we would need 10 times the number of cars on the road, 10 times the number of Coal power generators and we would have to do it for a 100 years.
Beyond the sheer impracticability lies the nature of human beings.
Most likely it will not be our world that survives into the future or our children, but it will hopefully be some one’s children.
We need to use this peak of knowledge to put in place structures for the future with ethics, though everyone’s ethics are unfortunately different.
The IPCC release is going to strongly push UN views.
Andrew Lilico is one of the most sensible commentators on the issue (I have to say that, his views are very similar to mine).
Your comments, Faustino, are required reading fer serfs.
Me pending edishun of Serf Under_ground Journal,
‘Living on the littoral’ – with yr permission will include
some of them.
bts.
Permission grunted, Beth, I’d be more gracious but I’m exhausted, just woke up. Brisbane’s top hernia specialist told me that I’d saved my life in recent weeks by my constant management of a hernia, he’ll operate ASAP so that I can relax my eternal vigilance.
Hi Faustino, take care and we look forward to your post-op comments
Take care dear Faustino.
Take care of yourself, Faustino. Even English cricket supporters are part of God’s plan.
mosomoso, English cricket supporters are a highly endangered species, particularly after the latest 20-20 fiasco, if God has a plan for us, it must be via purgatory.
Judith, thanks, op on 10 April, survival instincts remain in play (unlike our cricketers) until then. It seems that many parts of my body had “use by age 70” stamped on them, the finely-timed warranties keep running out.
Good luck with the op, Faustino.
“Best Before” rather than “Use By”, I suggest. Many of us are familiar with that phenomenon. But, from someone who cheerfully scoffs yogurt which has been in the fridge for many weeks after the BB date, with no ill effects, don’t be too fussed about what the label says!
Go with your gut. Top alert, expert, for ischemic symptoms.
===========
Faustino
Let me add my “good luck with your operation and speedy recovery” As for “sell by” date, I find the new three D printer of renewable parts a hope for my own as well as other’s future. No one needs to die for me to feel spiffy for a while.
On the other topic of Andrew Lilico and his economic viewpoints, I had to Google (really Bing it) to see the connection. Financial costs of regulatory behaviors if I understood that right. I should add one more: opportunity lost cost.
Interesting that the death pits from the Black Death in 15th Century London reveal the circumstances and hardship of life at the time. I believe at Walter Reed Hospital and the US Army War College, the details of the deaths of soldiers from the late 18th Century onward, and a record not only of how many died by what wounds, but also the stature and other organ system conditions were recorded. By the Korean War, the data on atherosclerosis of heart blood vessels was observed in soldiers in late adolescence. In the aftermath of war, there is sometimes enlightenment.
Much is learned when we study the people and their circumstances of the past. However, dynastic recapitulations for me, are a bore.
Again, speedy recovery and return safely. Your writings are read by many and often, and, appreciated by me.
Just heard Judith on BBC Radio 5. It was a rather short interview but she came over well.
Judith speaks clearly and confidently in complete contrast to Richard Betts of the Met Office who was on half an hour earlier and was very hesitant. I have a lot of time for Richard but he is certainly no natural communicator and the interviewer had to come to his rescue.
tonyb
Congrats to both JC and Betts, both of whom came across to me as good scientists with no political agendas, and congrats to the BBC for talking first to scientists. Betts was correctly hesitant when pushed to give more certainty than the science allows.
“Woe, woe, thrice woe”
– Senna the Soothsayer.
Who needs the IPCC?
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
The related Senna the Pods are keeping me going at the moment, in more ways than one (see response to BtS above).
Faustino,
Although I have no direct experience, you have my sympathy. I wish you all the best. I won’t make any bad jokes about Senna the Pod’s moving words of wisdom – “Sh*t happens”, will I?
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
According to some spokes person on the BBC this morning the AR5 WG2 Report predictions are as certain as the fact that smoking causes lung cancer, and the author that resigned did so because he had a personal axe to grind
Old, outdated. Heh, Stern’s the one past his sell by date.
============
Er, that was supposed to be Ed Davey calling Tol a ‘lone voice’ and his research ‘out of date’, as noted by Nick Milner @ the Bish’s, which has a link to Richard Tol speaking about the matter.
Pekka Pirila really didn’t contradict me when I told him several months ago that referencing the Stern report was a sick joke.
============
That spokes person should stick to cycling coverage, and the ground axe will be useful for cutting down trees for fuel once fossil fuels are banned. Ask not for whom the Tol bells, he Tols for our living standards, rampant or otherwise.
The spokes person was from the Overseas Development Institute.
Not entirely sure what connection there is between Climate and ODI
R. Gresty, the connection is that many use the alleged CAGW issue as a vehicle for transferring resources from developed to poorer countries. Many aid agencies and NGOs are on this particular bandwagon, whether or not there is any scientific, economic or moral justification for it.
I have not been able to download the SPM yet. Looks like the website must be overloaded.
I was finally able to download it now.
The prize-winning WUWT seems to have mistakenly posted the WG1 SPM outline, but the 80+ comments there have not noticed this yet, so they are just rehashing complaints from six months ago. Sad.
The really interesting question to my mind is how long it will take before the data shows the ‘pause’ is continuing will have to be in order to change peoples opinions?
http://climatedatablog.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/hadcrut-giss-rss-and-uah-global-annual-anomalies-aligned-1979-2013-with-gaussian-low-pass-and-savitzky-golay-15-year-filters-1979-on.png
I wonder what you will be saying next year? Ocean full of energy. ENSO neutral firmly in place. El Nino more probable than La Nina.
And after the el nino we will have a la nina to cool things down again. We’ve heard it all before and every prediction has been wrong so far which means skeptical guesswork has a far better scoring average than alarmist guesswork. It’s just as likely to cool as warm as stay plateaued over the next 10 years as far as anyone knows.
James G, I disagree. It’s much more likely to cool than to stay plateaued or warm. The scene is set for cooling at multidecadal and probably longer timescales. Apart from CO2 effect (cargo cult), nothing points to warming in the next few decades.
All your base are belong to us.
JCH, yes El Nino is more probable than La Nina this/next year. However, it will be weak (PDO trending negative) and after 2015/16 expect a big fat La Nina, similar to the one in 1955/56. Global temperature indices will plummet. I wonder what you will be saying by then?
You do not know what the PDO is doing in terms of phase, or that it is even capable of cooling.
On the BBC radio2 news this morning, they presented the WG2 predictions not as predictions, but as things which had already come about.
New Scientist has a good article
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25326-world-must-adapt-to-unknown-climate-future-says-ipcc.html#.Uzlb7FwXxG4
Thank you for that fine link, Judith Curry!
Question Which ordering is more readily appreciated and smoothly received?
• PREDICT (in IPCC5) that “the tropospheric pause” will end “The tropospheric pause will end because energy-balance science is right, and the ending of the pause is important because the Tragedy of the Commons is real.”
• OBSERVE (in IPCC6) that “the tropospheric pause” has ended “The tropospheric pause has ended because energy-balance science is right, and the ending of the pause is important because the Tragedy of the Commons is real.”
Conclusion The IPCC has (correctly!) appreciated that in the world of climate-change politics, “Observe” beats “Predict”.
Denialists/Randians/Contrarians/Cranks/PeterPans will quibble and froth and abuse and spin either way (needless to say!).
Fan
Preparing for a repeat of the weather of the past will stand us in good stead for preparing for the weather of the future.
We have been living through a benign period over the last 100 years. Let us hope we are heading for a rerun of the MWP and not the LIA This latter period was punctuated by extremes much more violent than today.
tonyb
climatereason, well, not really. Do we prepare for a steady sea-level? Same other other changing factors which are pushing against new frontiers for the civilized world.
Sea level has been increasing for over a thousand years, at a rate of around 1 mm/yr. For the last 400 or so years, the rate has been more like 2-3 mm/yr, with a large signal from natural internal variability. The hype has been that AGW has put it at 3 mm/yr, but similar values were seen in the 1940’s, and values for the last decade are below 3 mm/yr. In most locations, these values are swamped by local geological processes and land use, which can have local sea level rises (or even sea level decreases) that are an order of magnitude greater than the expected AGW value. So the bottom line is that each coastal location needs to assess what is going on with its local sea level rise. Trying to stop a small amount of sea level rise by reducing CO2 emissions is futile; there has not yet been a convincing demo that natural sea level rise has accelerated due to CO2, and whether the the CO2-predicted rise will dominate over local processes in the most vulnerable locations. E.g. in Bangladesh, sea level is rising an order of magnitude more than would be expected from CO2 alone
It’s to see you drive a stake in the ground, Dr. Curry. Or in this case drive a stake into the heart of a climate troll.
3 mm/yr is at least ten times the average rise rate in the last 8000 years, and is a rate that hasn’t been seen in a sustained way since the Ice Age glaciers stopped melting 8000 years ago. It is only this high because the “permanent” continental glaciers are just starting to melt, and this is a sign of things to come. If I was planning, I would plan for a meter in the coming century.
“Preparing for a repeat of the weather of the past will stand us in good stead for preparing for the weather of the future.”
______
Probably not. Certain dragon king events are simply not predictable by any reasonable measure. These unknown unknowns will be the events that truly test a civilization, be they natural or anthropogenic in origin.
” Let us hope we are heading for a rerun of the MWP and not the LIA.”
____
Probably neither. The climate over the next several centuries will likely be unlike anything seen in the Holocene. It will be uncharted territory for homo sapiens.
Jim D is right-on-the-facts.
More broadly, the triune observational evidence of rising sea-level, warming waters, and accelerating ice-mass loss, as scientifically explained — and forecast decades in advance! — by thermodynamically simple energy-balance analysis, is convincing to 97% of climate-scientists</b.
Judith Curry, perhaps you might explain, as plainly and explicitly as possible, why this combination of strong observational evidence and well-founded theoretical explanation are not convincing to you?
Cherry-picked observational counterexamples and dubious phenomenological models (buttressed by weak statistics) are *NOT* strong counter-arguments.
“Trying to stop a small amount of sea level rise by reducing CO2 emissions is futile” – JC
Well, that’s an opinion.
Here’s another – expecting adaption to increased future sea-level rise in places that are already under-adapted to current realities, is magical-thinking.
And the failure of humans to pre-adapt to various environmental stresses is not a recurring theme throughout recorded history? It’s new? I don’t understand your point. Civilizations rise and fall for many reasons. You’re obssessing over changing weather patterns which is just one of many reasons. Stop.
Fan
The rate of sea level rise has not increased in over 21 years since there have been reasonably reliable means of measurement. Sea level has been rising at very close to the current rate for close to 1000 years. There is no reasonable means to validly claim sea level is currently rising due to AGW.
I’d expect 1/3 to half meter, but plan for over a meter and a cat 5 hurricane during high tide.
Thanks for the tip Aaron but I already planned for it. I live at 800 feet above sea level. I am not my brother’s keeper so others who fail to plan as I have is not my responsibility.
Remark by Rob Starkey, science-links by FOMD!
To express your observation another way, Rob Starky, if sea-level rise-acceleration is visible on decadal time-scales, and moreover CO2-removal occurs on millennial time-scales, then it follows rationallyy that the worst-case climate-change projections of James Hansen are scientifically credible.
Ain’t that sobering common-sense, Climate Etc readers?
fan said
‘Jim D reminds us “Three mm/yr is at least ten times the average rise rate in the last 8000 years.”
Jim D is right-on-the-facts.’
Citation please.
As would be expected, the continental glaciers largely melted during the warmest part of the Holocene, partly regrew but diminished again during Roman times. Renewed themselves somewhat during the Dark ages then melted to the lowest levels in the Holocene from around 900AD to around 1600Ad (with small advances and retreats at times)
The LIA then substantially topped everything up as it was the greatest snow/ice event during the Holocene. It is the LIA material that is now melting -and have been since around 1750-although not in a linear fashion) -and if past events are anything to go by will continue to do so.as we warm back towards the MWP circumstances.
So, sea levels oscillate around 50cm to a metre upwards and downwards, according to the climate of the time.
Extreme events can be traced to all types of climates but seem to be at their worst during the LIA period which of course had periods of great warmth as well as great cold, thereby producing a greater temperature gradient between the poles and the equator which in turn produces energy.
tonyb
Fanny- You can choose any belief system you choose. There is no reliable data to support a conclusion that sea level will rise as Hansen forecasted by 2100. He was wrong!
Tony,
Really need to read this…
http://phys.org/news/2014-03-atlantic-ocean-sun-volcanoes.html
“in Bangladesh, sea level is rising an order of magnitude more than would be expected from CO2 alone” – JC
I was surprised at this claim.
I’d be interested to see the evidence it is based on.
Climate etc has done several posts on this, see esp
http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/07/bangladesh-sea-level-rise/
see also this recent NYTimes article (esp the bottom part from Pethick)
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/world/asia/facing-rising-seas-bangladesh-confronts-the-consequences-of-climate-change.html?_r=0
Michael
Are you not aware that changes in local land height often is much more significant than changes in sea level overall??? The fact that SE Asia is being impacted at a different rate in unsurprising.
Fan
Your 11.01.
The first link went to a pay walled article (again).
The second link gave us a 20 year perspective. Try 2000 years and it might have significance.
The third link. Was it a test? I waited 1 minutes and 30 seconds but the audience was still milling and there was no one on the stage. Have I passed?
tonyb
“More broadly, the triune observational evidence of rising sea-level, warming waters, and accelerating ice-mass loss, as scientifically explained — and forecast decades in advance! — by thermodynamically simple energy-balance analysis…”
_____
This is exactly right and all these factors combined point to the simple fact of increased energy in the climate system, far beyond “LIA recovery” and far beyond natural variability and point quite strongly at the external forcing from the rapidly increasing GHG concentrations from anthropogenic activities.
RGates
Your 11.13. Sincere thanks for the link. I think it muddies the water even further as it demonstrates once again that there are many key things we don’t know about the climate, plus many nuances.
I was reading an article by Phil Jones (I think) last week in which he pointed out that during volcanic eruptions winters actually became warmer and the greatest effect was in summer. Tree rings wouldn’t pick up the winter warming of course.
I have no doubt that the biggest eruptions have an effect, but the evidence from crop records is that they are not long lasting. Thought you might appreciate this sobering reference. (The following year everything was back to normal as far as the weather goes, even after such a cataclysmic event)
“There are anomalies within the Data, mainly caused by the effects of volcanic eruptions and the plague. The 1257/8 apocalypse caused by the gigantic explosion of Rinjani in Indonesia resulted in
“such unendurable cold … suspended all cultivation and killed the young of the cattle” so that by midsummer “scarcely were there visible any of the small and rare plants or any shooting buds of flowers (or) … fruit crops. Owing to the scarcity of wheat a very large number of poor people died and dead bodies were found in all directions, swollen and livid, lying by fives and sixes in pigsties, on dunghills, and in the muddy streets” – Matthew Paris, Benedictine monk of St.Albans Abbey in his Historia Anglorum which covers the period 1250-1259. The same was true of 1428/9 after another volcanic explosion on 28th June 1427 of Mt. Fuji in Japan – torrential rain destroyed hay and corn and caused the sheep to die (William Gregory Chronicles) ”
Tonyb
Here Micheal.
Read Harder.
http://pure.qub.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/rapid-rise-in-effective-sealevel-in-southwest-bangladesh-its-causes-and-contemporary-rates(792fcb3f-eb18-45fe-9837-7c7443b559e0).html
I predict you wont have anything interesting to say about the science.
Judith Curry
The New Science article goes off the rails in the last two paragraphs: “100s of millions and 2 C rise causing wide spread crop loss”, items specifically removed from IPCC WG2 statements. Then there is a portion of one sentence in the middle of page 2 stating the need to reduce poverty since poverty makes all other human issues worse. The article and apparently WG2 then leaves that issue blank, no further consideration except reducing CO2 emissions which are acknowledged as its reduction having no impact on any of the calamities over the next century.
If there is one issue the history of the industrial revolution highlighted, the human condition gets better ONLY when the energy for living, working and playing is inexpensive. Cheap and abundant energy available to all will lift the masses from the grind of poverty. No other way to do it.
To me, AR 5 WG2 gets it wrong, by science, by history, and awareness of the human condition. To me the wrong people, with the wrong outlook, and the wrong mandate produced a document suitable for the circular file..
Thank you Judith. Your summation of sea level rise is outstanding. Everything I read supports your analysis. When I start to see signals of an acceleration in the rise then I will reconsider my views, but as long as the data from NOAA and other sources confirm your position I am not going to get hysterical. In this case, historical anecdotes are just as valuable as any other source of information. There are plenty of those to suggest the rise is not significantly greater than what has been experienced for a very long time.
Judith,
That’s just where I went looking for it…but it ain’t there, at least not in the form you presented it.
They compared the typical measure of MSL with what they say is a preferred measure of ESLR which reflects high water levels, not mean levels. So, no Bangladesh is not experiencing “sea level…rising an order of magnitude more than would be expected from CO2 alone”.
And they in no way discount or trivialise the contribution of global SLR;
“The results presented here indicate that the average increase in ESLR for the Pussur Estuary of 14.1 mm a-1 will mean that by the year 2100, and without any contribution from global warming, sea level will have risen by 1.24 m with a 95% confidence range from 0.64 m to 1.85 m…….The existing rate of increase in local ESLR must, however, be in addition to any eustatic increase in sea level due to global warming. ….. Adding this range to our worst case prediction for the Pussur Estuary as a whole, results in a predicted total rise in ESLR of between 1.74m and 3.24m (± 0.6m at P= 95%) by the year 2100”
Local factors; 0.64-1.85, add AGW, 1.74-3.24.
So yes, local factors are important, but it is not at all the case that global SLR is not important, and hence we can ignore CO2.
Yes TonyB, it *was* a learning-test … upon which your initial performance was poor, needless to say!
Seriously, James Hansen speaks at 33:10, and Mary Wood speaks at 1:21:10.
It is a pleasure to assist your climate-science learning, TonyB!
White Knight – thanks for the broken link.
Fan
Hmm. So you don’t think it would have been helpful to have told me that the presentation didn’t start until after 33 minutes??? The sound quality was really too poor to listen for too long.
How about that citation to back up JImd’s assertions that you endorsed?
tonyb
Cutting-edge climate-science ain’t *NEVER* gonna be predigested for yah, TonyB!
Recommendation Learn to *ENJOY* and *LEARN* from the red-hot civic chili-peppers of *rational* discourse!
Regarding sea level rise in general, like the warming of the oceans (which is related to sea level rise of course) there is an unequal distribution of the sea level rise based primarily on prevailing winds and currents. The IPWP in general and the Indian Ocean Warm Pool (IOWP) has been rising and warming for 60 years or so. Much research has been focused on the causes of this rise as well as the potential positive feedbacks going on as well. The bottom line or take-away from all this is that more net energy is being stored in the IOWP and IPWP, with the regions gaining energy on the decadal basis for the past 60+ years through both expansion of the areas and higher temperatures. Really, the only major loss of energy from this region is during El Ninos, but the long-term trend is up, as discussed at length in this research:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-011-0121-x
A very important take-away from the article:
“Our new investigations clearly show that, since the Little Ice Age, there has been a correlation between the known external forces and the temperature fluctuations in the ocean that help control our climate. At the same time, however, the results also show that this can’t be the only driving force behind the AMO, and the explanation must therefore be found in a complex interaction between a number of mechanisms. It should also be pointed out that these fluctuations occur on the basis of evenly increasing ocean temperatures during the last approximately fifty years – an increase connected with global warming,” says Associate Professor Mads Faurschou Knudsen, Department of Geoscience, Aarhus University
Much here that those who are interested in the “stadium wave” hypothesis and potential modulation of that wave via both natural and anthropogenic forcing might want to look into…
Michael
When articles discuss those areas under most extreme threat e.g. Bangladesh, invariably they will refer only obtusely to the real culprit in that location- subsidence. Sinking land is only an afterthought. Yet it could be a very significant factor but without efforts to quantify those processes, all the MSM has to go on is AGW. When you see data that the sea level is dropping in the Scandinavian countries but increasing a few hundred miles away, a reasonable person should be asking “why is that?”. Crescent City, CA has sea levels going down but in San Francisco they are going up. Instead of the hype, lets understand where the threats are coming from. Not all of it is from the steric and mass components of sea level increases.
Let do some real science and quantify the impact of subsidence in those areas with the greatest threat.
Gates
You can comment all you wish about your belief about stored energy, but the truth is that there has been no increase in the rate of sea level rise since 1992. The current rate of rise is very similar to what has been happening for roughly 1000 years. That is somewhat surprising. Climate “alarmists” believe that the rate of rise will dramatically increase in the “near future”. I have yet to read a definitive statement by anyone as to when (+/- a couple of years) as to when the rate will change will occur or they will acknowledge they are wrong about an inevitable increase.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Jim D
Why did they stop melting?
If you switch your freezer off and leave the door open, the ice steadily melts until it’s all gone – it doesn’t melt for a while and then stop.
Respectfully Rob, I disagree. With the acceleration of mass loss from both Greenland and Antarctica’s ice sheets and the oceans reaching some of their warmest temperatures in well over the past 1,000 years, the sea level rise is turning upward from the longer term average over the later part of the Holocene. We are just at the beginning of that turn upward in the rate, but the rapidity of changes going on particularly in the ice mass loss from Greenland and Antarctica would tell us that the later part of this century will show a markedly higher rate than the later part of the 20th century.
Melting of the glaciers leads to sea level rise, and so does warming of the ocean water. There are other effects that do also affect sea levels like the amount of water in the continental areas (both on the surface and underground).
The large number of factors that affect sea level and its measurement may mean that it’s easier to draw conclusions about the future from what we know about glaciers than from the measurements of the sea level itself.
Fan
Your 12.44 . How was your first link backing up JimD’s assertion? Please provide a proper relevant citation.
Your link 2. I am afraid that Wendell Berry leaves me cold. Perhaps he does more for simple folk on your side of the pond?
tonyb
“…the oceans reaching some of their warmest temperatures in well over the
past 1,000 years….”
Warmists are only now beginning to admit that we don’t really know what the global average surface temp is. (And they are admitting that only because reported temps are humiliating their GCM programmers.)
But now we know the oceans temps from the past 1000 years.
It’s situational reality.
You don’t know what the temperature of the oceans is on average today, let alone 50, 100 or 1000 years ago.
Gates
Also with all due respect- as Pekka also explained- there are many things that can happen to water other than to have it result in an increase in sea level. You BELIEVE that you know what will happen in a complex system.
You BELIEVE there must be an increase in the rate of rise, but you are unwilling to definitively state when (+/- a couple of years). I observe that the rate of rise is pretty much unchanged since 1992 and think that there has been an awful lot of warming since that time and wonder when/if the rate of sea level rise will change.
R. Gates,
So when do you predict we will see said acceleration in the Colorado altimeter measurements? Do you not believe the enormous amounts of CO2 we have dumped into the atmosphere over the past 30 years should have shown this trend emerging by now? This measurement has a fairly good SNR.
In order to get to 1M by 2100, this trend is going to need to average about 4x the current rate for the rest of the century. An acceleration this large should be emerging by now, or are you arguing there are natural forces suppressing the current measurements?
Tom,
I personally think we’ve already really turned the corner in terms of seeing a big change from the later Holocene average sea level rise. I think this chart really shows what has been happening over the past few thousand years rather well:
http://www.realclimate.org/images//Kemp_sealevel_20111.png
If you accept that recent rises have been somewhere just over 3 mm/yr, the spike upward in the late 20th and now into the 21st century is even more impressive. But even so, the future increases will be even more so. The great ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are really now just awakening and though slow to start, will move even more rapidly as each year passes. See:
http://antarcticsun.usap.gov/science/contenthandler.cfm?id=3003
So look for a ramp up from 3 to 4 mm/yr. by mid-2020’, and then not a linear, but more non-linear increases into the mid-21st century…maybe 7 mm/yr. by 2050 as Greenland and Antarctica really start moving with increasing mass loss to the oceans. This party is just getting started.
Micheal.
Read harder.
1. Had you actually read what Judith referred you to, before reading my post you would have no trouble.
2. There was a simple way for me to test whether you read what Judith
linked to.
you failed the test.
thank you for playing
We have a consistent overall picture of what’s going on (or several consistent overall pictures). Many different observations are part of that, but are by themselves too inaccurate to add much to the evidence.
Part of that picture is that the rate of sea level rise will increase in the future. There has been some signs of that acceleration in the data, but my impression is that this is one example of my first paragraph.
The change in style of the WG2 report from AR4 to AR5 reflects on many points this same fact. “Knowing” what to expect led in AR4 to too many claims that have since been found to lack real evidence (including a few that are now known to be erroneous).
In very many areas we have the situation where evidence is lacking, but the lack of strong evidence is not proof of incorrectness of the expectation.
Don’t worry, Pekka, Kerry Emanuel assures us that the theory and the models are now in good agreement.
========================
Gates
The chart you posted regarding the trend of sea level rise from “Real Climate” is imo little more than propaganda. From everything I have read on sea level rise there is little reliable information to suggest a significant change in the rate of rise over the last 500 years. The only reasonably reliable data on overall sea level rise within the margins of error relevant today is the satellite record and it shows no acceleration.
Might it accelerate? Yes Do we know how much rise is likely to be associated with AGW? IMO, NO.
I write that in spite of others (Steve Mosher) having written that there are reliable models. I have looked and not found one that matched observed conditions reasonably well.
RiHo08, I put you in the “sensible” class with Andrew Lilico. There is indisputable evidence that all indicators of improvements in the human condition over the last few centuries are closely linked to economic growth. As for what we’ve escaped from, I posted this on Facebook:
So is life really better now than erstwhile? Examination of skeletons in a London burial pit from the 1348-50 Black Death gives an indication. From BBC online:
Analysis of isotope levels in the skeletons’ bones and teeth indicate that:
• Many of the skeletons appear to suffer signs of malnutrition and 16% had rickets.
• There is a high rate of back damage and strain indicating heavy manual labour.
• The later skeletons from the 1400s had a high rate of upper body injury consistent with being involved in violent altercations.
• 40% grew up outside London, possibly as far north as Scotland – showing that 14th Century London attracted people from across Britain just as it does today.
Archaeologist Jay Carver said: “We can see from the people here that Londoners weren’t living an easy life. The combination of a poor diet and generally a struggle means they were very susceptible to the plague at that time and that’s possibly one of the explanations for why the Black Death was so devastating.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26770334
climatereason, this is a well know graphic of sea level since the last Ice Age.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
Note how flat it for the last 8000 years. In contrast, 3 mm/yr would have given us a very noticeable 24 meters in that period.
phatboy didn’t know why sea levels stopped rising 8000 years ago. That was when the Scandinavian and North American land glaciers finally melted, leaving the slightly more robust Greenland and Antarctica, but these are the next two tipping points, and could go at least as fast with climate forcing. The largest rates in this graph are a little over 10 mm/yr, 1 meter per century, but that was only responding to the more subtle Milankovitch forcing. They can easily go faster, and Greenland is worth 7 meters, while Antarctica would bring it up to 70 meters. As you can see, we only lost 2/3 the Ice Age glacial mass coming into the Holocene, and the rest is available for the next tipping point.
Jimd
You and Rgates are now contradicting each other.
He posted the chart from this article
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/06/13/1015619108.full.pdf
As would be expected sea level oscillates according to how much ice is
Locked up or has melted. In roman times it melted. After reforming it melted again during the mwp. Then it reformed again during the lia which the gates graphic notably doesn’t show. Your graphic suggests that the climate has been static over the last 8000 years. Not a hockey stickist are you?
Tonyb
tonyb, it would be hard to see 1-2 m on the scale I had, but it may be there. His Figure 2 bottom panel shows how exceptional the recent period is, which is the point here.
The climate over the next several centuries will likely be unlike anything seen in the Holocene
Indeed.The Holocene highstand is well described in the literature ie sealevels were 1-3 metres higher 5000-1500 BP and then decreased to todays levels .
“1. Had you actually read what Judith referred you to, before reading my post you would have no trouble.
2. There was a simple way for me to test whether you read what Judith
linked to.” – Steven Mosher (AKA White Knight),
Thankyou for your well-meant advice – “read harder”.
I try my best.
I asked Judith for clarification, because I had already read the post she subsequently directed me to.
That I quoted from the article Judith’s post referred to, might have been a give-away that I had indeed read it.
May I suggest, also with the best of intentions, that you take your own advice?
Your earlier link may indeed be relevant and interesting, but it’s broken.
“The chart you posted regarding the trend of sea level rise from “Real Climate” is imo little more than propaganda.”
—-
Of course you are required to think this. Your memeplex would allow nothin less!
Real Near Enough Climate.
====================
Jim D, I asked you why the ice stopped melting 8000 years ago
Judith Curry wrote:
“Sea level has been increasing for over a thousand years, at a rate of around 1 mm/yr. For the last 400 or so years, the rate has been more like 2-3 mm/yr, with a large signal from natural internal variability.”
I’ve never seen any evidence for 2-3mm/year over the last 400 years. The 20 century average is 1.4mm/year and, before that, it was lower, I think. Also, as Jim D points out, the average rate was very much smaller than even that over the last few millennia.
Maybe more importantly, there seems to be an inherent contradiction in the claims that internal variability can account both for recent (last 150 years) surface warming and recent sea level rise. When internal variability causes ocean surface to warm, this increases outwelling shorwave radiation and when it causes ocean surface to cool, this reduces outwelling shortwave radiation. Hence, warming from internal variability over a sustained period (long enough to cancel the short term effect of reduced land retention of water) ought cause sea levels to drop. Only external forcing can cause surface temperatures and sea levels to vary in synchronously, while internal variability tends to pull them in opposite directions.
Judith Curry wrote “For the last 400 or so years, the rate has been more like 2-3 mm/yr, with a large signal from natural internal variability.”
Besides… do you seriously believe that? Just 2 to 3mm/year on average would mean 80cm to 1.2m of sea level rise over the last 100 years. There would be unequivocal evidence of that, in Venice and countless other places, would there not be?
…last 400 years, sorry.
The influence of internal variability on the sea level is more complex than that because the coefficient of thermal expansion depends on both the temperature and the pressure. It’s smallest in cold water, when the pressure is not extremely high. A large volume of such water is at depths of 500-2000 m. Thus transfer of heat between those depths and volumes of warmer water influence the sea level keeping the total OHC constant.
I have no quantitative knowledge on the importance of this effect, but it might be non-negligible.
“The influence of internal variability on the sea level is more complex than that because the coefficient of thermal expansion depends on both the temperature and the pressure.”
It does complicate quantitative relations but it might be rather difficult to come up with a realistic model that would explain both the sharp increase in the rate of sea level rise together with the sharp increase in the rate of outwelling shortwave radiation. That might possibly be explained (qualitatively) by a reduction of the rate of transfer of ocean heat from warm layers to deep cold layers. But this would still fail to explain why surface warming has been so much more pronounced over land than it has been over oceans.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
phatboy asks why this is so flat in the last 8000 years. I answered above, but anyway. 8000 years ago the only major continental glaciers left were the ones we have now, Greenland and Antarctica. Prior to that there were left-over glaciers from the Ice Ages in Scandinavia and North America that melted due to warming of the environment, which was subtle but enough, and, as we saw from another graphic I posted, Greenland is now at or past a tipping point.
Pierre, the land warm is probably mostly due to economic activity (mostly land use changes, agriculture, draining of aquifers, etc.). I suppose it is possible that clouds form more over land and release latent heat (of course, this should show more in satellite data than surface station data, and I think the opposite is true).
Jim D, I said absolutely nothing about sea level.
As I don’t think I’m going to get any kind of sensible answer, let’s just forget it huh?
Sorry, phatboy, I was connecting sea levels with melting land glaciers, but this jump seems to have completely lost you. Maybe you can figure your answer out for yourself now with this clue.
Jimd
Your 7.59 was probablymeant for me not phatboy. I have graphed glacier movements taking hundreds of references from such as ladurie, lamb and Pfister. please look at figure 5 in particular
Figure 5
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/16/historic-variations-in-temperature-number-four-the-hockey-stick/
Tonyb
Michael I seriously doubt you read the entire article and know you did not understand it.
Also, you still do not get it.
The link I provided WORKS.. ( but you have to READ HARDER)
I’ll double the bet that you have nothing interesting to say about the science
http://pure.qub.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/rapid-rise-in-effective-sealevel-in-southwest-bangladesh-its-causes-and-contemporary-rates(792fcb3f-eb18-45fe-9837-7c7443b559e0).html
(hint,, copy all of it and paste )
If you read like the lazy ass you are you’ll click on the link
If you pay attention to details you’ll see what you missed
Tonyb, I was trying to answer both you and phatboy, who both seem to be questioning the flat for 8000 years part of what I said. I am not sure your Figure 5 is showing anything large enough to affect sea level. You would need to look at Greenland, at least.
Jimd
Your 1.43.
The lia saw the largest accretion of ice and snow during the entire Holocene. How is that not going to reduce sea levels substantially as it is locked up and a rise when the ice melts?
Tonyb
tonyb, Gates’s graph at 2:48pm shows a 10 cm dip around then. 10 cm is significant, given that Greenland only contains 7 meters.
“past events are anything to go by will continue to do so.as we warm back towards the MWP circumstances.”
______
The climate will blow right on by “MWP Circumstances” as Greenland and Antarctica both will melt rapidly over the coming centuries. You’re underestimation for what the long-term forcing on the climate is from the highest GH gas levels in millions of years is remarkable considering you are otherwise quite educated. The great ice masses of these two regions are just now beginning to respond to the highest levels of CO2 in millions of years and the highest levels of methane and N2O in far longer than that. Think mid-Pliocene and then Miocene if you want to get a feel for the likely coming climate. There is nothing in the history of homo sapiens like where we appear to be headed. Our Australopithecus distant cousins had a taste.
JimD
Below is my article on sea levels carried here
http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/12/historic-variations-in-sea-levels-part-1-from-the-holocene-to-romans/
Here is the much longer version;
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/document.pdf
At the very foot of it is a graph. It is a much more realistic representation of what happens when vast quantities of water are locked up as ice, then melts, with a 40cm difference peak to trough from MWP to LIA.. Please note date of graph so a cm or so needs to be added to the modern value.
tonyb
Rgates said in a caring and non patronising fashion to me;
‘You’re underestimation for what the long-term forcing on the climate is from the highest GH gas levels in millions of years is remarkable considering you are otherwise quite educated.’
The forcing is entirely theoretical and as we have discussed before on those few occasions when I have been able to string two intelligent words together, is that such eras as the Pliocene are so different to ours that to translate what happened then, to what will happen now, is a step too far.
tonyb
tonyb, still, the current rate exceeds anything you have there, and the 21st century rate is conservatively double the current one. I don’t think many would be comforted by those recent trends, even if you take away the projected ones.
jimd
your 12.57. glad to see you are now being more realistic as regards glaciers and sea levels.
They fluctuate much more than allowed for in the ‘stickist’ view of climate history. Can I sincerely suggest you might enjoy the book ‘Times of Feast times of Famine’ by Le Roy Ladurie whereby the extent of glacier movements and the temperature fluctuations that caused them are dealt with at some length. We are by no means in ‘new’ territory as regards our climate and Glaciers have been melting long before man is supposed to have had a hand.
Bearing in mind how much ice was locked up during the LIA it seems reasonable to suppose we will see sea levels continue to rise in coming decades and mitigation is therefore sensible. In planning for the weather of the future look to the weather of the past.
tonyb
tonyb, I would expect sea level and glaciers to be sensitive to temperature. You show that even a few tenths of a degree leads eventually to a few tenths of a meter sea-level rise, but you haven’t yet seen that there are tipping points where the sensitivity goes up, as can be seen from sea-levels over thousands of years that I showed where the sensitivity becomes an order of magnitude larger. For example 120 meters for about 8 C since the last Ice Age was due to the non-survival of some continental glaciers. 400+ ppm is likely not conducive to Greenland’s survival, which is supported by its accelerating melt rate.
Judith Curry “The hype has been that AGW has put it at 3 mm/yr, but similar values were seen in the 1940′s, and values for the last decade are below 3 mm/yr.”
What are your data regarding the last decade? The data from Aviso (Topex/Poseidon, Jason-1 and Jason-2) don’t seem to show any recent decline. The average since 1993 up until now still is 3.26mm/y +-0.6 (90% confidence interval). That’s doesn’t seem significantly smaller then the trend for the first ten years.
Am I now to understand that the oceans are warming and because of CO2 the oceans are becoming more acidic. Cant understand how this is possible perhaps some one can explain to me how gas solubility now increases with temperature? I was always under the impression that increases in temperature resulted in gases becoming less soluble and therefore given off into the atmosphere, has this now changed?
Not that I believe in the oceans becoming more acidic, but they will absorb more if the CO2 partial pressure in the atmosphere increases. Since the atmosphere is in direct contact with the oceans, partial pressures will tend to equalize. That’s the reason I don’t believe that we can increase atmospheric CO2 with our emissions – oceans must absorb it and they do it very fast.
R. Gresty, it is the air-water CO2 ratio that changes with temperature. A smaller fraction of CO2 can stay in warmer water, but both are increasing.
“That’s the reason I don’t believe that we can increase atmospheric CO2 with our emissions – oceans must absorb it and they do it very fast.”
This is an illogical argument. Whatever is causing the atmospheric CO2 concentration to rise, and it does rise, *isn’t* entirely offset by ocean absorption. Else, the atmospheric concentration would not have risen. This refutes your premise that oceans *must* absorb the totality of the atmospheric excess. (And the rate of our emissions is about twice the rate of the atmospheric increase, by the way).
Pierre-Normand,
What is hindering the oceans from uptaking the excess anthropogenic CO2 emissions into the atmosphere? Air-water CO2 exchange is primarily controlled by the air-water difference in CO2 concentrations. Whenever the partial pressure of CO2 is increased in the atmosphere over a body of water, the gas will diffuse into that water until the partial pressures across the air-water interface are equilibrated. The oceans contain a very large reservoir of CO2, so they will hardly ‘notice’.
The long equilibration time, as claimed by the consensus makes no sense.
Edim, it’s the finite rates of diffusion and mixing of CO2 in ocean layers that prevents the atmosperic CO2 to be more rapidly diffused in the bulk body of the oceans. The sea surface is in equilibrium with the atmosphere but the deeper layer aren’t. The story is similar for temperature.
Your line of thinking still is quite illogical. You are suggesting that mainstream science must be wrong about the rate of absorption on CO2 by oceans because you think it ought to be *faster* than it *actually* is. But science ought only to explain what actually takes place in the world and not why it isn’t happening in the way you imagine it ought to.
To repeat, there are two empirical facts that (1) there has been a sharp increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration recently and that (2) oceans didn’t completely offset this increase. You can’t understand how (2) is possible. You are faulting science for providing an explanation which is in accordance with reality (#2 above) rather than being in accordance of your own conception of what should have occurred instead (i.e. the very quick ocean uptake of all the atmospheric excess). But science fulfills its duty well enough when it explains what *does* happen in the empirical world. The actual rate of atmospheric CO2 increase (with the approx. 50% ‘airborne fraction’) is consistent with the rate of our emissions and our models of CO2 mixing and diffusion in ocean layers (also accounting for the net terrestrial biomass uptake).
Ocean chemistry, more specifically the Revelle factor has a large influence on the amount of carbon oceans can absorb. When the pH is high enough, the amount of bicarbonate ions is very large relative to unionized CO2 (or H2CO3). More CO2 lowers the pH and reduces this ratio. For this reason the total dissolved inorganic carbon concentration increases in relative terms much more slowly than the atmospheric concentration of CO2.
The ratio of the relative changes of concentrations is of the order of 1/10. It’s, however, not a constant. Thus the effect cannot be described fully by this single number.
Pierre, (1) the increase in atmospheric CO2 recently is nothing unusual and (2) the increase is mostly caused by the reciprocal pumping action of the seasonal (annual) temperature cycle (the cycle is ‘asymmetric’). Oceans are causing the increase, anthropogenic emissions are absorbed locally (by oceans mostly). The annual change in atmospheric CO2 is temperature dependent.
Edim, the recent increase *is* unusual in the context of the 650,000 year old ice core record. The atmospheric CO2 concentration has typically varied from about 180-200ppm during glacial periods up to 280-300ppm during inter-glacial periods, including most of the Holocene, right up to about 200 years in the past. The magnitude of the swing also tells us that the ocean warming from glacial to inter-glacial periods causes atmospheric concentration to increase by about 100ppm. That’s about 12-15ppm/1°C of surface warming. Hence the warming that occurred over the last couple centuries would have been sufficient (assuming it had had some natural causes other than an independent CO2 increase) to increase atmospheric CO2 concentration from 300ppm to about 312-315ppm. Anything over that leads the oceans to become net sinks of CO2 rather than net sources, for reasons Pekka alluded to.
Pierre, Pekka,
Is this statement true, in your opinion?
“It takes about one year to equilibrate CO2 in the surface ocean with atmospheric CO2…”
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Carbon+Uptake
Edim,
That’s a reasonable statement. What does equilibrate mean and what exactly is surface ocean is not, however, defined so precisely that the word true is really applicable.
There’s a lot of variability at different depths that are usually included in surface ocean due to the biological activity. Some of that has a strong annual cycle. For that reason alone an equilibrium does not always apply to anything of shorter duration than annual averages.
Edim, how do you understand this sentence, just three sentences down from the one you quoted: “Evidence suggests that the past and current ocean uptake of human-derived (anthropogenic) CO2 is primarily a physical response to rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations.”?
Suggestion, if the ocean surface wasn’t broadly equilibrated already with the atmosphere (on average, seasonally and geographically), then the uptake rate would be larger that it currently is and the airborne fraction of our emissions would be less than the current (approximate) 50%.
Pierre Nprmand,
You say:
“Suggestion, if the ocean surface wasn’t broadly equilibrated already with the atmosphere (on average, seasonally and geographically), then the uptake rate would be larger that it currently is and the airborne fraction of our emissions would be less than the current (approximate) 50%”
I assume English is not your first language. Of course, my assumption may be incorrect.
As a native English speaker, might I suggest that you are talking nonsense, as expressed in colloquial English.
If you need assistance, please let me know. I have enough knowledge of the more commonly used romantic languages, plus some languages using Devanagiri script, to be able to assist the transliteration into English. I cannot help with Cantonese, Mandarin or Hakka. Likewise, my knowledge of some other Asian languages is sadly lacking.
Feel free to request assistance. Science should not be constrained by borders. I assume you can communicate adequately in German or Latin.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
Mike Flynn, have you considered that it might be your English or scientific comprehension that might be lacking. This was a very uncalled for post based on what was said.
I have a question for Dr. Curry and Steven Mosher. Climate models are criticized for their macro level predictive ability. In a very brief bullet type list — could you list (A) the things Climate Models seem to do an OK job on; (B) things they are having trouble with. Not asking for long explanations, just the big issues. Thanks.
Climate models get right:
1. the Stratospheric cooling trend:
http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger2/6209/520731018096741/692/z/663553/gse_multipart51047.png
with the caveat that there appears to be a “step function” cooling after
both El Chichon and Pinatubo that may account for a lot of the trend -or- simply coincided.
2. perhaps the Arctic warming also.
Climate models get wrong:
1. the tropical upper tropospheric maximum of warming:
http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger2/6209/520731018096741/692/z/663553/gse_multipart51047.png
This is important because it indicates that the ‘parameterizations’ in the models are screwed up.
2. the overall trend in near surface warming:
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/SatelliteEraTemperatures.png
That is likely not so much the response to radiative forcing as it is the fact that the IPCC and others grossly exaggerated the amount of forcing.
Forcing growth peaked in the late 1980s and has decreased by a quarter since then:
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/GHG_Forcing/dF_GHGs.gif
That’s impossible to answer unless you specify the purpose.
the problem is nobody specified the purpose or the measures of merit
in advance of model development. Consequently all evaluations will be
tainted by the views of the evaluator.
Given the complexity of the system being modelled one could argue that getting the absolute temperature within 1C is stunningly good. For example, a satellite measuring the surface temp can just barely do that
well. About half of the models are better than satellite observation.
That looks good, until you specify a purpose: predict arctic ice loss within 10%. Then that 1C error will ( perhaps ) make a hash of your ice predictions.
A 1C error looks good, until you ask “what about regional amplification?”
In short everyone comes to the model evaluation question with a post hoc agenda. If you like modelling you tend to focus on things done well.
If you want to question models, you compare every molecule of difference
and declare them not fit for use.
“A 1C error looks good, until you ask ‘what about regional amplification?’”
Or more to the point, a 1C error looks good until you realize the consensus advocates are using the models to push trillion dollar public policies based on predictions of decadal increases of .1C.
Josh has a good cartoon at BishopHill
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2014/3/31/the-alarmists-return-josh-268.html
We’ve found something worse than lawyers…
How could this possibly be when we know that…
“At the heart of the IPCC is a cadre of scientists whose careers have been made by the IPCC. These scientists have used the IPCC to jump the normal meritocracy process by which scientists achieve influence over the politics of science and policy. Not only has this brought some relatively unknown, inexperienced and possibly dubious people into positions of influence, but these people become vested in protecting the IPCC, which has become central to their own career and legitimizes playing power politics with their expertise.”
Kyoto to Yokohama is about 4 hrs 20 minutes (280.8 mi), $1 Billion Dollars /day or a 0.0°C increase in average global warming, depending on you measure it.
That is indeed a funny cartoon by Josh. As I said earlier, it would be the height of extreme irony if the release of this WG2 report turns out to be the bright spot for skeptics this year as extreme climate and weather stories look to once more dominate the headlines as the year progresses, with potential stories coming from continued extreme weather around the globe, but also a potential El Nino, and the Arctic summer sea ice may once more grab headlines. None of these of course “proves” anything related to AGW, but they may make the skeptics a bit upset by the headlines they will grab.
“extreme climate and weather stories look to once more dominate the headlines”
Propaganda?
Andrew
I guess Josh hasn’t got the memo that the IPCC report is alarming.
I notice an inconsistency.
Some denial propagandists like Josh are trying hard to pretend the report obliterates alarm.
While other denial propagandists claim the report is too alarmist.
Then why the shift towards adaptation – which used to be a dirty word?
R Gates will be right there with the headline writers straightening out all the readers about what proves what.
==================
Yikes! Michael Mann clones
IPCC+Acolytes = The Sky Is Falling.
Sane People: Ho Hum. Its colder than 1998.
IPCC+Acolytes = We Are All Going To Die From Ocean Warming
Sane People: .09C in 60 years with no change in rate is going to kill us?
IPCC+Acolytes = Arctic Sea Ice Is Melting!!!!
Sane People: Antarctic Sea Ice is Growing
IPCC+Acolytes = The Sky Is Falling.
Pingback: These items caught my eye – 31 March 2014 | grumpydenier
EXCELLENT article on WG2 report related to their communication of uncertainty
http://www.futureearth.info/node/585
What if, as climatists believe, that Earth will warm further over the coming century? The climatists of global warming alarmism have difficulty admitting the obvious: warming due to natural causes – about 0.5°C /100 years – is sufficient to explain all of the global warming we see over the last 200 years. So, absent another ice age, why wouldn’t we expect more global warming over the next 200 years?
Given the natural component of global warming, there is no room left for any other causal factors. No further explanations are necessary so hysterical ravings about a warming catastrophe is ludicrous (and exposed as hoax and a myth: a scare tactic).
Well i just did an interview with BBC Scotland, they wanted to know why I was called a lukewarmer and a denier. I was happy with my response, that I was busy looking at the evidence and giving my best scientific assessment, and that I was concerned that too much of the science was being filtered through a political agenda
With respect&nbsdp;— based purely on the evidence&nbsdp;— isn’t it *more* rational to opine that not *enough* strong climate-science is being filtered through the citizen agenda because the scientific community is too conservative?
Everyone should be a ‘lukewarmer’ because the data indicate ‘lukewarming’.
“…and that I was concerned that too much of the science was being filtered through a political agenda..”
____
Did you mention that one particular party “taps” you to come to D.C. to testify as their expert witness for their own political agenda?
I’ve testified twice for the Democrats, thrice for the Republicans
Dr. Curry,
Just out of curiosity, what are the timeframes for each? That is, when did you testify for the Dems and when for the Republicans? Being quite Independent, I really don’t care from a political perspective, just more from “how the wind is blowing” perspective. That is, your testimony from years ago on hurricanes probably was used one way, and your testimony on the Uncertainty Monster, probably used another. As you well know, being called to testify always has a political agenda attached, regardless of whether you personally hold to that agenda or not.
testimony for dems: circa 2006/2007.
testimony for reps: since 2010
Stop the presses, R. Gates has discovered that politicians are …wait for it…political.
But he doesn’t care about politics from a political perspective, just from a “how the wind is blowing” perspective.
Just in case you were wondering.
Dr. Curry,
Thanks for your honesty. Far beyond what other many other experts offer in such a public venue I am constantly impressed. Even though we disagree on some things, I certainly hope your example in honesty is one that other’s follow.
Once more Gary M, you try to create something out of nothing. Dr. Curry has been honest enough to indicate a change in the party she’s has been testifying for recently. I suspected it was the case, but appreciated her confirming it to be so. Each party has it’s own agenda and calls on experts to support that agenda. That’s the way D.C. works and Judith has been honest enough to confirm which party has though her recent perspective might help them advance their agenda. Simple enough.
Here is a link to Judith’s Radio Scotland interview.
http://www.bishop-hill.net/storage/currywg2.mp3
R. Gates @ 2.08: as many CE posters observed, there have been some shifts in Judith’s views over the last six years, as further evidence has come in and she has given further thought to issues such as uncertainty. As a result of this shift, the Reps now think that her evidence provides some support for their view on the issues, previously the Dems held that view. This in no way implies any politicisation of our gracious host or her views, it is just that the weight of evidence as she sees it has shifted. I will assume that any implication to the contrary from you is unintentional.
“This in no way implies any politicisation of our gracious host or her views, it is just that the weight of evidence as she sees it has shifted.”
_____
That the Republicans now find Dr. Curry “useful” for furthering their political agenda is the established fact. They would not “tap” her to come and testify if they did not think her testimony is useful toward that end. Thus, there are several possibilities regarding Dr. Curry’s own complicity in this political use for her scientific perspective:
1) She agrees with the political agenda of the Republicans
2) She does not fully agree but is will do whatever it takes to put a halt to the bandwagon of the “consensus” approach to science– thus, she is using the Republicans as much as they are using her.
3) She does not realize she is being used.
In my mind, somewhere between number 1 & 2 is most likely. She is too smart for #3 to be true.
R Gates projects his own corruptibility onto the wide silver screen.
==============
Gates, (4) Judith Curry will put forward her considered views as a climate scientist when asked, as a contribution to public knowledge and understanding, whenever she is asked to and whoever asks her to. I reject your churlish options, they demean you rather than Professor Curry.
Faustino, R. Gates says silly and obviously wrong things when it comes to issues of politics like this. I suspect any scientist asked to testify for the United States Congress would likely do so, regardless of politics.
What kind of scientist would say, “No, I’m not going to try to inform people making decisions because I don’t agree with some of the views some of them have”?
“Gates projects…
Indeed. That you think Judith might lie to you about her testimony because she thinks she has something to hide in this regard is beyond absurd. You succeed only in revealing your own thought processes by thinking her honesty merits your yucky congratulations.
Also revealing of your own flawed judgment. Do you suppose she,s going to lie about something so easily checked, if she were the type to try to hide the truth? Why would she do that?
Wow, some rather touchy and shallow people here. It’s okay that Dr. Curry wants to assist the Republicans in furthering their policy objectives, but let’s not put some unecessary lofty “contribution to public knowledge and understanding” spin on it. She can do that quite well through pure research. Going to D.C. only helps to further the policy goals of those who “tap” her to testify, or furthers her personal goes to do whatever damage she can to “consensus” science. It is not a negative statement on her character that she has chosen the politically useful “expert” witness route. It’s her chosen path and who can blame her for being one of the most effective counter-viewpoints to consensus science around. Chill people…your skeptical hero remains intact and unblemished…
“You succeed only in revealing your own thought processes by thinking her honesty merits your yucky congratulations.”
____
There are many “experts” who would never admit as much as Dr. Curry does in such a public forum. Her honesty is refreshing, brave, and worthy of congratulations. If you think it is “yucky”– well, who cares?
Waiting for Chris Mooney’s ‘The Democrat War on Science’.
====================
“I suspect any scientist asked to testify for the United States Congress would likely do so, regardless of politics.”
____
Depends on who’s asking and why. Saavy scientists know how the game is played, and are too smart to play the game without believing that strings are attached and real consequences for their careers for better or worse. A frequent response when one wants to stay above the political fray is: “Thank you for asking, I’m honored, but…(I haven’t the time…A better choice might be…etc.).
“R Gates projects his own corruptibility onto the wide silver screen.”
____
Ouch Kim. I don’t claim to be a saint, but I do consider myself a person of high integrity. I tell you exactly where I stand on any issue and most likely that position will be the same this year as it was last year. As an honest skeptic, I remain open to changing that position as new data becomes available. I would assume that this is exactly what has happened in the case of Dr. Curry, switching from testifying for Dems to Republicans. Just shows she’s an honest skeptic open to changing. My guess is that Climategate and “consensus science” played a big role in that change, but you’d have to ask her. All this has nothing to do with “corruptibility” though…a poor and inaccurate use of the word.
Miraculously, both the Republicans and Judy Curry flow in the same tide toward skepticism about the catastrophic element in anthropogenic climate change.
The Hobgoblin of Foolish Consistency mocks earlier predictions of doom. Warming is a manifold blessing, cornucopic in scope.
=====================
R. Gates
I’d say it’s very likely your number “2” (slightly modified)
2) She
does not fully agree butis will[ing to] do whatever it takes within the limits of ethical scientific behavior to put a halt to the bandwagon of the “consensus” approach to science– thus, she is using the Republicans as much as they are using her.I would not see “using” so much in the negative sense (of “taking advantage of”) but more in the positive sense of sense of “benefitting from”.
Agree?
Max
Twice for the Democrats, three times for the Republicans. She’s .6 +/- .02 pure evil! Burn the witch!
Honest people change their minds all the time. It’s the liars that continually say the same thing over and over … trying to make the lie become plausible, they are.
Judith,
lukewarmer is true but denier is a slander that the CAGW activists can’t let go. As Pielke jr said, let’s disagree on the science like gentleman and ladies and use observations to modify projects as we learn more about the climate response to various stimuli. From Pielke sr, land use changes and urbanization impact local and regional climate. Those are also anthropogenic changes that need estimation along with changes in circulation of the ocean. Hard to believe missing heat in the deep ocean when we can see clouds and wind changes caused by ocean circulation changes. We will see how this cold winter in the east and midwest play out in the MSM. They risk credibiltiy with the public. I wish Kerry had given his flat earth statement in the middle of a snowstorm.
Scott
During human evolution, it paid to be part of a group and we’re evolved ( in our psychology ) for that. For hunting, gathering, and self-defense this worked out OK. But for intellectual pursuits, group think is the worst.
Consequently, geeks ( those without strongly evolved social traits ) may assess more clearly many things ( though you might not want to go to dinner with them ).
Now consider this in terms of politics, where people will tell you first what party they belong to, then tell you what they think ( which, because of social evolution, is what the party ‘thinks’ ).
Now consider this in terms of modern ‘climate discussions’. Are you a ‘denier’ or a ‘warmist’? Now tell me what your think. No wonder we’re screwed up.
I just searched throughout the report for the word “hiatus” and came up empty. I did not search all chapters, only those where one could expect the word to appear. Is there a new buzzward to replace “hiatus”, or has the group decided to ignore it altogether?
Perusing the articles of today, you can see the editorial rooms across America have gotten a call on their red phone with the message “Urgent message, from Global Warming central, it is time to write the apocalyptic messages on cue to be in coordination with the latest IPCC release. Let’s make this a big one. The more dire the message, the better. Contact the usual suspects for their help.
All this data has caused us to lose momentum so we really need to make this a big push. Be sure to point out the threat to the Statue of Liberty from catastrophic sea level rise. Her petticoat must stay dry.”
The newsrooms of America are bee hives of activity.
The ‘message’ has shifted from documenting dire impacts, to finding solutions that integrate with broader societal challenges.
This sounds really scary, as if the AGW folks are going to integrate their policy with other social policies. Now, it may sound good, but these folks have made some nutty predictions well before the evidence was there, which leads me to believe the evidence isn’t what counts to these folks.
I wonder what the message is going to be for global women’s rights and AGW, to give an example? “Have fewer children, they are burning up the planet,” for instance.
The root cause of the problem is too many hungry mouths to feed. A great start to solving the problem and a demonstration of good faith would be for warmists to voluntarily undergo non-reversible sterilization. Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words.
What, no volunteers?
JC:
“While I have yet to read the entire WG2 Report…”
Why bother? – Your secondary sources and blog self-citations are apparently all you need to give public reviews. Who wants to read the whole actual Report before deigning to talk about one’s opinions of it on TV?
I mean, really, it’s FORTY-FOUR pages long!
That’s some serious book-learnin’!
And just think of all the extra work involved if citations were followed up with even more reading!
For those pedants that are interested in the primary doc:
http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/IPCC_WG2AR5_SPM_Approved.pdf
Why bother?
Good question.
Andrew
Yes, the Stern report needed several hundred pages to come up with a scenario where global warming was a cost rather than a benefit.
That’s some serious rhetorical gymnastics.
Yeah.
I’ve gone through it in detail and I’ll add:
“why bother?”
Max
FYI: It’s Fred “Pearce”, not Pierce
We’re told climate keeps getting warm,
So now we wait for the gathering storm,
It’s a shame the climate has been so tame,
As a gathering calamity it’s been so lame,
No deluge full of gore?
Waters rising up and more,
Like houses rushing going down a river,
As we watch, all wet and shiver.
Not yet in the Beth the Serf class I’m afraid, but points for trying.
Scientific method for Mosher from his science buddy Dave.
http://www.cdn.sciencebuddies.org/Files/5084/7/2013-updated_scientific-method-steps_v6_noheader.png
The problem with a lot of global warming science is that GCMs are considered to be experiments. GCMs aren’t experiments they’re the hypotheses! Hypotheses expressed in computer programming languages are still hypotheses!
Well, actually GCM’s are experiments that are testing hypotheses. Before any model is run it would be a hypothesis, but the running of a model over some given time period (the “spinning up” of the model) would be the experiment. Whether or not that experiment or series of experiments have anything to do with the actual dynamics going on in the real world is another issue entirely.
Are you ever going to get your foot out of your mouth, Gates?
A GCM is a hypothesis. Running a GCM generates hypothetical predictions. Comparing the predictions to observations is the test of the hypothesis (i.e. the experiment).
I’d say write that down but you really need to go to school and get a passing grade in a few science classes. It’s obvious you have not done so.
You’re not wrong about it being a different matter entirely.
The devil’s almost always in the detail.
R. Gates
FALSE
Models are not “experiments”.
Models cannot “test hypotheses”.
Only empirical scientific evidence, from actual physical observations or reproducible experimentation can do that (Feynman).
Models are only as good as the input assumptions which have been programmed in.
Sorry ’bout that.
Max
If you have a set of equations you can test those equations by processing them with a computer.
If the equations are the hypothesis then the computer program is testing that hypothesis, which is an experiment.
lolwot
You can test the arithmetic of the equations with a computer model.
You cannot test their scientific validity with a computer model.
Only testing them against empirical scientific evidence (Feynman) will do that.
Max
The process of running equations to see what behavior they produce is an experiment to see how well they reproduce the system they were devised for.
lolwot
All the double-talk in the world will not change the fact that models are only as good as the input assumptions that have been programmed in.
GIGO.
No “test” of a hypothesis at all.
Max
That’s the point. The experiment using the computer model is testing the inputs made.
lolwot
Testing inputs against other inputs – NOT against reality – is no real “testing”.
It’s still the GIGO effect.
Max
Gates:
Before any model is run it would be a hypothesis, but the running of a model over some given time period (the “spinning up” of the model) would be the experiment
If you hypothesis is that a computer program implementing some subset of scientists knowledge of earth’s climate system, coupled with computational limitations, then yes.
As we are learning, though, the value of that may not be so great. At a minimum, their is value only to the extent the models can accurately predict conditions in the real climate system.
As Judith mentioned, only 2% of simulations predicted a 15 year hiatus, and not now. If the hiatus lasts 20 years, I suspect even the die hards are going to think the models aren’t accurately predicting conditions, and it’s time to come up with other theories.
In fact, it seems that’s happening already. I think this is an accurate portrayal: Ternberth: ocean heat stores capture energy more readily than thought. Judith Curry: Natural Variability has been underestimated (and perhaps climate sensitivity over-estimated). Some: Global dimming because of Chinese Coal plants. Michael Mann: recent volcanoes cooled the earth. I’ll bet there are more. Some of these go directly to core model assumptions.
Then there is the question even if the models had all the most important climate systems modeled, can they accurately predict? Maybe there simply isn’t enough compute power.
And tuning would be called fudging the data?