by Judith Curry
Red-teaming the the U.S. government’s Climate Science Special Report on the topic of sea level rise.
Steve Koonin as a new op-ed in the WSJ: A Deceptive New Report on Climate. that clarifies the need for a Climate Red Team. Excerpts:
One notable example of alarm-raising is the description of sea-level rise, one of the greatest climate concerns. The report ominously notes that while global sea level rose an average 0.05 inch a year during most of the 20th century, it has risen at about twice that rate since 1993. But it fails to mention that the rate fluctuated by comparable amounts several times during the 20th century. The same research papers the report cites show that recent rates are statistically indistinguishable from peak rates earlier in the 20th century, when human influences on the climate were much smaller. The report thus misleads by omission.
This isn’t the only example of highlighting a recent trend but failing to place it in complete historical context. The report’s executive summary declares that U.S. heat waves have become more common since the mid-1960s, although acknowledging the 1930s Dust Bowl as the peak period for extreme heat. Yet buried deep in the report is a figure showing that heat waves are no more frequent today than in 1900. This artifice also appeared in the government’s 2014 National Climate Assessment, which emphasized a post-1980 increase in hurricane power without discussing the longerterm record. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently stated that it has been unable to detect any human impact on hurricanes.
Such data misrepresentations violate basic scientific norms. In his celebrated 1974 “Cargo Cult” lecture, the late Richard Feynman admonished scientists to discuss objectively all the relevant evidence, even that which does not support the narrative. That’s the difference between science and advocacy.
These deficiencies in the new climate report are typical of many others that set the report’s tone. Consider the different perception that results from “sea level is rising no more rapidly than it did in 1940” instead of “sea level rise has accelerated in recent decades,” or from “heat waves are no more common now than they were in 1900” versus “heat waves have become more frequent since 1960.” Both statements in each pair are true, but each alone fails to tell the full story.
Several actions are warranted. First, the report should be amended to describe the history of sea-level rise, heat waves and other trends fully and accurately. Second, the government should convene a “Red/Blue” adversarial review to stress-test the entire report, as I urged in April. Critics argue such an exercise would be superfluous given the conventional review processes, and others have questioned even the minimal time and expense that would be involved. But the report’s deficiencies demonstrate why such a review is necessary.
Finally, the institutions involved in the report should figure out how and why such shortcomings survived multiple rounds of review.
Mr. Koonin was undersecretary of energy for science during President Obama’s first term and is director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University.
Critique of the Draft of the CCSR discussion of post 1900 sea level rise
Steve Koonin has written an essay Critique of the Draft of the CCSR discussion of post 1900 sea level rise [link CSSR on SLR]
Executive summary. In discussing global sea level rise since 1900, the draft Climate Science Special Report (CSSR) notes that the rate of rise since 1993 is significantly greater than the average rate of rise 1900‐1990, but fails to mention the substantial and well‐established decadal‐scale fluctuations during the 20th century. In fact, the rates since 1993 are statistically indistinguishable from rates in the first half of the 20th century.
Read the whole thing, it is very concise and packs a well-documented punch. He provides the following recommendation for the CCSR draft:
Comparison with the literature shows that the CSSR draft misleads by omission in not mentioning both the strong decadal‐scale variability of GMSL rates during the 20th century and the fact that the most recent values of the rate are statistically indistinguishable from those during the first half of the 20th century.
This deficiency in the CSSR draft should be remedied before the report is released. For example, the draft CSSR Executive Summary statements quoted at the beginning of this document should be replaced with something like:
GMSL has risen 16‐21 cm since 1900, continuing a trend that began in the 19th century. The rate of rise has averaged 1.3 mm/yr since 1900, but has oscillated between about 0 and 2.5 mm/yr, with uncertainties of ±(1‐2) mm/yr. The rates since 1993 are at the high end of this range, but are not statistically different from those during the first half of the 20th Century.
Other modifications of the CSSR text itself follow straightforwardly, and a figure similar to one of the two immediately above should be included. It would also be useful to refer to that figure when discussing the projected average rates of rise for the various scenarios shown in Figure 12.4(a). For example, a rise of 2 meters (~six feet) by 2100 is equivalent to an average rate of ~24 mm/yr for the rest of this century, some 8 times larger than the highest observed rate to date. That would help illustrate for the non‐expert reader just how dramatic the projected changes are.
With such changes, the CSSR would more fully and correctly describe the data and would not misleadingly alarm the non‐expert reader into believing that recent rates of rise are unprecedented.
Red-teaming sea level rise
While we’re on the topic of red teaming sea level rise, I’m providing a recent presentation on sea level rise that I prepared for a client in the insurance industry who is interested in U.S. coastal sea level rise out to 2050 [link sea level ins]. I’ve been meaning to write this up into an essay, but I have been too busy, so I’m posting it for comments.
What my presentation does, beyond what Steve Koonin did, is reframe the sea level issue to look at much longer time frames and also the broader drivers for local sea level rise.
These represent two different angles on red-teaming: critiquing within the existing frame of an assessment report, versus reframing the analysis in a broader framework. Both are needed.
I like your presentation. There where many useful graphs. But I missed my favourite. This: https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/global_50yr.htm?stnid=680-140
There you can see 50 year average on a long time scale and some variation not explained by recent heating. There are many of them.
Alas for Steve, WSJ ledes all too often turn self referential on repetition.
But Russ surely you must admire that NOAA SLR data for Sydney. The latest 50 year trend is .78mm/yr while in 1950 it was 1.60mm/yr. Seems to be upside down from what the establishment says. Someone needs to have a conversation with the people in Sydney. Maybe some imaginative adjustments are in order.
What part of PDO don’t you understand? Or for that matter, isostasy.
Since all onshore SLR is local, one admires those who refrain from cherry picking and look to the data sets.
I guess Sydney proves Koonin is wrong.
The evidence shows there is no evidence of isostatic movement (“indistinguishable from zero”) at either Sydney or Australia as a whole. The record of 130 years at 0.65mm/yr without acceleration is what is important for Sydney.. This is not unusual for that entire region with other work finding 0.8mm/yr throughout Tropical Pacific and 0.3mm/yr for Australia. A review of the global data will also find innumerable examples of similar very low rates without acceleration. Of course one has to be motivated to actually do the research and discover what the on the ground observational data say.
But it fails to mention that the rate fluctuated by comparable amounts several times during the 20th century. – Professor Koonin
As far as I know this claim is really based upon one study by Jevrejeva. Is there a single other study, not by a crank (Jevrejeva is definitely not a crank), that substantiates the above claim?
I suspect that Jevrejeva would not agree at all with Professor Koonin’s claim. The rates fluctuated, but they are not comparable.
https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/sea-level.jpg
http://www.realclimate.org/images//haysl21.jpg
Read Koonins supplementary analysis, he has additional references for this
20-year:
https://i.imgur.com/0miX0yz.png
10-year:
https://i.imgur.com/0EFyaMZ.png
5-year:
https://i.imgur.com/fuKixTy.png
The rates fluctuated, but they are not comparable.
Of course not, the past rates have been adjusted some, but the recent rates have been adjusted unprecedented amounts.
Natural data does not compare well with modified data. The natural data did not suit their purposes or support their alarmist goals, so they changed it.
AR5 in 13.2.2.2 says the rise during the period 1920 to 1950 is likely to be comparable to the rate since 1993.
Svetlana Jevrejeva
Lead Author of Chapter 13 (Sea level changes), Working group 1, Fifth Assessment report of Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC)
The paper:
Recent global sea level acceleration started over 200 years ago?
Total citations Cited by 365
Jch
Simon holgate of the Proudman institute also showed this fluctuation and concluded that the rate of sea level rise in the first half of the 20th century was greater than in the second.
http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Holgate/sealevel_change_poster_holgate.pdf
I had a considerable amount of correspondence with him and reported it here. He didn’t believe the change was significantly significant but that it could certainly be detected
Tonyb
Just an aside Tony, but I see that your climatereason website’s defunct, pity.
A problem with the first half being more than the second half is finding sources for the rise. It never balanced. It makes no sense. Enter Munk. One resolution, additional research reduces the amount of SLR in the 20th century, which is what has happened.
“This paper does little toward solving the problems of the historical rise in sea level. In looking for causes, I have applied what Edward Bullard (31) has called the “Sherlock Holmes procedure” of eliminating one suspect after another. The procedure has left us without any good suspect (it is a matter of attribution, not of error bars), but I am reluctant to accept large error bars as definitive evidence for dismissing the traditional estimates of 1.5–2 mm/y for the 20th century sea level rise.
Thermal expansion was the candidate of choice at the time of the first IPCC review. This choice has been almost foreclosed as a major factor by the recent compilations of Levitus and by recent model calculations that account for the incremental ocean heat storage as a consequence of greenhouse warming. The computed steric rise is too little, too late, and too linear.
The rotational evidence, although convoluted, appears to rule out a large eustatic contribution from melting on Antarctica and Greenland, assuming that the measured J̇2 is representative of the 20th century. However, an enhanced contribution from glacial melting and other midlatitude sources is NOT ruled out by the rotational evidence.
Cabanes et al. (16) have demonstrated that the historical estimates of ζ̇ (here taken at 18 cm/cy) are severely biased by a concentration of tide stations in areas of recent warming, and that global estimates have to be radically revised downward. It remains to be demonstrated whether this bias extends to the traditional estimates for the rise in sea level on a century time scale.
Among the many possibilities for resolving the enigma, we suggest the following:
Traditional estimates of the combined (steric plus eustatic) sea level rise (in the range 1.5–2 mm/y) are much too high [the Cabanes et al. (16) view];
Levitus estimates of ocean heat storage and the associated steric rise are much too low;
rotational bounds on the eustatic rise are not valid (see text);
generous error bars in all these estimates mask the enigma (IPCC);
all of the above;
none of the above.
Sea level is important as a metric for climate change as well as in its own right. We are in the uncomfortable position of extrapolating into the next century without understanding the last.” http://www.pnas.org/content/99/10/6550.long
I have a bit of a problem with JCH’s characterization of this work.
Koonin is a physicist. Presumably he must know that water expands when it warms and that ice melts if it is heated. Both contribute to rising sea levels. If we continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere, we will continue to sustain a planetary energy imbalance, the system will continue to warm, ice will continue to melt, and sea level will continue to rise. The rate, of course, will depend on how much we end up emitting, but every indication is that we will follow an emission pathway that will lead to accelerated sea level rise. That it may have varied in the past doesn’t somehow provide some fundamental challenge to our understanding of what will probably happen if we continue to emit CO2 into the atmosphere. It’s really somewhat odd that Koonin seems to not appreciate this.
The issues are this:
there is substantial natural variability in sea level rise (see my presentation)
Greenland melt and West Antarctic ice sheet collapse have happened previously
There is no statistically significant acceleration in sea level rise that can be attributed to human caused warming
Future sea level rise scenarios ignore all contributions from natural climate variability, and rely on climate models that are apparently running too hot that are anchored by unrealistic emissions scenarios
Quantitative estimates of future rates of sea level rise are highly uncertain (independent of any uncertainties about future emissions), and the assessments have over-hyped the high estimates
I don’t think that really addresses the point. At a fundamental level, sea level rises if water warms or if ice melts. We can estimate how continuing to emit CO2 into the atmosphere will impact this. Maybe there will be some variability, but if we continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere, this will probably have a relatively small impact.
Did you go through my presentation.
Simple thermodynamic reasoning such as you are doing does not get you very far in terms of quantitative predictions.
If you are focused on simple thermodynamic reasoning, don’t forget about increased snowfall from warmer ocean temperatures, that can temporarily (for say a few thousand years) increase mass balance of the continental glaciers.
For decision making, we are interested in the next 50-100 years. Talking about equilibrium responses doesn’t help much on these timescales, where natural variability has huge impact.
Sea level rose ~8 inches in 20th century. We can expect same in 21st century, likely some additional rise. 8-18 inches rise over a century is not catastrophic, although awkward for low elevation cities that have been building on wetlands, etc.
Collapse of the West Antarctic Icesheet (this is the big one) happened during the last interglacial, no reason to think it won’t happen in the current interglacial. Seems stable at present. This would be good target for geoengineering ideas.
Your presentation seems to focus on local sea level rise (which I think is a fair point, in the sense that it isn’t going to be the same everywhere and other factors could certainly influence local sea level rise). Globally, however, I do not think there is much evidence to suggest that the impact of our emissions can be substantially influenced by some kind of internal variability.
ATTP
You’ve oversimplified the issue. I don’t take exception with what you’re saying about warming, etc, but that limits the dynamics that could be at play, including changes in the ocean basins, tectonics, etc. Also, given multi-decadal oscillations that influence water levels, it seems premature to say we have a long enough record to make judgments about 2100.
I won’t even bring up the change in how we now measure the rates of SLR. That creates an even bigger mess.
“the assessments have over-hyped the high estimates”
The opposite view seems to be taken by some glaciologists.
https://www.glaciology.net/2014/ar5-sea-level-rise-uncertainty-communication-failure/
“climate models that are apparently running too hot”
The opposite view seems to be taken by some (most?) climate scientists
https://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin/status/910535115100606465
“There is no statistically significant acceleration in sea level rise that can be attributed to human caused warming”
Do we expect to see that from the dataset we have?
“Future sea level rise scenarios ignore all contributions from natural climate variability”
Indeed, natural variability is always down, right?
Remind me who’s hyping here?
“We can estimate how continuing to emit CO2 into the atmosphere will impact this [the sea level rise].” ATTP, please estimate. And show us error bars of your estimate.
VTG: “The opposite view seems to be taken by some glaciologists”
The glaciologists don’t seem to understand the concept of joint probabilities (or for that matter the use of quote marks around the word unlikely). The Science letter that they quote makes the point that 1/3rd of the time the actual SLR will lie outside the IPCC “likely” range for the RCP8.5 projection for 2100 (.52 – .98m) or 1/6th above .98m.
But this projection is conditional upon the RCP8.5 emissions scenario occurring. This requires there to be no moves to abate (business as usual), and at the 90th percentile within that. If we arbitrarily say there is a 10% chance of no move to abate (pretty generous if you consider likely global responses if the temperatures actually start tracking upwards), and you assume all the above are independent, one ends up with under 0.2% probability of a sea level rise of greater than .98m.
I’d add that all the catastrophic events seem to be predicated on temperatures reaching the top end of the RCP8.5 scenario temperatures this century, those events are contained within the 0.2% probability.
The glaciologists are unfortunately part of the over hyping brigade.
“There is no statistically significant acceleration in sea level rise that can be attributed to human caused warming”
But there is acceleration. “Statistical significance” is misused here. It comes from statistical inferenbce, where someone is trying to infer something new, just from data. Here the situation is that it had been expected that pumping CO2 into the air would cause accelerating sea level rise. And that is observed. It may be that it has happened before. But the prediction happened. There is no better that a prediction can do than come true.
Nick Stokes: “There is no better that a prediction can do than come true.”
SLR also decelerated in periods since 1950. There’s nothing worse that a prediction can do than not to come true.
The serious point is that the acceleration is a statistical artifact and has to be discussed in those terms before claiming it demonstrates or otherwise a physical phenomena.
Nick
In Judith’s presentation is a graphic showing sea level change! taken from the website of the university of Colorado, who, as you know are generally considered to be the doyens of sea level calculations.
They show satellite derived changes of sea levels, which covers a relatively short period of time. As others here have said, comparing tide gauges and satellites are comparing apples and oranges.
Taking all this into consideration it is evident there are variable rates of change and the current era has similarity to the rates of change in the recent, pre satellite period.
This is quite a hot topic for obvious reasons and much resarch has gone into determining why there hasn’t been the exponential rise that should be under way if the more pessimistic predictions of sea level rise by the end of the century are to be realised.
The university of Colorado are as aware as anyone of this non acceleration to expected modelled levels and indeed that, even within the satellite era, there are varying rates of change.
This paper is from their own site and was published in Nature magazine last year. In it is discussed why the expected acceleration has not taken place, indeed that there has been a deceleration.
Fasullo ET al
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep31245
The title is interesting. The contents equally so. We have seen some dramatic increases in sea level rise over short periods during roman times and around the 10th century and again in the 16 th century.
This is not one of those times.
Tonyb
ATTP should be ATTPANRW
And There’s Theoretical Physics And No Real World
Tony,
“This paper is from their own site and was published in Nature magazine last year.”
Well, in Scientific Reports. It is about detection in the 23-year satellite record. But the evidence cited here is of a faster rate after 1993, relative to before. That is about when the satellite record started.
What Fasullo et al show (here) is a somewhat linear rate for the first part of those 23 years followed by a dip and then a decidedly more rapid rise.
Nick
So you are disagreeing with the author about the findings of their own paper? I mist admit that is a new one on me
He clearly points out the acceleration has not happened and in the fact that the opposite has occurred and looks for reasons why this should be so.
Also see my reply to jch just now Upthread of this one. In it Simon holgate of the proudman institute confirms the rate of rise was higher in the first half of the 20th century
Tonyb
First, the paper clearly acknowledges there has been an acceleration in the tide gauge record. Second, the paper clearly finds there would be an acceleration in the satellite record if not for the effect of a volcanic eruption close to the start of the satellite record. The paper states the rate of SLR was greater in the first half of the satellite record, but predicts and acceleration in the record is imminent. Well, the rate in the 2nd half is now clearly greater than the first half, so the situation they found has changed, and the change is congruent with being on the cusp of an imminent acceleration.
Jch
Here is the graphic updated to 2016
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
The last ten years has seen a lower rate of increase than the previous ten years. There are always reasons given as to why reality hasn’t matched the models.
As shown by holgate the rate of acceleration was greater in the first half of the 20th century than in the second half.
As the satellite record shows, there has been a decrease in the period covered by fasullo and in looking at the actual graphic to 2016
The expected rate of acceleration never occurred some 10 years ago and was followed by a fall attributed to Australian rain fall. Who knows whether another fall might be on their way.
The surge in sea level rise to reach the projected levels by 2100 has not occurred. It is highly speculative based on the evidence to date to suggest we are on the cusp of it happening. I seem to remember we had this same discussion some Years ago.
Tonyb
Judith’s 3″-8″ estimate centers on about 4 mm/yr between now and 2050. This would be a further acceleration on top of the current already accelerated rate through 2050. Would Koonin agree with this? If so, what is this argument about?
“…so the situation they found has changed, and the change is congruent with being on the cusp of an imminent acceleration.”
“…at the point when something is about to change to something else…”
So we are looking for a shift in OHC, or Glacier and Greenland ice loss. Thus allowing a shift from something to something else. Some sea level rise cycle may switch to positive.
But we could ask the question is it more likely the planet tries to maintain a atmospheric temperature, an ocean temperature or a sea level? I say try as we are here talking about it, suggesting by chance or something, that’s what it does.
Continuing my tangent, the atmosphere may have an equilibrium given the conditions. But assume an oceans equilibrium. So powerful that the atmospheric equilibrium gets dragged along by the oceans equilibrium. With CO2 causing the oceans to retain more joules, I’d say they’re on their way to a new equilibrium. But it may be more complicated than a CO2 command/response. Sea ice loss may cool the polar oceans and likewise sea ice gain warm them during cool periods.
Tony,
“So you are disagreeing with the author about the findings of their own paper?”
No, I’m pointing out that Fasullo et al are talking about a different time period. What the report said, according to Koonin, was
” The report ominously notes that while global sea level rose an average 0.05 inch a year during most of the 20th century, it has risen at about twice that rate since 1993.”
Fasullo doesn’t contradict that; he says that the decade 1993-2002 trend was about the same as 2003-2012. As for my description of the satellite record, well, here it is:
https://images.nature.com/lw926/nature-assets/srep/2016/160810/srep31245/images_hires/srep31245-f1.jpg
The last ten years has seen a lower rate of increase than the previous ten years. There are always reasons given as to why reality hasn’t matched the models. …
Not true:
Last 10 years, 4.24 mm/yr (data to August 10, 2017: much more current than the stale CSU site):
https://i.imgur.com/2w0wS1k.png
10 years prior to the last 10 years, 3.05 mm/yr:
https://i.imgur.com/JPXsLWP.png
Holgate! Lol.
JCH
And you call US deniers! So ignore the various studies including The University of Colorado and Fasullo and Koonin Holgate. Here is Holgate’s record
https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=w2Zml0UAAAAJ&hl=en
It doesn’t warrant an ‘lol’. I am surprised at you.
According to the BBC this morning there will be up to an 8 feet rise by the turn of the century.
To do that sea level rise would have to accelerate faster than a tesla. Surely you don’t believe that?
Where’s the evidence?
tonyb
It is really odd that ATTP is reduced to suggesting Koonin doesn’t know about the greenhouse effect. It’s as if he has never encountered the other 99.9% of the issue, ie measurements and the attribution problem.
Tony,
“And you call US deniers! So ignore the various studies”
No. I think you are not paying attention to the time intervals. Again, Fasullo’s time interval does not contradict the statement in the report. And your “The last ten years has seen a lower rate of increase than the previous ten years.”; if you’re basing it on your link, it isn’t true. The second interval there was 2003-2012. JCH is talking about the most recent decade, where there is clearly a rise at the end. That second decade reflects the slowdown, which ended some time ago.
Holgate 2007 was 10 years ago. Since then other people have used improved methods and his conclusion about the first and second half has been been met with a paper that disagrees. He’s has never responded to it; I doubt that he still believes what he wrote of the halves is true.
Your personal incredulity: I’ve never seen it on Google Scholar. As for 2 to 8 feet by 2100, there was a recent paper that discussed periods of time in the past where sea level rose by tens of millimeters per year. And papers like that will keep right on coming because that is what happens when there are dynamic collapses of land-based ice sheets. Dynamic collapses sometimes happen to naturally formed structures. There are numerous examples of it.
That second decade reflects the slowdown, which ended some time ago.
And somewhere up above I posted an AVISO graph of that period. The PDO was negative. The rate of SLR to around 2.5 mm/yr. That was natural variations great moment. It reduced the satellite-ear rate of rise; for a brief period. And then the PDO flipped positive.
JCH
You said
‘Holgate 2007 was 10 years ago’
We were discussing two separate things; the satellite record during the last two decades (and the whole record) and the rate of rise in the 20th century.
Holgate had 6 years in which to analyse the 20th century data. He believed it to be correct when I last corresponded with him around 3 years ago. Why should established data be reinterpreted?
Why are he and Fasullo and Koonin wrong?
tonyb
Holgate is involved in improving the data products.
Nick
‘The second interval there was 2003-2012. JCH is talking about the most recent decade, where there is clearly a rise at the end.’
The graphic you show has been truncated. I earlier linked to the current graphic which shows a distinct down turn back towards (but not at ) the previous trend. Saying a. ‘rise at the end’ is some clear indication we are heading towards a cataclysm, such as the top of the range prediction of an 8 foot rise (not your prediction) by the end of the century, is like saying that a cold winter is clear evidence of a forthcoming ice age.
Its far too short a period so we need to look at the wider context and clearly there has been a (very) long rise, which Manley and Lamb originally believed started around 1800 as the bulk of the glaciers started melting following the LIA, during which came one of the longest sustained cold period this side of the Holocene.
Glaciers similarly meted around the Roman period, the 10th century the first half of the 16th century (all probably from a lower base) and we can trace high water stands back to that point.
The current very modest sea level rise is a response to the recent warmth, as were earlier episodes. As the amount of ice locked up in glaciers is believed to have been greater than for many thousands of years, it would follow that there is more to melt than for a similar time frame in the Holocene past.
I expect to see the modest rise continue, but not to accelerate to reach 8 feet by the end of the century
tonyb
Where on earth do you get the ridiculous notion that I think Fasullo is wrong? He concluded we were on the cusp of an acceleration in the satellite-era record. I think he is right.
You appear to want science frozen when a paper says something you think affirms your notions. Data keeps coming in.
The last ten years in the SL data is August 2007 to August 2017.
The rate of SLR over the last ten years is 4.24 mm/yr. It is almost double, 2 times, the rate during the 10 years prior to the ten years that were the last ten years when Fasullo closed data and wrote his paper.
jch
Fasullo is looking for reasons as to why the expected acceleration has not happened.
So, what is your expectation of SLR by 2100? Presumably it must differ markedly to Judith’s and mine expectations?
Although, as I said to Nick, there is (probably) more ice to melt than at most any time this side of the Holocene,(8000 years or so) so it is likely to continue rising for some years. Other than if there is a sudden slow down or reversal in temperatures, which I am not expecting for many years if previous extended eras of warming are repeated.
tonyb
Thank you for the blog. Are you aware of any thorough assessment of underwater volcanic activity? Can we accurately assess volcanic effects on sea level? How accurate are assessments of tectonic plate activity on sea level? With increased tectonic activity do we have increased concern for more rapid sea level rise (or fall)?
Warming is likely to cause slight increase in water transfer to land, which will offset some expansion from heat. Increased retention of water by land and expanding biosphere are likely.
Re: curryja
Re: “Greenland melt and West Antarctic ice sheet collapse have happened previously”
Yes, I’ve heard that general talking point before. Past non-anthropogenic climate changes does not prevent attributing current climate change to anthropogenic causes.
“These examples illustrate that different climate changes in the past had different causes. The fact that natural factors caused climate changes in the past does not mean that the current climate change is natural. By analogy, the fact that forest fires have long been caused naturally by lightning strikes does not mean that fires cannot also be caused by a careless camper.”
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-6-1.html
Re: “There is no statistically significant acceleration in sea level rise that can be attributed to human caused warming”
I don’t buy that, since it conflicts with the conjunction of the following well-established facts:
1) Global warming causes sea level rise, via melting of land ice and thermal expansion:
“Global sea level linked to global temperature”
“Temperature-driven global sea-level variability in the Common Era”
2) Sea level increased post-1970s relative to the 1940s to 1970s. This coincides with post-1970s global warming, as expected, given point 1:
“New estimate of the current rate of sea level rise from a sea level budget approach”
“Recent global sea level acceleration started over 200 years ago?”
Table 2 of “Twentieth-Century Global-Mean Sea Level Rise: Is the Whole Greater than the Sum of the Parts?”
“Trends and acceleration in global and regional sea levels since 1807”
“A 20th century acceleration in global sea-level rise”
“Sea-Level Rise from the Late 19th to the Early 21st Century”
“An Anomalous Recent Acceleration of Global Sea Level Rise”
“Probabilistic reanalysis of twentieth-century sea-level rise”
3) Most of the post-1950s global warming is anthropogenic, predominately caused by increased CO2.
This is known via various lines of evidence, including:
– Post-1950s stratospheric cooling
– Post-1950s mesospheric cooling
– Post-1950s thermospheric cooling
– Horizontal/regional distribution of warming and the temporal pattern of warming [DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00191.1, pages 1683 and 1684]
– Exclusion of other likely causal factors, such as the Sun [ex: solar-induced warming causes warming of the stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere, yet scientists observed cooling in these layers].
4) Most of the post-1950s sea level rise is anthropogenic:
“Internal Variability Versus Anthropogenic Forcing on Sea Level and Its Components”
“The rate of sea-level rise”
“Quantifying anthropogenic and natural contributions to thermosteric sea level rise”
“Detection and attribution of global mean thermosteric sea level change”
“Long-term sea level trends: Natural or anthropogenic?”
“Anthropogenic forcing dominates sea level rise since 1850”
“Anthropogenic forcing dominates global mean sea-level rise since 1970”
5) Sea level rise is tied to forcing from CO2 in the long-term:
“Relationship between sea level and climate forcing by CO2 on geological timescales”
The conjunction of points 1 to 3 support the idea that the post-1970s increases in sea level rise wre caused by anthropogenic, CO2-induced warming. Point 4 further bolsters that conclusion. And point 5 also supports the conclusion, by increasing the predictive power and explanatory scope of the explanation. That rebuts your statement that:
“There is no statistically significant acceleration in sea level rise that can be attributed to human caused warming”
Re: “climate models that are apparently running too hot”
Oh come, not this trite talking point again. The issues here don’t resort from model error, but instead predominated from factors such as heterogeneity in the data-sets, errors in inputted forcings, internal variability, and invalid model-data comparisons. This has been explained in paper and after, including papers denialists misrepresent. For example:
“Causes of differences in model and satellite tropospheric warming rates”
“Comparing tropospheric warming in climate models and satellite data”
“Robust comparison of climate models with observations using blended land air and ocean sea surface temperatures”
“Coverage bias in the HadCRUT4 temperature series and its impact on recent temperature trends”
“Reconciling warming trends”
“Natural variability, radiative forcing and climate response in the recent hiatus reconciled”
“Reconciling controversies about the ‘global warming hiatus’”
Does anybody actually read the long screeds with BS lists and copy/pasted crap from all over the place with which this Atomski character litters the thread?
It’s sad to see Steve eschew the climate science literature and cleave to the gospel according to the Heartland Institute.
Far from focusing on the EPA’s public mandate, Administrator Pruitt seems to be refracting Heartland’s Red Team playbook through the Dominionist prism of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.
Russel Seitz
What you say climate science “literature”, I take it you are referring to the gospel according to government, with its monster budget and obvious vested interest in fomenting alarm, created by its paid-for lackey ‘scientists’ and ‘peer reviewers’. You know, the ones who gave us Climategate and whose even more corrupt managers then officially brushed it under the carpet.
An interesting thing to look at is whether tides are getting more or less variable.
Your presentation seems to focus on local sea level rise (which I think is a fair point, in the sense that it isn’t going to be the same everywhere and other factors could certainly influence local sea level rise).
All engineering is local. This is one reason why coastal engineers wrote a paper urging everyone to ignore the climate model predictions on sea level and just watch the tide gauge trends.
Globally, however, I do not think there is much evidence to suggest that the impact of our emissions can be substantially influenced by some kind of internal variability.
So many problems with this claim. First off, there is essentially zero evidence to link emissions to sea level rise. Even if we accept every poorly-evidenced step of the tortuous logical chain of emissions>concentrations>temperatures>sea levels to some ridiculous level of precision that can’t possibly be justified (even the emissions aren’t well known!), the anthropogenic signal doesn’t exist in the tide gauges yet and might not in our lifetimes — these predictions are largely speculative. Then there’s the problem of quantifying the variability of natural processes we know we don’t understand because the estimates of various factors keep changing every year… you have to rule these things out to make sensible emissions policy, you can’t just wave your hands and say “there’s no evidence we’re wrong so go ahead and spend trillions of dollars based on this speculation over here.”
Talldave, can you provide a link to the paper by the coastal engineers, thx
ugh ATTP flaunrting the complete lack of understanding AGAIN.
Schmidt’s graph lol, with tilted projection spread, not CMIPS I take it
Warming in hindcast is tuned in, therefor warming in projections is “tuned in” also.
The point of Koonin’s writeup is that the government climate report contains unscientific alarmism. He makes a strong case for that. ATTP, perhaps you should address this on a technical detailed level. Your unquantifiable statements of “general understanding” don’t address the issues Koonin raised.
It’s just kenny’s usual knee-jerk reaction to truth being told about anti-science climate alarmist propaganda.
The problem here is the period where variability suppressed satellite-era sea level rise has come and gone. It was a short-lived suppression. Hopeful articles were written about it, and then it rolled over and died. He’s doing moutt-to-mouth resuscitation on a corpse.
It seems to me that during the pause, the negative PDO, the thermosteric SLR increased. With a positive PDO it would decrease. With declining Arctic sea ice, I think that ocean vents joules and slows SLR. With increaseing SSTs, the question is does that indicate a stronger up arrow or more joules going into the oceans?
I think what you think can happen is impossible.
https://i.imgur.com/1jPbkwO.png
ATTP: You take a simplistic point — that CO2 tends to raise temperatures and deflect from a very important issue of whether sea level is actual rising and what the real world shows about sea level rising. Even if temperatures are rising as a result of CO2 (probably the case), there could be countervailing tendencies — such as the earth’s rising as a result of rebound from glaciers. (Or any number of other potential countervailing factors). So, it is absolutely necessary to see whether and potentially how much sea level is rising to see what the real world effects of sea level rise are. It would be important to know that sea level rise does not closely track CO2 if that actually turns out to be the case. Or, conversely that sea level rise is more than would be expected by the rise of CO2.
If mainstream “scientists” were truly interested in the science of this issue, they would welcome all perspectives to test their hypothesis. To the contrary, it appears that many mainstream “scientists” are looking for ways to support their assumptions and avoid testing their hypothesis.
JD
“Presumably he must know that water expands when it warms and that ice melts if it is heated.”
It is clear ATTP cannot comprehend the thesis of the OP because the alarmist phraseology identified by Koonin is inherent in the way ATTP writes. ATTP cannot perceive the beam in his own eye, as it were.
When you heat ice it expands. True, eventually it might eventually melt it you continue to heat it, but it is the melting that is foremost in his mind.
Simplistic ‘theoretical’ evidence of existence of potential is not evidence of existence of future outcome in the physical domain.
ATTP can’t even get the basic physics right. Sea water expands on warming if it is above about 4° C. Below that number, it actually contracts. Much of the southern oceans and deep water is at or below 4° . If that warms, sea level drops.
Chrism56,
Actually, for salinities above 24.7 (which is most of the ocean) the density of seawater increases as temperature decreases, for all temperatures above freezing. What you’re referring to applies to fresh water.
“Actually, for salinities above 24.7 (which is most of the ocean) the density of seawater increases as temperature decreases, for all temperatures above freezing.”
Right. So…
What does this indicate about convection of warm water to ocean depths?
aTTP: That it may have varied in the past doesn’t somehow provide some fundamental challenge to our understanding of what will probably happen if we continue to emit CO2 into the atmosphere.
Of the future sea level rise, if any, how much can be prevented by curtailing human CO2 production? Closer to 1mm/year or closer to 10mm/year? The policy issues surrounding CO2 revolve around quantitative scientific issues like that. Your non-quantitative approach is inadequate.
“sea level rises if water warms or if ice melts. We can estimate how continuing to emit CO2 into the atmosphere will impact this.”
We can’t really estimate this very well. CO2 has about the same mass per cubic meter all the way to 70 km altitude (read well mixed). The stratosphere is cooling, allegedly from increased CO2 radiance to space. The stratosphere is characterized by a temperature inversion that limits convective mixing with the troposphere. Stratospheric cooling works against this inversion, and in favor of increased mixing.
What we know is that CO2 does not precede warming at any geological time scale.
I note your use of the word “probably” pumping co2 will etc..
Given that leading UK scientists Grupp UCL Myers Oxford now openly accept the models run hot apparently we can now pump another 240 billion tonnes of co2 and still keep below a 1.5 degree increase.
The Paris agreement clearly relied on these ‘too hot’models and along with your probable and the evidence here of appalling manipulation of the data and records we are supposed to not just recycle and put a solar panel on our roof but essentially deindustrialise the western economies.
Can you see “and then there is physics “ why ordinary non science based but hopefully educated people who also really care about the environment feel seriously manipulated and bloody angry at the ipcc and their cronies. The efficacy of empirically based science has brought about the wonderful society today medicine materials science etc. You and Mr Mann et al arrogantly abuse the exaulted position that society has afforded you.
“It’s really somewhat odd that Koonin seems to not appreciate this.”
Probably, contrary to what you do, Koonin takes into account the existence of feedback mechanisms, like water, clouds, etc…
It is time to end this crazy thinking of a one-parameter-is-sufficient, CO2 concentration, as the only that matters.
robertoko6,
1. Very few (certainly not me) ignore other feedback mechanisms, including water vapour, clouds, etc.
2. CO2 may not be the only thing that matters, but it is the dominant long-lived, non-precipitating greenhouse gas and it is the dominant thing that we are continuing to emit into the atmosphere.
Re: Don Monfort
Re: “Does anybody actually read the long screeds with BS lists and copy/pasted crap from all over the place with which this Atomski character litters the thread?”
Let me know when your intellect/maturity has advanced beyond the level of a child, to the point where you can actually address the scientific literature. I can’t make you do your homework, nor get you to read.
“Presumably he must know that water expands when it warms and that ice melts if it is heated.”
Glad to see you knew enough to point that out! We had our doubts.
And Then There’s Physics wrote, “Koonin… must know that water expands when it warms and that ice melts if it is heated. Both contribute to rising sea levels… The rate, of course, will depend on how much [CO2] we end up emitting, but every indication is that we will follow an emission pathway that will lead to accelerated sea level rise.”
That’s wrong.
The key factor w/r/t sea-level rise is grounded ice mass balance, especially in the world’s two (or three, depending on how you count) remaining large ice sheets: Greenland and Antarctica. The most important thing affecting ice mass balance is not melting, it is snowfall.
There are four factors which affect ice sheet mass balance: snowfall, sublimation, melting, and glacier calving. In both Greenland and Antarctica, snowfall is by far the most important of those four. In fact, in Antarctica, snowfall accumulation is approximately equal to the sum of the other three.
To talk only about melting, and ignore the other factors, is ridiculous. You cannot predict the effect of a warmer climate on the rate of sea-level rise if you ignore what is by far the largest factor affecting it: snowfall.
The magnitude and importance of snowfall on ice sheet mass balance is illustrated by the story of Glacier Girl.
She’s a Lockheed P-38 Lightning which was extracted in pieces from beneath 268 feet of accumulated ice and snow (mostly ice), fifty years after she landed on the Greenland Ice Sheet.
That is an astonishing number, more than 5 feet of ice per year, which is equivalent to more than seventy feet of annual snowfall!
That snow represents evaporated water, mostly removed from the Arctic Ocean, which then fell as ocean-effect snow on the Greenland Ice Sheet.
http://p38assn.org/glaciergirl/images/GPR-measurement-concept.jpg
The story of Glacier Girl is fascinating. You can read more about it here:
http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/glacier-girl-the-back-story-19218360/?all
and here:
http://p38assn.org/glacier-girl-recovery.htm
So, what happens to snowfall in a warming climate?
The answer is, it probably increases. A warmer climate should reduce sea-ice extent, increasing evaporation from the Arctic and Southern Oceans, and increasing Lake/Ocean-Effect Snowfall (LOES) downwind. When that snow falls on the ice sheets, in adds to ice mass accumulation and subtracts from sea-level.
Warmer temperatures do not necessarily melt ice sheets and raise sea-level. Where ice sheets or glaciers are near 0°C, or the ice is grounded below the ocean’s waterline, warmer temperatures can, indeed, accelerate melting. But most of Antarctica averages more than 40° below zero, so it is in no danger of melting from a few degrees of warming. Only in southern Greenland, on the Antarctic Peninsula, and where the ice sheets are grounded below sea-level and in contact with the ocean, is significant melting even plausible.
So in a warming climate we know that there are some factors which increase sea-level, and other factors which reduce sea-level. There’s no fundamental reason to suppose that either of those will dominate the other.
We can, however, draw upon the historical record, to gain insight. At the best tectonically stable locations, sea-level has been rising at about 1½ mm/year (6 inches per century) since the 1920s or before, with no sign of significant acceleration due to rising CO2 levels.
Here are three high-quality, long-term sea-level measurement records, juxtaposed with CO2: a continuous 111-year measurement record from the mid-Pacific at Honolulu, a continuous 162-year measurement record from the Atlantic basin (the Baltic), and the longest measurement record in the world, 210 year at Brest, France. All three locations are at tectonically stable, with very typical sea-level trends:
Honolulu, Hawaii:
https://www.sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=Honolulu
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=1612340
http://www.sealevel.info/1612340_Honolulu_vs_CO2_annot1.png
Wismar, Germany:
http://www.sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=Wismar&c_date=1866/1-2019/12&thick&boxcar=1&boxwidth=3
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=120-022
http://sealevel.info/120-022_Wismar_2017-01_150yrs.png
Brest, France:
http://www.sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=1&c_date=1900/1-2019/12
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=190-091
http://sealevel.info/190-091_Brest_2017-01_since_1900.png
Some locations, such as Brest, have measured a very slight acceleration in sea-level rise in the late 1800s or early 1900s, but globally averaged coastal sea-level rise has not accelerated since the 1920s. Here’s a very comprehensive paper, which found a slight deceleration in sea-level rise since 1930:
http://www.jcronline.org/doi/pdf/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1
It is plain that the opposing effects of CO2 and its consequent warming on sea-level must be very nearly equal, so that the net effect is near zero. There is no good reason to expect that to change.
We’ve done the experiment and we know the result. Over the last 2/3 century we’ve raised CO2 levels by nearly 100 ppmv, from about 310 ppmv to nearly 410 ppmv, with no detectable effect on the rate of sea-level rise. If you don’t appreciate the significance of that fact, and the huge problem it poses for defenders of the nonsense in AR5, here’s Richard Feynman, to explain it, in 60 seconds:
Dave,
All of that plus the Feynman gambit. Thanks.
Everybody loves Feynman, right? :-)
They don’t ignore snowfall.
aTTP: Dave,
All of that plus the Feynman gambit. Thanks.
Is there something in daveburton’s post you responded to cryptically that you think is false?
Yes, the implication that the scientists who do research on sea level rise, like Mitrovica, have somehow violated Feynman’s science, and Feynman is not alive and cannot defend himself from the hijacking of his reputation.
It is not Feynman who needs defending, JCH.
JCH: Yes, the implication that the scientists who do research on sea level rise
There is no such implication in daveburton’s post.
The sea-level rise since the last Ice Age has been 140 m and “snowfall” had little to do with it. This is a complete red herring. There’s 70 m more locked up in the remaining glaciers and that will dominate as it melts. Sea level is governed by how quickly the remaining glaciers melt in a warmer world. Past climates have had higher sea levels in warmer temperatures because of the lack of glaciers. There’s no two ways about it. It’s the glaciers.
Sorry, but Feynman needs to be defended from you. Feynman would likely want nothing to do with the crowd that is always invoking him. He went to see Uri Gellar because Uri Gellar represented a disease he wanted to confront.
Jim D, the water for that 120 or 140 meters (depending on who you believe) of SLR since the LGM came from the Laurentide, Cordilleran, Weichselian, etc. ice sheets. If you think snowfall has “little to do with” sea-level, then how do you suppose all that ice got into those ice sheets, in the first place?
Likewise, how do you think the 70 meters or so of sea-level equivalent which is locked up in ice sheets and alpine glaciers got there, if not from snowfall?
This is an example of what Prof. Feynman would call “cargo cult science.”
https://www.sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=Brest&boxcar=1&boxwidth=3&thick&lin_ci=0&lin_pi=1&co2=1&xtraseg=2&g_date=1800/1-2099/12&c_date=1900/1-2019/12&x_date=2017/10-2099/12&x1=7.130&x2=8.959&xslope=4.000
http://sealevel.info/190-091_Brest_1900-2066_plus_6ft_const_accel_starting_at_4mm_per_yr2.png
You do not know that. You are simply borrowing the reputation of a dead man to enhance your credibility. Reputation hijack Mitrovica. He’s alive. Good luck.
daveburton, OK, so you probably noticed that continental glaciers decline in a warming world, right? Maybe you even see this with the trends around the Ice Ages? The problem is that I can’t point you to any papers because you will think it is cargo cult science anyway. You live in an isolated pseudoscience world where you apparently don’t believe anything that is published about climate science, but sadly you do believe the pseudoscience blog stuff. I can’t help you, sorry.
I don’t “reputation hijack” anyone, JCH, but I do pay attention to what they say. Do you?
Do you understand the implications of the fact that we’ve already performed a very large scale experiment, testing the effect of CO2 level on the rate of sea-level rise — and found no effect at all?
But, since you asked about Mitrovica, here’s what I wrote about one of his more interesting lectures:
http://sealevel.info/mitrovica_cmts01.html
Jim D, mankind has only been driving up GHG levels dramatically since about 1950. So if human activity were causing a dramatic increase in glacier retreat, that change should have happened in the last seventy years or so.
But take a look at this map, by the U.S. Geological Survey, of Glacier Bay, Alaska in the 18th, 19th & 20th centuries. Pay careful attention to the glacier terminus lines and the dates beside them:
http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2001/07/glacierbaymap.gif
Do you see it? That’s the real world, not an “isolated pseudoscience world.” The glaciers there retreated much faster in the late 1700s and the 1800s than in the 20th century — long before anyone was driving SUVs.
Dave
Thank you for the link to the story about Glacier Girl. Fascinating reading. I was aware of the plane but never heard the back story. There are 3 remarkable aspects to the events. First, what those gutsy, young pilots went through after their aircraft went down. Presumably the only knee taken was when they said a prayer that they would survive. Second, the sophisticated measures to get down to and recover that P-38. Previously, I had visions of a few shovels and a lot of digging. There was more than a little bravery to go down that far into the man made cavern. Third, that so much snow/ice had built up in just a few decades. While predictions were being made of turning Greenland into the world’s largest jacuzzi, 80 meters of firn were covering the planes. Looks like instead of being the largest hot tub, it will have to settle for being the worlds 2nd largest ice cube.
Thanks, also for the SLR graphs. I have a few favorites of mine. Sydney (0.65mm/yr), LA (0.88mm/yr), and Mumbai (0.79mm/yr) are especially dear to my heart. Whenever I get a little wobbly about my skepticism of CAGW, I whip out those graphs, note the lack of acceleration, and then lie down and place a warm, wet washrag on my forehead. It quickly passes.
Dave
I have written a number of articles on the Climate during the past 2000 years.
I produced this graphic of the likely changes over the last 1000 years taken from thousands of references.
Sea level stands conicide roughly with the extended periods of warmth
https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/slide71.png
tonyb
Thanks, cerescokid.
Sydney is an instructive case. As with most places, the ocean has sloshed up and down a bit at Sydney. There does appear to have been a very slight acceleration there, in the early 20th century. If you do the linear regression starting in 1930 you get a slightly higher rate: 1.16 ±.17 mm/yr (i.e., at most ~5 inches per century).
But one of the “sloshes down” at Sydney was in the 1990s, as you can see here:
http://sealevel.info/680-140_Sydney_1930-2016_vs_CO2_slosh_down_circled.png
Look what that does to the linear regression over the “satellite era” (since 1993):
http://sealevel.info/680-140_Sydney_1993-2016_vs_CO2_slosh_down_circled2.png
3.59 ±1.02 mm/year! Oh, no, we’re all gonna drown!!!
Or not. Of course, it is obvious from the graph that it does not represent a true increase in the sea-level trend. That apparently-high rate is really just an artifact of the particular starting point.
If there were a significant change in trend then you’d see a sustained departure from the long-term linear trend, but from the graph you can see that isn’t the case. Sea-level measured by tide gauges sometimes sloshes above the trend line for 5-15 years, and sometimes sloshes below the trend line for 5-15 years (as happened in the early 1990s at Sydney). But in the best-quality measurement records there’s no significant, sustained departure from the long-term linear trend since the 1920s — and in most cases since even before that.
daveburton, so why didn’t your snowfall help with that retreat while you invoke it now. Depending where you look and in which decade they advance and retreat, but now with sea level rising twice as fast as in the last century, you may be able to figure out that glaciers are melting more quickly, and that with several more degrees of warming they would be on a downward trend. Think of it like going into an Ice Age, but in reverse. Why is this so hard to comprehend? It gets warm. Ice melts. Physics in action.
I would also add that the GHG forcing has been increasing more or less since the 1800’s. The sea-level rise rate has only doubled since 1990.
It’s annoying that most of articles and papers talk about sea level rise since 1993. I believe that’s when some of the satellite-based measurements started. The measurements for 1992 and 1994 were much higher. Choosing 1993, a local minima, as the baseline exaggerates the change in sea level. Using an average of 1992-1994, with an asterisk stating that measurement methodologies changed during that time, as the baseline would be the honest approach.
Not only the methodologies changed, but also what is measured : tide gauges measure local height differences between earth and see, while satellites measure an absolute mean see level. Putting both on the same curve makes no sense.
Thanks to both of you for honest assessment of the issue. Can’t wait to hear from tonyb as well.
THis is all so fascinating, if only the political aspects and extreme attacks could be toned down. But interesting scince, if uncertain and wide error bars.
Scott
“…..but failing to put it into complete historical context.”
That is the norm. I have come to expect that from the media. But we should expect more from the scientific community.
There are very few articles that will provide any in-depth background about the global warming debate.
A massive amount of historical information exists. But you would never know it from the MSM. Publishing anything that contradicts the establishment view just burdens the readers with having to think on their own. Much easier just to be gullible and buy the whole enchilada.
Reblogged this on Quaerere Propter Vērum.
Sounds like a, “modeling error”…?
Judy, the first link to Koonin’s WSJ doesn’t seem to work.
And typo: “Steve Koonin as”.
Koonin link is here (though it’s behind the WSJ paywall).
Try using “archive.is” and search for the URL a “saved snapshot”
Try using “archive.is”
Where is the “Deceptive new report” that Koonin is criticising?
PM, the final ‘official’ newest National Climate Assessment report is due to be released today. Koonin’s WSJ piece points out that there was a specific written SLR critique to the released draft, and this problem (an error of omission) was not corrected in the final version.
It was possible to deconsteuct and debunk every single example in the first chapter of the previous version, NCA2014. See essay Credibility Conundrums in ebook Blowing Smoke.
“It is very concerning that scientific disagreement, uncertainty and a complex policy debate surrounding climate change are apparently seeding what seems to be a wave of eco-terrorism…”
But it’s not scientific disagreement that is doing this. It’s an argument over faith and heresy. This–at least to one side–is an argument over secular religion.
Groundwater extraction appears to be going asymptotic:
https://usercontent1.hubstatic.com/5559222_f520.jpg
While that won’t continue, it does have some bearing on rates to date.
The new discovery of freshwater under the ocean is interesting. Not sure how much subsidence one should expect from extracting sub-oceanic groundwater, but given the depletion of land based groundwater, I expect that will account for much future use.
Judy – your link to the WSJ column is not correct (no URL – it looks like). It’s here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-deceptive-new-report-on-climate-1509660882
(;~/ gary
thx
One disagreement with the JC paper on SLR concerning WAIS. It did not collapse during the Eemian. The two papers claiming otherwise are mutually inconsistent concerning timing and amount. Both are explained by tectonics, and one is also provable academic misconduct. See essay and previous guest post By Land or by Sea.
The double Eemian highstand reached over millennia is simply explained by melting plus thermosteric rise at a rate of about 2mm/year, comparable to today’s rates. See Kopp et. al. in Nature 2007.
Thx Rud, i would appreciate some links on this
Start with guest post Ice Sheet Collapse?, Aug 30 2013. Covers Eemian and one of the two papers. Essay By Land or By Sea in ebook Blowing Smoke (you were gifted a Kindle copy) covers both papers, with multiple references and illustrations. There is also the supporting result of the Ross Andrill program, covered in 2014 guest post Sea Level Rise Tipping Points with references. Highest regards.
VTG, read the guest post on the Oleary paper, then get back. The forensics were hiding in plain sight in the SI. I don’t use the words academic misconduct lightly. But there are also at least four other CLEAR examples in essays in Blowing Smoke, including Marcott’s hockey stick (a guest post here in 2013), Fabricius (Milne Bay corals and ocean acidification), Barton (whiskey creek oyster hatchery and ocean acidification, a guest post here in 2014 titled Shell Games), and Brusca (catalina highway, failure to disclose major intervening forest fires on all transects).
” I don’t use the words academic misconduct lightly.”
And I’m the Prince of Denmark.
You throw these slurs around, facilitated and lent credibility by Judith’s toleration, because you have no substance to your arguments.
I’ve read some of your stuff before, and as a result I’ll decline the invitation to wade through it again, thanks all the same.
VTG, suit yourself. The three monkeys routine seems to suit warmunists. But the cases cited for your edification are all carefully, clearly, and fully documented in published writings in an Amazon ebook should you change your mind. And for anyone else interested, like the denizens here.
With respect to some of them, the information was brought to the corresponding Journal’s attention withut any response whatsoever. Marcott in Science was the most egregious such situation, since McNutt’s secretary acknowledged receipt of the written demonstration of a classic form of scientific misconduct also guest posted here in 2013. Cannot be too careful, with the likes of Mann and Jacobsen prowling about screaming lawsuit defamation at debunkers.
Which just shows the Climategate emails understated the evident corruption in consensus climate science.
VTG
“…..you have no substance to your arguments.”
I’ve I read a helluva lot more substance in Rud’s pieces than I’ve ever seen from you. You should wish that you could bring on the same amount of substance. Have you ever gotten beyond some college sophomore equations?
I have been thinking about how the Red Team might actually do its work. Here are some strategic Red Team work issues that need considering.
Recently EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt once again endorsed the idea of having an official Red Team exercise to clarify the climate change debate. Here is Pruitt’s strong statement:
“The American people deserve, in my view, an objective, transparent, honest discussion about what we know and what we don’t know, with respect to CO2. It’s never taken place. That’s the reason I’ve been proposing a red team, blue team exercise where we bring red team scientists in and blue team scientists in and they would engage in a multi-month process asking of each other these very difficult questions to help inform the American public on these issues to help build consensus toward this very important issue.”
There has been a lot of public discussion about what a Red Team might say, but very little on how it might actually function. There are a number of important options here, which will need to be resolved. These are alternative ways of doing the same job, if you like. So I thought I would lay out a few options for discussion.
To begin with, should there be a Blue Team? In his statement, Pruitt is referring to the exercise described by former Energy Department Undersecretary for Science Steve Koonin in the Wall street Journal several months ago. This is an elaborate back and forth debate between two teams of scientists. The Blue Team is alarmist and the Red Team is skeptical.
The Koonin debate has some great features, especially that the multiple rounds of debate will show the depth of the debate. I can see people anticipating and debating each round. Many people love debates. The downside is that this will take a very long time, perhaps even several years depending on how many rounds there are. It is also likely to become extremely technical, thus losing the public audience.
An alternative is to simply have the Red Team critique an existing alarmist report. I myself have proposed that they tackle the soon to be released Climate Science Special Report ( CSSR), which is part of the latest, and highly alarmist, National Climate Assessment (NCA).
The NCA is written in nontechnical language for a public audience and the Red Team critique could be too. Moreover this could be done quickly and simply. The Special Report is over 600 pages long so the critique could be a comprehensive presentation of the basic skeptical arguments. The downside is that there would be no live exchange of views. Some of the arguments require a lot of back and forth in order to be properly articulated and this would not happen.
The too there are degrees of officialness, mostly depending on how the debate is funded. If it is run by a university or a think tank then the result is just a research report, which has no official status. Alarmist assessments like the NCA represent federal policy but research reports do not.
The exercise would be more official if the team or teams were formed under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. To my knowledge no advisory committee has ever been formed for the purpose of debate, so this might be a great precedent if there is both a Blue Team and a Red one. On the other hand it is not unusual for an advisory committee to critique a report.
However, the output of an advisory committee is still not official policy. For that to happen the exercise needs to be something like the National Climate Assessment process. That is it needs to be formally issued by one or more federal agencies. In this sense the report is far more important than the live debate.
In fact it could be made part of the NCA. The CSSR will be volume one of the NCA. The traditional assessment will presumably be one or more additional volumes and these are not due out for a year or so. There is no reason why the Red Team exercise report cannot be an additional volume.
A far deeper issue is which skeptical arguments the Red Team should present? Skepticism of alarmism is not a single view, because different people question different alarmist claims.
For example, the lukewarmers accept that human activity is the primary cause of global warming, but argue that this warming us benign, or even beneficial, not something to be stopped. Other skeptics (like me) think that humans have very little impact on climate. Some of us even question that the purported rapid warming is occurring.
At one extreme the Red Team might pick and defend a single one of these views. At the other extreme it might simply present them all, without endorsing any one in particular. Or it might pick and choose a subset of the more prominent views. This deep issue of positions arises no matter how the exercise is run.
The point is that there are a lot of choices to be made if there is going to be a Red Team exercise. There are many different ways to do this much needed work, so strategic planning is imperative.
The For example, the lukewarmers accept that human activity is the primary cause of global warming, but argue that this warming us benign, or even beneficial, not something to be stopped. Other skeptics (like me) think that humans have very little impact on climate.
I believe some lukewarmers question that human activity is the primary cause of global warming, just a cause or possible cause. I consider the people who believe human activity is the primary cause but that it is benign are % alarmists. They believe 80% alarmism or 40% or even 90%. They are still supporting the alarmist viewpoint. ZERO %, plus or minus some fraction of one degree is the correct amount.
Bill Gray, one of the best, said .2, .3 or .4 at the most. He said precipitation would increase with any warming to counter it.
Not sure I understand the need for the red team to propose alternate hypothesis. I would think there goal should be to falsify the alarmists claims.
They first have to decide which claims to disagree with. That is where the alternatives arise.
Actually, the lukewarmer argument is quite a bit simpler–it’s that atmospheric sensitivity to a doubling of the concentrations of CO2 is less than 3. My personal WAG is 2.1. That’s all there is to the lukewarmer argument.
Given that the official definition of dangerous AGW is now 1.5 degrees C for all future CO2 concentrations going out at least 300 years (social cost of carbon), a sensitivity below 3 does not qualify by itself as lukewarming.
DW, an interesting set of process thoughts. Got me thinking about them. Conclude there are two separate most useful tracks.
One debunks the new CSSR and following NCA. Purpose is to show government bias. No need for blue team, as the reports are ‘official’. Just show biases, along lines Koonin started.
Other deals with the endangerment finding. As this by law requires comment and input, a natural blue team/red team exercise. Except here, the blue team would be against endangerment, using carefully selected experts like Judith, John Christy, and Bjorn Lomberg. Critical that the initial ‘findings’ be carefully formated and deal with only the major CAGW pillars, not the minutia. The red team will form naturally from warmunists and NGO’s.
Repealing endangerment first requires repudiating the 1000+ page EPA assessment supporting it, so this is similar to CSSR and NCA4.
Layman interests:
1. Is CO2 earth’s thermostat and/or its contribution
2. What is human contribution to warming
3. Water Vapor – it counts highly for warmth – does it count for further warming
4. What are the benefit of a warmer planet
5. Should science indulge in soothsaying
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I’d expect that perhaps 97% of the world’s scientists studying AGW and climate, etc., would agree with what Koonin has laid out.
Here is the USGCRP (G-crap) announcement of the CSSR release, with a copy available to download:
http://mailchi.mp/usgcrp/just-released-climate-science-special-report-plus-review-and-comment-on-public-drafts-of-nca4-vol-ii-and-soccr-2?e=eb8aae4f60
The CSSR is being added to the usual National Climate Assessment as a new Volume I. The regular NCA will be Volume II and it is now released in draft for public comments in this same announcement.
Y’all comment now.
AR5 has some numbers for the two middle emission scenarios. Going forward about 70 years, I come up with about 2.3 inches per decade of SLR. This seems manageable subject to local conditions. Communities should start acting. What may happen is that local decisions will be political, and involve compromises. A community may compare the benefits of putting solar panels on top of City Hall, or spending money with direct benefits.
SLR calculated from Tide Gauge data that has not been corrected by a Continuous Operating GPS Reference System station for vertical land movement, preferably one attached to the same structure as the tide gauge, are not fit for purpose of determining any sort of Global Mean Sea Level or its rise (or fall).
Altimeter data (satellite data) should not be shown on the same graph with Tide Gauge datawhich, almost entirely, is based on uncorrected data, thus is a finding of the mean of Local Relative Sea Level Rise — which is not a scientific concept as it conflates various unrelated causes of entirely local effects with the effects that cause Global Absolute Sea Level Rise.
Dr. Curry is correct, the expectation for Global Absolute SLR for the 21st Century is nominally the same as that for the 20th Century — 8 to 12 inches, maybe a “bit” (10-20%) more if “AGW” continues to raise global average temperatures.
Anything else is unsupportable scientifically (barring something as unlikely and unpredictable as an asteroid strike or world-wide volcanism).
Kip, agree. See my guest post here on SLR, acceleration, and closure for lots of supporting data and analysis.
12″ give or take is my calculation too.
https://climateadj.wordpress.com/2017/01/28/sea-level-rise-acceleration-and-trends/
AP is out today with:
Addressing the, ‘since 1900,’ bit – as the rest of it is exactly what Koonin has so brilliantly dissected. Pls feel free to critique my comment here:
Am I close?
Do you have a link to the AP story?
What the CSSR concludes has little to do with what the science, or any agency, actually says. This makes it the perfect official Red Team target. But the Red Team report should be volume III of the NCA, since the CSSR is vol I and the actual NCA is vol II. Only Trump can make this happen because the USGCRP answers to no agency head. It is virtually autonomous.
About the 2017 NCA report. Was just a wire blip:
That’s the whole thing.
US report contradicts Trump team: Warming mostly man-made
By SETH BORENSTEIN
, Associated Press
Nov. 3, 2017 7:08 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AP) — A massive U.S. report concludes the evidence of global warming is stronger than ever, contradicting a favorite talking point of top Trump administration officials, who downplay humans’ role in climate change.
http://www.apnewsarchive.com/2017/A-massive-U-S-report-says-global-warming-is-mainly-man-made-contradicting-a-major-talking-point-of-top-Trump-administration-officials-/id-b0b9dafcfcc644b59cdab2de9071391c
re: fires, interesting TED talk here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edDZNkm8Mas
Short answer: changed forest management practices changed nature of forest, and actually led to more mega fires. Anthopogenic? Definately! CO2 or temperature related? Not so much.
Re: garyh845
Re: “Pls feel free to critique my comment here: […] I doubt that the report concludes such nonsense. The consensus of climate science is that CO2 had not yet risen enough prior to somewhere in the 1950’s – ’70’s such that they expect to be able to see – to observe – any measurable human footprint on GT’s, hence the beginning of some potential AGW.”
False. You’re misrepresenting the consensus position.
CO2-induced anthropogenic warming ends up being close to linear, due to a near-exponential rise in atmospheric CO2, coupled with the logarithmic relationship between CO2 increase and temperature increase. Thus the rate of 1900-1950 CO2-induced warming is about the same as the rate of post-1950 CO2-induced warming.
The near-exponential CO2 increase and near-exponential anthropogenic emissions increase is shown in sources such as:
http://ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-2-1-figure-1.html
“Atmospheric CO2 over the last 1000 years: A high-resolution record from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide ice core”
http://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/emis/glo_2011.html
The near-linear rate of anthropogenic warming (predominantly from anthropogenic greenhouse gases) is shown in sources such as:
“Deducing Multidecadal Anthropogenic Global Warming Trends Using Multiple Regression Analysis”
“The global warming hiatus — a natural product of interactions of a secular warming trend and a multi-decadal oscillation”
“The Origin and Limits of the Near Proportionality between Climate Warming and Cumulative CO2 Emissions”
“Sensitivity of climate to cumulative carbon emissions due to compensation of ocean heat and carbon uptake”
“Return periods of global climate fluctuations and the pause”
“Using data to attribute episodes of warming and cooling in instrumental records”
“The proportionality of global warming to cumulative carbon emissions”
“The sensitivity of the proportionality between temperature change and cumulative CO2 emissions to ocean mixing”
Re: “97% of climate scientists would not state that ‘most of warming since then is man-made”
They’d claim that most of the warming since the 1950s or 1970s is anthropogenic:
Table 1: “Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming”
Re: “Note: On NASA’s Global Climate Change home page, they list statements from numerous academies and scientific associations. They say nothing about any man-made GW prior to 1950, rather they speak of, ‘the last 1/2 century,’ ‘since the middle of the 20th century,’ but with the majority referenced the beginning point as, since the 1970’s,’ or simply, ‘over the past several decades.”
And you don’t seem to understand why they say what they say, just like you didn’t seem to know what the consensus position was. A word of advice:
potholer54’s rule:
If most scientific experts in a field say something about that field which does not make sense to you, then they likely know something you don’t. So you should figure out what they know that you don’t.
I adapted the rule from:
Youtube, “Being an atheist doesn’t necessarily mean you’re rational”, from 9:35 to 9:55, and 21:37 to 22:10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhQdYvz0VwQ&t=549s
Here’s what the experts know that you don’t. The case for CO2 causing most of the post-1950s warming is based on numerous lines of evidence, including:
1) Post-1950s stratospheric cooling
2) Post-1950s mesospheric cooling
3) Post-1950s thermospheric cooling
4) Horizontal/regional distribution of warming and the temporal pattern of warming [DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00191.1, pages 1683 and 1684]
5) Exclusion of other likely causal factors, such as the Sun [ex: solar-induced warming causes warming of the stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere, yet scientists observed cooling in these layers].
6) Estimate of climate sensitivity which, when applied to current warming, imply that most of the warming is caused by CO2.
7) Increased radiative forcing in energy frequencies CO2 is expected to absorb in.
Unfortunately, many of these lines of evidence aren’t as strong pre-1950s. For example, atmospheric temperature trends aren’t as well-known pre-1950 as they are post-1950, so points 1 to 3 are weakened pre-1950. And satellites weren’t around to measure radiative forcing pre-1950, so point 7 is weakened.
Does that mean CO2-induced anthropogenic warming did not occur pre-1950? No, as I already showed you above for the near-linear rate of CO2-induced warming back to the late 1800s. And there are still some lines of evidence supporting pre-1950 attribution, such as point 6.
To say otherwise, is to conflate the following two claims:
Claim 1: The evidence on anthropogenic attribution is weaker for 1900-1950 than for post-1950.
Claim 2: The anthropogenic contribution is weaker for 1900-1950 than for post-1950.
Claim 1 applies “weaker” to the evidence for attribution, while claim 2 applies “weaker” to magnitude of the attribution. So claim 1 is not the same as claim 2, and the two claims should not be conflated. Claim 1 is true, since there’s more evidence for phenomena like stratospheric cooling, mesospheric cooling, etc. post-1950 than for 1900-1950. Claim 2 is not well-supported.
Your point 4:
“The early onset of sustained, significant warming in palaeoclimate records and model simulations suggests that greenhouse forcing of industrial-era warming commenced as early as the mid-nineteenth century and included an enhanced equatorial ocean response mechanism. The development of Southern Hemisphere warming is delayed in reconstructions, but this apparent delay is not reproduced in climate simulations. Our findings imply that instrumental records are too short to comprehensively assess anthropogenic climate change and that, in some regions, about 180 years of industrial-era warming has already caused surface temperatures to emerge above pre-industrial values, even when taking natural variability into account.”
We have a suggestion. I find it confusing that the records are too short.
Pre 1950, the CO2 level data is:
https://static.skepticalscience.com/images/co2_10000_years.gif
From the plot, the pre 1950 CO2 increase is less. And their plot stops at less than 390 ppm.
With a greater CO2 increase post 1950, we have less warming. Which AR5 recognized.
A side point is that we see a CO2 increase during most of the Marcott temperature swoon lasting thousands of years.
Re: Ragnaar
Re: “Your point 4:”
Stop plagiarizing, Ragnaar. If you quote a source, then cite the source. You’re quoting this paper:
“Early onset of industrial-era warming across the oceans and continents”
My point 4 was:
“4) Horizontal/regional distribution of warming and the temporal pattern of warming [DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00191.1, pages 1683 and 1684]”
The paper you’re quoting does nothing to rebut point 4, since the paper affirms that there’s CO2-induced global warming, including post-1950.
Re: “I find it confusing that the records are too short.”
It’s not confusing: they’re saying that greenhouse-gas-induced, anthropogenic global warming goes back to before the instrumental records began. That ties into other papers that try to look at how much warming has occurred since before the industrial era. For instance:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/challenge-defining-pre-industrial-era
“Estimating changes in global temperature since the pre-industrial period”
Re: “From the plot, the pre 1950 CO2 increase is less. And their plot stops at less than 390 ppm. With a greater CO2 increase post 1950, we have less warming. Which AR5 recognized.”
I know better than to trust what you say about sources, given your penchant for quote-mining and misrepresenting sources. So I’m not going to believe what you said about AR5, until you show me where iAR5 says that.
And I already addressed what you said on warming and CO2 rises. Once again:
CO2-induced anthropogenic warming ends up being close to linear, due to a near-exponential rise in atmospheric CO2, coupled with the logarithmic relationship between CO2 increase and temperature increase. Thus the rate of 1900-1950 CO2-induced warming is about the same as the rate of post-1950 CO2-induced warming.
Let’s do a test.
Search each of these by themselves:
DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00191.1
Horizontal/regional distribution of warming and the temporal pattern of warming
I still don’t know what paper you’re talking about.
But one of them returns something about the Uncertainty Monster:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00191.1
“It’s not confusing: they’re saying that greenhouse-gas-induced, anthropogenic global warming goes back to before the instrumental records began. That ties into other papers that try to look at how much warming has occurred since before the industrial era.”
With ice cores for CO2 and the BEST error bars, good luck to them.
This of mine was poorly written:
“With a greater CO2 increase post 1950, we have less warming. Which AR5 recognized.”
With a greater CO2 increase post 1950 as seen in the SkS plot above, we get less warming per ppm increase. We open the CO2 floodgates and only get as much warming as we did pre 1950. I’ll cede that AR5 recognized this.
Looks like Atomski ate up a half a day of your time with his elaborate gibber jabber, Ragnaar. And then he accuses you of plagiarizing. Some might call that extreme trolling.
gary, it turns out to be over 100% because the imbalance is positive meaning that all the warming so far has not caught up to the forcing and more is in the pipeline. Secondly, the forcing is dominated by GHGs mainly CO2 with natural forcings (solar and volcanoes, orbital) not really registering on the century scale. Therefore not only all of the warming so far, but more to come is due to GHGs which is why it is >100%. A point often missed on these blogs and in skeptic op-eds, so read around.
In terms of the insurance related issues (presumably the target of Judith Curry’s presentation) the classic graphing of projected sea level rise against year is less useful than graphing the projected period of enjoyment of a property at a given height above sea level (for any particular location) and its uncertainty.
This is because it emphasizes the risk management problems faced by the owner, which is where insurance comes in. It also gives due weight to the benefits of property ownership, and to the uncertainty in the assessment of the time to failure.
It also helps think about how the risks evolve and draws attention to their path dependence. For example as time passes and if it becomes more certain the property is on the path to destruction (or unusable because the destruction around it) the market value of the property will decline. In the end it has potentially negative value depending on the cost of removing improvements
An owner at potential risk of failure today is faced with a number of options. Accept the risk, including possibly continuing to invest in the property, invest in protection, sell out to someone more willing to accept the risk, or ultimately retreat. All depend at least in part on an assessment of the life left in the property and its uncertainty.
Taking all the above into account the role of insurance is moot. It is difficult to see how to pool the risks. One could perhaps insure a minimum period of enjoyment, but the underlying risk is systematic. Options are an option.
Finally the problem with government involvement in managing the risk is it tends to ignore the benefits of ownership and discount them in favour of any residue risks that might apply to itself (liability for having permitted improvements, maintaining utilities and social costs of decaying communities, cleaning up the mess etc). There is good reason to explicitly define the public versus private liability for SLR for this reason, and because evolving risks require different management.
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
Reblogged this on ClimateTheTruth.com.
From the Executive Summary: “Global annually averaged surface air temperature has increased by about 1.8°F (1.0°C) over the last 115 years (1901–2016). This period is now the warmest in the history of modern civilization.”
I don’t know what their evidence is, but lack of evidence probably does not concern them.
Richard
With sea level it is better to look at integrated rises rather than fluctuating rates. Sea level rose 7-8 cm in the first and second 50 years of the 20th century. But it only took 25 years since 1990 to rise that much again. Nor is anyone surprised at this acceleration because of all the warming and melting going on.
Jim D. Not true if you only look at reliable tide gauges. years. Only true if you append sat alt from 1993 to tide gauge pre 1993, ignore the splice, and ignore the tidal variability 60 year requirement. You use Mike’s Nature trick deja vue. Not good.
Your scientific fallacy is fully exposed by the SLR closure problem. See my previous guest post here on SLR, acceleration, and closure for the referenced details you either ignore, or are ignorant of. Either way, BAD.
The integrated sea-level rise is always going to give a cleaner signal. Derivatives are notoriously noisy. It’s like looking at weather changes rather than climate changes. What’s the fastest 25 year rise in the 20th century? You’ll find it is rather less than the last 25 years, but skeptics obviously want to avoid long-term trends. It’s a common pattern.
When the sea level rises, earth inertia increases, the earth spin rate decreases and more and more leap seconds must be added to make keep the clocks right. Over the time since the atomic clock was introduced, the number of leap seconds that are added has decreased. Earth spin rate is faster than it was during the first years of the atomic clock usage. This is not consistent with an increasing sea level.
From: Watson, P.J., 2017. Acceleration in European mean sea-level? A new insight using improved tools.
“Key findings are that at the 95% confidence level, no consistent or compelling evidence (yet) exists that recent rates of rise are higher or abnormal in the context of the historical records available across Europe, nor is there any evidence that geocentric rates of rise are above the global average. It is likely a further 20 years of data will distinguish whether recent increases are evidence of the onset of climate change–induced acceleration.”
“It is also evident from these long records that relative velocity is steadily increasing over time, peaking at or near the recent end of the time series record, driven by low and continually changing rates of acceleration. For each of the long records depicted in Figure 4, the acceleration is predominantly confined to a narrow band within ±0.05 mm/y2 and not statistically different from zero at the 95% confidence level for most of the records, despite evidence that relative velocities are continuing to increase.”
http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-16-00134.1
I am a civil and structural engineer and wish to emphasise that most major civil engineering projects have a mandatory red team/blue team design process. Additionally, in aviation, the software development for fly-by-wire aircraft has a least two independent teams (analogous to the red team/blue team approach).
If saving the planet is deemed to be a major project, then I am at a loss to understand why climate scientists would wish to resist the red team/blue approach that is mandatory in other disciplines for major projects, e.g., engineering.
you realize that the science has been through one formal red team when its published. another when the ipcc reviews it and today anyone can red team it.
write your report.
We are not Red Teaming the science, just artfully biased assessments like the CSSR and NCA4. The IPCC does not Red Team its alarmist reports. That too would be very useful. There have been skeptical reviewers of IPCC reports, including me, but our comments are simply ignored.
Peer review of alarmist stuff by other alarmists is not a Red Team exercise. It is properly called Pal Review. When it is a general practice it is what I call paradigm protection, which Kuhn describes well in his landmark “Structure of Scientific Revolutions.”
Red teaming as a conception only exists to counter those for whom a subject is settled.
The more you deny the need for a red team the more urgent the need to have one.
And boy are you in denial.
Angus
Stop being a heretical denying apostate we want no rational thoughtful creative contributions and thinking here! On this blog there isn’t a lot of it.
The Paris Agreement was based on the data of now accepted “too hot” faulty models yet still we must agree to abolishing the internal combustion engine by 2030 and air travel to Save the Planet. Even then we must double down again to save 1degree of co2 forced warming.
Repeated clear evidence of manipulated data on sea level rises , wrongly purported causes of hurricanes, arctic sea ice melts, ignoring the antartic, hockey stick tree ring proxy nonsense, incidence of heatwaves.
I think sometimes I’ve had a weird dream and woken up not in a 200 year plus years of an enlightened age the 21st century but in Witch Trials in Maine.
I think at least in the UK where I live Climate Change AGW has replaced Religion/ Christianity. Most of my leftyish atheist peer group friends passionately adhere to it. I’m 60. Remember it’s a great feeling to be part of a global group of people pulling together to reduce co2 emissions doesn’t matter how much really as long as you BELIEVE it’s great we are saving the planet for us all. Get a turbine and a solar panel on your roof. Jacobsen has sorted it all in the US.
More worrying is the level of debate and petty bitching that goes on between highly esteemed PHD academics acclaimed ‘scientists’. Jim D, Mosher Demontfort Grown men ? et al so indulgent
Thankfully Judith C still flies a flag of rationality – this blog.
Some times I think my 10 year old granddaughter has a more rational cogent debate.
Real science has been polittically infiltrated and debased perhaps as a result of the relative affluence there is in Western economies in funding this bollocks.
Kevin Martin
The problem with a red, blue team approach to climate science is the extremely political nature of the debate which would be carried out in the public arena. If it could be carried out on a high plane, like the above comments by Prof Curry, ATTP, ClimateReason, JCH and others in the first half of the comments here, and if we keep the policy debate out of it, then maybe we could get somewhere.
I don’t see how red/blue debate in the engineering world, which I assume can be carried out successfully, is necessarily applicable to the climate science arena. For one thing, from a strictly political standpoint I can’t see what the alarmist/consensus camp would gain by participating. Let’s be honest. Their view is the the majority position, right or wrong. Why engage with a bunch of contrarians?
I can see value in critiquing The NCA, so long as it is conducted by the right people. It would help if the participants were respected scientists who were removed from the climate wars. Also, it would help if you could get some “consensus” types to critique some of the statements which are clearly wrong.
It wasn’t “resistance” that has stopped a red team, it was incompetence or lack of desire to organize one on the part of the government who just let the report through unquestioned. Blame them, but I think they saw how worthless that effort would be, so they didn’t even try.
My thought always has been that the Trump Administration should let the report be published without the taint of interference. It would be foolish to leave oneself open to the charge that the Administration sullied the purity of science by interfering with the report. They could challenge the report more credibly with a purely scientific challenge.
Of course, this is giving the Trumpsters a lot of credit. I don’t really know why they accepted the report without question. Maybe they were asleep.
They are a seat-of-the-pants outfit, so they would not be thinking about anything further ahead than next week, or maybe even tomorrow. Meanwhile there has been months of dickering about on blogs and op-eds about red teams, but no one is actually doing anything. Sad. It’s not resistance, just ineptitude. Know which side to blame.
It is informative to think of this ocean level change in terms of a simple lab experiment. Put some water in a beaker and measure its level change as measured air temperature varies.
When you set up this lab experiment, you assume that –
. the volume of the beaker remans constant
. evaporation is negligible, as is condensation entering the beaker
. the water is adequately stirred
. the water temperature is the same as the thermometer temperature
. level measurement is adequately accurate
. there is no liquid added to or taken from the beaker
Not one of these simple conditions is satisfied by efforts to measure ocean level changes.
You cannot overcome these simple complexities by invoking increasingly complex solutions that you hope will dazzle the objector.
Geoff
The ultimate cherry picking?
NCA and the CSSR are extreme examples of cherry picking. Consider the following statistical facts.
1. Every climate variable probably oscillates naturally on the decade to century scale.
2. This means that roughly half will be rising globally over the recent period.
3. Moreover, these oscillations all vary regionally.
4. This means that almost all of the variables will be rising somewhere over the recent period, including those that are not rising globally.
The NCA and CSSR simply pick out the worst rising variables, global or regional, that might be related to AGW. That these are part of natural oscillations is simply ignored, but only experts can see what is not there.
That these are part of natural oscillations is simply ignored, but only experts can see what is not there.
Not true, Trump was elected because many recognized the alarmism was a bunch of lies. I talk to people about this almost every day, where ever I meet them, on the sidewalk, at a park, in the grocery store, a really high percent of people I meet every day recognize that most of climate is natural cycles.
You don’t get this from the mainstream media, you must to talk to people you meet.
You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that there are natural cycles and that they milk them to scare us so they can tax and control us and get us to pay subsidies and allow tax credits so they, and their contributors can get rich off of windmills, solar panels, ethanol and whatever schemes they have to save the world from a made up problem that does not exist.
My point, which you repeat without attribution, is that natural oscillations (not cycles) are ignored in the CSSR and NCA4. You are correct that many people believe that they are significant, but that needs to be clearly spelled out in an official Red Team critique of these official alarmist reports.
Perhaps there is room for one other team — we could call it Team Purple. While Red produces the mainstream science based on the accepted causes of warming, and Blue examines their claims for scientific errors, Team Purple would be tasked with suggesting other causes of warming not considered by Red which is committed to CO2 as the controlling factor..
For example, in the figures above it looks as if greenhouse effect science is faulty but warming is occurring anyway. Team Purple could check for UHI, albedo change, pollution etc theories to see if those, combined with the greenhouse effect, can produce predictions which actually match reality, something Red’s efforts conspicuously fail to do.
This whole scientific muddle is set to cost us trillions. To stop us getting it wrong the allocation of a couple of billion dollars to a team seeking out other contributory causes would be a worthwhile investment.
JF
WashPo has predictable praise for the CSSP:
“Trump administration releases report finding ‘no convincing alternative explanation’ for climate change.”
Natural variability is ruled out in the title!
Here are the first two paragraphs of a very long, video laden, alarmist love fest:
“The Trump administration released a dire scientific report Friday calling human activity the dominant driver of global warming, a conclusion at odds with White House decisions to withdraw from a key international climate accord, champion fossil fuels and reverse Obama-era climate policies.”
“To the surprise of some scientists, the White House did not seek to prevent the release of the government’s National Climate Assessment, which is mandated by law. The report affirms that climate change is driven almost entirely by human action, warns of a worst-case scenario where seas could rise as high as eight feet by the year 2100, and details climate-related damage across the United States that is already unfolding as a result of an average global temperature increase of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900.”
So now we officially have the threat of an 8 foot SLR in 82 years. And this is just paragraph 2. (Author instructions for the CSSR mandate a focus on worst cases.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/11/03/trump-administration-releases-report-finds-no-convincing-alternative-explanation-for-climate-change/?utm_term=.15655462541e
…as a result of an average global temperature increase of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900.
Amazing how they’ve begun drinking the kool-aid of anthro warming going all the way back to 1900. Used to be that they avoided talking about that like the plague. The early twentieth century warming has always been an inconvenient truth for AGWers. A truth that they were constantly sweeping under the rug. Kind of hard to make a case for agw when it was warming faster a hundred years ago than it is these days. So why not just embrace it and say it was always a part of agw all along? (the ipcc be damned!) Kind of sad really. How on earth does the political left go forward with slop like this? It can’t. Sooner or later they’re going to realize that they can’t go forward with a progressive ideology that’s based on lies. (a regressive one, perhaps) It’s just too difficult to keep the masses on the bandwagon that way. Come back to the truth, be pragmatic and eventually you will curry favor with the populace again. (until then, it’s all just a freak show made to order for the amusement of conservatives)…
In review at Energy and Environment
Dependence of environmental predictions on underlying assumptions
John Reid
Abstract
By examining time series of measured quantities we can gain insights into underlying mechanisms and make predictions of future values. Here we use a well-known time series to show how such insights and predictions depend strongly on prior assumptions. Global mean sea level was found to be well-fitted by a stochastic model which predicted only a 180 mm increase from 1990 to 2100 whereas a quadratic curve fitted to the same data for the same interval predicted an increase of 314 mm. Thus the type of model used can have a significant economic impact, for example, on coastal planning decisions.
I would use an exponential change in rate. A 1% per year increase in sea-level rise rate gives 15″ in the 21st century, while 2% per year gives 45″. Both are credible rates given past data.
Judith, I did not like the more snowfall due to more moisture in the air as it gets hotter argument at all.
It is a trivial but well used observation that ignores the reality of a warming or cooling world.
In practice there is always leless likelihood of snow as the world heats up. The amount that may fall in a now reduced but still cold area is less than the amount that cannot fall or melts quicker in the now larger warmer areas.
Hence if it warms there will always be overall less snow despite one small new area being able to temporarily have more.
It snows more when it is warmer and it snows less when it is colder. Buffalo New York gets more snow when Lake Erie is warmer and thawed and gets less snow when Lake Erie is colder and frozen. Polar Oceans work exactly the same way. Ice Accumulation on Greenland is more when the Arctic is warmer and open. Ice Accumulation on Greenland is less when the Arctic is colder and frozen and closed. This is fully supported by the ice core data.
It works the same way in the southern hemisphere. The Ice Accumulation on Antarctic is more when oceans are warmer and less when oceans are colder.
Snow is caused by moisture. More moisture comes from thawed oceans, less moisture comes from frozen oceans.
These are simple, easy to understand facts. The freeze thaw temperature is the thermostat setting in the polar regions. More snowfall thawed and less snowfall frozen. There is easy to understand ice core data that proves this to be true.
Thinking about ATTP’s cleverly worded simple but scientific analogy of adding more CO2 to the atmosphere resulting in increased heat and sea level rise led to the thought about what might be missed here.
One clue was the fact that CO2, as he put it was the major non water GHG.
Two results. The first was that he was talking about an incredibly small fraction of the total GHH (water) .
The second was on what might happen when you stuff a tiny extra amount of GHG in the atmosphere which can only handle a certsin molar load.
The easiest response would be for an equivalent small amount of H2O to drop out of the atmosphere.
No problem at all.
In which case the CO2 rise would be counterbalanced by the equally minuscule H2O fall.
Is this true?
Could one even measure the water ppm that accurately, no is the answer.
Still the molar load is a necessarily valid physical argument against the added CO2 effect.
What actually happens is that the CO2 warms the atmosphere making the H2O increase. This is the well known water vapor feedback. According to physics, water vapor is slave to the temperature and can’t vary independently from it. It increases about 7% per degree, which is measurable and has been.
“However, this increase of water vapor, at least in recent years is either not occurring or is very muted from the predictions made by the IPCC multi-decadal global model predictions.”
https://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/new-paper-that-further-documents-a-muted-atmospheric-water-vapor-trend-surface-water-vapor-pressure-and-temperature-trends-in-north-america-during-1948-2010-by-isaac-and-van-wijngaarden-2012/
A reduced response might bring things more in line. A response as you suggest might just push joules into the oceans where some of them drift downwards. Cooling the atmosphere from this joule loss, lowering water vapor.
A case of not sticking enough. Joules like water, find a way. If you warm the atmosphere but the oceans lag. More joules move into the oceans.
And I’ll call the additional H2O in the atmosphere a fast response. Since 2/3s of the surface is oceans, this fast response exists above a slow response and it tends towards equilibrium across the sea surface/atmosphere interface. Since there are X more joules above from fast response the slow response oceans moderate this and drag things back.
Equatorial oceans now being warmer, to some extent move toward the poles where water vapor is less than at the equator. So while water vapor is suggested to warm the equatorial water more than before, the water can move to where the path to the TOA is much easier.
While most data sets in this case show warming, we might argue it’s moderated warming from moving stuff around to moderate atmospheric warming. Perhaps consistent with a long term stable enough for life planet.
The land is warming twice as fast as the ocean, and since the H2O responds to the ocean temperature the response to the global temperature may appear muted until this geographical imbalance has equilibriated. This delayed response is also the reason that ECS estimates from recent trends alone likely to be underestimated, because the H2O feedback has not fully kicked in yet.
Let’s go beyond : 7% more vapor means 7% more latent heat convectingly evacuated from the ground to the top of atmosphere, across H2O vapor opacity. A quick calculation shows that this greatly compensates more than 1°C increase (current total evaporation is about 18 billions kg/s representing 95 W/m2 of latent heat).
This looks like quackery unless you are thinking of someone’s publication.
Re: Ragnaar
Re: ““However, this increase of water vapor, at least in recent years is either not occurring or is very muted from the predictions made by the IPCC multi-decadal global model predictions.””
Why are you relying on a garbage blogpost (from Pielke Sr., no less) about 2012 paper covering only the US? How about you address the actual scientific literature, including the more recent literature showing increasing water vapor and positive water vapor feedback? Please stop relying on crackpot blogs for your information on science; you’ve been repeatedly told this. For example, read:
“Upper-tropospheric moistening in response to anthropogenic warming”
“Anthropogenic greenhouse forcing and strong water vapor feedback increase temperature in Europe”
“Enhanced positive water vapor feedback associated with tropical deep convection: New evidence from Aura MLS”
“Global water vapor trend from 1988 to 2011 and its diurnal asymmetry based on GPS, radiosonde, and microwave satellite measurements”
“An analysis of tropospheric humidity trends from radiosondes”
“Observations of climate feedbacks over 2000–10 and comparisons to climate models”
“Water-vapor climate feedback inferred from climate fluctuations, 2003–2008”
Another paper discusses how atmospheric humidity increased during the recent period of pronounced global warming (from about the late 1970s to the present), with a humidity decrease during the cooling / temperature stagnation period of ~1940s to the 1970s:
“Trends in U.S. Surface Humidity, 1930–2010
[…]
Increasing evidence from observations and climate models indicates that anthropogenic activity is increasing atmospheric moisture (Boucher et al. 2004; Willett et al. 2007; Santer et al. 2007; Min et al. 2008).
[…]
Most studies of global atmospheric moisture indicate that recent warming is associated with an increase in specific humidity and little change in relative humidity (Dai 2006; Trenberth et al. 2007; Willett et al. 2008). A more recent analysis suggests that reductions in relative humidity have occurred because of a lack of increase in oceanic moisture being supplied to warming land surfaces (Simmons et al. 2010).
[…]
Hourly temperatures in the United States have warmed since 1930, with much of this warming occurring since 1980. […] There have been no long-term changes in dewpoint temperatures or specific humidity but rather there has been a decreasing (1947–79) and then an increasing (1980–2010) trend in both variables.”
“Why are you relying on a garbage blogpost (from Pielke Sr., no less) about 2012 paper covering only the US? How about you address the actual scientific literature, including the more recent literature showing increasing water vapor and positive water vapor feedback?”
Why Pielke? Google Scholar shows 20 works with over 300 citations each.
I like the United States. Some studies for a number of reasons including money will be conducted at one sight. Think of it as a weather station. With 30 global weather stations only, you can say something. It’s better if you have 300.
What is the value of one ice core? Apparently Alley would say a lot. Regional studies are great. Just as each weather station is.
If there’s something from AR5, I’d like to see that:
“Significant progress has been made since the TAR in understanding and evaluating water vapour and lapse rate feedbacks. New tests have been applied to GCMs, and have generally found skill in the representation of large-scale free tropospheric humidity responses to seasonal and interannual variability, volcano-induced cooling and climate trends. New evidence from both observations and models has reinforced the conventional view of a roughly unchanged RH response to warming. It has also increased confidence in the ability of GCMs to simulate important features of humidity and temperature response under a range of different climate perturbations. Taken together, the evidence strongly favours a combined water vapour-lapse rate feedback of around the strength found in global climate models.”
It’s like getting a Kindergarten report card. You get to go to the first grade, and here’s my warmest personal regards.
Jim D:
“The land is warming twice as fast as the ocean…”
Think large quantities. Where is the water vapor?
Excluding the polar regions, most of it is over the oceans. As I tried to bring up, an increased water vapor GHE may be in material amounts, sunk by the oceans.
“However, huge scientific uncertainty exists in defining the extent and importance of this feedback loop. As water vapor increases in the atmosphere, more of it will eventually also condense into clouds, which are more able to reflect incoming solar radiation (thus allowing less energy to reach the Earth’s surface and heat it up). The future monitoring of atmospheric processes involving water vapor will be critical to fully understand the feedbacks in the climate system leading to global climate change. As yet, though the basics of the hydrological cycle are fairly well understood, we have very little comprehension of the complexity of the feedback loops. Also, while we have good atmospheric measurements of other key greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, we have poor measurements of global water vapor, so it is not certain by how much atmospheric concentrations have risen in recent decades or centuries, though satellite measurements, combined with balloon data and some in-situ ground measurements indicate generally positive trends in global water vapor.”
– NOAA
Ragnaar, the water vapor is in equilibrium with the ocean temperature that has risen less than the global temperature, so its response relative to the global temperature may be less than 7% per degree, while it is 7% per degree for the ocean. Not sure you understood this.
Regarding the cloud feedback, that is small to positive, so it is making things worse if anything. It is a strong positive total feedback because even at effectively 2 C per doubling we are not keeping up with the forcing,and with no positive feedback, we would be nearer 1 C per doubling. These rates are important to realize.
“Thus the possible positive and negative feedbacks associated with increased water vapor and cloud formation can cancel one another out and complicate matters. The actual balance between them is an active area of climate science research.” – ACS
We orbited something in 1958. And let’s not forget what Mears said about satellites.
“Trends in observed atmospheric water vapour are hampered by inhomogeneities in data records, which occur when measurement programmes are discontinued because of, for example, the limited lifespans of satellite missions or insufficiently documented or understood changes in instrumentation. Combining records from different instruments that do not agree with one another is also a problem. One example is the offset between records from the HALOE and MLS satellite instruments. Nevertheless, observations show a steady increase of the total water vapour column as well as a 30-year net increase in stratospheric water vapour.” (Confidence level not apparent.)
“The observed temporal trends in stratospheric water vapour are poorly understood and this demonstrates our lack of understanding of how water vapour enters the stratosphere. These are areas that GAW will address in the future.”
WMO
Quite a range here:
“Stratospheric water vapor has a positive climate feedback effect: a warming climate increases stratospheric water vapor, and the increased stratospheric water vapor enhances surface warming. There is strong debate on the importance of this feedback. Previous studies reported a wide range of stratospheric water vapor feedback strength from 0.02 to 0.3 Wm-2K-1” https://ams.confex.com/ams/21Fluid19Middle/webprogram/Paper319586.html
I think we can agree, it’s time to start building Lomborg’s water squirting climate Navy.
The actual measurements indicate more certainty than what you are quoting. They most certainly don’t cancel one another as the water vapor feedback is much larger and the cloud feedback either adds or is small to allow for measured values of 2 C per doubling.
Re: Ragnaar
Re: “Why Pielke?”
You’re still relying on crackpot blogposts from Pielke Sr. How telling.
“Unlike mainstream climate scientists, who publish primarily in peer reviewed journals, these critics typically employ a range of non-peer-reviewed outlets, ranging from blogs to the books we are examining. […]
The general lack of peer review allows authors or editors of denial books to make inaccurate assertions that misrepresent the current state of climate science. Like the vast range of other non-peer-reviewed material produced by the denial community, book authors can make whatever claims they wish, no matter how scientifically unfounded.”
http://abs.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/05/01/0002764213477096.full.pdf
Re: “I like the United States.”
You like cherry-picking particular locations and blogposts, so you can ignore the wider evidence that debunks you.
Re: “If there’s something from AR5, I’d like to see that:”
This has been dumbed down for you so many times, so you should stop pretending otherwise. Once again:
The IPCC summarizes much the scientific literature; they don’t do original research. Furthermore, scientific research didn’t magically stop 3 or 4 years ago with AR5. Research continued. So stop pretending you can dodge what scientific research shows, by referencing AR5. Actually address the evidence cited to you, for once.
Re: “However, huge scientific uncertainty exists”
Once again, you plagiarize by not citing your source. You also quote-mine, like usual. This is the source you’re quote-mining:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/greenhouse-gases.php?section=watervapor
I wonder why you didn’t go with your usual practice of quote-mining the IPCC?
…Oh wait, it’s because the IPCC debunks the position you’re trying to support:
“There is likewise very high confidence that, consistent with observations, models show a strong positive correlation between tropospheric temperature and water vapour on regional to global scales, implying a positive water vapour feedback in both models and observations [page 745].”
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter09_FINAL.pdf
“…the water vapor is in equilibrium with the ocean temperature that has risen less than the global temperature, so its response relative to the global temperature may be less than 7% per degree, while it is 7% per degree for the ocean.”
For the most part, water vapor is in fast response equilibrium with the oceans. As they do respond more slowly to warming, so too does the water vapor. So we assume increased water vapor over the oceans. And just as CO2 makes the oceans warmer than otherwise, so does water vapor. So the GHE in the atmosphere moderates that effect, unless the ocean returns all of the new joules put into it because of the GHE. I consider that highly unlikely. This same moderation is not seen over land as land doesn’t have the same deep thermal reserves as the oceans. At 45 degrees North in Minnesota, there is much less water in any case from about mid November until about the beginning of April. So for large parts of the globe, seasonally there is little water vapor to throw up into the atmosphere. Antarctica is a better example. So over land, the increased temperature can increase water vapor if water is available.
Not sure what you are saying, but yes the ocean is the water vapor reservoir and its temperature is largely responsible for how much H2O feedback we get. Clearly with effectively 2 C per doubling observed the positive feedback is rather important.
Take for instance Gavin Schmidt and his Real Climate and his associates there. As far as credibility goes, it’s high. Peer reviewed science has a problem in that it’s slow. A blog does not have that same problem. Change is all around and probably increasing. A blog will at times reach a wider audience because it is not peer reviewed science and is more understandable to us, the voters.
As mentioned about Pielke’s papers above, how may can say they’ve done what he has?
I fail to see your point about regional or one sight studies. Here are today’s 3 papers or something from Nature:
https://www.nature.com/subjects/climate-sciences
Disrupting the atmospheric beat
Cheng Li
Sketch-up: Southern Ocean mixing
James Tuttle Keane
Cryospheric science: Muddying Greenland’s meltwaters
Matthew A. Charette
Looks like two of three are not global.
So I take it AR5 had nothing more useful for policy makers than what they said in AR4 about water vapor and climate.
Which is what we are, policy makers, every time we vote or put something on our Facebook page. The question is not so much what a few scientific papers say, but what do people hear? I think we can find papers on that too.
How come the Republicans don’t listen to us when we are right eight ways from Sunday?
Plagiarize. I put quotes on it and I put this after it: – NOAA. And there was the available copy 10 words and search it option. It’s my opinion excessive clickable links may not be opitimal.
Chapter 9 is called:
Evaluation of Climate Models
Here’s is more context of your quote:
“The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) model spread in equilibrium climate sensitivity ranges from 2.1°C to 4.7°C and is very similar to the assessment in the AR4. No correlation is found between biases in global mean surface temperature and equilibrium climate sensitivity, and so mean temperature biases do not obviously affect the modelled response to GHG forcing. There is very high confidence that the primary factor contributing to the spread in equilibrium climate sensitivity continues to be the cloud feedback. This applies to both the modern climate and the LGM. There is likewise very high confidence that, consistent with observations, models show a strong positive correlation between tropospheric temperature and water vapour on regional to global scales, implying a positive water vapour feedback in both models and observations. {9.4.1, 9.7.2, Figures 9.9, 9.42, 9.43}”
So the problem with the ECS is clouds. Now what does strong mean for policy? For the ECS?
We are still looking for something more on point from AR5.
I’ll let the IPCC do the assessments thank you very much.
The GCMs have a cloud feedback that ranges from small to positive, and this agrees with observational amount of warming too. Good to have that consistency, and you would be right not to ignore it.
Re: Ragnaar
I long ago put away the idea that you’ll respond in intellectually honest ways. I respond to you for the lulz, so that you don’t mislead intellectually honest people, and so you look ridiculous when you pretend your claims have not been addressed.
Re: “Peer reviewed science has a problem in that it’s slow. A blog does not have that same problem. Change is all around and probably increasing. A blog will at times reach a wider audience because it is not peer reviewed science and is more understandable to us, the voters.”
Ridiculous response from you. By that absurd logic of your’s:
You should just get your medical advice from some random person on the Internet. After all, your doctor will take awhile to meet with you, get your laboratory results back, etc. The random Internet person can get back to you much faster. And they might have a very ride audience, like Alex Jones has.
Ragnaar, you should improve your poor scientific meta-literacy, and learn that speed + audience size are less relevant than expertise + evidence.
Re: “Looks like two of three are not global.”
Doesn’t justify you cherry-picking local (US) trends in order to side-step the evidence on more global trends. To say otherwise is as silly as pointing to a study of marsupials, in order to justify you cherry-picking marsupials as being representative of mammals more broadly.
Re: “So I take it AR5 had nothing more useful for policy makers than what they said in AR4 about water vapor and climate.”
Another one of your disreputable tricks; no matter what evidence you’re given, you always claim it’s useless for policy, as long as the evidence supports mainstream climate science. This is just you moving the goal-posts and manufacturing doubt to avoid policies you dislike.
“Manufacture of doubt: Denialists highlight any scientific disagreement (whether real or imagined) as evidence that the entire topic is contested, and argue that it is thus premature to take action.”
http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6950.full
“Many of the strategies used by the opponents of both evolution and global warming are based on sowing misinformation and doubt. This approach is often called the “tobacco strategy”, because tobacco companies used it effectively to delay health warnings and regulation of smoking.”
http://reports.ncse.com/index.php/rncse/article/viewFile/71/64
Re: “So the problem with the ECS is clouds.”
Another one of your usual tricks. Once again:
The IPCC summarizes much the scientific literature; they don’t do original research. Furthermore, scientific research didn’t magically stop 3 or 4 years ago with AR5. Research continued. So stop pretending you can dodge what scientific research shows, by referencing AR5. Actually address the evidence cited to you, for once.
The evidence on positive cloud feedback (amplifying CO2-induced warming) has gotten stronger since AR5. You won’t engage the evidence, of course, because you don’t bother to actual read peer-reviewed papers, and you like pretending that climate science stopped with AR5 (as I discussed above). Fortunately, intellectually honest people can read the papers you refuse to read:
“Observations of climate feedbacks over 2000–10 and comparisons to climate models”
“Cloud feedback mechanisms and their representation in global climate models”
“Clearing clouds of uncertainty”
“A net decrease in the Earth’s cloud, aerosol, and surface 340 nm reflectivity during the past 33 yr (1979–2011)”
“A determination of the cloud feedback from climate variations over the past decade”
“Long-term cloud change imprinted in seasonal cloud variation: More evidence of high climate sensitivity”
“New observational evidence for a positive cloud feedback that amplifies the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation”
“Impact of dataset choice on calculations of the short-term cloud feedback”
“Evidence for climate change in the satellite cloud record”
“Thermodynamic constraint on the depth of the global tropospheric circulation”
If anyone reads my responses, here I recycle one of them.
We are selling chainsaws. We have two choices. The first chainsaw is aimed at you and I. The homeowner with about 4 trees in our yard. The second chainsaw is aimed at lumberjacks. We think the second one is a splendid chainsaw. It’s heavy. It’s powerful and its bar is huge. We only get to sell one of these two models. Which one do we sell?
We think of bell curves and market share.
Got it?
You are selling a lumberjack’s chainsaw to homeowners. And then like minded people are wondering what’s wrong with homeowners? Why aren’t they buying the lumberjack’s chainsaw?
Then someone like Pielke Sr. is admonished for not sticking to writing peers but talking to homeowners.
I believe it is a truism that, Everyone is in sales. And sales are not happening through peer reviewed papers. There’s a much wider audience for science out there for a somewhat different but still related product. Gore, Nye, Clinton and Sanders are in sales. As is the Guardian. The inability to move the Republicans on the issue is because others figured out they were in sales too and did a good enough job of it. Anti nuke and anti GMO people are in sales and have done their jobs well enough to win on nuclear power and carve out selected wins on GMOs even though the science says otherwise.
There are subtleties in climate science that don’t lend themselves to shortcut explanations. For example, I have tried for a long time to explain the fundamental importance of the energy imbalance to the attribution problem, but so far no hint of any understanding here despite the apparent large interest in attribution itself. The skeptics have to actually learn things to understand things, and that is a barrier. Spoonfeeding doesn’t work with science, and especially not with skeptics who will not take any science as a given. Its concepts have to be understood at a basic level first, and if that looks too longwinded to delve into, that’s a problem for you.
“…despite the apparent large interest in attribution itself.”
Dateline: Salem Massachusetts
You caused the crops to die.
It was natural variability.
It was you.
We find you guilty of witchcraft.
But since we are now inclusive, we will raise taxes instead of doing that other thing.
As far as driving policy, say the SCC, what good is attribution?
“Combining the evidence from ocean warming and mass loss of glaciers we conclude that it is very likely that there is a substantial contribution
from anthropogenic forcing to the global mean sea level rise since the
1970s.”
Anyone see where the IPCC defines subtantial?
of considerable importance, size, or worth.
What do we with this attribution?
Ragnaar, I can’t tell whether you think attribution is important. Anyway warming in the pipeline means even if we stop now there is more to come, and this has been known for at least several IPCC reports and a decade, and that is because the forcing has not all been realized yet as warming. Some skeptics still think half or more could be natural, possibly because they don’t understand the positive imbalance and its ramifications, and you may not either for all I can tell. I gave this as an example of a gap in understanding. The IPCC central estimate is that all the warming is from anthopogenic causes.- paraphrased as extremely likely most and most likely all. Skeptics look for wiggle room in that by always ignoring the second part.
Jim D:
Is attribution important?
The question I want to answer is, Does it have value?
We did this. We are recording.
This will happen. We are predicting.
The TCR can be used for predicting. I think the TCR is better for predicting than attribution is.
In a general way the debate includes blame which lines up with attribution. Fixing the problem lines up with the TCR.
Perhaps others can provide examples of the GMST attribution being useful.
The effective TCR for the last 60 years is 1 C per 100 ppm (2 C per doubling). Here it is with other lines near effectively 50% less and 50% more (1 C and 3 C).
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1950/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.01/offset:-3.2/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.015/offset:-4.8/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.005/offset:-1.6/mean:12
This indicates a sharp value around 2 C, which is good enough for a confident projection going forwards. Then the ECS, being about 3 C would also be reasonable. That the TCR is consistent with the IPCC attribution is a bonus for those interested in the scientific backup.
I’d say the TCR is more like 1.75 C.
But then what?
Richard Tol then has a number to plug into his model.
Then we can talk about spending money. But we are still using a global TCR.
Next step.
Are we saving us or the world? So we are at policy, where everyone has a say.
But I’ve assumed agreement on the TCR. And we don’t have it. Yet we do have wind turbines and home solar. So policy got done. But it got done with what I’ll call a not well constrained TCR. And we’ll see if it made economic sense some day.
About extreme event attribution:
“Another, more speculative, possibility is that over time, conducting such studies will identify a set of best practices in attribution research that lawyers and judges could apply in cases where the court needs to settle questions of liability for the costs or harm caused by an extreme event that may have been influenced by global warming and climate change.” – NOAA
It goes along with my blame theory of attribution.
Apple doesn’t sit around trying to blame people.
Attorneys are going to fix things? Good thing they fixed the smoking problem with their lawsuits.
At 1 C per 100 ppm, the effective TCR works out to exceed 2 C, if anything. Then we can suggest that for every 1500-2000 GtCO2 we emit, we get another 1 C of eventual warming. Policies range between 1000 GtCO2 and 10000 GtCO2 going forwards. Although these extremes are both unlikely they represent about a 5 C difference in global temperature just from the chosen fossil fuel policy, and it is no wonder that energy policy has got the world’s attention now because we can make that much difference despite what you read in op-eds, blogs and certain thinktank reports.
Pardon the swearing JimD, inaudible, stage left.
There is more to water vapour than your imagination can ever conceive.
Clouds, JimD.
Made of water vapour.
Aggregates that defy locally your primer version of physics and in so doing create albedo effects lowering temperature, precipitation events lowering sea level when over land and altering temperature left right and centre.
Water vapour slave to temperature?
The boot is on the order foot.
Water vapour is not your obedient wife JimD.
Instead she is cruel mistress and you are the beknighted slave in your house.
Hope I have not egged this too hard.
OK, red team that and see how far it gets. The tropics has a lot more water vapor than the polar regions. Do you know why? Probably not, based on this.
Hope my wife does not read this.
http://www.pnas.org/content/114/23/5946/F3.large.jpg
JCH, good post
The rate of sea level rise is a little more than it was in 1945?
The acceleration was greater from 1925-1945 than fro 1965 to 2000?
Based on those estimates?
Douglas 1992 found insignificant acceleration for previous 100 years. Houston & Dean 2011 found deceleration, but in a follow up paper said whichever direction the rate was, it was insignificant. Others have chimed in as well, acknowledging uncertainties.
In 1993 a new system of measurement was introduced. Prior to the new system no acceleration. After new system, a significant acceleration.
It seems a critical thinker would ask a few questions. Pre new system, was there an acceleration not picked up by the old system? Are there weaknesses in the new system that is not accurately measuring SLR?
It’s a little much to swallow the idea that by coincidence the actual, physical acceleration began at exactly the time the new system was introduced.
Give that man an RG Dun.
One is not exclusive of the other. To have done what I did for a couple of decades, I had to be both.
But if you’re comfortable with the data, the more power to you.
As for me, there are too many stacked oscillations and other variables, known and unknown, to come to any conclusion.
JCH
Your comment disappeared. I had same problem with one of Ragnar’s comments yesterday. It was there and poof. His was about discovery of freshwater under sea floor. Very interesting.
“I had same problem with one of Ragnar’s comments yesterday. It was there and poof. His was about discovery of freshwater under sea floor.”
Unless I am losing my mind, I didn’t post about freshwater under the sea floor. Wonder if I had a ghost that was busted?
I must be losing it. I thought that you had made a reference to the discovery. When I read it , I looked it up and found several articles about it, including one quantifying the amount of water at 120,000 Cubic kilometers. But then when I returned here there was no such comment. Just to make sure I didn’t dream it up I looked it up again.
It wasn’t the heat because it’s cold here. And it wasn’t the alcohol since I haven’t had a drink in a week. No clue what I was reading.
I vaguely remember the reading the same comment. Maybe it was a fake that was discovered and disappeared.
aaron
Thank you. I’m glad to know my memory hasn’t completely left me. I thought it was an interesting discovery. I wonder how many of those who think they know all there is to know about earth would have thought there were vast amounts of freshwater under the ocean floor 20 years ago. I’m confident many more significant discoveries of the like are on the way in the next 50 years .
JC,
Thanks for this post: objective, sensible rational. This is the sort of succinctly summarised, relevant information relevant needed by policy analysts and policy makers.
JCH,
Does the old adage that water will find its own level not apply?
I have problems with parts of the ocean system steadily getting higher compared to others. Do you have an explanation? Geoff.
I have the same problem with mountains. I actually don’t believe they’re there.
jch
I seem to remember you are a hot air balloon fan. You must feel the updraft from mountains, see their weather pattern, see them in the distance AND know you would bump into one if you flew too low.
So you can see, sense and feel them. Pretty conclusive evidence of their existence. SLR accelerating due to man? Not so much.
tony
This article shows that the acceleration of sea level rise is real and ongoing. It is also an example of how climate models can play a key role in both the interpretation of observations and the prediction of near-future climate. – John Fasullo
Real and ongoing – 1.2 mm/yr from 1900 to 1990; 3.29 mm/yr from Jan 5,1993 to August 10, 2017. 10-year-rate is 4.24 mm/yr.
JCH
Quit trying to evade a sensible answer.
Read your own quote Nov 5 12.15 am – “This feature is geographically dominated by the Indian Ocean–Southern Pacific region, marking a transition from lower-than-average rates before 1990 toward unprecedented high rates in recent decades.”
My question is, put more clearly, how can acceleration be different in different geographical regions, when gravity acts on water levels to minimise differences from place to place?
For what periods do you imagine this differential acceleration to continue? Will we get ‘mountains’ of water in future centuries in the Indian-Sth Pacific region?
Is local gravity variation so fast that it is changing water levels while we watch? Or are we just looking at measurement errors?
Geoff.
Oceans are not perfectly still buckets – geostrophic winds and currents influence geopotential heights of water surfaces differently everywhere and at decadal and longer scales.
Re: “Steve Koonin as a new op-ed in the WSJ”
So he’s probably going to misrepresent science, for the sake of a conservative political ideology. That’s what conservative commentators in WSJ typically do, when discussing climate science.
Re: The same research papers the report cites show that recent rates are statistically indistinguishable from peak rates earlier in the 20th century, […].
And… so what? That doesn’t change the fact that sea level rise accelerated post-1970, and that this acceleration is anthropogenic. The following claims illustrate this point:
1) Global warming causes sea level rise, via melting of land ice and thermal expansion:
“Global sea level linked to global temperature”
“Temperature-driven global sea-level variability in the Common Era”
2) Sea level increased post-1970s relative to the 1940s to 1970s. This coincides with post-1970s global warming, as expected, given point 1:
“New estimate of the current rate of sea level rise from a sea level budget approach”
“Recent global sea level acceleration started over 200 years ago?”
Table 2 of “Twentieth-Century Global-Mean Sea Level Rise: Is the Whole Greater than the Sum of the Parts?”
“Trends and acceleration in global and regional sea levels since 1807”
“A 20th century acceleration in global sea-level rise”
“Sea-Level Rise from the Late 19th to the Early 21st Century”
“An Anomalous Recent Acceleration of Global Sea Level Rise”
“Probabilistic reanalysis of twentieth-century sea-level rise”
3) Most of the post-1950s global warming is anthropogenic, predominately caused by increased CO2.
This is known via various lines of evidence, including:
– Post-1950s stratospheric cooling
– Post-1950s mesospheric cooling
– Post-1950s thermospheric cooling
– Horizontal/regional distribution of warming and the temporal pattern of warming [DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00191.1, pages 1683 and 1684]
– Exclusion of other likely causal factors, such as the Sun [ex: solar-induced warming causes warming of the stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere, yet scientists observed cooling in these layers].
4) Most of the post-1950s sea level rise is anthropogenic:
“Internal Variability Versus Anthropogenic Forcing on Sea Level and Its Components”
“The rate of sea-level rise”
“Quantifying anthropogenic and natural contributions to thermosteric sea level rise”
“Detection and attribution of global mean thermosteric sea level change”
“Long-term sea level trends: Natural or anthropogenic?”
“Anthropogenic forcing dominates sea level rise since 1850”
“Anthropogenic forcing dominates global mean sea-level rise since 1970”
5) Sea level rise is tied to forcing from CO2 in the long-term:
“Relationship between sea level and climate forcing by CO2 on geological timescales”
The conjunction of points 1 to 3 support the idea that the post-1970s increases in sea level rise wre caused by anthropogenic, CO2-induced warming. Point 4 further bolsters that conclusion. And point 5 also supports the conclusion, by increasing the predictive power and explanatory scope of the explanation.
Re: earlier in the 20th century, when human influences on the climate were much smaller.
Why does Koonin claim that “human influences on the climate were much smaller”? He’s likely conflating (maybe intentionally):
Claim 1: The evidence on anthropogenic attribution is weaker for 1900-1950 than for post-1950.
Claim 2: The anthropogenic contribution is weaker for 1900-1950 than for post-1950.
Claim 1 applies “weaker” to the evidence for attribution, while claim 2 applies “weaker” to magnitude of the attribution. So claim 1 is not the same as claim 2, and the two claims should not be conflated.
Claim 1 is true, since there’s more evidence for phenomena like stratpspheric cooling, mesospheric cooling, etc. post-1950 than for 1900-1950. Claim 2 is not well-supported. If Koonin wants to claim otherwise, then he should remember that CO2-induced anthropogenic warming ends up being close to linear, due to a near-exponential rise in atmospheric CO2, coupled with the logarithmic relationship between CO2 increase and temperature increase. Thus the rate of 1900-1950 CO2-induced warming is about the same as the rate of post-1950 CO2-induced warming.
The near-exponential CO2 increase and near-exponential anthropogenic emissions increase is shown in sources such as:
http://ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-2-1-figure-1.html
“Atmospheric CO2 over the last 1000 years: A high-resolution record from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide ice core”
http://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/emis/glo_2011.html
The near-linear rate of anthropogenic warming (predominantly from anthropogenic greenhouse gases) is shown in sources such as:
“Deducing Multidecadal Anthropogenic Global Warming Trends Using Multiple Regression Analysis”
“The global warming hiatus — a natural product of interactions of a secular warming trend and a multi-decadal oscillation”
“The Origin and Limits of the Near Proportionality between Climate Warming and Cumulative CO2 Emissions”
“Sensitivity of climate to cumulative carbon emissions due to compensation of ocean heat and carbon uptake”
“Return periods of global climate fluctuations and the pause”
“Using data to attribute episodes of warming and cooling in instrumental records”
“The proportionality of global warming to cumulative carbon emissions”
“The sensitivity of the proportionality between temperature change and cumulative CO2 emissions to ocean mixing”
Re: “This artifice also appeared in the government’s 2014 National Climate Assessment, which emphasized a post-1980 increase in hurricane power without discussing the longerterm record. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently stated that it has been unable to detect any human impact on hurricanes.”
Koonin’s tactics are clear:
1) Point out similarities between past climate events and more recent climate events.
2) Claim that that the past events are more natural than anthropogenic.
3) Point out individual climate cases in which human-causation is not yet clear.
4) Use point 3, and the longer-term records from points 1 and 2, to claim that current climate change in non-anthropogenic.
5) Use point 4 to justify your politically-motivated, conservative opposition to climate policy; also use point 4 to attack the scientific community, even though you’re clearly not well-informed on the relevant scientific evidence.
The problems with Koonin’s tactics should be obvious. For example, inferring 4 from 1 and 2 is fallacious:
“These examples illustrate that different climate changes in the past had different causes. The fact that natural factors caused climate changes in the past does not mean that the current climate change is natural. By analogy, the fact that forest fires have long been caused naturally by lightning strikes does not mean that fires cannot also be caused by a careless camper.”
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-6-1.html
“Critics have argued that, if temperatures were as warm or warmer than current conditions before the onset of anthropogenic forcing, this would provide evidence that “natural” fluctuations alone could explain current conditions, since greenhouse gases were only ~280 ppmv during Medieval time (versus 400 ppmv today).
[…]
With the increase in irradiance and a decline in explosive volcanism in the early 20th century, global temperatures might then have returned to an unperturbed level similar to that of the MQP [Medieval Quiet Period], but the rapid rise in anthropogenic greenhouse gases propelled temperatures well beyond that level, as positive anthropogenic radiative forcing overwhelmed natural variability (Myhre et al., 2013).”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291523102_The_Medieval_Quiet_Period
While Koonin’s Op-ed concludes that :
“the government should convene a “Red/Blue” adversarial review to stress-test the entire report, as I urged in April. Critics argue such an exercise would be superfluous given the conventional review processes, ”
it fails to disclose that this echoes the position of those who fear the EPA’s capacity to conduct research Administrator Pruit’s network of support in the oil patch might find legally embarassing.
As far as I know, the EPA has not been authorized by congress to conduct research. Also, the notion that courts should be arbiters of science is deeply flawed.
Richard
Yes water finds it’s own level – subject to geostrophic flows. Just one example of the silliness infesting the threads.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/nile-river-flow1.jpg
Climate data never finds a level. It is a constantly moving target over millennia. Including in 20 to 30 year Pacific regimes. Of which we saw three in the 20th century – with breakpoints around 1912, 1944, 1976 and 1998. These can be easily seen in changes in the trajectory of surface temperatures. Not monotonically increasing.
Something clearly happened in the 20th century with a peak in El Nino intensity and frequency. Satellites show cloud radiative forcing as the dominant factor in late century warming.
There should be an equation linking global temperature with global thermosteric ocean level change.
What is the ocean level change for a 1 deg C change in global temperature? (or SST if you want to be more localised)?
Why is this equation almost always absent in the literature of ocean level change?
Is it because nobody has worked it out?
Geoff.
It would be more directly linked to ocean heat content.
Jim D,
OK, so what is the equation?
This is not playing around.
The lack of the equation leads to fundamental conceptual problems about this topic.
Geoff.
The first hit I got on this was this one. The amount depends on the depth over which the heat accumulates too, and OHC measurements have certain depth ranges associated with them.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012GeoRL..3910603L
Jim D,
The link leads me to nothing. But thanks.
Look, if one heats a part of a body of water then removes the heat, the water will have expanded instantly. If later the heat is redistributed, the rise of surface level remains much the same, in the first instance. In the second instance, there are some changes associated with the coefficient of thermal expansion as the water composition and initial temperature vary.
But, there is no0 lag. If you heat water, it expands (with quibbles in the range 0 to 4 deg C). It does not sit quiescent, waiting for something to happen before the injected heat, as energy, rearranges is geometric disposition.
I am interested in the first instance generalised equation. Can you quote it?
You see, the problem for thermosterics is this. If the IPCC says we can maintain a heat increase ceiling at 2 deg C above early, pre-industrial CO2 levels, then that limits the sea level rise to that caused by the additional 2 deg C. And that rise, I contend, is miniscule and easy to manage.
Of course, other factors like melt water from land sources and underground water extraction for irrigation and so on each have their sets of maths as well. But thinking only of heat-induced expansion, is it really a worry?
So how about settling the matter by producing the general equation?
Without it, one is pressed to be intelligent about the topic because it is so fundamental. Geoff.
Yes, most of the expected rise is not thermal, but the melting of Greenland and Antarctica. Even so far the warming only accounts for part of the rise rate with melting contributing the rest, and that will start to dominate more in the future. Greenland and Antarctica contain enough ice to raise sea levels by 70 meters, so even if they melt at only 5% per century, that’s over 3 meters or 10 feet per century.
On the differences between two semi-empirical sea-level models for the last two millennia
Re: “There should be an equation linking global temperature with global thermosteric ocean level change.”
No, there doesn’t. One doesn’t need a mathematical equation in order to establish a causal relationship between two phenomena. For example, Mills’ methods for causal inference don’t require a precise equation, nor do the Bradford Hill criteria. So you’re just pushing back the goal-posts and inventing some arbitrary criteria for this topic. It’s still a well-established fact that warming causes sea level rise (through land ice melt and thermal expansion), and humans caused most of the post-1950s global warming (predominately via greenhouse gas emissions).
I recommend reading papers such as:
“Global sea level linked to global temperature”
“Temperature-driven global sea-level variability in the Common Era”
“Relationship between sea level and climate forcing by CO2 on geological timescales”
“Quantifying anthropogenic and natural contributions to thermosteric sea level rise”
Re: “You see, the problem for thermosterics is this. If the IPCC says we can maintain a heat increase ceiling at 2 deg C above early, pre-industrial CO2 levels, then that limits the sea level rise to that caused by the additional 2 deg C. And that rise, I contend, is miniscule and easy to manage.”
Ah, now it makes more sense. So your goal-post move is motivated by a certain policy position you have with respect to adaptation. To be expected.
“One doesn’t need a mathematical equation in order to establish a causal relationship between two phenomena.”
An air foil of this general shape when moved through the air at 70 knots creates lift. Therefore my pickup with added wings and a 100 hp Rotax bolted to the bed is a good policy to pursue. If you disagree with me, you’re moving the goalposts expecting me to have to refine my idea so that I don’t do a quick half roll into the ground upon takeoff.
Atomsk: One doesn’t need a mathematical equation in order to establish a causal relationship between two phenomena.
The equation is necessary to express the quantitative relationship between two phenomena. It matters whether the sea level rise is closer to 100 mm or 1000 mm in the next century. The best we have now is a polynomial regression vs time, and polynomials are unreliable for extrapolating.
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“Such data misrepresentations violate basic scientific norms. In his celebrated 1974 “Cargo Cult” lecture, the late Richard Feynman admonished scientists to discuss objectively all the relevant evidence, even that which does not support the narrative. That’s the difference between science and advocacy.”
Good advice for the climate change deniers.
Harry Twinotter: Good advice for the climate change deniers.
Who denies climate change ?
“Steve Koonin as a new op-ed in the WSJ:”
Science by op-ed? Boring. I will just wait for Steve Koonin’s rebuttal study published in a credible, peer-reviewed scientific journal.
Don’t worry about that, doublefurrycritter. Here’s your headline:
Executive Orders Trump Peer-Reviewed BS
Sorry about the poor quality of the graphic.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/cheng-et-al-2017.jpg
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v7/n7/full/nclimate3325.html
Some more detail on how these measures are arrived at – https://sealevel.nasa.gov/understanding-sea-level/key-indicators/global-mean-sea-level
All of these elements are variable on decadal scales – including ocean heat. One might note the lack of ocean warming over the past 2 decades.
One might note the lack of ocean warming over the past 2 decades.
Changing the distribution of energy in the water column does what, nothing?
Or rather the lack of acceleration in steric sea level rise.
https://i.imgur.com/MdlgTEa.png
Re: “One might note the lack of ocean warming over the past 2 decades.”
Further confirmation that you’re unreliable when it comes to science.
The oceans warmed. Deal with it, and do some reading:
“Assessing recent warming using instrumentally homogeneous sea surface temperature records”
“Tracking ocean heat uptake during the surface warming hiatus”
“A review of global ocean temperature observations: Implications for ocean heat content estimates and climate change”
“Unabated planetary warming and its ocean structure since 2006”
Atomsk’s Sanakan: Re: “One might note the lack of ocean warming over the past 2 decades.”
Further confirmation that you’re unreliable when it comes to science.
The oceans warmed.
RIE already corrected that to “lack of acceleration of steric sea level rise”.
Re: “RIE already corrected that to “lack of acceleration of steric sea level rise”.”
After JCH called him on his nonsense. This isn’t the first time RIE has shown ignorance of the scientific literature, including the very literature he’s discussing.
The paper RIE mentions explicitly affirms an acceleration in sea level rise. RIE tries to dodge this point by focusing on steric sea level rise. But reading the paper debunks that evasion:
“The increasing rate of global mean sea-level rise during 1993–2014
[…]
The recovery in ocean thermal expansion following major volcanic eruption takes more than 15 years. Thus, the underlying acceleration of thermal expansion in response to the anthropogenic forcing may emerge over the next decade or so, resulting in a further acceleration in the rate from that reported here and recent estimates. In contrast to the lack of observed acceleration in the ocean thermal expansion, there has been a significant acceleration in the mass contributions, dominated by the increased GIS [Greenland ice sheet] mass loss.”
Furthermore, it’s already fairly well-established that thermosteric sea level rise since the 1970s is predominately anthropogenic, as is post-1970s sea level rise in general. For instance:
“Quantifying anthropogenic and natural contributions to thermosteric sea level rise”
“Internal variability versus anthropogenic forcing on sea level and its components”
That makes sense, since post-1970s global warming is predominately anthropogenic, and global warming causes sea level rise. Thus post-1970s sea level rise is predominately anthropogenic, and sea level rise acceleration. RIE can try to dodge these points all they want by distorting the scientific literature. But that still doesn’t change what the literature shows.
So I stand by my point: RIE is unreliable when it comes to science, so one is better off just reading what the scientific literature says, as opposed to placing much credence in RIE’s distortions of the literature.
Atomsk: So I stand by my point
Good rejoinder. Thank you.
Sea level rise attribution:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/10/sea-level-in-the-5th-ipcc-report/
Didn’t see a statement from stefan about attribution.
We also find by 2100 we will not have a meter of sea level rise as some have said. 0.55 meters under the 2 middle emissions scenarios is closer.
What natural variability?
“the IPCC’s claim that “it is likely that similarly high rates [as during the past two decades] occurred between 1920 and 1950.””
We’ve see that thermosteric SLR has not accelerated. We are warming water, where’s my slide rule?
With ice sheets, we have a more complicated situation.
“The ice sheet response remains a not yet well-understood part of the sea-level problem, and the IPCC has only “medium confidence” in the current ice sheet models.”
Medium confidence About 5 out of 10 chance
https://i.imgur.com/tG69KFC.png
His OHC two-step sidestep goes way back.
The contribution of thermal expansion shown on the graph actually reflects the redistribution of warmth to lower layers because of La Niña dominance, downtrending PDO, and the Kimikamikaze wind (M. English’s anomalous trade winds.) Once the Kimikamikaze subsided, near the end of the graph, and the PDO went solidly positive, also near the end of the graph, thermal expansion takes off as percentage source for the rate SLR.
And their point was solid acceleration of SLR during the satellite era, which is the only thing that makes a lick of sense anywhere else other than CargoCult Etc. and The Waldelusional Street Journal.
1900 to 1993 – 1.2 mm/yr
1993 – 2.3 mm/yr
August 10, 2017 – 3.29 mm/yr, AVISO; 3.4 mm/yr, NASA
I think you are winging in on thermal expansion taking off.
NOAA shows the last four months as negative PDO, more in line with the ENSO region then JISAO is.
The PDO is a product of the University of Washington. It has not had a negative number in almost four straight years:
https://i.imgur.com/vakp2qk.png
Who wins?
JISAO or NOAA’s PDO.
This I plotted in the Argo Marine Atlas. It is a very short record of more reliable ocean heat observations. I find interesting the annual and interannual variability – which has implications for ‘heat in the pipeline’.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/lin71-e1510085232454.jpg
Over long enough all climate series look like Nile River flows for immutable physical reasons. This shows baseflow – dry season flow – in the Nile River. It is a measure of moisture retained in the landscape. I’m not even positive that the units are cubits – about half a metre.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/nile-river-flow1.jpg
Joseph told Pharaoh that his dreams came from God telling him to prepare for seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. The task of Pharaoh was to find a wise and honest man to put some of the abundance of the years of plenty away to provide for the years of need and avert a terrible tragedy.
Rainfall in the Mediterranean Basin is influenced by ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific and the north Atlantic. The variability in ocean surface temperature year to year, decade to decade, century to century result in persistent regimes of droughts and floods at many scales and with irregular beats.
Because of the importance of Nile River flows to the Egyptian civilisation water levels have been measured for 5,000 years and recorded for more than 1,300. The ‘Nilometer’ – known as al-Miqyas in Arabic – in Cairo dates back to the Arab conquest of Egypt. The Cairo Nilometer has an inner stilling well connected to the river and a central stone pillar on which levels were observed.
Does Argo show ocean anthropogenic warming against internal variability? Not for many years yet.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/lin71-e1510120020868.jpg
That’s not internal variability. It is external forcing because the earth’s orbit is elliptical. News to you, right? This is why it disappears with a simple annual average.
https://itsnotnova.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/heat_content2000m.png
Re: “Does Argo show ocean anthropogenic warming against internal variability? Not for many years yet.”
Your graph is weird. You’re choosing a graph that emphasizes intra-annual variability. You could have easily does what JCH suggested and taken the annual average. Of course, that would have gotten in the way of your goal of exaggerating variability.
Fortunately, Hausfather et al. already published a relevant graph on this as supplemental figure S2 in their paper:
“Assessing recent warming using instrumentally homogeneous sea surface temperature records”
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/suppl/2016/12/30/3.1.e1601207.DC1/1601207_SM.pdf
Below is smoothed, adapted version of the figure:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/old-and-new-noaa-ssts-v3-1024×1024.png
The aforementioned paper also has the added bonus of validating the Karl et al. ERSSTv4 corrections (corrections that so many denialists unjustifiably whined about).
Darn, I showed the wrong image above. That’s for comparison to buoys and satellite data, not the ARGO from the supplemental figure S2. This is the image I meant:
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OFj3vmmoT1E/WT6QYEybS3I/AAAAAAAAAUg/f-3UdlJnSegyrCef3Uaw4koTDOrRJUdSACKgB/s1600/ARGO%252C%2BKarl.PNG
Who wins?
Negative phase of the PDO:
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2011/anomnight.3.31.2011.gif
Not a negative phase of the PDO:
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2017/anomnight.9.28.2017.gif
It is the raw Argo data – gridded and volumetrically weighted – with implications as I said for radiative imbalances at toa. And with far too much internal variability to say much with such a short record.
Technically – glacials not externally forced by orbits. They are triggered by AMOC changes due to freshwater inflows to the Arctic. This leads to ice sheet feedbacks that become runaway ice sheet feedbacks in certain orbital configurations – apparently.
With the 2 SST maps you linked to. What is each one’s baseline?
I think it’s 1985-1993 for both.
JCH:
Thank you. So it’s getting less blue over time.
The upwelling that comes with a negative PDO will turn the PDO region just blue as the upwelling that is present along the eastern Pacific equator.
“Changing the distribution of energy in the water column does what, nothing?”
“Re: “RIE already corrected that to “lack of acceleration of steric sea level rise”.”
After JCH called him on his nonsense. This isn’t the first time RIE has shown ignorance of the scientific literature, including the very literature he’s discussing.”
At top is the nonsense immediately above my ‘correction’ – which I ignored. If you like to check the time stamps – go right ahead. Their comments are all tired old excuses and calumny. I have just written a little more on sea levels here.
As for late 20th century warming – I nearly always believe data. Most warming then was quite natural as a response to the 20 to 30 year Pacific Ocean regimes. The difference between the warm regime peak in 1944 and the warm regime peak in 1999 – it is 0.4 degrees K. That may be due to greenhouse gas warming. We may enter a new warming regime as this one finishes almost certainly within the decade – or we may not.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/wong2006figure7-e1510085675603.gif
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/wong-et-al-2006.png
I came across this – that I am reviewing. There is substantial agreement of ISCCP and ERBE radiative data.
https://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/climanal.html
What’s the economic impact of a 0.5 m sea level rise by 2100?
According to Anthoff, Nichols and Tol (2010), the economic cost to the global economy is a mere US$200 billion in 2100 (Figure 11 here https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11027-010-9220-7 .
I.e. SFA! There are much more important things for societies to focus on than human caused GHG emissions and sea level rise.
This is not the optimum place to study the relation between sea level change and temperature change or governing equations. In passing, today I read again the 2008 paper by Nir Shaviv, in which he studies some of the concepts that seem fundamental to me and uninteresting to many others.
Please read this Shaviv paper, not from its main angle of proposed amplification of small changes in TSI, but for the data relating to sea level change, SST and OHC.
DOI: 10.1029/2007JA012989 title “Using the oceans as a calorimeter to quantify the solar radiative forcing”.
There is relevant data here-
http://www.geoffstuff.com/shaviv_graph.jpg
Geoff.
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Sorry this is off thread/topic but can someone explain to me or respond to a bloke who is telling me that satellite evidence of mid troposphere cooling is definitive proof of AGW. Too techy for me I’m a political civilian denier
Kevin.
Assume CO2 insulates the atmosphere. Add better insulation in the same volume. The temperature profile changes. It becomes warmer near the source of the warmth, the surface. And cooler further away from it.
“Proofs exist only in mathematics and logic, not in science. Mathematics and logic are both closed, self-contained systems of propositions, whereas science is empirical and deals with nature as it exists. The primary criterion and standard of evaluation of scientific theory is evidence, not proof.”
– Psychology Today
Here is a very interesting post on CA from 2011 on the question of climate modeled ratio of lower troposphere to surface trend. Apparently 6 years ago the best science modeled the ratio of surface to TLT as 1:1.4 but the observed ratio for the satellite record was stubbornly tracking almost the inverse of that ratio. In his post Steve McIntyre pointed out that both Gavin Schmidt and Richard Lindzen agreed on the 1:1.4.
But this rare agreement among rivals did not last long. Further down the string climate scientist Robert Way (from Cowtan and Way 2014) and Steven Mosher were about to parse this conflict when Gavin Schmidt made a surprise appearance into the string to state that the now modeled TLT to surface is now thought to be ~ 1:1 here.
Perhaps now the best science has the ratio matching the observation 1.4:1 (“just as predicted”). But I don’t know what would create a cooling of the mid-troposphere in conformity with the modeled enhanced greenhouse theory.
Re: “but can someone explain to me or respond to a bloke who is telling me that satellite evidence of mid troposphere cooling is definitive proof of AGW.”
I doubt anyone told you that. Science doesn’t deal in “definitive proof”, since it isn’t math or formal logic. It deals in evidence. Contrarians start demanding “definitive proof” when they’re moving the goal-posts in order to avoid accepting evidence-based conclusions that are inconvenient for their position.
What the person probably told you was that stratospheric cooling is evidence that CO2 caused global warming. And that’s true:
– CO2-induced global warming comes with warming of the troposphere and surface, but cooling of the stratosphere.
– Solar-induced global warming comes warming of the troposphere and surface, with warming of the stratosphere.
NASA acknowledges this point:
“A second smoking gun is that if the sun were responsible for global warming, we would expect to see warming throughout all layers of the atmosphere, from the surface all the way up to the upper atmosphere (stratosphere). But what we actually see is warming at the surface and cooling in the stratosphere. This is consistent with the warming being caused by a build-up of heat-trapping gases near the surface of the Earth, and not by the sun getting “hotter.””
https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/?
Same point for a document co-authored by contrarian John Christy
(“Executive Summary: Temperature trends in the lower atmosphere – Understanding and reconciling differences”, table 1 on page 5):
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bxb71ngX2tc/WVDtU6PLHgI/AAAAAAAAAbs/0N2yJUJPwy0HvFyzaDEbUAs6giqcytdiQCKgBGAs/s1600/expected%2Btemp%2Bchanges.PNG
Ozone depletion contributes a lot to cooling in the lower stratosphere, with increased CO2 contributing some cooling. But increased CO2 contributes more cooling as you get higher in the stratosphere. And increased CO2 contributes a lot of cooling to the mesosphere and thermosphere.
So cooling of the stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere is evidence that post-1970s global warming was predominately caused by CO2, instead of factors such as the Sun.
Other scientists have repeatedly pointed this out to Curry, so she should be well aware of this. For example:
“The solar fingerprint shows a vertical pattern of free atmosphere temperature changes that has warming throughout the atmosphere unlike the observed pattern of warming in the troposphere and cooling in the stratosphere […]”
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00191.1
We can find proof enough that there is a radiative effect from CO2.
e.g. https://www.atmos.washington.edu/~dennis/321/Harries_Spectrum_2001.pdf
The warming attribution problem remains and the point is that the assumption that recent decadal variability is all anthropogenic is wrong.
Re: “We can find proof enough that there is a radiative effect from CO2.”
Again, science doesn’t deal in in proof. And this is a more recent paper providing evidence on this subject:
“Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010”
Re: “The warming attribution problem remains”
No, it isn’t, anymore than the attribution of AIDS to HIV remains a problem. Once again, there are multiples lines of evidence supporting attribution of most of the post-1950s warming to CO2, including:
– Post-1950s stratospheric cooling
– Post-1950s mesospheric cooling
– Post-1950s thermospheric cooling
– Horizontal/regional distribution of warming and the temporal pattern of warming [DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00191.1, pages 1683 and 1684]
– Climate sensitivity estimates, where even the low range estimates would end up with CO2 causing most of the post-1950s warming
– Exclusion of other likely causal factors, such as the Sun [ex: solar-induced warming causes warming of the stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere, yet scientists observed cooling in these layers].
And as I’ve explained before, one can apply many of the same conceptual tools for inferring causation in the climate change case, as in the AIDS case. These tools include Mills’ methods for causal inference, and some of the Bradford Hill criteria. For example, here’s how you could use some of the Bradford Hill criteria or climate change:
The causal case is a cumulative case of:
1) correlation +
2) well-evidenced mechanism (i.e. plausibility) +
3) primacy, where the proposed cause occurs before the effect +
4) robustness of the correlation under multiple tests/conditions +
5) experimental evidence that adding the cause subsequently results in the effect +
6) exclusion of other likely causes (see point 7 as well) +
7) specificity, where the effect having hallmarks of the cause (ex: the observed tropospheric warming and stratopsheric cooling, is a hallmark of greenhouse-gas-induced warming, not warming from solar forcing)
8) a physical gradient (or a dose-response), where more of the cause produces a larger effect, or more of the cause is more likely to produce the effect
+ ….
= causation.
Re: “the assumption that recent decadal variability is all anthropogenic is wrong”
Please stop attacking a straw man you erected.
I know of no one who claims that “recent decadal variability is all anthropogenic is wrong”. For example, there is decadal variability from the solar cycle, many posit large non-anthropogenic variability due to AMO, etc. All of that is compatible with increased CO2 causing most of the post-1950s global warming. For instance, in the case of AMO:
“Atlantic and Pacific multidecadal oscillations and Northern Hemisphere temperatures”
“On forced temperature changes, internal variability, and the AMO”
“Tracking the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation through the last 8,000 years”
But feel free to let me know when that non-anthropogenic variability can account for most the cooling of the stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere.
However, AS, your multiple lines range from weak to nonexistent as evidence. Moreover, they must be balanced against the multiple lines of evidence that human activity had nothing to do with whatever warming may have occurred (which itself is controversial and hence also uncertain). In short your proposed epistemic simplicity does not exist.
Re: “However, AS, your multiple lines range from weak to nonexistent as evidence. Moreover, they must be balanced against the multiple lines of evidence that human activity had nothing to do with whatever warming may have occurred (which itself is controversial and hence also uncertain). In short your proposed epistemic simplicity does not exist.”
You’re right. For instance, there’s this list of 400 scientific papers debunking anthropogenic global warming. A lot of the “skeptic” websites seem to be talking about this list. For example:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/10/24/delingpole-now-400-scientific-papers-in-2017-say-global-warming-is-a-myth/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/10/25/so-far-this-year-400-scientific-papers-debunk-climate-change-alarm/
http://notrickszone.com/2017/10/23/400-scientific-papers-published-in-2017-support-a-skeptical-position-on-climate-alarm/#sthash.ng4wjeis.aRZir9KW.dpbs
But here’s the weird thing, David: a lot of these “400 papers” endorse my position, and debunk your’s. So maybe I shouldn’t trust you “skeptics” [*cough* denialists *cough*] when you tell me this whole thing is controversial, and there’s strong evidence against what I say? Because it looks like you “skeptics” can’t reliably represent reality, especially when a lot of your pretend sources support your position, when they actually debunk your position.
Anyway, here are quotes from some of the 400 papers that supposedly say that “global warming is a myth” (in James Delingpole’s words):
Deng et al., 2017 [DOI: 10.1002/2016JC012458]
“The [Medieval Climate Anomaly] and [Little Ice Age] are climate anomalies that were caused by natural forcing (e.g., solar variability and volcanic emissions), but the [Current Warm Period] is linked to anthropogenic factors (e.g., industrialization and land-use changes)”
Abrantes et al., 2017 (DOI: 10.5194/cp-2017-39, 2017):
“Today’s climate goes through a warming shift caused by the increased release of human-generated greenhouse gases, such as CO2, and poses a pressing problem on societies’ sustainability”
Williams et al., 2017 (DOI: 10.1002/2017GL073138)
“The warming trend post-1850s in the SST reconstruction (0.8 ± 0.16°C, 1s) is consistent with global mean warming of 0.85 ± 0.21°C (1s) from 1880 to 2012 (Figure 4b,c), attributed largely to anthropogenic causes […].
[…]
Finally, the warming trend post-1850s in the SST reconstruction is consistent with an anthropogenic forcing of the larger northern hemisphere temperatures.”
Gray et al., 2017 (DOI: 10.1063/1.4975498)
“Clearly, the global mean surface warming in response to the [solar cycle] is modest compared to effects of other external forcings. It is certainly much smaller than the radiative forcing associated with anthropogenic increases in GHG concentration.”
Zawiska et al., 2017 (DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2016.11.034):
“The warming at the beginning of 19th century in the region of Lake Atnsjøen coincides with a reconstruction from Southern Finland […], and a record from Northern Sweden […]. Its onset correlates with the positive NAO index and increased solar activity (Fig. 7). Some authors found that solar change contributed ~60% of the temperature rise since pre-industrial times […]. However the anthropogenic impact on the climate is regarded as most important driver of the climate warming in 20th century […]. It is caused the increased emission of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Since 18th century the carbon dioxide concentration increased 31% […]. This is mainly due to industrial activity and the burning of fossil fuels […].”
Luoto and Nevalainen, 2017 [DOI: 10.1007/s00704-017-2139-0]
“Recently, the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases has raised air temperatures […], but at the same time, there appears to be divergent trends in the precipitation dynamics between southern and eastern Finland (Fig. 2). Therefore, it is likely that the forcing factors that have dictated the T/P [air temperature versus precipitation] ratio in the past do not operate in a similar way today, or in the future, due to the persistent anthropogenic influence of increased greenhouse gases on surface air temperatures […]. In fact, using climate model simulations, it has been demonstrated that the recent shift of the NAO [North Atlantic Osccillation] over Europe is a result of anthropogenic greenhouse forcing […].”
Wang et al., 2017 (DOI: 10.1038/srep46091):
“As for the most important long periodic signals of 1000 years, a reasonable speculation is that they represent the impacts of greenhouse gases (GHGs) on the climate system. This long period signal is topmost modulated which controls all scale-components, while GHGs is almost the unique factor to directly heat the air by absorbing the longwave radiation from the Earth surface. Thus, it should be considered that this millennial signal may be an impact of GHGs.
This result differs from the conclusions in Scafetta’s papers [e.g. refs 17, 18, 19], where this millennial period scale (983 years in his papers) is regarded as a harmonic of the solar cycle, but here we prefer to regard it as the GHG signal for the physical energy of the climate system.”
Li et al., 2017 (DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2017.01.009):
“Additionally, increased El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) strength (possibly El Ni ~ no-like phases) during drying periods, increased volcanic eruptions and the resulting aerosol load during cooling periods, as well as high volumes of greenhouse gases such as CO2 and CH4 during the recent warming periods, may also play a role in partly affecting the climatic variability in NC, superimposing on the overall solar dominated long-term control.”
Speaking of deception:
https://twitter.com/planktoncounter/status/928149985887244288
The central purpose of government climate scientists is deception; they are untrustworthy. That is is the meta-point of the whole issue.
Re: “The central purpose of government climate scientists is deception; they are untrustworthy. That is is the meta-point of the whole issue.”
I disagree with a lot of claims Judith Curry makes, especially her baseless, derogatory claims about the IPCC. But I don’t think she’s deceptive. John Christy is another matter.
It’s interesting to me, though, that you’re committed to Curry and Christy being “deceptive” and “untrustworthy.” After all, both Judith Curry (DOI: 10.1007/s00382-013-1950-2; https://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/1182264) and John Christy (DOI: 10.1175/JAMC-D-15-0287.1) performed government-funded climate science research, as have:
– Roy Spencer (DOI: 10.1007/s13143-017-0010-y)
– Richard Lindzen (DOI: 10.1007/s13143-011-0023-x)
– Willie Soon (DOI: 10.3354/cr023089)
– Roger Pielke, Sr. (DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00221.1)
– David Legates (DOI: 10.1175/2009JHM1086.1)
– Craig Idso (DOI: 10.1260/095830503765184619)
– Anthony Watts (DOI: 10.1175/2009BAMS2769.1)
Looks like you’re committed to a lot of people being “deceptive” and “untrustworthy”.
Thank you for your reply that is very helpful.
I will ignore future demands and protestations for “proof”
If I as a humble non scientist (I did social policy in higher ed) have the audacity to reply on behalf of Dr Curry.
I have understood that yes it is accepted that GW is caused by increased human co2 as you explained to me, the point in some dispute is the rate at which it causes it and the alarming projections that have been made by climate scientists for quite a few years now. I watched Al Gores first film and listened carefully.
Here in England our leading climate scientists Proff Grubb at University College London and Prof Myers at Oxford have published that they now accept as Dr Curry has been saying for a long time that the ipcc and other mainstream academic climate models were not actually very good and were definitely projecting too hot predictions for global temperature increases. They have said “when the evidence changes I change my mind ……. the recorded actual real data simply does not align with the projections. Apparently we can now globally belch out another 240 billion tonnes of co2 before getting to where we thought we were.
Now I’m sure this good news for us all but again as a non scientist and a non right wing Trump type supporting conspiracy theorist I can’t but wonder what’s happened to all the 97% settled science business we’ve been told.
A lot of people in my position straightforward basically educated quite rightly hold scientists in high regard and with respect.
It just seems that the Paris Agreement effectively deindustrialising western economies by mid century to save 1degree end of century of projected warming based entirely on now agreed decidedly dodgy computer models is somewhat difficult to understand in social policy terms.
Both my expensively educated post graduate daughters treat me with disdain for daring to broach the subject. Terms such a denier and heretic surely have no place in a reasoned science based debate or have I misunderstood everything?
Kevin.
The Paris agreement is still going strong with the Berlin meeting this week, so I am not sure what world you are living in. Possibly the same one as Trump who makes the US the only nation not signed up. Emission reduction remains a priority despite what you may think.
Oh, they are having another meeting. That should save our planet. The non-binding agreement they come up will be the strongest non-binding agreement evah.
There are two Paris agreements. The 2 degree hoax and emissions anarchy. Jimmy better hope that technology and development provide better pathways for emission reductions.
There are so many deep decarbonization methods that the authors of those are arguing which one is better. The “skeptics” even seem to support some of these plans over others. Interesting change of tack. Hard to keep up.
Re: “GW is caused by increased human co2 as you explained to me, the point in some dispute is the rate at which it causes it”
That’s not under too much dispute either. Anthropogenic CO2 caused most of the post-1950s global warming. Equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely between 1.5K to 4.5K, with that range to likely increase to 2K to 4.5K now that the errors in the energy-budget-model-based approaches (used by Lewis, Curry, and others) have been identified.
Re: “I watched Al Gores first film and listened carefully.”
Politicians like Al Gore are not reputable sources on scientific information.
Re: “and the alarming projections that have been made by climate scientists for quite a few years now”
You’ve bought into a myth common in denialist circles. For example, IPCC scientists tend to under-estimate the impacts of climate change, which runs contrary to the charge of alarmism:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-ipcc-underestimated-climate-change/
“Climate Change Skepticism and Denial: An Introduction
[…]
A constant refrain coming from the denial campaign is that climate scientists are “alarmists” who exaggerate the degree and threat of global warming to enhance their status, funding, and influence with policy makers. The contribution by William Freudenburg and Violetta Muselli provides an insightful empirical test of this charge and finds it to lack support.”
And this is some of the relevant supporting research on this point:
“Reexamining Climate Change Debates: Scientific Disagreement or Scientific Certainty Argumentation Methods (SCAMs)?”
“Climate change prediction: Erring on the side of least drama?”
“Global warming estimates, media expectations, and the asymmetry of scientific challenge”
Furthermore, the IPCC’s tone tends to be more tentative and less “alarmist”, with sufficient attention paid to uncertainty:
“The language of denial: Text analysis reveals differences in language use between climate change proponents and skeptics”
“Comment on “Climate Science and the Uncertainty Monster” by J. A. Curry and P. J. Webster”
“Guidance note for lead authors of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report on consistent treatment of uncertainties”
Re: “I can’t but wonder what’s happened to all the 97% settled science business we’ve been told.”
The consensus is still there. There’s still an evidence-based scientific consensus that:
A1) There has been global warming since the mid-20th century.
A2) Humans (largely via anthropogenic greenhouse gases) caused most of this recent warming.
A3) Most of the recent (or near future) climate change is (or will be) caused by humans.
A4) Climate change is a serious problem and/or a danger to humanity.
The consensus on A1 and A2 is covered here:
Table 1: “Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming”
“Does it matter if the consensus on anthropogenic global warming is 97% or 99.99%?”
The consensus on A3 and A4 is covered at:
http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/07/23/elaborating-on-the-views-of-aaas-scientists-issue-by-issue/
Figures 88 (v043) and 2 (v007) of: “The Bray and von Storch 5th International Survey of Climate Scientists 2015/2016”: https://www.hzg.de/imperia/md/content/hzg/zentrale_einrichtungen/bibliothek/berichte/hzg_reports_2016/hzg_report_2016_2.pdf
Of course, just because there’s a consensus on these issues, doesn’t mean there’s a consensus on everything in this topic. That’s analogous to how there’s an evidence-based scientific consensus that HIV causes AIDS and AIDS is a serious problem, even though there’s no consensus on a permanent cure for AIDS. Only denialists and contrarians act as if that lack of consensus on one issue, means that strong scientific evidence has not settled a different issue:
“Manufacture of doubt: Denialists highlight any scientific disagreement (whether real or imagined) as evidence that the entire topic is contested, and argue that it is thus premature to take action.”
http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6950.full
Re: “projected warming based entirely on now agreed decidedly dodgy computer models”
Who agreed to that? The computer models aren’t perfect; no model in science is. But the computer models have made accurate predictions; heck, even very basic climate models from the 1890s made accurate predictions about radiative forcing from atmospheric CO2. So climate models have an over 100 year-long history in make accurate predictions; that’s a longer history than HIV models have had in making accurate predictions. I can’t even list all the accurate climate model predictions, because there are so many.
Re: “Terms such a denier and heretic surely have no place in a reasoned science based debate or have I misunderstood everything?”
Terms like “denier” and “denialist” do have a place; denialism needs to be pointed and distinguished from skepticism. That’s why, for example, the medical community, immunologists, virologists, etc. have no problem calling people “AIDS denialists”. Terms like “denier” and “denialist” describe folks engaged in a specific behavior, which usually comes with certain characteristics:
“It is, however, important not to confuse denialism with genuine scepticism, which is essential for scientific progress. Sceptics are willing to change their minds when confronted with new evidence; deniers are not.
[…]
Characteristics of denialism”
http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6950.full
Denialists need to be called out, lest one end up with a South Africa situation, where 300,000+ people died because the South African government acted as if AIDS denialism was based on evidence:
“[…] it is important to recognize denialism when confronted with it. […] Yet it would be wrong to prevent the denialists having a voice. Instead, we argue, it is necessary to shift the debate from the subject under consideration, instead exposing to public scrutiny the tactics they employ and identifying them publicly for what they are. An understanding of the five tactics listed above provides a useful framework for doing so.”
https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/19/1/2/463780/Denialism-what-is-it-and-how-should-scientists
Does anyone read Atomski’s apocalyptic rants? Not while I am sitting on my balcony in a pale sun shining through thinning cloud. Coming from the south east – remnants of storms roiling from the Antarctic as far north as the Tropic of Capricorn.
Check out the near real time supercomputer simulation of total precipitable water in the atmosphere.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=total_precipitable_water/orthographic=-221.16,-29.75,226
Clouds change as a result of changing sea surface temperatures. Sea surface temperatures change at many scales for many reasons. Clouds modulate Earth’s energy budget over millennia and more – second only to runaway ice sheet feedbacks leading to glacials every 100,000 odd years.
The idea is that warming induces strong spring freshwater inflows that inhibits Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). Changes in northern hemisphere insolation changes the extent of summer ice survival. At low points – ice sheet growth become a runaway feedback leading to glacials.
Ice, cloud and terrestrial water storage are variable on decadal to millennial scales at least. So the same goes for sea level rise.
e.g https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-00875-5
The richness of climate data behaviour, ‘decade by decade and century by century, testifies to the fundamentally chaotic nature of the system that we are attempting to predict. It challenges the way in which we evaluate models and emphasizes the importance of continuing to focus on observing and understanding processes and phenomena in the climate system. It is also a classic demonstration of the need for ensemble prediction systems on all time scales in order to sample the range of possible outcomes that even the real world could produce. Nothing is certain.” Slingo and Palmer 2011 Here they refer to perturbed physics ensembles with a focus on seasonal to decadal simulation.
https://www.facebook.com/Australian.Iriai/posts/1470432873072970 i
There is a view btw that science – if done right – is fun.
e.g. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016WR020078/full
Re: “Does anyone read Atomski’s apocalyptic rants?”
I’d point out that co2warmingbollocks, Ragnaar, and others respond to my comments… but I already know you don’t operate in good faith. The best you can do is whine about the length of posts, in order to dodge evidence that debunks you. Akin to Don. I guess that explains why you seem so uninformed on the science: reading anything long strains your attention-span. Old age can be hard for some folks, I guess.
Robert I Ellison: Does anyone read Atomski’s apocalyptic rants?
I read most of Atomsk’s Sanakan’s posts.
I don’t of course. There is inevitably nothing but talking points and whines about skeptics.
This started with some observation of cloud – and some near real time supercomputer moisture data visualization – segue into clouds and glacial ice sheet feedbacks from a warming Arctic. All utterly on sea level rise.
Ice, cloud and terrestrial water storage are variable on decadal to millennial scales at least. So the same goes for sea level rise. Nile River flows famously show temporal chaos in the data series – so we know a little about paleo variability in climate. As for chaos – I could give you 1000’s of references in a list but – if you are interested – Google spatio-temporal climate.
I am never quite sure what it is that I deny. I on occasion identify myself as a climate catastrophist – in the sense of Rene Thom – https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/bifurcations1.png
and advocate practical and pragmatic policies for carbon mitigation – necessary for other reasons – and that are gaining momentum in the real world.
https://watertechbyrie.com/
“On climate I am inclined to think that most 20th century warming was quite natural. Anthropogenic warming in the post – war period was some 0.4 degrees K. 1944 and 1998 being the peaks of 2 successive 20 to 30 year Pacific Ocean regimes – as seen in surface temperature records. With a dimming sun and associated resurgent upwelling in the eastern Pacific suggesting a cooling influence this century. Starting perhaps with the next Pacific climate shift due in a 2018 to 2028 window. If you have not heard of this – I guess it will come as a surprise.”
They seriously have not heard of this? Here’s a review from my site with references.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2014/06/23/the-unstable-math-of-michael-ghils-climate-sensitivity/
I am not the climate science denier here.
AS thank you for taking the triouble to reply to me I have read it and ? Most of the links you supplied I will study them in more detail shortly.
By way of a brief response. Just some evidence or information I’ve picked up as a civilian along the way trying to understand this incredibly complex chaotic topic.
1. Didn’t global temps drop post war as human co2 boomed. How was that ?
2. Yes I agree Al Gore is a bit of a plonker. ( uk vernacular for silly person)
3. I really can’t see how you feel the ipcc has under estimated the threats in any way. We’ve been told the ice caps will be gone in a year or two 2013 (Gore)sea levels will drown most of us .. the Maldives will be gone funny that I’m here on holiday now they are fine it’s great here ….. and it’s probably too late anyway we are all totally doomed to destruction since at least the 1990’s. I’ve never seen any evidence of ipcc under estimation.
4. The ipcc gave us the hockey stick graph, that wasn’t under estimation. Hasn’t the Macintyre ?work discounted it. Are we not supposed to be halfway up it by now?
5. I never learnt at age 15 in my science classes (last time I studied science many years ago) that consensus was not any form of evidence. Why do you repeat this so much. Me thinks dust thou protesteth too much? ( see I read eng lit) is there not any natural form of variance in climate and temperatures?
6. Mr AS. To quote the abominable ignorance and tradegy involved in Aids/HIV issues in Africa as related to this discussion is really beneath you and quite rude. Tut
7. In the totality of your welcomed and considered helpful response to my post you have I fear quite blatantly failed to respond to what I felt was my strongest point and firmest ground. Grupp et al’s paper published in GeoScience Oct 17 did not admit that the climate models were as you assert “ not perfect “. They were bloody wrong by a wide margin. (Sorry for swearing). Using them to predict real data retrospectively is hopeless and World leading climate scientists as they are admit they are way too hot but it’s ok we are still doomed but we have a few more years to spend time deindustrialising the West Building more windmills and solar panels and buying stupid electric cars before we all die.
8. Sorry I lapsed then into hyperbole
Yes I’m a skeptic
Kevin
Re: “1. Didn’t global temps drop post war as human co2 boomed. How was that ?”
Due to aerosols and the negative phase of a cycle knows as the AMO (Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation), with the former playing a larger role than the latter. Sulfate aerosols reflect solar radiation, causing cooling. The negative phase on the AMO also causes cooling, though I have some doubts about whether is a very significant factor here. Add those factors (along with smaller effects from non-anthropogenic factors) to the near-linear rate of CO2-induced warming since the later 19th century, and you end up with the observed pattern of warming.
The following sources providing more context:
Figure 1: “Deducing multidecadal anthropogenic global warming trends using multiple regression analysis”
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JAS-D-12-0208.1
Ray Pierrehumbert’s 2012 video, from 40:35 to 45:59: “Tyndall Lecture: GC43I. Successful Predictions – 2012 AGU Fall Meeting”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RICBu_P8JWI&t=578s
Re: “3. I really can’t see how you feel the ipcc has under estimated the threats in any way.”
Because I read scientific sources comparing the IPCC projections to what was subsequently observed; I cited some of those sources for you. It turned out the IPCC repeatedly under-estimated the observed effects, as shown by those sources.
Re: “We’ve been told the ice caps will be gone in a year or two 2013 (Gore)sea levels will drown most of us .. the Maldives will be gone funny that I’m here on holiday now they are fine it’s great here ….. and it’s probably too late anyway we are all totally doomed to destruction since at least the 1990’s. I’ve never seen any evidence of ipcc under estimation.”
Feel free to cite where the IPCC made any of those claims. Not Al Gore or the media or some random person, but the IPCC.
Re: “4. The ipcc gave us the hockey stick graph, that wasn’t under estimation. Hasn’t the Macintyre ?work discounted it. Are we not supposed to be halfway up it by now?”
Not so much the IPCC, but Michael Mann and his co-authors; Mann is the first one I know of to produce the hockey stick pattern. There are multiple lines of research supporting the hockey stick pattern, including research that was not done by Mann.
Figure 4 of the following paper confirms the hockey stick pattern by comparing different temperature constructions:
“Continental-scale temperature variability during the last two millennia”
The hockey stick shows up in a number of different proxy records, as shown in:
“A global multiproxy database for temperature reconstructions of the Common Era”
The hockey stick pattern also shows up in the following papers:
“Pacific Ocean Heat Content During the Past 10,000 Years”
“Inter-hemispheric temperature variability over the past millennium”
The following paper addresses, and rebuts, criticism of the hockey stick pattern:
“Robustness of the Mann, Bradley, Hughes reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere surface temperatures: Examination of criticisms based on the nature and processing of proxy climate evidence”
Mann even showed the same hockey stick pattern *without* the tree ring proxies that some people had objected to:
“Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia”
Also, the following paper compares recent warming to Northern Hemisphere temperatures back to 1000AD. This data seems to suggest modern warming stronger than that seen in the medieval periods displayed (see figure 2):
“Ensemble reconstruction constraints on the global carbon cycle sensitivity to climate”
Furthermore, see the following for an alternative account, where recent modern temperatures were warmer than the vast majority of the Holocene, reversing a long-term cooling trend:
“A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years”
Re: “5. I never learnt at age 15 in my science classes (last time I studied science many years ago) that consensus was not any form of evidence. Why do you repeat this so much. Me thinks dust thou protesteth too much?”
Scientific consensus forms in response to scientific evidence. Here’s an example of this:
“European evidence based consensus on the diagnosis and management of Crohn’s disease: definitions and diagnosis”
Scientific consensus is useful to non-experts. Most non-experts don’t have the time/expertise to read peer-reviewed scientific evidence. So they have to rely on the expert consensus on those topics. That’s why, for example, expert testimony is allowed in court, but only if the expert is actually competent in the field in question and sticks to making testimony in the field in which they are competent. The non-expert judge and jury ends up relying on the expert’s testimony. It’s also why people rely on doctors, and expert specialists like oncologists, to give them medical advice. Similarly so for relying on the consensus of astronomers when it comes to astronomical topics. So evidence-based scientific consensus helps inform non-experts.
So no, you do know the value of evidence-based scientific consensus; otherwise, you wouldn’t rely on experts like doctors, dentists, and so on. I referenced consensus to you since you are a non-expert, as you yourself admit. I also referenced the consensus since you brought the issue up when you wrote:
“I can’t but wonder what’s happened to all the 97% settled science business we’ve been told.”
My referencing the consensus is not suspicious, anymore it would be suspicious for me to reference the evidence-based scientific consensus that smoking causes cancer.
Re: “6. Mr AS. To quote the abominable ignorance and tradegy involved in Aids/HIV issues in Africa as related to this discussion is really beneath you and quite rude.”
Nope. It’s related, since the non-sensical/fallacious tactics used by AIDS denialists are the same tactics used by AGW (anthropogenic global warming) denialists. I can almost always predict what silly reasoning AGW denialists will use, because I’m already familiar with the reasoning used by AIDS denialists and other science denialists (such as young Earth creationists); Denialists tend draw on the same pool of tactics.
You can call that “rude” all you want; it doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. If you think otherwise, then I suggest you read:
“Manufactured scientific controversy: Science, rhetoric, and public debate”
“How the growth of denialism undermines public health”
“Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond?”
“Science denial: a guide for scientists”
“Science denialism: Evolution and climate change”
Re: “7. In the totality of your welcomed and considered helpful response to my post you have I fear quite blatantly failed to respond to what I felt was my strongest point and firmest ground. Grupp et al’s paper published in GeoScience Oct 17 did not admit that the climate models were as you assert “ not perfect “. They were bloody wrong by a wide margin. (Sorry for swearing).”
You didn’t cite any paper in response to me. Is this the paper you’re referring to?:
“Emission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C
[…]
Human-induced warming reached an estimated 0.93°C (±0.13°C; 5–95 percentile range) above mid-nineteenth-century conditions in 2015 and is currently increasing at almost 0.2°C per decade.”
Or did the people who lied to you about that paper not tell you the paper said that?
Anyway, that paper didn’t claim that models were “wrong by a wide margin”, at least when it came to longer-term projections. In fact, the paper acknowledges that the IPCC’s model-based projections are in line with the paper’s results, as shown in figure 3a of the paper.
Here’s my suggestion: stop trusting whatever crackpot sources have been lying to you about what the paper said. Read the paper. Read what the scientists who authored the paper said about the paper, and shift to credible sources on this paper. I recommend the following sources, if you don’t want to read the paper:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-climate-models-have-not-exaggerated-global-warming
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-the-one-point-five-warming-limit-is-not-yet-a-geophysical-impossibility
Youtube, potholer54’s video “Did scientists REALLY just admit to exaggerating global warming?”
Atomsk,
Which is the most credible paper you can evidence to a scientist qualified to give expert evidence in a Court, for the way in which natural climate change is currently separated from man-made climate change?
Geoff
Re: “Which is the most credible paper you can evidence to a scientist qualified to give expert evidence in a Court, for the way in which natural climate change is currently separated from man-made climate change?”
I don’t think there’s one “most credible paper”. As in most branches of science, it’s a cumulative effort of multiple researcher teams gatherings evidence for years in numerous papers. But I’ve found the following papers to be helpful in discussing how to attribute climate change to anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic factors:
“A multi-approach strategy in climate attribution studies: Is it possible to apply a robustness framework?”
“Attribution: Robustness of warming attribution”
“Patterns of change: whose fingerprint is seen in global warming?”
“Comment on “Climate Science and the Uncertainty Monster” by J. A. Curry and P. J. Webster”
“Model robustness as a confirmatory virtue: The case of climate science”
The first paper is a fairly solid overview.
Concerning this 97% consensus : could you remind what was the question asked to those scientists ?
If the question was : “has it been warming during the past 50 years ?” : everybody will answer YES (100% consensus)
If the question was : does mankind has an incidence on warming the planet ?” : the answer can also be YES (probably)
But now, ask an other question such as :
Is climate submitted to natural cycles ? : you will also get a YES
or “Do we have a good knowledge of those cycles and can we deduce those from the current evolution ?” : nobody will answer YES.
Atmosk,
A search of your suggested key words “A multi-approach strategy in climate attribution studies: Is it possible to apply a robustness framework?” gave this as the first hit.
“A multi-approach strategy in climate attribution studies: Is it possible to apply a robustness framework?” AntonelloPasini FulvioMazzocchi https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2015.02.018
A sentence in the abstracts was similar to others I have read or searched, namely “These models show the essential role of anthropogenic forcings in driving the temperature behaviour of the last half century.”
You can find many references like this, papers that assert that the ability to attribute change to man-made or natural is taken as a given. See Stott et al “Attribution of Weather and Climate-Related Extreme
Events”, noting the sentence “There is clear evidence that climate has changed as a result of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, and that across the globe some aspects of extremes have changed as a result.”
My question to you was far more fundamental: which papers allow the assertion that one can distinguish between the 2 cases?
It seems from a lot of reading over the last 30 years that there is no first principles paper of any merit that shows how to attribute, as opposed to many assuming that attribution is possible. Please be assured I have studied Arrhenius, Tyndall, J Fourier, Revelle and others to whom recourse is often made. Heck, I used to be able to derive the main Schrodinger equation almost in my sleep and appreciate its importance in broader science.
Would you care to try for a serious, mature, scientific answer this time? Geoff.
Ok thank you. I can as you know only reply in general terms.
As Geoffrey says in the papers you quote there are endless simple assertions but little evidence.
If you can try to understand how it appears to the “man / woman in the street”.
Eg. One of the UK’s best exports is TV nature documentaries with our national treasure David Attenborough last week on his new show The Blue Planet II we watched a poor sad Walrus hanging on to a melting iceberg. These creatures supposedly seriously affected by record co2 spike in 2016 highest since the Pliocene when the world was 2 to 3 degrees warmer. The Arctic is vanishing claimed our BBC. No mention that there has been no further downward trends in the extent of its annual summer melting since 2006. Its lowest point this September was higher than seven of the past eleven years. The US fish and wildlife service say the bloody walruses are doing fine there are so many of the buggers that they have been taken off the endangered list.
No mention of the strong El Niño that has itself outgassed co2 not humans. Our UK met office has confirmed that ocean temps have dropped sharply back to where they were in 2002.
Can you see why one can feels manipulated patronised and cheated by the dominant orthodoxy you climate scientists assert. You find a natural trend project it massively claim we are all doomed and get more funding.
The Grupp Myers paper I referred to (I don’t have the resources to link site it properly but I will) openly admits how the projections by ipcc have been too hot and we can now as I said produce 240 billion tonnes more co2 than we thought. Now this isn’t a regular scientific quite proper routine adjustment.
It’s saying that the models which we are determining multi trillion global $ expenditure are uh uh wrong. Now that climate science dominates global policy you have to take more responsibility.
Doesn’t the set of carefully set out papers on this blog show the SLR hysteria “It will be 10ft up by 2030 rant rant scream scream to be just another example of bad science and selective data manipulation for political ends?
Why has the ipcc removed all of Mann’s hockey stick graphs from their sites and has Macintyre got it all wrong?
You have to remember that in your nice ivory tower you haven’t accurately predicted anything yet. Each time real data doesn’t fit you have to find a new theory. Post war temp drops the 12 year “Pause”
Please don’t deride and insult others with real questions with terms like deniers because we question it is unenlightened. We in the uk proudly established the Royal Society in the 18th century guaranteeing open scientific enquiry.
In the uk at least public concern that climate change is a worrying issue has gone down from 85% to 60% in the last few years mainly I think because none of the dire threats that have been repeatedly made have come true. Boy crying wolf except there is no wolf. You can’t dispense with Al Gore Bill Guy and others they base all they have on your science and influence public opinion.
As public interest further drops so will the global political support drop along with your funding.
Kevin.
I must change my blog title I set it up when I was angry at discovering how much BS there in climate science.
co2 (you must change your name!)
As you mention the Met office you might be interested to know that they maintain Central England Temperature (CET) which dates back to 1659.
It is somewhat curious and almost unknown, that no one born in England this century will have known warming. I wrote about it here.
https://judithcurry.com/2015/11/25/the-rise-and-fall-of-central-england-temperature/
I have had several conversations with them about this and they say (rightly) that its too early to see any definitive trend (which takes 30 years)
I am waiting for January to update it to 2017 but as things stand currently the negative trend continues.
Ironically when I wrote the piece in 2015 that year was shaping up to be a cool year here, but we then had a very warm December. Everyone initially claimed it confirmed AGW. However it turned out to be (marginally) only the second warmest December in the long record,, beaten by one in the 1840’s.
It must be fairly said that this century’s decline comes off a high base caused by the 1998 warmth, however the 1730’s were the warmest decade here until the 1990’s.
The Met office and the Dutch Met office and a variety of luminaries believe the CET is a reasonable (but not perfect) proxy for global or NH temperatures.
tonyb
Re: “Concerning this 97% consensus : could you remind what was the question asked to those scientists?”
You could just read some of the studies. For instance:
Table 1: “Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming”
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002
The questions dealt with issues such as:
A1) Whether there has been global warming since the mid-20th century.
A2) Whether Humans (largely via anthropogenic greenhouse gases) caused most of this recent warming.
A3) Whether most of the recent (or near future) climate change is (or will be) caused by humans.
A4) Whether climate change is a serious problem.
Re: “My question to you was far more fundamental: which papers allow the assertion that one can distinguish between the 2 cases? It seems from a lot of reading over the last 30 years that there is no first principles paper of any merit that shows how to attribute, as opposed to many assuming that attribution is possible.”
The paper show you how attribution is done; they don’t just assume it’s possible. So they already addressed your question. Analogously, if you ask me what allow the assertion that one can distinguish between felines and canines, and I then show you how this distinction is made, then I’ve answered your question. It’s now quite clear you haven’t read the papers cited to you.
To give a standard, concrete example: scientists have a fairly good understanding of the physical mechanisms via which increased CO2 causes tropospheric warming with stratospheric cooling. Similarly so for the physical mechanisms via which increased solar irradiance causes tropospheric warming with stratospheric warming. If you’re ignorant of this, then I suggest you read the following:
Page 65 of “Principles of planetary climate”
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ed53/e5500b6cbc095ef196d688bbf03d982dd92e.pdf
Page 409 of “Global physical climatology”
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=RsScBAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=Global+Physical+Climatology&ots=b9gUdQWmYk&sig=iqTJknmTKMKt8nj2_W4603JxxFY#v=onepage&q=409&f=false
So if we then observed tropospheric warming with stratospheric, then that argues more in favor of attribution of the tropospheric warming to increased CO2 instead of increased solar irradiance.
Re: “Would you care to try for a serious, mature, scientific answer this time? Geoff.”
Try not to throw shade next time, just because you’ve clearly neither read nor understood the sources cited to you. Because it’s getting tedious explaining introductory climatology to someone with your poor attitude.
Here’s my suggestion. Keep checking in here to see what’s new. Stay away from Sky Dragons.
Rag
Is the SLR hysterical misleading data a Sky Dragon?
Ridiculous assertion and zero evidence.
“The loud divergence between sea-level reality and climate change theory—the climate models predict an accelerated sea-level rise driven by the anthropogenic CO2 emission—has been also evidenced in other works such as Boretti (2012a, b), Boretti and Watson (2012), Douglas (1992), Douglas and Peltier (2002), Fasullo et al. (2016), Jevrejeva et al. (2006), Holgate (2007), Houston and Dean (2011), Mörner 2010a, b, 2016), Mörner and Parker (2013), Scafetta (2014), Wenzel and Schröter (2010) and Wunsch et al. (2007) reporting on the recent lack of any detectable acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise. The minimum length requirement of 50–60 years to produce a realistic sea-level rate of rise is also discussed in other works such as Baart et al. (2012), Douglas (1995, 1997), Gervais (2016), Jevrejeva et al. (2008), Knudsen et al. (2011), Scafetta (2013a, b), Wenzel and Schröter (2014) and Woodworth (2011).”
“The data only suggest the sea levels have been oscillating about the same trend line during the last century and this century.”
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/11/01/new-paper-finds-no-acceleration-in-sea-level-rise/#more-30641
So there’s a plot on the increase to SLR from Greenland above somewhere. And that raises the question, what was happening with that 60 years ago?
Excellent list of papers concluding that an acceleration of the SLR is pure nonsense. But then that is what we have come to expect.
SLR 1900 to 1990 – 1.2 mm/yr; 1993 – 2.2 mm/yr; 2014 – 3.3 mm/yr.
SLR for last 10 years – 4.24 mm/yr; last 5 years – 4.54 mm/yr.
1.2; 2.2; 3.3; 4.24; 4.54 – Lol.
Fasullo – the acceleration is masked by volcano at the beginning of the satellite era.
Chen, Zhang, and Church – acceleration is masked by drift in the first decade of satellite record.
Either way, it’s there. Unless you have a Cargo Cult Etc. bone in your nose, it really can’t be any other way.
Hamlington and Reager – rate of sea level rise increases when the PDO is positive; decreases when PDO is negative. Wait, I already said that.
“…it really can’t be any other way.”
““The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away,” Zwally said. “But this is also bad news. If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for.””
The other way is that Antarctica could be slowing SLR.
One paper, and everything since then I’ve seen says he’s wrong.
“However, our analysis reveals that the anthropogenic impact on Antarctic SMB is very likely to emerge from natural variability by the middle of the current century, thus mitigating future increases in global sea level.”
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/9/094001
“Projections of Antarctic SMB changes over the 21st century thus indicate a negative contribution to sea level because of the projected widespread increase in snowfall associated with warming air temperatures (Krinner et al., 2007; Uotila et al., 2007; Bracegirdle et al., 2008). Several studies (Krinner et al., 2007; Uotila et al., 2007; Bengtsson et al., 2011) have shown that the precipitation increase is directly linked to atmospheric warming via the increased moisture holding capacity of warmer air, and is therefore larger for scenarios of greater warming. The relationship is exponential, resulting in an increase of SMB as a function of Antarctic SAT change evaluated in various recent studies with high-resolution (~60 km) models as 3.7% °C–1 (Bengtsson et al., 2011), 4.8% °C–1 (Ligtenberg et al., 2013) and ~7% °C–1 (Krinner et al., 2007). These agree well with the sensitivity of 5.1 ± 1.5% °C–1 (one standard deviation) of CMIP3 AOGCMs (Gregory and Huybrechts, 2006).” – AR5
It is also encouraging that the southern hemisphere has the geography that it does.
Warmth makes more ice. It’s epic.
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/antarctic/Antarctic-ice-balance-A.gif
From this paper:
https://www.the-cryosphere.net/7/303/2013/tc-7-303-2013.html
Author: Massimo Frezzotti looks good.
Greenland’s past contributions to SLR:
https://static.skepticalscience.com/pics/Greenlandicelosses.jpg
And someone’s favorite source:
http://notrickszone.com/2016/12/19/scientists-1930s-ice-melt-rates-in-greenland-iceland-were-the-same-as-today-no-net-ice-loss-in-80-years/#sthash.Wm3eHM6m.dpbs
Sure looks like some kind of cycle or alternating regimes to me.
We have the sea ice death spiral.
Not every thing gets worse exponentially.
This is in this: The Cryosphere
Estimation of the Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance for the
20th and 21st centuries
X. Fettweis1, E. Hanna2, H. Gall´ee3, P. Huybrechts4, and M. Erpicum1
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Greenland-Surface-Mass-Balance-Fettweis08-copy.jpg
Fettweis appears qualified.
End point bias can set aside the long term cycles.
https://imgur.com/BzEUGMv
The end of cycles I guess.
We love Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bridenstine#Environment_and_climate
The environment and climate is now the recent GMST, the military and climate, weather versus climate spending and weather data.
Spotted Owls, you’re on you own.
If exactly 239 watts/sq meter keep coming in from ASR and thence leaving into space as OLR, the only way portions of the earth can get warmer from CO2 is if some layer of air or water becomes warmer and some layer becomes cooler, as in lapse rate changes, etc. The total kinetic + potential energy in the system has to stay the same, doesn’t it?
But the earth _does_get a little warmer from CO2. Is this just the surface layer? Is another layer getting cooler? If the total energy in the system is increasing a bit from CO2, then this has to mean that the 239 watt rule is wrong. Doesn’t this mean that CO2 is changing the albedo a tiny bit? But if a little more energy is absorbed, then CO2 is acting like a little black soot in the atmosphere and it will, in turn, radiate more toward space as a black box would from the added heat and this might compensate for the change in albedo. So we could end up with CO2 not increasing total energy in the biosphere whatsoever, but it might only affect lapse rate or whatever.
I guess my question is how certain is the 239 watts-coming-in and 239 watts-going-out rule?
At top of atmosphere energy is all radiative. Ultimately it will equilibriate – energy in equals energy out –
largely due to the Planck effect. Warming or cooling result in exponentially changing emissions. But there are both long and short term patterns of ocean and atmosphere circulation that modulate both energy in and energy out through chaotic regimes in clouds, ice. dust and vegetation – and the planet always chases equilibrium.
What the IPCC says is that 20th century warming was all and more greenhouse gases. Utter and obvious nonsense.
No, the temperature of the system is not simply a function of how much energy comes in and goes out. The issue is how long it stays in between. It is like people in a bank. If the number leaving equals the number entering the number in the bank depends on how long the lines are. GHGs lengthen the random walk that the energy takes while it is in the system, because they intercept the outgoing radiation and spread it into the surrounding air, where it wanders around until finally leaving.
The longer the average walk, the higher the temperature (all else being equal). Thus adding GHGs has the potential to increase the temperature. But it is only a possibility, because a lot of other things are also going on, including nonlinear feedbacks. These other things are what the debate is all about.
I thought the same as you, David. But then it occurred to me that this transit time increase, as you say, your average ‘walking time’, has got to be owing to transactions–14u photons being absorbed and molecules jiggling and warming other molecules, etc.–and these transactions are conversions of energy from one state to another….and that the total transactions probably are related to the total CO2, as well as other GHGs. Maybe the energy is totally conserved in each transaction, but the more total transactions occurring at a given time, the more total energy in the system at that time, correct? Doesn’t this mean that a small increase in ASR has occurred? …Or a decrease in OLR? ot both? or the albedo?
But, as we know these have to be brought to equilibrium rapidly after a change in either the energy-in or in the energy-out. Otherwise, we would all die in a few hundred days. (you can’t have one thousanth more energy coming in each day, and the outgoing remaining the same for very long.) It would be like changing a thermostat that had no sensor feedback.
When you look at light reflecting from earth from a sattelite, you see a deep @14u absorbtion line in the spectrum from CO2. This means that infrared coming from the surface is having a hard time going into space. But shorter wavelengths from the sun are not impeded in hitting the surface going in the other direction. Doesn’t this have to mean that the total energy in the system is going up a little?… you are keeping some long waves from leaving while allowing all the same short waves to enter …and the only way to correct for this and bring equilibrium is to chage the albedo a bit?
In reality there will always be some imbalance. Under global warming it is more coming in than going out. And it is the absorbation of SW radiation that make most of this warming. What is the contribution of greenhouse gases to the global warming?
I think the question is actualized by the 2014 Donohoe et al paper, as they show that it is the absorbed solar radiation (ASR) that makes the earth warmer, perhaps together with IR downwelling radiation. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250165/
«In computer modeling of Earth’s climate under elevating CO2 concentrations, the greenhouse gas effect does indeed lead to global warming. Yet something puzzling happens: While one would expect the longwave radiation that escapes into space to decline with increasing CO2, the amount actually begins to rise. At the same time, the atmosphere absorbs more and more incoming solar radiation; it’s this enhanced shortwave absorption that ultimately sustains global warming.»
« As longwave radiation gets trapped by CO2, the Earth starts to warm, impacting various parts of the climate system. Sea ice and snow cover melt, turning brilliant white reflectors of sunlight into darker spots. The atmosphere grows moister because warmer air can hold more water vapor, which absorbs more shortwave radiation. Both of these feedbacks lessen the amount of shortwave radiation that bounces back into space, and the planet warms rapidly at the surface.
Meanwhile, like any physical body experiencing warming, Earth sheds longwave radiation more effectively, canceling out the longwave-trapping effects of CO2. However, a darker Earth now absorbs more sunlight, tipping the scales to net warming from shortwave radiation.»
From:The missing piece of the climate puzzle. Researchers show that a canonical view of global warming tells only half the story. By Genevieve Wanucha, 2014.
Both measurements and models show that there is no reduction in IR radiation out at Top-of-atmosphere. Instead it has been a slight increase the last 40 years. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/teleconnections/enso/indicators/olr/
So the increased heat uptake is coming from increased absorbed solar radiation and perhaps from increased downwelling longwave radiation. Most studies operate with DLR increase of about 2 W m2 pr decade. Wang and Liang, 2009, have the value of 2,2 W, and is perhaps the most thorough study. The OHC has increased by 7,5W m2 pr decade between 1992 and 2015, according to Lijing Cheng, Kevin E. Trenberth, John Fasullo, Tim Boyer, John Abraham, and Jiang Zhu (2017): Improved estimates of ocean heat content from 1960 to 2015.
The conclusion of this should be that only a little part of global warming can be directly attributed to increased Green House Gases. It also means that natural variations play a greater role than revised canonical view will admit. There are variations in wind pattern, ocean currents and arctic melting.
The conclusion of this should be that only a little part of global warming can be directly attributed to increased Green House Gases. It also means that natural variations play a greater role than revised canonical view will admit. There are variations in wind pattern, ocean currents and arctic melting. …
The sidestep 2-step is amazing.
Two major modes of natural variation –
AMO:
https://imgur.com/DNnQOaK
PDO:
https://imgur.com/pPZsH3Q
JCH. I agree. Variations in air pressure over 60 years range have clear consequences for temperature variations and regional sea level change.And they are part of change in wind patterns, ocean currents and arctic melting. AMO had great effect on arctic warming from 1915 to 1940, and on sea levels in the nothern Atlantic. But there may be longer variations that are interesting for the understanding of recent climate change, like the climate dynamics of LIA.
And I have to disagree a little with myself. As long as the outgoing longwave radiation isn`t decreasing over the Top Of Atmosphere, all the heat uptake comes from the change of short wave radiation. As Frank pointed out in a comment at Science of Doom, the change in downwelling longwave radiation is only redistributing energy, contributing to some warming at the surface, perhaps with some effect on ocean overturning, and changing the lapse rate.
CO2 at first decreases outgoing long wave (LW). It warms, and over time outgoing LW increases as it’s warmer. Over time a new equilibrium is reached. However there may be multiple equilibriums and a simple box model assumption may not describe reality. An equilibrium associated with a negative PDO. A heavily oceans dependent equilibrium. A really big volcano pushing the next 2 years equilibrium.
Atomsk and Rag
Here is an Israeli Astrophysicist who has a few problems with your scientific positions.
Can Astrophysicists do Sky Dragons?
Kevin
http://www.climatedepot.com/2017/11/09/israeli-astrophysicist-rejects-un-ipcc-finds-the-sun-completely-overturns-the-way-we-should-see-global-warming/
Can Astrophysicists do Sky Dragons?
Of course they can: CargoCult, Etc. Cooling, natural variation, is coming to save us from the “hoax”! Just pray.
Shaviv – I don’t think he makes a sky dragon argument at your link.
He says CO2 lags temperature. Which used to be true but isn’t today. People will disagree if this is a sky dragon argument?
While NASA lost 25% of the annual CO2 and launched a satellite to help find it, we have caused most of the CO2 increase, and there is some natural variation involving ocean cycles.
I think saying CO2 cannot warm the oceans is a sky dragon argument. CO2 not being able to warm the atmosphere is a sky dragon argument.
Re: “Here is an Israeli Astrophysicist who has a few problems with your scientific positions.
Can Astrophysicists do Sky Dragons?
Kevin
http://www.climatedepot.com/2017/11/09/israeli-astrophysicist-rejects-un-ipcc-finds-the-sun-completely-overturns-the-way-we-should-see-global-warming/“
It looks like you didn’t take my advice: you’re still relying on garbage, denialist blogs for your information of science. Just a reminder, that this is the same Nir Shaviv who published a paper saying:
“Quantifying the role of solar radiative forcing over the 20th century
[…]
However, we also find that the largest contribution to the 20th century warming comes from anthropogenic sources.”
Did ClimateDepot tell you that? Of course not, since they aren’t in the business of telling you any scientific points that would be inconvenient for their political ideology. Shaviv and ClimateDepot are free to make their nonsensical points in non-peer-reviewed venues such as blogposts and oral presentations, where they can spout whatever evidence-free tripe they want:
“The general lack of peer review allows authors or editors of denial books to make inaccurate assertions that misrepresent the current state of climate science. Like the vast range of other non-peer-reviewed material produced by the denial community, book authors can make whatever claims they wish, no matter how scientifically unfounded.”
http://abs.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/05/01/0002764213477096.full.pdf
Anyway, the points ClimateDepot lists are easy to address:
1) Duh, just like evidence of cancer isn’t evidence that smoking causes cancer. That doesn’t change the fact that there’s clear evidence that smoking causes cancer, just like there’s clear evidence that humans (via anthropogenic greenhouse gases) caused warming. It’s as if ClimateDepot thinks the audience does not know the difference between “detection” vs. “attribution”.
2) Evidence-based scientific consensus is cited in order to inform non-experts. It’s the same reason why people rely on the expertise of doctors (often multiple doctor) when they’re ill, instead of the patient looking up all the evidence themselves.
3) Doesn’t change the fact that anthropogenic climate change had a negative impact on polar bears. To say otherwise is as ridiculous as saying AIDS did not have a negative effect on people in India, since India’s population increased. In news that may be shocking to ClimateDepot, polar bear population is affected by non-climatological factors such as regulations on polar bear hunting, just like India’s population is affected non-AIDS factors such as vaccination programs.
4) Of course there isn’t, because science deals in evidence, not “proof”. And as in most branches of science, the causal conclusion is supported by multiple lines of evidence, not just 1.
5) Nonsense. There’s a well-evidenced, long-term correlation between CO2 and temperature. To say otherwise is to resort to either deception or willful ignorance of the scientific literature.
6) No, it wasn’t; the current period is warmer. And even if it wasn’t, then so what? Past non-anthropogenic climate change does not imply that current climate change is non-anthropogenic.
7), 8) I’m not interested in policy suggestions from people who misrepresent the science that should inform the policy discussion.
“The 20th century temperature anomaly record is reproduced using an energy balance model, with a diffusive deep ocean. The model takes into account all the standard radiative forcings, and in addition the possibility of a non-thermal solar component. The model is parameterized and then optimized to produce the most likely values for the climate parameters and radiative forcings which reproduce the 20th century global warming. We find that the best fit is obtained
with a negligible net feedback. We also show that a non-thermal solar component is necessarily present, indicating that the total solar contribution to the 20th century global warming, of ∆Tsolar = 0.27 ± 0.07◦C, is much larger than can be expected from variation in the total solar irradiance alone. However, we also find that the largest contribution to the 20th century warming comes from anthropogenic sources, with ∆Tman = 0.42 ± 0.11◦C.” http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117711007411
1) Duh… … the utterly stupid smoking analogy… The point is that nothing has been detected unambiguously. The assumption is that all recent change is anthropogenic – and it is a nonsense assumption.
2) Evidence-based scientific consensus… … the medicine analogy? Most medical studies are wrong – as is much of climate science. I have been known to ask for a second opinion.
e.g. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/
3) Doesn’t change the fact that anthropogenic climate change had a negative impact on polar bears…. AIDS and polar bears? They may not have AIDS
– and populations are increasing – but that is not to say that global warming isn’t affecting populations?
4) Of course there isn’t, because science deals in evidence, not “proof”… “In experimental philosophy, propositions gathered from phenomena by induction should be considered either exactly or very nearly true notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses, until yet other phenomena make such propositions either more exact or liable to exceptions.
This rule should be followed so that arguments based on induction be not be nullified by hypotheses.” Newton’s 4th rule.
Ignoring evidence for hypotheses is the sin against science of Atomski and cognitively disonnent fellows .
5) Nonsense. There’s a well-evidenced, long-term correlation between CO2 and temperature… Natural climate variations caused mid 20th century cooling and added to late century warming. What is nonsense is attributing all 20th warming to greenhouse gases.
e.g. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
6) No, it wasn’t; the current period is warmer…
Refer back to Newton’s 4th rule.
7), 8) I’m not interested in policy suggestions from people who misrepresent the science that should inform the policy discussion…
I hadn’t read the climate depot blog for a long time – like all of the blogosphere it is interminable nonsense. The paper however has an interesting approach to using sea level rise to determine the amount and source of energy entering oceans. Beyond that – it is permissible in scientific publications to speculate as to mechanisms. And also as to policy implications. It is not to say that every speculative word is not treated by the naive or opportunistic as the immutable word of science – as long as it agrees with the memes.
‘Evidence for warming is not evidence for warming by humans.’
‘Anyone who appeals to authority or to a majority [97% claims] to substantiate his or her claim is proving nothing.’
‘The polar bear population is now probably at its highest in modern times!’
‘There is no single piece of evidence that proves that a given amount of CO2 increase should cause a large increase in temperature.’
‘Over geological time scales, there were huge variations in the CO2 (a factor of 10) and they have no correlation whatsoever with the temperature. 450 million years ago there was 10 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere but more extensive glaciations.’
‘The simple truth is that in the height of the middle ages it was probably just as warm as the latter half of the 20th century’
‘Taking unnecessary precautionary steps when we know they are unnecessary is immoral. It is even committing statistical murder.’
‘Let us use our limited resources to treat real problems.’
But it is all close enough to the facts to be regarded as true or nearly so.
I am firmly in the let’s use limited resources to treat real problems camp. Ironically – we may in that way make real progress on carbon mitigation, environments and development.
e.g. https://watertechbyrie.com/
But what we have with Atomski and fellows is simplistic claims and extraneous argument gleamed from blogospheric echo chambers. Skepticism is treated as some buffoonish posturing by fools with little to no scientific understanding. Frankly I find the complete opposite to be closer to truth. Piddling little pissant progressive doofus’ assuming a moral and intellectual high ground – the consensus meme sheet can’t possibly be wrong – without having a conspicuous clue. From them – it is all utterly worthless, unscientific nonsense.
Re: “the utterly stupid smoking analogy… The point is that nothing has been detected unambiguously. The assumption is that all recent change is anthropogenic – and it is a nonsense assumption.”
The smoking analogy is not stupid at all, as shown below in response to your point 2. You’ve shown no problem with the analogy.
Global warming has been unambiguously detected; stop confusing detection of warming, with attribution of warming. And I know of no one who claims that all recent climate change change is anthropogenic. For example, even the IPCC admits that the 11 year solar cycle exists and it affected recent climate. The IPCC claiming net cooling (or not a substantial temperature increase) from the sum of all post-1950s non-anthropogenic factors, is not the same thing as the IPCC claiming that no individual non-anthropogenic factors affect climate. So you’re attacking a straw man.
Re: “the medicine analogy? Most medical studies are wrong – as is much of climate science. I have been known to ask for a second opinion.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/
You need to learn not to rely on press pieces as guidance on topics (like medicine) in which you’re clearly uninformed. Evidence-based conclusions in medicine that are supported by numerous studies use various independent lines of evidence, are usually true. Some classic examples include “smoking causes cancer” and “HIV causes AIDS.” If you think otherwise, then please stop relying on the fruits of peer-reviewed research in medical science.
Your reference to the Atlantic piece is sad. After all, the Atlantic piece relies on the work of John Ioannidis, a man who notes that the evidence (and level of certainty) on anthropogenic climate change is on par with the evidence (and level of certainty) that smoking kills people:
17:17 to 18:22 of:
“RS 174 – John Ioannidis on “What happened to Evidence-based medicine?””
http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs-174-john-ioannidis-on-what-happened-to-evidence-based-med.html
That debunks your claim about the “the utterly stupid smoking analogy”. And it might come as a shock to people who saw how Ioannidis’ work has been abused on this blog in order to attack mainstream climate science research. For example:
https://judithcurry.com/2016/07/06/is-much-of-current-climate-research-useless/
Anyway, Ioannidis made an apt comparison between the science on “smoking causing cancer” and the science “human causing climate change. He made this comparison because he recognizes that scientific hypotheses become more reliable (and more likely to be true) as more and more research groups test the hypothesis using different lines of evidence, methodologies, etc., and keep finding that the hypothesis passes the tests. You’d know this if you bothered to read up on the literature surrounding Ioannidis’ work. The following tweet thread will link you to the relevant papers:
https://twitter.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/927833314366500869
And here’s some of the literature for you:
“Why most published research findings are false”
“Most published research findings are false—But a little replication goes a long way”
“Why most published research findings are false: Problems in the analysis”
“Why most published research findings are false: Author’s reply to Goodman and Greenland”
So do you homework next time, Robert. Stop relying on your garbage interpretations of what you read in the media; actually read primary sources.
Re: “AIDS and polar bears? They may not have AIDS
– and populations are increasing – but that is not to say that global warming isn’t affecting populations?”
You missed the point of the comparison. Once again:
Anthropogenic climate change can negatively affect polar bear populations even if polar bear population increases, just as AIDS can negatively affect India’s population even if India’s population increases.
If you need a primer on how anthropogenic climate change affects polar bear populations, then read:
“Effects of climate warming on polar bears: a review of the evidence”
“Anthropogenic flank attack on polar bears: interacting consequences of climate warming and pollutant exposure”
“A review of ecological impacts of global climate change on persistent organic pollutant and mercury pathways and exposures in arctic marine ecosystems”
Re: “Ignoring evidence for hypotheses is the sin against science of Atomski and cognitively disonnent fellows”
What you wrote has no bearing on my 4th point. And please try not to bluff knowledge of philosophy; that tactic didn’t work when you tried it on medicine. I suggest you look up abduction and the criteria for inference to the best explanation (ex: explanatory power, predictive power, explanatory scope, etc.). I also suggest you look up the difference between “scientific evidence” vs. “proof in math and formal logic”.
Re: “Natural climate variations caused mid 20th century cooling and added to late century warming. What is nonsense is attributing all 20th warming to greenhouse gases.”
Does nothing to address my point on the long-term correlation between CO2 and temperature. Please learn to actually address what you’re responding to. If you’re uninformed about the CO2-temperature correlation, then the following sources can help you with that:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/global-warming/temperature-change
“CO2-forced climate thresholds during the Phanerozoic”
“Climate Sensitivity in the Geologic Past”
“Synchronous Change of Atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic Temperature During the Last Deglacial Warming”
“Global warming preceded by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations during the last deglaciation”
Re: “But what we have with Atomski and fellows is simplistic claims and extraneous argument gleamed from blogospheric echo chambers.”
…says the person who gleaned his understand of medical research from reading a piece in the Atlantic, as opposed to reading the primary literature. I’m beginning to suspect that you lack self-awareness.
The assumption is that all recent change is anthropogenic – and the point is that it is a nonsense assumption. That is the point of the post. And I did quote NASA most recently on this. So sad too bad for these pissant progressives.
The smoking analogy is not stupid at all… in response to your point 2. You’ve shown no problem with the analogy.
Was point 2 bears and AIDS?
“Global warming has been unambiguously detected; stop confusing detection of warming, with attribution of warming. And I know of no one who claims that all recent climate change change is anthropogenic.
This is clearly disingenuous – direct solar effects are too small to make any material difference in attribution.
You need to learn not to rely on press pieces as guidance on topics (like medicine) in which you’re clearly uninformed.
There are a couple of meta-studies by John Ioannidis and his group that are not strictly medical – but estimate the frequency of – and sources of – error in medical articles. The Atlantic article is based on this work.
“In the paper, Ioannidis laid out a detailed mathematical proof that, assuming modest levels of researcher bias, typically imperfect research techniques, and the well-known tendency to focus on exciting rather than highly plausible theories, researchers will come up with wrong findings most of the time. Simply put, if you’re attracted to ideas that have a good chance of being wrong, and if you’re motivated to prove them right, and if you have a little wiggle room in how you assemble the evidence, you’ll probably succeed in proving wrong theories right. His model predicted, in different fields of medical research, rates of wrongness roughly corresponding to the observed rates at which findings were later convincingly refuted: 80 percent of non-randomized studies (by far the most common type) turn out to be wrong, as do 25 percent of supposedly gold-standard randomized trials, and as much as 10 percent of the platinum-standard large randomized trials.”
John Ioannidis, a man who notes that the evidence (and level of certainty) on anthropogenic climate change is on par with the evidence (and level of certainty) that smoking kills people.
The usual bizarre non-sequitur. Is there any one here denying that smoking kills – or indeed that there is an effect from greenhouse gases on radiative properties of the atmosphere? Just that there are other things happening in climate.
That debunks your claim about the “the utterly stupid smoking analogy”. And it might come as a shock to people who saw how Ioannidis’ work has been abused on this blog in order to attack mainstream climate science research. For example:
https://judithcurry.com/2016/07/06/is-much-of-current-climate-research-useless/
Much of climate science is incorrect – specifically on attribution of warming in the 20th century. Which the IPCC says is all anthropogenic.
So do you homework next time, Robert. Stop relying on your garbage interpretations of what you read in the media; actually read primary sources.
Having done lots of reading in the primary literature on many topics – I can’t see that anything from Atomski that has much scientific depth. More the sociology and rhetoric of so called denial of things they imagine are denied.
You missed the point of the comparison (bears and AIDS). Once again:
Anthropogenic climate change can negatively affect polar bear populations even if polar bear population increases, just as AIDS can negatively affect India’s population even if India’s population increases.
The changes thus far have been minor – and tales of future polar bear doom apocryphal.
What you wrote has no bearing on my 4th point. And please try not to bluff knowledge of philosophy…
More word salad. Science is much more fun than that.
e.g. https://hydroclimate.wordpress.com/2017/03/12/debates-hypothesis-testing-in-hydrology-pursuing-certainty-versus-pursuing-uberty/
Does nothing to address my point on the long-term correlation between CO2 and temperature. Please learn to actually address what you’re responding to.
He doesn’t say anything that is worth responding in the great swathes of verbosity and a lack of any discussion of the articles he lists.
Re: “But what we have with Atomski and fellows is simplistic claims and extraneous argument gleamed from blogospheric echo chambers.”
…says the person who gleaned his understand of medical research from reading a piece in the Atlantic, as opposed to reading the primary literature. I’m beginning to suspect that you lack self-awareness.
You may suspect that Atomski is a trifle disingenuous. I usually don’t bother with facile crap like this – but I find the fluffery, the sociology of denialism, the shallow science references, the appalling stylistics, the stilted and incoherent language and the utterly obnoxious nature of his discourse annoying enough to deconstruct it.
Re: “The assumption is that all recent change is anthropogenic – and the point is that it is a nonsense assumption. That is the point of the post. And I did quote NASA most recently on this. “
Feel free to quote NASA saying that all recent climate change is anthropogenic. You won’t be able to because NASA didn’t say that, and you just made it up. For example, NASA has articles on El Nino; El Nino is not anthropogenic, last I checked.
Re: “This is clearly disingenuous – direct solar effects are too small to make any material difference in attribution.”
Still no support for your claim that someone, somewhere claims the all recent climate change is anthropogenic. By the way, you just called Shaviv disingenuous. Or did you forget that I quoted a paper where he said direct solar effects were significant?:
“Quantifying the role of solar radiative forcing over the 20th century
[…]
However, we also find that the largest contribution to the 20th century warming comes from anthropogenic sources.”
Re: “There are a couple of meta-studies by John Ioannidis and his group that are not strictly medical – but estimate the frequency of – and sources of – error in medical articles. The Atlantic article is based on this work.”
You didn’t read the papers, and you have no clue what Ioannidis’ work shows. You just parroted whatever you read in the press, because you thought it supported your ideologically-motivated opposition to evidence-based consensus (in medicine and climate science). Turns out Ioannidis’ work doesn’t support your nonsense position, as Ioannidis’s own words show. So, once again, actually read primary sources next time, not just press pieces.
Re: “Is there any one here denying that smoking kills – or indeed that there is an effect from greenhouse gases on radiative properties of the atmosphere?”
You once again show you can’t grasp the point of analogies, nor understand what words like “anthropogenic” mean. Once again:
Stop abusing Ioannidis’ work; it doesn’t not support your ideologically-motivate position. Ioannidis admits that science evidence can accumulate to the point where a conclusion is >99% certain, as in the case of smoking people and anthropogenic climate change. Those are the very examples Ioannidis uses.
Also, there are people who claim that humans don’t cause global warming. They were even mention in the forum on the context of “slaying the Sky Dragon”. For instance:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/a-discussion-of-the-slaying-the-sky-dragon-science-is-the-greenhouse-effect-a-sky-dragon-myth/
I suggest you not pretend otherwise. And unlike you, when I claim someone has said something, I can show they said it.
Re: “Having done lots of reading in the primary literature on many topics – I can’t see that anything from Atomski that has much scientific depth. More the sociology and rhetoric of so called denial of things they imagine are denied.”
Let me know when you can cite the primary literature, instead of what you read in the press and the blogs you cite. It’s clear you don’t read much of the primary literature.
The rest of your post is trash that doesn’t address the evidence cited to you, nor my summary of the relevant conclusions. It’s just you ranting about me in an almost pathological manner. Tell me when you can address the sources cited to you.
This is an interesting discussion.
From here: https://judithcurry.com/2016/07/06/is-much-of-current-climate-research-useless/
“Climate research that can lead to a favorable change in decision making regarding climate when changes in benefits, harms, cost, and other impacts are considered.”
The product is teed up for politicians, and what do they do? Act like politicians. Pearls before swine. I always hated big oil and now I have a new talking point. And let’s not forget about jobs. We needed a new jobs program and this one is for scientific reasons.
So are our decisions any better for all this science? It’s helped give some of the free market away. To wind and solar owners. To electric cars. Now we can make electric cars not because they are a good idea, but for science reasons. You have a bunch of salesmen using your science for their own reasons. Wrapping themselves in science.
Feel free to quote NASA saying that all recent climate change is anthropogenic…
This was in the blighty old IPCC – as I assumed would be obvious.
“The evidence for human influence on the climate system has grown since the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in GHG concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period (Figure SPM.3).”
It was ridiculous even before the ink was dry. NASA in fact discussed some other things that were happening in climate in the 21th century.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/pdoenso.jpg
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
So – 20 to 30 year quasi standing waves in the Earth’s spatio-temporal flow field. Causing warming and cooling. With breakpoints that can be seen in the surface tempetrature – 1912, 1944, 1976 and 1998. That’s bright – start your count in the middle of a cool Pacific Regime.
“By the way, you just called Shaviv disingenuous. Or did you forget that I quoted a paper where he said direct solar effects were significant?”
You would find if you had any natural science chops at all that a key element of the paper was a discussion of solar amplification. After that clunker – you will forgive me for not continuing with your idea of solar forcing.
You didn’t read the papers, and you have no clue what Ioannidis’ work shows. You just parroted whatever you read in the press, because you thought it supported your ideologically-motivated opposition to evidence-based consensus (in medicine and climate science). Turns out Ioannidis’ work doesn’t support your nonsense position, as Ioannidis’s own words show. So, once again, actually read primary sources next time, not just press pieces.
I have read meta-studies in medical science, autism, vaccines, the efficacy of ‘air walkers’ vs contact casting and no doubt one or two others. Only because – in environmental science – nothing is off limits to curiosity.
And I can understand the statistics. And to suggest that I haven’t researched Ioannidis when I clearly suggest that I have is just more low life pond scum allegations.
Stop abusing Ioannidis’ work; it doesn’t not support your ideologically-motivate position. Ioannidis admits that science evidence can accumulate to the point where a conclusion is >99% certain, as in the case of smoking people and anthropogenic climate change. Those are the very examples Ioannidis uses.
STOP ABUSING SCIENCE AS A PLAYTHING OF URBAN DOOFUS HIPSTERS. THERE IS NOTHING IN CLIMATE SCIENCE THAT REMOTELY APPROACHES 99% CERTAIN.
Also, there are people who claim that humans don’t cause global warming. They were even mention in the forum on the context of “slaying the Sky Dragon”. For instance:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/a-discussion-of-the-slaying-the-sky-dragon-science-is-the-greenhouse-effect-a-sky-dragon-myth/
I suggest you not pretend otherwise. And unlike you, when I claim someone has said something, I can show they said it.
That’s the lamest rationalization for avoiding a rational and polite discussion evah.
Re: “Having done lots of reading in the primary literature on many topics – I can’t see that anything from Atomski that has much scientific depth. More the sociology and rhetoric of so called denial of things they imagine are denied.”
Let me know when you can cite the primary literature, instead of what you read in the press and the blogs you cite. It’s clear you don’t read much of the primary literature.
The rest of your post is trash that doesn’t address the evidence cited to you, nor my summary of the relevant conclusions. It’s just you ranting about me in an almost pathological manner. Tell me when you can address the sources cited to you.
Wow. Such a vitriolic and febrile rant. I have given up on climate sites – but do have a much more interesting reading list than Atomski. I don’t see why he thinks I should follow his narrow comprehension down an ideological rabbit hole. Noam Atomski has a knowledge deficit model of science communication – he has it and you don’t. This is a fairly common trait with these types. And it is because you are a drooling deplorable. In Atomski’s case – however – it is just freakin’ hilarious.
Atomsk:
” It’s just you ranting about me in an almost pathological manner. Tell me when you can address the sources cited to you.”
It’s what Ellison does.
(Been there and got the T-shirt).
He’s not known as the “thug” for nothing.
“Does anybody really spend the time to read all this foolishness?”
Yes.
At last we have someone (with a couple of notable exceptions) who is prepared to call out the majority on here for what they are and have the stomach for the ad hom, “with one bound” sort of thuggishness that Ellison, Montfort, Springer et al bring to the table.
Most refreshing.
https://imgur.com/0zh8awn
https://i.imgur.com/cfDyaE9.png
For some reason, my questions to Atomsk’s Sanakan were not posted.
Banton doesn’t ever say anything relevant. It is all about how awful and stupid denizens are and how hard done by he is by me in particular. I can’t help it. They are urban doofus hipsters – with a religion of global warming, an assumption of moral and intellectual superiority and an unyielding conviction in the veracity of their simplistic and misguided narrative memes. They are groupthink climate warriors and disparagement of outsiders is par for the course.
When did you first use “pissant progressive” at CargoCult Etc. you politically motivated pile?
I wanted to add something about the ‘replication crisis’.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/pop-psych/201604/psychologys-research-replication-problem
Something that is not limited to psychology – but seems very likely to compromise much of the horrendous amount of poor climate science about the place. One of the key concepts is the one raised by Koonin – starting at 1950 and assuming all change since is anthropogenic is bad science leading to bad policy.
It is completely wrong scientifically as well.
I hate pissant progressives – does it show? As far as I can make out they are a fringe cult with astonishingly picayune notions of what climate science is and a social agenda I find to be appallingly misguided.
There is of course good science – and I quote it all the time. But any alternative view to the narrow memes of the pissant progressive – a broader view with considerable uncertainty and spatio-temporal chaos at its core for instance – is a product of a diseased mind. Usually of old, dumb, white male conservatives. And then they have the nerve to complain about being called pissant progressives. Color me unimpressed.
Does anybody really spend the time to read all this foolishness? I’ll summarize it for you:
1) blah
2) blah
3) blah
4) blah
5) blah
6) blah blah
7) whatever
–snip–
–snip–
blah
blah
…………………….. FIN
Your purile replies just make you look a prat Don
Don Monfort: Does anybody really spend the time to read all this foolishness?
I have read all (almost all?) of the interchanges between RIE and AS.
I appreciate the summary. I usually don’t read Atomski – but then a “foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
My latest 3 looks at COP 23 (and the CSSR)
Excerpts:
Trump effect in Bonn climate talks?
An online news outlet that tracks UN climate conferences has a dynamite story titled Don’t wake the bear: fragile climate talks begin in Bonn. The bear in this case is President Trump. The article is about something called the Trump effect which is scaring the heck out of the Bonn negotiators.
The principal fear is that the Trumpers will be disruptive. This does not mean beating on the table with their shoes, although that would be great fun indeed. In diplomatic language, disruptive may simple mean disagreeing and being stubborn about it. Sounds like Trump to me.
Climate Home puts it this way: This is a consensus body and to function it needs the US. Trump could utterly derail the talks if he chose.
What this says to me is that President Trump himself should go to the Bonn COP 23 climate conference. President Obama went to several of these COPs, as the only way to get what he wanted out of them. Frances President is already scheduled to be there, as is Germany’s Merkel (whose government is presently threatened for being too green). In fact last minute visits by heads of state are fairly common once the tough crunches finally appear.
Trump showing up would be outrageous, which is just how Trump is. The US delegation is already set to promote fossil fuels in various ways. Even Peabody Energy (read coal) is going to be part of it, which is already pretty outrageous. Trump should go to Bonn. Just think of the tweets he could send.
http://www.cfact.org/2017/11/06/trump-effect-in-bonn-climate-talks/
U.S. government climate report timed for Bonn UN conference
Fridays release of the wildly alarmist Climate Science Special Report or CSSP has brought forth the predictable green gush from the lefty press. The fact that this is an official federal report that contradicts the Trump Administrations climate skepticism is its big selling point. That the release is strategically timed with the beginning of the grand UN climate control festival in Bonn, Germany makes it more than timely. That the science is crap is irrelevant.
The Washington Post is typical. Their story title is Trump administration releases report finding no convincing alternative explanation for climate change.
Natural climate change is ruled out in the title! This is not science.
The real message here is that the folks who produced this official pseudo-scientific garbage need to be stopped. This is the US Global Change Research Program office (USGCRP). It was created by that 1990 law and it has done nothing since except churn out alarmist reports. The biggest of these are the National Climate Assessments but there are many others. The USGCRP office needs to be shut down, including the NCA4 project presently in progress.
As for the bogus Climate Science Special Report, this needs to be torn to shreds by a Red Team critique, which should be easy enough. Lets have an equally official report that says what is wrong with this report. That should balance things out nicely.
http://www.cfact.org/2017/11/06/u-s-government-climate-report-timed-for-bonn-un-conference/
UN climate summit = Bonn COP massiveness
How many climate alarmists does it take to write the rules of world domination? In the case of the upcoming Bonn meeting the answer is well over 20,000. I am not making this up. COP 22 was in Morocco, where they started writing the Paris Pact rule book. Here are the astounding official attendance figures:
Last year The UN Climate Change Conference brought together over 22,500 participants, including nearly 15,800 government officials, 5,400 representatives of UN bodies and agencies, intergovernmental organizations and civil society organizations, and 1,200 members of the media.
The huge number of over 15,000 government officials makes it clear that these COPs are global government actions, not just activism or advocacy and certainly not science. The fact that their purpose climate control is scientifically absurd is not relevant. They are in Bonn to write rules.
Make no mistake; these officials are each haggling in order to promote their own country’s interests, especially getting more money. The vast majority of the COP members are developing countries looking to cash in on various funding schemes that take huge amounts from the developed countries, including the US. This is a big part of why Trump is opting out of the Paris Pact. That the science is silly is another reason.
http://www.cfact.org/2017/11/06/un-climate-summit-bonn-cop-massiveness/
There is more to each article of course. Feel free to share this.
Red Team the CSSR!
Wojick will not rest until CFACT produces a press release headlined:
‘ SPACE ALIENS CURED MY CLIMATE MODEL BUT ATE MY ASTROPHYSICS ENVY
I have no idea what you gibberish means, russell. Perhaps it is your idea of debate. In any case I am happy to say that I rest quite well these days. I have been analyzing COPs since Kyoto and COP 23 is a joy, thanks to Trump.
Red Team the silly CSSR!
Trump will be playing golf. Bonn is irrelevant. Appalachia first. Coal is king. Trump rules! Paris drools.
Don, are you saying we will never again have a Democrat President? The Paris Agreement is a presidential deal, not a treaty, so it is only a matter of time until we are back in.. COP 23 is writing the rules for then. They are very important.
“With this final correction, the ERBS Nonscanner-observed decadal changes in tropical mean LW, SW, and net radiation between the 1980s and the 1990s now stand at 0.7, −2.1, and 1.4 W/m2, respectively” http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI3838.1
So quite a large increase in longwave emissions – and even larger decrease in reflected shortwave. The resultant is strong warming (net positive is warming by convention) of 1.4W/m2.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/wong-et-al-2006-e1510341656183.png
“In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.” https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-4-4-1.html
It is very real – so sad too bad. In the longer term sea level rise is correlated with solar activity – and calorimetric considerations suggest a terrestrial amplification of solar forcing by an order of magnitude.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/ocean-callrimeter.jpg
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007JA012989/full
These are things that people have been saying for decades – if they are not too intimidated by extreme reactions to any perceived departure from approved memes.
This just up: “Freeman Dyson on ‘heretical’ thoughts about global warmimg”. Video included.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/10/freeman-dyson-on-heretical-thoughts-about-global-warmimg/
My latest on the Bonn COP 23:
Five rivers of gold to flow from the magical UN COP — not really
http://www.cfact.org/2017/11/10/five-rivers-of-gold-to-flow-from-the-magical-un-cop-not-really/
This is my explanation of what is actually going on in Bonn at COP 23. I have been covering UN Climate COPs ever since Gore went to Kyoto. Thanks to Trump this one is fun.
Here’s the beginning: “That’s COP not cup. The Paris Pact COPs are all about money, not climate. Huge amounts of money. World governments are sending 15,000 negotiators to either get it (developing countries), or to protect themselves from getting badly got (developed countries). That this monumental wealth transfer is not going to happen is irrelevant at this point. No one can afford not to be at the table, just in case by some magic it does happen.
The COP is operating on the unfounded assumption that the developed countries are going to cough up at least $100 billion a year, beginning in 2020 and going on forever. This money is supposed to go to the developing countries; to pay for combating mythical human caused climate change, which the developed countries are said to have caused. The UN even has studies saying that as much as $400 billion a year will be needed so that too is considered to be on the table.
The five rivers of gold are the five revenue channels that the developing countries are trying desperately to dig, each hoping that when the gold starts flowing, it will flow to them. Collectively these channels are called simply “finance.” In their honor November 13 is Finance Day at COP 23. I am not making this up. Here are names of the five revenue channels.”
End of quote.
There is more of course. Feel free to share or quote this article.
Red Team the silly CSSR!
The Republican tax bill includes a tax increase for some graduate students who ‘work’ for their school.
A stipend plus a tuition waiver can set a young person up to continue on their path and prevent the use of new student loans.
“The annual stipend for a PhD student in Carnegie Mellon’s school of computer science is about $32,400. The university covers the student’s $43,000 tuition, in exchange for the research she conducts and the courses she teaches. Under current law, the government taxes only a student’s stipend; the waived tuition is not taken into account. But under the GOP bill, her annual taxable income would rise from $32,400 to $76,234.”
TA and RA grad students have a number of roles. Test scoring, small group help such as teaching labs. Research assistance.
According to a recent VOX article, 60% of those receiving something like the above money are STEM students. People will argue STEM is an important path that we need to stay on for a number of, good for our country reasons.
My son is one of these students. His numbers are smaller as he has a lower cost of living than some of the East Coast schools.
With money, what’s fair? People earning 4 year degrees can get scholarships and grants up the amount of their tuition. As far as taxation goes, as long as the free money is less than the tuition, there is no taxable income. To the extent free money exceeds tuition that is called taxable scholarship, or at least that’s what the IRS says we label it as. The tuition amount absorbs the free money, making it not taxable.
Why would this not happen under the new law? My example isn’t exactly the same, but we try to find rules of thumb that apply across the tax code.
With grad students, why not let the free money of the waiver be absorbed by the tuition?
Why target only the students being targeted? Why not say all grants and scholarships are taxable for those working on 4 year degrees as well?
I don’t see the benefits of the proposed change but I have my bias. If the change is made, a signal will be sent to some students planning on pursuing a PhD.
The situation has not been completely described. Colleges will talk to their accountants. Perhaps these students could have their tuition ‘paid’ with grants and scholarships instead of a waiver.
On the long-run efficacy of punishments…
“…and even tackling global warming and climate change, pose a conflict between cooperating, which is socially optimal and free-riding, which promotes individual self-interest.”
“A significant insight coming out of this work is that enforcing cooperation in social dilemmas requires punishments for free-riding.”
“However, de-centralized peer-to-peer punishments have drawbacks. First, punishment becomes a second-level public good; those who are willing to punish, must not only punish free-riders but also those non-punishers, who may cooperate but do not punish free riders and hence free ride on others’ punishment and so on.”
“…one often finds the incidence of “anti-social” punishments, where free-riders punish cooperators, often in anticipation of punishment from the latter.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-12490-5
We declare what is socially optimal which is cooperating with global warming solutions. We declare some are the problem. And for the good of us all, they should be punished if that works.
And that this is something we can each do if we feel like it.
I never considered it this way.
We don’t have time for a meeting of the flat earth society.
We have skeptics and it’s everyone’s job to call them out. If you don’t, you’re not doing your part.
If few care about global warming and little gets done, we need to stick to our game plan. Keep delivering punishment one to one.
“enforcing cooperation”
Why not? I want that title. Cooperation Enforcer.
Ok you didn’t like the Astrophysicist how about a Princeton Physicist. Yes it must be tedious for you to have reply to us.
I see Ragnaar New appointed supremely arrogant Witchfinder General want to call us out for punishment.
Geoff and I are sorry we can’t go immediately and read 1000,s of recommended cited pages enough to qualify for a meaningless undergraduate degree in your semi academic field of climatology. We actually have a life and real qualifications in our own fields.
No other branch of science assiduously and cynically influences multi trillion $ global policy and tells me to sell my car stop air travel and make my children live in a deindustrialised economy and teepee. So yes you should reply.
Ok I’ll come clean yes Atomsk I’ll admit I have been looking at blog / resources you told me not to. Didn’t follow your advice. God help me.
This 93 year old distinguished Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson Professor of Physics at the Institute of Advanced Study? — he knew well, Francis Crick who has something to do with a double helix and the real science we now call genetics. Is he a member of the flat earth society?
https://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge219.html#dysonf
He thinks your climate computer models are useless as well. Although you do ok in terms of fluid dynamic equations and fluid motion you really have no idea about the real effect of water vapour on radiative transference and the effects of clouds let alone dust and glacial history. What about mud all over the planet and how it captures massive amounts of carbon? Topsoil carbon capture is that in your dumb models?
Proper science in the Enlightenment (another Brit invention, well with some other great Europeans) demonstrated that science is about questioning not dictating perceived dogmas. Our climate is incredibly chaotic and complicated and you do not yet understand it all.
Stop pretending that you do. We won’t mind.
You Atomsk have no right to ludicrously and in a revoltingly patronising way throw scorn on any objection. You are unique amongst scientists to be so arrogantly certain of everything in front of you, your tone and demeanour is just like a born again Christian evolutionary denialist.
As Geoff says you denigrate science itself.
Cast out thee who dusth not believe in the sacred texts of global warming climate change and our great lord redeemer the IPCC and Archbishop Al Gore.
Is there any other branch of science who actively seeks to expel forthwith any non believer. Did you,Atomsk play any role in forcing out Dr Curry from Georgia Tech or was it your co conspirators? The place is littered with failed careers of of honest scientists who dared object and denied belief in the the truth and the light. This in the age of science. A lot of scientists have chosen not to enter this field despite your billions of dollars such is the political stench emanating.
By the way what are you and Agg saying I mustn’t look at Sky Dragons and heretic web sites – what are you doing on Climate etc home of the apostate devil worshiping evil Judy and her fellow deniers?
To say the Climate Depot / blog is a politically driven web site is an extreme example of the pot calling the kettle black. Of course it is and so inherently is the entire Climatology world ,massively and completely —political DOH.
Nobody has forgotten Climategate our main British contribution to this nonsense even on this current thread we see Steve Koonin clearly demonstrating how the IPCC folks have deliberately distorted and manipulated by omission and hence misled people about the SLR data over the past hundred years.
What about AR5 where your lot overtly repressed the poor bunch of scientists who wanted to illustrate how the considerable less sensitivity to greenhouse gases they found – models running too hot and carefully omitted from the final report a tad inconvenient and you want to accuse me of reading politically driven websites.
You sit in your federally funded ivory fossil fuelled air conditioned towers playing with your useless computer models arrogantly doling out your dogma ridden meme obsessed obfuscated nonsense.
Anyway with El Niño fading away and possibly a new El Nina with other natural cooing factors coming in to play there is a good chance of another decade or more of “Pausing” or cooling in global temperatures which is itself a stupid concept as it cools and heats in different places of the planet dependent on the local climate conditions an average is meaningless — you really need to dream up some more dire alarmist nonsense to keep your show on the road.
As I mentioned interest or concern among the population in general is steadily falling and with it your funding and your relevance to anyone. We need to have a few more countries with dumb unstable renewable generating infrastructure. Many panicolgists before you lie dead, forgotten by history.
It must be getting quite a challenge and a worry for you.
Kevin
dear cooperation enforcer.
Can you clarify the very real steps you are obviously taking to reduce your own co2 emissions.?
Without doubt you are contracted to a green energy supplier for your power needs.
your house is supremely well insulated using only natural products.
Cement is only something you read about but never use yourself
you will drive an electric car.
you will only buy local fresh produce from local outlets in the appropriate season.
you will not buy bottled water or indeed any products in plastic bottles.
you will forgo plastics in general
you will decline to use services that deliver them via fossil fuel, for example delivery companies, the emergency services, garbage collection.
you will routinely walk or take a bus-presumably powered by green means.
you will never fly of course-do you find Skype an adequate alternative?
you will not buy unnecessary imported foreign junk, which you can easily do without
Any other tips you can provide as to how we can reduce our co2 footprint?. many thanks
tonyb
Let’s ‘red team’ David.
https://www.facebook.com/Australian.Iriai/posts/1473907749392149
I take it you have not actually read my stuff, Robert. Your comment makes no sense.
I did read it of course – I copied and pasted some of it. Try addressing what was actually said instead of responding with BS like this.
Atomsk’s Sanakan (@AtomsksSanakan) | November 9, 2017 at 9:51 pm “scientists have a fairly good understanding of the physical mechanisms via which increased CO2 causes tropospheric warming with stratospheric cooling”
We can agree on your words. However, they are a shortcut way to the main problem.
The problem is that the understanding is not good enough to support its outcomes to date, including –
. massive policy changes at enormous expense such as in energy generation
. attacks on the credibility of good science; climate science has lowered standards for other science, example, widespread poor treatment of the uncertainty of measurements.
Even the words you choose to write above are slanted by preconception. Once again, you assume an effect for CO2 when there is little if any fundamental scientific evidence of its effects, because there remains no valid described way to attribute natural variation versus man made change. The last IPCC, you recall, declined to give a figure on climate sensitivity and gave a wide range of little future use. (They did not know what CO2 does to air temperatures).
Your “fairly good understanding” is not fit for purpose. That is where we disagree. Geoff.
“…increased CO2 causes tropospheric warming with stratospheric cooling…”
Here’s what I think the argument is. It was predicted. It was observed. What else would also cause such a thing?
How about increased ocean storage? Showing up in the SSTs while cooling it up higher.
But if (lower) tropospheric warming equals stratospheric cooling then there is no overall warming of the atmosphere, merely a slight redistribution of the heat. This redistribution is not global warming.
In particular the satellites show zero overall atmospheric warming during the 1978-1997 period, which is when the surface statistical models show the supposed warming that AGW is based on. After that the little overall atmospheric warming that is actually shown by the satellites is entirely coincident with big El Nino(s).There is thus no observational evidence for AGW. None whatsoever.
You can actually check both tropospheric and stratospheric trends.
http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html
Try some real data sometime.
Even if the two balance out, it’s the GMST that is the metric because of a number of things.
We can consider and uninsulated attic in Minnesota in winter. Take a temperature profile including every 2 inches from top to bottom. Then repeated this profile with the same conditions with 2 feet of insulation.
This argument includes information from this plot:
http://seaice.alaska.edu/gi/observatories/barrow_sealevel/brw2012/BRW_MBS12_currTprof.png
Seems clear to me that ice insulates. If some volume insulates more than before the temperature profile changes. However, it may be possible other factors cancel out the change.
a) the troposphere has ten times as much mass as the stratosphere
b) we live at the bottom of the troposphere
c) the warming and cooling come via different physical effects of the increased CO2 and there is no reason for them to cancel, which they don’t.
Engaging in misinformation to fool the unwary is a common practice. Find the source of it and have a go at correcting them.
Jim D:
My cancel ‘comment’ was to qualify things. There are multiple variables.
Ragnaar,
“It was observed”
Was it within the accuracy limits of the measurement?
Geoff
Geoff Sherrington:
They don’t say here:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=7839
You can try different channels here to change the height:
http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html
I don’t know much about the whole thing. I guess we could ask Spencer.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/03/stossel-show-schmidt-spencer-ridley-on-global-warming/
He comes at it 2 different ways. Let’s applaud Schmidt for getting in front of Stossel. Really, without sarcasm.
It’s official. She’s back.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/november-2017-la-ni%C3%B1a-update-she%E2%80%99s-back
What will this do to the sprinting, rocket pack wearing sea level rise?
Looks like it’s going to be very weak and very short, so probably not much.
r u ok?
It looks to JCH – which is far from persuasive.
^ ur A o.
r u ok?
Sheeee’s back.
Thanks for the link. I learned about a new oscillation, the Madden-Julian (I assume not John) Oscillation. With the golf clubs put away, I’ll have to compile a list of all the oscillations. More than I can keep track of in my head.
I really wish JCH would pull some strings to get CU to update their SLR graph since the 12/16 one is getting a little stale. I’m breathlessly waiting to see if it mirrors the NASA graph that shows the last couple of years have been as flat as ……flat.
I do not understand how on earth you think it would be significantly different. They have their individual methods, but their results are always very close. NASA is at 3.4 mm/yr; AVISO is at 3.29 mm/yr. The tide gauges are at 3.X mm/yr.
It also is just a astounding that you think “flat” is to your argument’s benefit. It’s the exact opposite. In the past, it would usually be trending downward, even straight down. LMAO.
Unless, of course, flat went on and on and on and on. Like the energizer bunny. BTW tidal gauge studies are all over the place. Some up. Some indeterminate. Some acceleration. Some no acceleration. But as noted at the top of the post, Sydney is my favorite. As close to no rise as possible. I think it is safe to assume that if Charlotte Church wants to book a gig at the Opera House in 2100, she won’t have to pack her waders.
Lol. Candy for the delusional. Flat is not going to go on and on.
1900 to 1990 – 1.2 mm/yr
1993 – 2.2 mm/yr
2014 – 3.3 mm/yr
20-year rate – 3.34 mm/yr
10-year rate – 4.24 mm/yr
5-year rate – 4.58 mm/yr
intertia
Flat may well continue. Sea level rise is projected using utterly unreliable models. The essential question is cannot be resolved – will there be any warming at all? Resolution depends on the unpredictable nature of natural variability and the temperature response to greenhouse gases. The latter is some 0.2 degrees C/W/m2. Natural variation is considerably more significant.
‘The satellite altimeter systems designed up to now have widely used the nadir radar altimeters (Seasat, Geosat, Topex/Poseidon, Jason1/2/3, HY-2, etc.), and echo-tracking technique to get a centimeter level accuracy of range estimation [5,6].’
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S167498471630163X
Despite the faux precision of naive fanatics – errors from satellite altimetry exceed annual sea level rise by an order of magnitude. Always a red flag.
I have been perusing the Nature sea level collection. Despite the faux precision and barely informed certainty from a certain commentator – the reality is decadal to centennial changes that of course – in a chaotic climate – can be large and abrupt in proxy sea level data.
And while the satellite altimetry trend is nominally marginally higher than with the tide gauges – it is perhaps more rational to consider that the ‘biasing’ linear trends are broadly in accord. The contention that there is a meaningful change that radar altimeters suddenly discovered is nonsense.
The satellite record is far too short – at any rate – to distinguish internal variability from global warming. Nor do they understand enough about internal variability to realistically remove that nonlinear signal.
Hogwash. Abject hogwash.
NV nets to about zero:
https://imgur.com/pPZsH3Q
You are too sophisticated for me. From the reference: “After simulating the sea surface, the signals received by two antennas are simulated.” That results, of course, in a simulated precision. Strangely enough, the precision for a 1×1 km area is 7 cm, for a 2×2 km area only 5 cm. Believe it or not.
The data isn’t real – but a simulation of what might be a more precise measurement system.
And natural variation does not sum to zero over many millennia.
Very Tall Guy and ATTP both here?
Invasion of the Science Snatchers!
Invasion of the UK Snatches may be more apt. You be the judge.
Climate Change is SO Obama era. Climate change is a dead issue boys. Trump killed it, snowflakes.
So we can expect the earth to continue greening?
Unless you prefer barren fields of ice to beautiful fields of green this is great news!
CO2 causes increased OLR while decreasing albedo:
“The greenhouse effect is well-established. Increased concentrations of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, reduce the amount of outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) to space; thus, energy accumulates in the climate system, and the planet warms. However, climate models forced with CO2 reveal that global energy accumulation is, instead, primarily caused by an increase in absorbed solar radiation (ASR).”
“Instead, observations constrain SW to be at the upper end
of the CMIP5 range, implying that OLR recovers quickly in
response to GHG forcing and that global warming is driven
by enhanced ASR.”
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/47/16700
The paper rearranges the climate flow chart somewhat. It’s weighting of the sustain of CO2’s warming effect is lessened.
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Pingback: Judith Curry merenpinnan kohoamisesta | Roskasaitti
Although Your PDF-document is excelent I still try to find some critical to say:
Few critical observation what were missing from Curry’s document:
No mention about Zwally from Nasa and his result, that the Antarctic ice sheet is growing.
No mention about the volcanic impact to the speed of the western Antarctic ice sheet.
No mention that the acceleretion of sea level rise happen same time as the change to satellite measurements.
I use one screencapture from the PDF-document in my blog:
https://roskasaitti.wordpress.com/2017/11/15/judith-curry-merenpinnan-kohoamisesta/
If there is some copyright issue I remove that image.
One of the things Feynman said was that real scientists should “bend over backwards to try to show how their results might be wrong”…….”real scientists must avoid politicisation even if it mean it’s affects your research funding.
Switch now to IPCC climatologists!!!!
Have they even bent over 1 degree to say they may be wrong.
The term “the science is settled” would have Feynman spinning in his grave.
Mainstream climatologists today have sold every last vestige of their scientific integrity.
Climate Change Cargo Cult
Kevin.
On the contrary, there have been lots of skeptics, some even scientists, you clearly have not noticed even reading these sites, but they haven’t constructed any alternative ideas of any use that can be tested so far. If you find any sources of all this warming that you can believe at all, point them out. Substance is what is missing from skepticism as it’s just namby pamby stuff from them. They have to do better because so far their grade is weak to failing, and you should be telling them that. Have you ever criticized the skeptics for being so weak on this subject? Think about it.
So, can’t some up with another explanation, so must be this. Never mind we can’t actually measure it.
That’s the namby-pamby ‘science’ that credulous nitwits cling to.
This explanation fits both the observations and known physics, so it works fine for the scientists.
It is clear that there is something else going on in climate that Jimmy is unable to process.
e.g. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
It is not that the science of climate complexity and internal variability is lacking – just that they don’t have a clue. The echoed group narrative persists because there is a momentum to which they have committed too much personal capital to review assumptions now. It goes well beyond climate change to include ideological norms of gender, economics and politics that are at social extremes.
Disparagement of the outsider is very much part of the groupthink dynamic. An outsider is someone who doesn’t share the group memes – in a dynamic that evolves through a coordinated effort of gatekeepers and acolytes. We can see it happening ad nauseum here with Jimmy and others.
Groupthink provides the only framework by which we can understand the phenomenon of the global warming collective.
http://www.psysr.org/about/pubs_resources/groupthink%20overview.htm
The point is the skeptics aren’t groupthink except that they all likewise disbelieve that it could even possibly be the increasing GHGs and its associated climate forcing, for some reason that can’t be fathomed.
The point is tat there are other things happening in climate – that have been discussed endlessly but that Jimmy can’t quite grasp.
RIE, no there haven’t. I call your bluff. Nothing has been seriously discussed to have the same effect as GHGs. I see some efforts like GCRs, GTE, and UHI that have an air of desperation to them.
You’re the one who does not have a clue. It both masks and unmasks along an upward trend. It cannot cool. It is not going to cool. The negative phase of the PDO, combined with two strong La Niña events, caused an itty bitty warming paws, and then it got killed off with extreme prejudice. That was the mask. That was your 1945-to-1970 event. Irrelevant in this century. There is no stadium wave coming. It came; it went. Nobody noticed. They’re too busy praying for the big one. The cargo plane full of cold. It’s not coming. Natural variation does not have enough punch in it to make a powder puff football team. It’s this century’s pansy.
e.g. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
Unlike El Niño and La Niña, which may occur every 3 to 7 years and last from 6 to 18 months, the PDO can remain in the same phase for 20 to 30 years. The shift in the PDO can have significant implications for global climate, affecting Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, the productivity of marine ecosystems, and global land temperature patterns. #8220;This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation ‘cool’ trend can intensify La Niña or diminish El Niño impacts around the Pacific basin,” said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The persistence of this large-scale pattern [in 2008] tells us there is much more than an isolated La Niña occurring in the Pacific Ocean.”
Natural, large-scale climate patterns like the PDO and El Niño-La Niña are superimposed on global warming caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and landscape changes like deforestation. According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”
What’s the quantum?
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/wong-et-al-2006-e1510341656183.png
Warming cloud feedbacks – note the large increase in SW forcing – are a small fraction of that at best. Jimmy has made this argument many, many times and it increasingly is bizarrely counter factual. We can understand error – but this goes way beyond that.
JCH, just for you, the itty bitty warming paws:
https://www.reddit.com/r/aww/comments/61i7y0/a_puppy_warming_its_little_paws/
https://i.redd.it/es8k07o9pmny.jpg
JCH’s rhetoric is faintly amusing, the hyperbole extremely unlikely and the lack of any science – or even rational thought – are telltale signs of his ineptitude. I truly don’t know why he bothers?
This is just sloppy nonsense. Read Google Scholar. New papers come out all the time that find some aspect of prior work to be wrong. Prior to Hay, most papers on 20th century sea level rise indicated ~1.7 to 1.9 mm/yr. There was always a problem with those numbers. Munk pointed it out. Hay’s work came in at 1.2 mm/yr, and since then other studies have come in with similar lower numbers.
All of this is met with ridiculously ignorant accusations of manipulation and fraud, etc. Go back and read comment threads here on the Hay paper, which is now looking to be pretty good science.
Feynman would find climate skepticism to be another form of politicized spoon bending. He would be all over the silly nonsense in the comment threads here at CargoCult Etc.
JCH wrote, “Prior to Hay, most papers on 20th century sea level rise indicated ~1.7 to 1.9 mm/yr. There was always a problem with those numbers…”
Yes, when groupthink substitutes for science, you get something very much like a cargo cult.
That high number was from Church & White 2006, who wrote, “Here, we … find a … 20th century rate of sea-level rise of 1.7 ± 0.3 mm yr–1 and a significant acceleration of sea-level rise of 0.013 ± 0.006 mm yr–2.”
But it turns out that their acceleration was all prior to 1930. After 1930 their own data showed a small (statistically insignificant) deceleration.
What’s more, look how they got their 1.7 mm/yr 20th century rate. This is a quote from the paper:
That sounds like a fudge factor, to increase the reported rate of sea-level rise! But I stared at it a while and wondered: why did they say “spatially?”
Surely, I thought, since they were reporting measured acceleration trends, the “additional field” must at least have been temporally uniform. So why did they use the word “spatially?” What other sort of non-uniformity could there be, besides spatial and temporal?
I emailed Drs. Church & White and asked them why they used the adjective “spatially.” Was the “additional field” temporally uniform, I asked? I’ve yet to figure out what that “field” was, but to my amazement Dr. Church replied that it was not temporally uniform.
In 2009 they posted on their web site a new set of averaged sea-level data, from a different set of tide gauges. But they published no paper about it, and I wondered why not. So I duplicated their 2006 paper’s analysis on their new data, and not only did it, too, show slight deceleration after 1925, all the 20th century acceleration had gone away, too. Even for the full 20th century their data showed a slight deceleration.
My guess is that the reason they wrote no paper about it was that the title would have had to have been something like, “Neeeeever mind: no 20th century acceleration in global sea-level rise, after all.”
Finally, in 2011, they posted another new dataset, and this one finally showed acceleration for sea-level even after 1930, though it was very slight, and statistically insignificant.
There is truly no substantive difference – given errors of centimeters at best – between 2mm and 3mm. How do they not know this?
How would you interpret this?
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/sea-level-rise-hay-et-al.jpg
Not sympathetically I’d judge. If we dispense with the nonsense that all warming since 1950 was anthropogenic – there are changing patterns of natural variability in there.
I have been sort of following this. I am expecting a low emissions trajectory – land use, energy and industrial technology and conservation management are all progressing at a rate of knots. The creative and destructive energy of capitalism will ensure a rapid transition over the next couple of decades. That should be good enough for them – but it isn’t. I think they are hanging out for the overthrow of democracy and capitalism.
Nor can they project anything sensible with models. It’s just a nonsense. Lorenz in the 1960’s truncated inputs to 3 decimal places instead of 6 – it made a big difference.
“In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of (perturbed physics) ensembles of model solutions.” TAR 14.2.2.2
Although they have still not managed even that credibly. Yet the lies keep coming. They cannot predict or credibly ‘project’ climate – or as a corollary predict a non-linear ocean response to mooted nonlinear warming.
e.g. http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1956/4751 – http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709.full
Not that warming is all that likely. Warming between 1944 and 1998 – high points of warm regimes – was 0.4 degrees C. The HadCRUT4 data shows the medium for the month and the next two here are the 95% CI. 1950 is the IPCC end point – starting in the depths of decadal cooling.
1944/09 0.293 0.046 0.538
1950/01 -0.318 -0.503 -0.132
1998/07 0.673 0.493 0.847
Weather has been known to be chaotic since Edward Lorenz discovered the ‘butterfly effect’ in the 1960’s. Abrupt climate change on the other hand was thought to have happened only in the distant past and so climate was expected to evolve steadily over this century in response to ordered climate forcing.
More recent work is identifying abrupt climate changes working through the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Southern Annular Mode, the Artic Oscillation, the Indian Ocean Dipole and other measures of ocean and atmospheric states. These are measurements of sea surface temperature and atmospheric pressure over more than 100 years which show evidence for abrupt change to new climate conditions that persist for up to a few decades before shifting again. Global rainfall and flood records likewise show evidence for abrupt shifts and regimes that persist for decades. In Australia, less frequent flooding from early last century to the mid 1940’s, more frequent flooding to the late 1970’s and again a low rainfall regime to recent times.
Anastasios Tsonis, of the Atmospheric Sciences Group at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and colleagues used a mathematical network approach to analyse abrupt climate change on decadal timescales. Ocean and atmospheric indices – in this case the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation and the North Pacific Oscillation – can be thought of as chaotic oscillators that capture the major modes of climate variability. Tsonis and colleagues calculated the ‘distance’ between the indices. It was found that they would synchronise at certain times and then shift into a new state.
It is no coincidence that shifts in ocean and atmospheric indices occur at the same time as changes in the trajectory of global surface temperature. Our ‘interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Tsonis said.
e.g. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
Four multi-decadal climate shifts were identified in the last century coinciding with changes in the surface temperature trajectory. Warming from 1912 to the mid 1940’s, cooling to the late 1970’s, warming to 1998 and plateauing since. The shifts are punctuated by extreme El Niño Southern Oscillation events. Fluctuations between La Niña and El Niño peak at these times and climate then settles into a damped oscillation. Until the next critical climate threshold – due within the decade.
But we also have centennial changes in the Pacific system that emerge from changing patterns of winds and currents. And that have a climate effect through cloud radiative forcing.
e.g. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00003.1
James Hurrell and colleagues in an article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society stated that the ‘global coupled atmosphere–ocean–land–cryosphere system exhibits a wide range of physical and dynamical phenomena with associated physical, biological, and chemical feedbacks that collectively result in a continuum of temporal and spatial variability. The traditional boundaries between weather and climate are, therefore, somewhat artificial.’ http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2009BAMS2752.1
Somewhat artificial is somewhat of an understatement for a paradigm shift in climate science.
It is all so desperate – made more so by the pitiful bleatings of pissant progressives who fondly but falsely imagine that they are champions of science. Here’s a whole book on why they are not.
‘Extreme events are a key manifestation of complex systems, in both the natural and human world. Their economic and social consequences are a matter of enormous concern. Much of science, though, has concentrated – until two or three decades ago – on understanding the mean behavior of physical,
biological, environmental or social systems and their
“normal” variability. Extreme events, due to their rarity, have been hard to study and even harder to predict.”
https://www.nonlin-processes-geophys.net/18/295/2011/npg-18-295-2011.pdf
“If as suggested here, a dynamically driven climate shift has occurred, the duration of similar shifts during the 20th century suggests the new global mean temperature trend may persist for several decades. Of course, it is purely speculative to presume that the global mean temperature will remain near current levels for such an extended period of time. Moreover, we caution that the shifts described here are presumably superimposed upon a long term warming trend due to anthropogenic forcing. However, the nature of these past shifts in climate state suggests the possibility of near constant temperature lasting a decade or more into the future must at least be entertained.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL037022/full
Past data shows that 20 to 30 year regimes are a feature of climate over millennia. See Vance et al linked above. And while there should be some warming – taking into account multi-decadal change shows a minor warming – And this will be offset by cooling from a 1000 year high this century. But they are utterly incapable of entertaining this notion that is at the core of climate – and model – behavior. Climate science is not a monolith – and most of it is wrong. This is – however – contrary to the meme.
There are simple physics – that pissant progressives struggle with – and more difficult physics and natural sciences that are way over their heads. I have come to the conclusion that these leftist doofuses don’t have the inclination, training or capacity for anything but partisan science. Pick a word or a phrase that fits their cognitive biases – not anything more. When it is not actually just crazy narratives.
Over 30 years of climate scientists fretting about global warming and it’s still all academic.
Hard to believe, isn’t it?
“In general, understanding how Earth’s climate varies on decadal timescales and, especially, the way in which fresh water is passed between different reservoirs within the global water cycle, rightfully remains at the forefront of climate science with wide-ranging implications with regards to understanding future conditions both in the near-term and long-term. As we have seen, internal variability in this system can lead to decadal variability in GMSL that serves to enhance or suppress the underlying long-term trends. It should be noted that we are not suggesting here that all decadal sea level variability is related to TWS, but do find TWS variability to play a significant role in sea level changes on the timescale of a decade.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5430504/
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