by Judith Curry
Some thoughts in response to a query from a reporter.
I received the following questions today from a reporter, related to climate change and ‘timelines.’ These questions are good topics for discussion.
My answers are provided below
From your perspective, have the early warnings about how hot the Earth is getting turned out to be accurate? Have they been adjusted higher or lower than expected?
Early predictions of warming were 0.2 to 0.3 degrees Centigrade per decade are too high relative actual observations. Further, blaming all of the recent warming on carbon dioxide emissions is incorrect, in my opinion. Solar indirect effects and multi-decadal oscillations of large scale ocean circulations have been effectively ignored in interpreting the causes of the recent warming.
What is the best figure that explains how we will know when things are really irrevocably bad? Is it the 2ºC limit, as some have reported?
‘Bad’ is a value judgment, and regions are affected differently by climate variations and change. Most of the so-called ‘bad effects’ of climate change relate to the natural variability of weather, and there is little to no evidence that extreme weather events have been worsening, against the large variations of natural climate variability.
How do the actions (or inactions) of the Trump administration, such as withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, affect that timeline? If Democrats win the government in 2020, would implementing the Green New Deal (if it even passed) be too little, too late?
1.5 C
Larry Kummer has a post today Did the IPCC predict a climate apocalypse? No.
Excerpts from the IPCC Special Report on 1.5C, Summary for Policy makers.
B1. Climate models project robust differences in regional climate characteristics between present-day and global warming of 1.5°C, and between 1.5°C and 2°C. …
B1.1. Evidence from attributed changes in some climate and weather extremes for a global warming of about 0.5°C supports the assessment that an additional 0.5°C of warming compared to present is associated with further detectable changes in these extremes (medium confidence). …
B1.3. Risks from droughts and precipitation deficits are projected to be higher at 2°C compared to 1.5°C global warming in some regions (medium confidence). …
B2. By 2100, global mean sea level rise is projected to be around 0.1 metre lower {4″} with global warming of 1.5°C compared to 2°C (medium confidence). …
B2.1. Model-based projections of global mean sea level rise (relative to 1986-2005) suggest an indicative range of 0.26 to 0.77 m by 2100 for 1.5°C global warming, 0.1 m (0.04-0.16 m) {4″} less than for a global warming of 2°C (medium confidence). …
B3. On land, impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, including species loss and extinction, are projected to be lower at 1.5°C of global warming compared to 2°C. …
B3.1. Of 105,000 species studied,9 6% of insects, 8% of plants and 4% of vertebrates are projected to lose over half of their climatically determined geographic range for global warming of 1.5°C, compared with 18% of insects, 16% of plants and 8% of vertebrates for global warming of 2°C (medium confidence). …
B3.2. Approximately 4% (interquartile range 2–7%) of the global terrestrial land area is projected to undergo a transformation of ecosystems from one type to another at 1ºC of global warming, compared with 13% (interquartile range 8–20%) at 2°C (medium confidence). …
B4. Limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2ºC is projected to reduce increases in ocean temperature as well as associated increases in ocean acidity and decreases in ocean oxygen levels (high confidence). …
B4.1. There is high confidence that the probability of a sea-ice-free Arctic Ocean during summer is substantially lower at global warming of 1.5°C when compared to 2°C. With 1.5°C of global warming, one sea ice-free Arctic summer is projected per century. This likelihood is increased to at least one per decade with 2°C global warming. Effects of a temperature overshoot are reversible for Arctic sea ice cover on decadal time scales (high confidence). …
B4.4. Impacts of climate change in the ocean are increasing risks to fisheries and aquaculture via impacts on the physiology, survivorship, habitat, reproduction, disease incidence, and risk of invasive species (medium confidence) but are projected to be less at 1.5ºC of global warming than at 2ºC.
Larry Kummer’s comments:
“Most of the findings in the SPM of this Special Report are of two kinds. First, stating that the effects of 1.5°C warming are less than those of 2.0°C warming. Pretty obvious, but it means little unless we know the effects of 2°C warming. It seldom quantifies the difference in effects from that extra 0.5°C warming, which is the key information necessary to know when assessing the cost-benefit of limiting the coming warming.
Second, there are more specific findings – bad but not disastrous – given at a “medium” level of confidence. The IPCC uses five levels of confidence: very low, low, medium, high, and very high. “Medium” is a weak basis for extreme measures to restructure society and the global economy. Especially since it is human nature to overestimate confidence more often than to underestimate it.”
JC note: with regards to IPCC confidence definitions, seem my previous post A crisis of overconfidence
“There is nothing in this Special Report justifying belief that the world will end, that the world will burn, or that humanity will go extinct. It has been misrepresented just as past reports have been (e.g., the 4th US National Climate Assessment). The disasters described the Climate Emergency and Extinction Rebellion activists are those of RCP8.5, the worst-case scenario in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment report – or even beyond it. RCP8.5 is, as a worst-case scenario should be, a horrific but not apocalyptic future that is improbable or impossible.”
JC note: with regards to RCP8.5, see my previous post What’s the worst case? Emissions/concentrations scenarios
JC conclusion
Bottom line is that these timelines are meaningless. While we have confidence in the sign of the temperature change, we have no idea what its magnitude will turn out to be. Apart from uncertainties in emissions and the Earth’s carbon cycle, we are still facing a factor of 3 or more uncertainty in the sensitivity of the Earth’s climate to CO2, and we have no idea how natural climate variability (solar, volcanoes, ocean oscillations) will play out in the 21st century. And even if we did have significant confidence in the amount of global warming, we still don’t have much of a handle on how this will change extreme weather events. With regards to species and ecosystems, land use and exploitation is a far bigger issue.
Cleaner sources of energy have several different threads of justification, but thinking that sending CO2 emissions to zero by 2050 or whenever is going to improve the weather and the environment by 2100 is a pipe dream. If such reductions come at the expense of economic development, then vulnerability to extreme weather events will increase.
There is a reason that the so-called climate change problem has been referred to as a ‘wicked mess.’
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.press.
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
Hifast
Did you notice that nearly every question was about the FUTURE climate?
But no one on this planet has proven he or she can predict the future climate, so it is impossible to get a right answer, beyond speculation.
Unfortunately, JC participates in the speculation, and only at the end does she ‘almost’ admits that no one knows.
Unfortunately, JC wrote: “While we have confidence in the sign of the temperature change, we have no idea what its magnitude will turn out to be.”
WRONG.
JC, you have no idea whether our planet will be warmer or cooler in 100 years. I have no idea. No one knows.
The correct answer about the future climate is “No One Knows”, and as a scientist, that fact should have been stated first, and clearly stated.
Only then should one speculate about the future climate, if the reporter is still interested.
I don’t have a PhD — only a Masters Degree, so I don’t have a problem saying “I don’t know what the future climate will be”. I wish more people had the courage to say climate science is not settled, and no one knows the future climate ! Why is that so hard to say ?
Richard Greene…”But no one on this planet has proven he or she can predict the future climate, so it is impossible to get a right answer, beyond speculation”.
The IPCC stated in TAR that future climates cannot be predicted. They have offered no statement since to counter that statement. Rather they have taken the advice of expert reviewer, Vincent Gray, that unvalidated models cannot predict. Therefore, the IPCC have changed predict to project.
All the IPCC offers are projections, which are glorified guesses.
https://www.int-res.com/articles/cr/10/c010p155.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20110313140007/http://www.nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/gray2.ipcc%20spin.pdf
When the oceans are warm and wet, it snows more and that bounds the upper limits of temperature and sea level.
When the oceans are cold and frozen, it snows less and that bounds the lower limits of temperature and sea level.
CO2 just makes green things grow better, while using less water.
About 2000 years ago, there was a Roman Warm Period and then it got cold. About 1000 years ago there was a Medieval Warm Period and then it got cold. That was called the Little Ice Age. It is warm again now because it is supposed to be warm. It is a natural cycle. CO2 just makes green things grow better, while using less water.
Climate has always changed in natural cycles. Oceans are carbonated drinks, there is a natural correlation between vapor pressure of CO2 following changes in the carbonated water temperature. Ice extent has always correlated with temperature, it is cause and not result.
CO2 sometimes correlates with temperature with the CO2 lagging the temperature change. CO2 sometimes totally does not correlate with temperature. Now, we have a significant lead by CO2 increase and two decades with no temperature following the CO2.
Ice extent and temperature have always correlated. The alarmists even promote this, and most “so called” skeptics.
If temperature changes caused ice extent changes, there would be a huge lag, it takes time to freeze water and it takes time to thaw ice.
There is no lag between temperature and ice extent, the ice extent is the cause and temperature is the result.
If you give up on consensus “so called” facts, that are really wrong, then study actual data, especially ice core data, understanding truth comes from understanding data.
There is a reason that the so-called climate change problem has been referred to as a ‘wicked mess.’
The reason is: “data and history are not considered as important” “only alarmist theory and flawed model output are considered”.
Data and history show that climate changes in natural cycles of warm, following cold, following warm, following cold, etc.
For ten thousand years the warm and cold periods have averaged a few hundred years. This warm period will last a few hundred years, it will not get warmer than other warm periods in this recent ten thousand years and it will not get a lot colder before the warmer time and more snowfall increases ice sequestering and later ice advance. What has happened will repeat.
One more molecule of CO2 per ten thousand molecules of atmosphere has not made a measurable difference.
One more molecule of CO2 per ten thousand molecules of atmosphere will not made a measurable difference.
One more molecule of CO2 per ten thousand molecules of atmosphere could not made a measurable difference.
Climate has always changed from natural causes, study and understand that or quit pretending to understand anything about causes of climate change.
you have no idea what you are talking about.
Judy,
Great work. More ammunition for non-scientists like moi.
Steve
“Even my best friends don’t know, I am searching for the philosophers stone.”
Van Morrison
Stephen Heins
The Practical Environmentalist, LLC
530 Wilson Avenue
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Humanity’s hubris knows no bounds. It has always been easy to rile the mob with simplistic talking points and doomsday predictions. Most people don’t look beyond the end of their nose, nor do they wish to expend the energy to actually think about some of these things. It’s truly unfortunate that climate science has become a “believers and heretics” pantomime, where anyone who doesn’t agree with the current climate disaster is simply stupid.
This is the WPA/CCC program for the 21st century!
Will keep people employed.
What more can we ask for?
The catastrophic misinterpretation of IPCC SR 1.5 would be funny if it were not so sad. That study merely addressed an internal debate about the Paris Agreement targets, with one school okay with 2.0 and a more radical school wanting 1.5 (which is just a tiny 0.5 degrees of future warming). So the UNFCCC asked the IPCC what the difference was?
The difference is slight but the IPCC said correctly (for once) that the models said holding to 1.5 would require truly radical action. In fact some models say it cannot now be done.
For some reason the new wave of green radicals interpreted this as saying truly radical action is required to avoid catastrophe on the scale of human extinction. Larry is perfectly right and I have been pointing out that this interpretation is utter nonsense for some time.
What is interesting is that the new radicalism threatens to seriously weaken the alarmist movement, simply because it is so extreme.
See my https://www.cfact.org/2019/09/28/is-climate-alarmism-tearing-itself-apart/. Trump loves AOC and the Extinction Rebellion.
Mr. Wojick
I read your article at “cfact”, and will return there often.
Very clear thinking, and easy to read writing = very unusual for a PhD.
Keep up the good work.
Socialism used to be something to be implemented in the US very gradually — but the young socialists want a huge change NOW.
The coming climate crisis (that never comes) was the mantra of a “secular religious” cult. popular with people who reject conventional religions.
As an atheist since I was old enough to understand that word, I find conventional religions, AND the climate change religion, to be strange faith-based groups.
But the Green New Deal (ordeal?), and the even more bizarre Extinction Rebellion, have moved much further into Fantasyland — they are the beliefs of village idiots !
What a coincidence that I just made a figure to illustrate that point in a discussion just a few hours ago:
https://i.imgur.com/dltEbVa.png
The most amazing thing is that many in the climate debate are pushing the idea that the IPCC is too conservative in its predictions. How can they predict double what is observed and be conservative?
The First Law of alarmism:
Speculation is not constrained by observation.
Javier
The temperature data you chose, and the period of time included on the chart with your comment, make it appear that you were deliberately trying to make the IPCC (climate model based) predictions look better than they were !
In my opinion, surface temperature data are not global, and are not reliable — I am puzzled why you have not used the best available temperature data from UAH weather satellites.
And then you cherry picked the starting year 1990 for your chart.
Lots of CO2 was added to the atmosphere before 1990.
Starting a chart with the year 1940 would make the IPCC theories look even more wrong !
I assume you started in 1990 because the IPCC was created in 1988 ?
But the global warming rate they predict from CO2 is based on a theory from the 1970s, and could be applied to 1940 through 1990 too.
The +1.5 to +4.5 degrees C. warming, from a 100% CO2 level increase, has not c hanged since the 1970s. and has been used by the IPCC since 1988 !
I have used HadCRUT4 because that’s a dataset the IPCC uses, so everybody has to accept the result, and I have chosen 1990 as the start because that is when the IPCC prediction in FAR was made.
Re: “I am puzzled why you have not used the best available temperature data from UAH weather satellites.”
I’m sorry, but it’s comical to claim that the UAH satellite-based analysis is the best available temperature data. The UAH team has a decades-long history of screwing up their analyses, as covered in sources such as:
“A comparative analysis of data derived from orbiting MSU/AMSU instruments”
“The reproducibility of observational estimates of surface and atmospheric temperature change”
“The effect of diurnal correction on satellite-derived lower tropospheric temperature”
“Effects of orbital decay on satellite-derived lower-tropospheric temperature trends”
“Spurious trends in satellite MSU temperatures from merging different satellite records”
“Difficulties in obtaining reliable temperature trends: Reconciling the surface and satellite microwave sounding unit records”
“Global warming deduced from MSU”
“Comments on “Analysis of the merging procedure for the MSU daily temperature time series””
“Global warming: Evidence from satellite observations”
Pages 5 and 6: “Review of the consensus and asymmetric quality of research on human-induced climate change”
“Tropospheric temperature trends: history of an ongoing controversy”
Some of my personal favorites on this:
“Once we realized that the diurnal correction being used by Christy and Spencer for the lower troposphere had the opposite sign from their correction for the middle troposphere sign, we knew that something was amiss. Clearly, the lower troposphere does not warm at night and cool in the middle of the day. We question why Christy and Spencer adopted an obviously wrong diurnal correction in the first place. They first implemented it in 1998 in response to Wentz and Schabel (1), which found a previous error in their methodology: neglecting the effects of orbit decay.”
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/310/5750/972.long
From 36:31 to 37:10:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-NFUgFU0EM&feature=youtu.be
Also, the RSS satellite-based team admits that the satellite-based analyses under-estimate warming, because the satellite-based analyses are likely flawed. Others research note a similar point. See, for instance:
AGU conference abstract: “Understanding and reconciling differences in surface and satellite-based lower troposphere temperatures”
Page S18 of: “State of the climate in 2018”
Figure 10: “An analysis of discontinuity in Chinese radiosonde temperatures using satellite observation as a reference”
Page 7715: “A satellite-derived lower tropospheric atmospheric temperature dataset using an optimized adjustment for diurnal effects”
The UAH satellite-based team even went out of their way to slash their warming trend over the past twenty years, when going from their version 5.6 analysis to their version 6 analysis. That caused them to under-estimate warming even more:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DridjvTXgAEqP9v?format=jpg&name=small
[figure 7 of: “UAH version 6 global satellite temperature products: Methodology and results”]
Hence UAH being a low outlier among analyses of bulk tropospheric temperature trends:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EHIS70eW4AEwcsV?format=png&name=900×900
[page S18 of: “State of the climate in 2018”]
So let’s drop the wildly implausible idea that UAH provides the best data; in fact, they are one of the worst sources, if not the worst. And it wouldn’t be an apt comparison here anyway, since the IPCC 1990 FAR projections were for surface trends, while UAH is a bulk tropospheric analyses. To compare them would constitute an apples-to-oranges comparison, as even UAH’s Roy Spencer admits:
“Comparing tropospheric and surface temperatures is a little like comparing apples and oranges.”
http://archive.is/ZvzmI#selection-197.0-197.94
Javier:
I think it’s good to use HadCRUT4. When I use wood for trees, I find I can make my point just fine with it. Often using GISS too. Your plot shows about 0.25 C per decade. Everyone say it. Not so scary. They need an upside breakout or the message is lost. It aint breaking out. No mechanism. We threw the kitchen sink at Mother Nature all ready.
Reply to Mr. Sanacan (below):
Your diatribe attacking UAH data brands you as a
trained parrot of climate alarmism — a DING DING DING bat of climate science, since you fail to list even one problem with surface temperature “data” !
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that surface “data” is LESS likely to represent global average temperature reality than weather satellite data.
You are so blinded by bias that you don’t even realize that by attacking UAH data quality, you are actually attacking ALL global temperature data compilations, because the numbers are all similar –but I suppose in your climate alarmist mind, UAH must be the worst simply because it reflects slightly less warming than other compilations and you “know” which temperature compilation is best, and which is worst ?
If you HATE the UAH satellite data, then you must REALLY HATE the surface temperature data … but apparently the surface data are “perfect”, at least in your biased mind, because you provide absolutely no criticism of them ?
Surface temperature global average “data” are not global — not even close.
UAH has near global coverage.
The majority of surface grid cells are missing data, or have no temperature data — so the numbers are wild guessed to create a global average.
I suppose that doesn’t matter — the wild guesses are made by government bureaucrats, and they just MUST be right, because they have science degrees !
Then the infilled numbers are repeatedly “adjusted” over the years — for example, the originally claimed -0.3 degree C. cooling from 1940 to 1975 has been revised to either no cooling, half the original estimate of cooling, or one-third the original estimate of cooling, depending on which surface temperature compilation you prefer.
.
.
The relevant portion of greenhouse warming takes place in the troposphere, not on our planet’s surface.
The planet’s surface is warmed from the warmer troposphere … but also from economic growth in the vicinity of weather stations, repeated changes to measurement equipment, weather station locations, numbers of weather stations used in the global compilation, dark soot continually falling on the snow and ice in the Arctic, etc.
The troposphere is a much more consistent environment for temperature measurements.
If UAH has problems, which are not hidden, then surface “data” have far more problems.
If UAH was showing MORE global warming than surface “data”, you would be singing praises for UAH — because that’s how trained parrots of climate alarmism behave.
Re: “You are so blinded by bias that you don’t even realize that by attacking UAH data quality, you are actually attacking ALL global temperature data compilations, because the numbers are all similar”
Nope. You’re just repeating a false claim of your’s, despite the fact that I gave you evidence showing you’re wrong. As I already told you, UAH is a low outlier:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EHIS70eW4AEwcsV.jpg
[page S18 of: “State of the climate in 2018”]
https://www.ametsoc.org/index.cfm/ams/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/state-of-the-climate/
For instance, of the analyses listed above, only ERA-I shows as little tropospheric warming as UAH. Which is ironic, since ERA-I under-estimated warming, as admitting by the scientists who publish ERA-I, among other scientists (hence ERA-I being updated by ERA5):
“Estimating low-frequency variability and trends in atmospheric temperature using ERA-Interim”
section 9 of: “A reassessment of temperature variations and trends from global reanalyses and monthly surface climatological datasets”
section 2 of: “Climate variability and relationships between top-of-atmosphere radiation and temperatures on Earth”
Re: “Surface temperature global average “data” are not global — not even close. UAH has near global coverage.”
UAH’s greater coverage doesn’t mean much when the UAH analysis undergoes incompetent homogenization. And a number of surface temperature analyses have sufficient coverage, such as ERA5, GISTEMP, Berkeley Earth, and Cowtan+Way. HadCRUT4 doesn’t, JMA doesn’t, and NOAA is borderline. That can be confirmed by comparing these instrumental trends to other sources, such as satellite-based surface analyses that have greater coverage. See, for instance:
“A high-resolution 1983–2016 Tmax climate data record based on infrared temperatures and stations by the Climate Hazard Center”
“Assessing recent warming using instrumentally homogeneous sea surface temperature records”
“Assessing the impact of satellite-based observations in sea surface temperature trends”
“Recent global warming as confirmed by AIRS”
And you really don’t need that many stations to get sufficient coverage, especially since temperature trends are correlated across long distances. See the sources below for more context on this:
https://youtu.be/VR3j2Sl8CTo
(based on: “Statistical analysis of coverage error in simple global temperature estimators”)
“Global trends of measured surface air temperature”
figure 3 of: “Towards a global land surface climate fiducial reference measurements network”
“A method to determine station density requirements for climate observing networks”
figure 1 of: “Berkeley Earth Temperature Averaging Process — supplement on statistical and mathematical methods”
http://berkeleyearth.org/static/pdf/methods-paper-supplement.pdf
Re: “The planet’s surface is warmed from the warmer troposphere … but also from economic growth in the vicinity of weather stations, repeated changes to measurement equipment, weather station locations, numbers of weather stations used in the global compilation, dark soot continually falling on the snow and ice in the Arctic, etc.”
Your references to UHI (urban heat island effect) and the like really aren’t going to help your case. For example:
1) Temperature proxies confirm the observed pattern of global warming, even without use of thermometers [that goes along with the satellite-based surface analyses I mentioned above]:
“Independent confirmation of global land warming without the use of station temperatures”
“Last Millennium Reanalysis with an expanded proxy database and seasonal proxy modeling” [data addition: “Additions to the Last Millennium Reanalysis Multi-Proxy Database”]
“A global multiproxy database for temperature reconstructions of the Common Era”
“Global warming in an independent record of the past 130 years”
“Global and hemispheric temperature reconstruction from glacier length fluctuations”
2) Scientists can correct for UHI by using processes known as homogenization. Homogenization corrects for artifacts / errors known as heterogeneities or inhomogeneities; these heterogeneities artificially skew temperature records. When one corrects for UHI using homogenization, there is still statistically significant surface warming and most of the observed surface warming remains. See:
“Quantifying the effect of urbanization on U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperature records”
“Urban heat island effects on estimates of observed climate change”
“Assessment of urban versus rural in situ surface temperatures in the contiguous United States: No difference found”
“Urbanization effects in large-scale temperature records, with an emphasis on China”
“Urbanization effects on observed surface air temperature trends in north China”
“Correcting urban bias in large-scale temperature records in China, 1980–2009”
“Contribution of urbanization to warming in China”
3) Wind mitigates the effect of UHI. So if UHI was responsible for much of the long-term warming, then there should be a large discrepancy in the temperature record for windy areas vs. non-windy areas. However, this predicted difference is not observed. Thus UHI is not responsible for much of the long-term warming trend:
“A demonstration that large-scale warming is not urban”
“Climate: Large-scale warming is not urban”
“Urban heat island effects on estimates of observed climate change”
Javier…”I have used HadCRUT4 because that’s a dataset the IPCC uses…”
Hadcrut gets its data from NOAA via GHCN. GHCN has been corrupt for a long time. 90% of the stations have been slashed since 1990 and more recently NOAA admitted to slashing the existing REPORTING stations from 6000 to less than 1500 stations.
You haven’t forgotten, have you, that hadcrut was lead by Phil Jones till recently? He was caught in the Climategate emails urging his cronies not to cooperate with an FOI request from Canadian Steve McIntyre to get hadcrut data for an independent audit.
What did Jones have to hide? Like NOAA, he has admitted to amending the temperature record while conveniently losing the original data. Is it any wonder he did not want McIntyre poking through his data after what McIntyre found seriously wanting in Mann’s hockey stick data?
He also admitted in the emails to using Mann’s ‘trick’ to hide declining temperatures. He applauded the death of skeptic John Daly and threatened to use his position as a Coordinating Lead Author at IPCC reviews to block papers from skeptics. He claimed his CLA partner, Kevin (presumably Trenberth), would aid him in his chicanery.
BTW, one paper they had their sites on was a paper co-authored by John Christy of UAH. Apparently they succeeded in blocking the paper. On another occasion, the aforementioned Trenberth interfered with a paper from UAH by putting pressure on the journal editor, who later resigned.
There’s a story behind the relationship between hadcrut and the IPCC. The IPCC was formed based on the input to the United Nations by former UK PM Margaret Thatcher. She was having a hard time dealing with striking UK coal miners and she was advised to use her degree in chemistry at the UN to baffle them re anthropogenic emissions to put the idea in the minds of UN delegates that emissions like those from coal could lead to global warming.
She obviously succeeded because the UN later created the IPCC to investigate. Thatcher also put forward one of her proteges from hadcrut, John Houghton, a climate modeler, and he became the first co-chair of the IPCC.
Houghton was the founder of the Hadley Centre, and it seems the IPCC is formed based on the Hadley model. It was authorized by, guess who…Margaret Thatcher. Hadcrut is a data set compiled by the Hadley Centre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadley_Centre_for_Climate_Prediction_and_Research
I hope you realize the relationship between hadcrut and the IPCC is embroiled in politics. IMHO, there is corruption as well.
“Early predictions of warming were 0.2 to 0.3 degrees Centigrade per decade are too high relative actual observations. Further, blaming all of the recent warming on
carbon dioxide emissions is incorrect, in my opinion.”
See( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfRBr7PEawY ) for radiosonde evidence that the atmosphere obeys ideal gas law and no greenhouse effect is present. The Connollys have analyzed about 20 million radiosonde data sets covering the last 70 years and have concluded that “this work shows categorically that there is no greenhouse effect in our atmosphere, increasing greenhouse gasses increases absorption and emission equally causing no warming, the IPCC were wrong to assume recent warming was due to greenhouse gasses,and current climate model temperature projections are worthless.”
DMA, interesting video, but they may have missed a few things. Firstly while GHG heating may not apply to the atmospheric transmission it does still apply from surface transmission to space having 50% of the relevant photons routed back to surface. That should be limited though especially when evaporation and convection tend to have a big effect.
As for their assessment of the stratosphere not being radiatively heated, that doesn’t fit with expansion of the stratosphere during solar max, and the inverse correlation between ozone concentration and stratospheric temp Because the stratosphere is heated primarily during the day by the sun it generates a wave with some of the energy being converted to kinetic energy in the form of wind. When the air spirals in to the poles it is compressively heated just like an accretion disk in a black hole. I’m also a fan gravitational heating theory btw.
It’s a sad day when nobody in the Climate Etc comments will defend a devastating attack on climate alarmists – and their misrepresentations of the IPCC’s work.
In days of yore, there would have been a score of frantic comments attempting to refute the obvious. Now the alarmists dominate the public space – skeptics are driven away (e.g., Susan Crockford) – but nobody will stand for them in space where they are subject to immediate rebuttal.
They’re winning. Why bother with rational argument?
I defend Judith. And they’re not winning…
Yup
I agreed with you above, Larry. Is that not defense? But they are not winning, just getting louder and crazier.
David,
“I agreed with you above, Larry. Is that not defense?”
My apologies for being unclear. By “a score of frantic comments attempting to refute the obvious”, I meant comments defending the alarmist narrative.
“But they are not winning.”
I did not say who is winning. I said “Now the alarmists dominate the public space.”
Alarmists are in the daily headlines, usually applauded. Those who contest them are mostly ignored – or even suppressed in a variety of ways, such as being banned from social media and much of the news media (eg, policies of The Guardian and BBC), vilified (eg, Susan Crockford, Roger Pielke), or sued (eg, by Michael Mann).
They only dominate those public spaces dominated by liberals, mostly newspapers. Skeptic’s dominate both talk radio and the blogosphere, which are wide open spaces. Not sure about new social media like Facebook and Twitter. An interesting question.
David
You vastly understate the dominance of the media’s support of climate alarmism. The internet media and television worldwide supports the alarmist notion.
Fortunately, the US public largely does not support the government policies the alarmist wish to be enacted. In the US, the alarmists are loosing and time is on the side of better data.
Rob: In the US, Fox News does a good TV job of skepticism. I do not know what you mean by Internet media. Blogs and listservs are such and many are skeptical.
I know little about other countries, but a recent poll shows considerable skepticism. Amusingly, Sweden appears as more skeptical than America. Poor Greta.
They are winning the public relations war with the assistance of the scientific illiterate sycophants in the media. The dialogue has been unbelievably dumbed down in the press, ignoring the complexity and nuance of the actual scientific issues.
But they are not winning the science. Each year there are more peer reviewed studies which emphasize the natural variability elements of the past, notably referencing the LIA and MWP, despite contention of their non existence.
David
Watch and read more than just Fox news.
All the other networks support and promote the notion of climate alarmism. Internet news sources such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, AP, Huff Post all promote the notion than action is needed….yesterday to avoid disaster.
The polls are mostly on the side of alarmists.
The polls were mostly on the side of Hillary
The people voted and Trump is our president.
The losers are getting louder and crazier, but that is not helping them win.
That tells people who we do not want to be in control of anything.
Rob Starkey…”You vastly understate the dominance of the media’s support of climate alarmism. The internet media and television worldwide supports the alarmist notion”.
I pestered the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation here in Canada till they had one of their policy poobahs contact me. He engaged me in a dialog of nonsense, pointing out that CBC presents the views of the IPCC. When I pointed to the credentials and integrity of John Christy of UAH, he was unmoved. He was not interested in the views of Christy, a degreed climate scientist, a multiple IPCC reviewer and lead-author, and a man of impeccable integrity.
The CBC has no problem interviewing Michael Mann and in one of there programs they scewered Tim Ball and Fred Singer. They had no interest in the views of Singer re warming or climate, they only wanted to discredit him re his interests in the tobacco industry back in the 1969s.
This is more than media policy, the media has forsaken the basis of journalism to present propaganda based on a religious-type, politically-correct, belief system.
The CBC science department was once ruled over by fruit-fly scientist David Suzuki. Suzuki has long forsaken the scientific method for eco-alarmist propaganda. When a female reporter pestered him about his views, he told her to eff-off, his words not mine. Reminds me of the lack of regard Michael Mann has for women like Judith Curry.
Now the CBC science department is run by Bob McDonald, a Suzuki clone and equally narrow-minded.
And don’t get me going on the clown-prince, Bill Nye. He was demolished in a debate with Richard Lindzen in which Nye revealed his utter lack of understanding of atmospheric physics. Yet Nye is popular with media types.
Re: “It’s a sad day when nobody in the Climate Etc comments will defend a devastating attack on climate alarmists – and their misrepresentations of the IPCC’s work.
In days of yore, there would have been a score of frantic comments attempting to refute the obvious. Now the alarmists dominate the public space – skeptics are driven away (e.g., Susan Crockford) – but nobody will stand for them in space where they are subject to immediate rebuttal.”
Oh, give me a break. You’re posting a comment on the day this blog article is posted, marveling that other people have not posted comments rebutting it yet. Do you realize how outrageous that is? Do you not recognize your double-standard / special pleading? For instance, I highly doubt that if no one posted a day-of rebuttal comment on a RealClimate post or another AGW blog article, that you would take this as some great defeat of climate contrarians. Many people have other things to do, Kummer, beyond posting day-of rebuttals each time a contrarian blog article is posted, especially from a source that’s just repeating their usual, long-debunked claims.
Also, I suspect that you’re just imagining these supposed “alarmists”. And Crockford is not a “skeptic” in the scientific sense of the term. She’s more like those people who continued to refuse to accept the evidence that smoking causes cancer, even after an evidence-based scientific consensus formed on the topic. The Heartland Institute (especially its leader Joseph Bast) were notorious for misrepresenting the science on the health risks of smoking, just as they now misrepresenting climate science. There’s a term for people like that; it begins with a D:
“This paper has been corrected online and in print in order to clarify Dr. Crockford’s scientific expertise and financial links in relation to the arguments made in the paper (BioScience 68: 281–287). The corrected text is as follows:
First change: Notably, as of this writing, Crockford has neither conducted any original research nor published any articles in the peer-reviewed literature on the effects of sea ice on the population dynamics of polar bears.
Second change: Some of the most prominent AGW deniers, including Crockford, are linked with or receive support from organizations that downplay AGW (e.g., Dr. Crockford has previously been paid for report writing by the Heartland Institute).
The authors apologize for any confusion.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5894075/
Anyway, I already have a Twitter thread covering your usual distortions of IPCC reports and the accuracy of their projections:
https://twitter.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/1181954715879276544
And I’ve already posted a comment below rebutting one of Curry’s usual false claims in her blog article.
Atomsk,
It is amusing that people like you think that research funded by industry is wickedly tainted.
Through many of the decades of my career in the resources industry, employed by a public company that we grew from humble beginnings by the application of high quality hard science, we enjoyed the act of funding research by universities and bodies like CSIRO. There was an interface body, Australia!Ian Minerals Industry Research Association. It was my choice to represent our company for some of the projects, which were invariably cordial and cooperative and a benefit to both parties.
It is likely that you have no evidence for this modern tainting of which you write. It smells somewhat of another trendy modern mind disease, chemophobia. Or ignorant fear of radioactivity.
Why do you consider that Heartland, for example, should not validly fund research? Do you fear that different scientific findings are contagious, like Ebola virus disease? What harm can possibly come from research funded by industry or interest groups? Why is it ok for Greenpeace to fund research, but not Heartland, in your view? Geoff S
Atomsky,
Thank you. That’s exactly the kind of frantic, even desperate, rebuttals I expect to see here! Yours is even more so than usual.
(1) “use a number of disingenuous tactics to evade the fact that it did the test they asked for”
Not even close. The “test I asked for” was re-running the code with observed forcings (co2, volcanoes, etc) and matching the forecast with actual temperatures. NOT comparing the predictions with actuals, and attempting to adjust for the difference between the scenario’s forcings and actual forcings. Did you read the post?
(2) “Nor did they show the difference between the scenarios used and actual observations”
Again, not even close. I referred to comparison of scenario inputs (CO2, volcanoes) vs. actual events. Not a comparison of forecasted temps and actual temps.
You show a graph of predicted vs. actual *temperatures* – how can you believe that is a parameter in the scenario used to make the prediction?
@ Geoff Sherrington
Re: “Why do you consider that Heartland, for example, should not validly fund research?”
Why do you think the moon is made of cheese?
See, I can imitate your tactic of basing a question off a straw man you erected of the other person’s position.
Nowhere did I claim that Heartland should not validly fund research. In fact, if you actually read what I cited, then you’d I posted that that Crockford performed no peer-reviewed research on the effects of sea ice on the population dynamics of polar bears. Thus there was no relevant peer-reviewed research for Heartland to fund from her. I don’t consider her contrarian, non-peer-reviewed blog articles competent research, anymore than I count ramblings on flat-Earther blog to be competent research.
@ Larry Kummer
Re: “Not even close. The “test I asked for” was re-running the code with observed forcings (co2, volcanoes, etc) and matching the forecast with actual temperatures. NOT comparing the predictions with actuals, and attempting to adjust for the difference between the scenario’s forcings and actual forcings. Did you read the post?”
Here’s what you actually said:
“That is, run past models (i.e., those used in past Assessment Reports) with actual data from model creation until present – and compare their forecasts with observed weather. The result would tell us much. I wonder why they do not do so. Congress would cheerfully fund such tests.”
http://archive.is/XPizc#selection-669.2-669.282
Your current reply show that you don’t understand the article, and/or you’re evading your challenge being met. “Re-running the code” and “run past models” just means applying observed forcings to the model; i.e. run the model with the observed forcings. They already did that. Not only did they do that, they applied a greenhouse-gas-only (GHG-only) forcings to the model. That makes sense, since the IPCC 1990 FAR projections used only greenhouse gas increases as the forcings (CO2, CH4, N2O, CFC-11, CFC-12, and HCFC-22). You would know this if you read FAR; FAR’s projections, for example, don’t include aerosol release from volcanic eruptions, etc. The article then compared those trends to the original projected trend (with its over-estimates forcings) and the observed warming trend. So it clearly met your challenge. I suggest you go read the article:
“Assessment of the first consensus prediction on climate change”
https://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/meet_us/max_boykoff/readings/frame_2013.pdf
At this point, you’re just trying to get around the fact that your challenge was met. You likely asked the challenge in the belief that it would not be met, and you could keep bringing it up as a tool in your ideologically-motivated narrative on climate sciene; i.e. you didn’t mean it as a legitimate, sincere challenge. You’re simply going to move the goal-posts so the challenge is never met to your personal liking, akin to how many young Earth creationists request evidence of evolution of a new “kind”, knowing full well they will move the goalposts to ensure no evidence ever meets their standard.
Re: “Again, not even close. I referred to comparison of scenario inputs (CO2, volcanoes) vs. actual events. Not a comparison of forecasted temps and actual temps.”
Now you’re just contradicting yourself. As I showed above, you really did ask for a comparison to actual temperature trends. And to make it even worse, you confused “weather” with longer-term climate trends while doing that.
Re: “You show a graph of predicted vs. actual *temperatures* – how can you believe that is a parameter in the scenario used to make the prediction?”
To explain this to you again: there are multiple lines in the figure. These lines are:
1) the observed warming trend
2) the original IPCC FAR BaU projection, run with it’s over-estimated forcings [as per FAR, this was forced with only projected GHG increases]
3) what FAR’s predicted trend would have been, if FAR was run just observed GHG increases
4) what FAR’s predicted trend would have been, if FAR was run with observed forcings, both GHG and non-GHG
With that again explained, it becomes your question is malformed. The depicted trends for 2, 3, and 4 are not “parameter[s] in the scenario”. They are instead results of the scenarios. The scenarios are increases in forcing due to various factors; projected BaU GHG increases for 2, observed GHG increases for 3, and observed GHG + non-GHG forcings for 4.
I should know better:
https://twitter.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/1181954715879276544/photo/1
I don’t care what the actual GHG forcing is. Make a prediction. Don’t tell me why you were wrong. You were wrong. When we include ENSO after the fact, we were pretty close. Excuses. We have a nation to make great. If you are going to write something called: Summary for Policymakers, let’s see what that said and figure out how much we can count on you in the future. You say you learned something with the pause that didn’t exist? Good, why didn’t you tell me you were still learning when you wrote the original thing? So after the fact, you show us how close you were. But the idea is a damn forecast, not excuses as to why you were wrong now and more explanations going forward two decades.
The idea was to link only Figure 1. Where ‘actual GHG forcing’ is shown.
Re: “I don’t care what the actual GHG forcing is. Make a prediction.”
Your first statement conflicts with the second, stemming from the fact that you’re misrepresenting how “prediction” works in this context.
In climate science, a projection states what will happen (often with a stated probability), given a set of initial conditions. A prediction states what will actually happen (often with a stated probability). See, for instance:
page 943 of: “Climate change 2007: Working Group I: The physical science basis; Annex I: Glossary”
pages 120 and 126 of: “Climate change 2014: Working Group I: The physical science basis; Annex II: Glossary”
““Prediction” or “Projection”? The nomenclature of climate science”
An analogy might help. Suppose a fire safety engineer offered the following projections:
A : If you add 3Y amount of gasoline, then this will cause the fire to grow by 3Z size.
B : If you add 2Y amount of gasoline, then this will cause the fire to grow by 2Z size.
C : If you add Y amount of gasoline, then this will cause the fire to grow by Z size.
Those projections are “if […], then […]” conditionals, with the “if […],” part being the antecedent conditions, and the “then […]” part being the consequent that follows from those antecedent conditions. We generate a prediction by stating how much gasoline was actually added in reality (i.e. stating what antecedent conditions occurred in reality), yielding a prediction for how much the fire should grow (i.e. what consequent is predicted to follow from those antecedent conditions). So suppose 2.5Y gasoline was actually added. We can then predict the fire should grow by 2.5Z size, based on the model used to generate the fire safety engineer’s projections. Thus, Ragnaar, in order to generate a prediction from the projections and the projections’ model, you need to state what antecedent conditions actually occurred.
A parallel point applies to the IPCC’s 1990 FAR projections. Each projection contains different levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) increases. The business-as-usual (BaU) scenario contains the largest increase, followed by scenario B, then scenario C, and then scenario D. The IPCC converted those GHG increases to increases in radiative forcing. And then they generated global surface temperature increases from those GHG radiative forcing increases, as per climate sensitivity. Note that the IPCC’s 1990 FAR warming projections are based only GHG increases, not other factors such as changes in solar irradiance, ENSO, aerosols, etc.
So in order to generate a prediction, Ragnaar, you need to plug in the GHG increases that actually occurred in reality, get the radiative forcing increases from those increases, and then covert that into a GHG-induced surface temperature trend prediction. Your antecedent condition is the GHG increases (or radiative forcing increase from those GHG increases), and the consequent you predict is the temperature trend. Thus it made no sense for you to demand a prediction be made, while you say you don’t care about the actual GHG forcing was. It’s as ridiculous as telling the fire safety engineer that you want him to predict how much the fire will grow, while telling him to ignore how much gasoline was actually added.
When you look at the observed GHG radiative forcing increase, it follows scenario B, and is lower than BaU. Thus the predicted warming rate would be scenario B’s rate. That prediction was confirmed, since the observed 1990 – 2019 warming rate matches scenario B and was less than BaU. I’ve covered that elsewhere in this comments section, and an earlier version of that point was made by the paper I included in the tweet of mine you posted:
http://archive.is/9idQQ#selection-2407.0-2505.79
https://judithcurry.com/2019/10/16/climate-limits-and-timelines/#comment-901523
“Assessment of the first consensus prediction on climate change”
https://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/meet_us/max_boykoff/readings/frame_2013.pdf
So, Ragnaar, a prediction was made, and the prediction was confirmed by later evidence. Deal with it.
Re: “I should know better:”
And I do know better. Based on previous interactions potholer54, I, and others have had with you, I know better than to think you have any genuine interest in accurately representing the science and understanding it. So the points I made above really weren’t for your benefit, but for the benefit of those who actually want to get informed.
Anyway, the rest of your comment was mostly your usual off-topic, evidence-free, obscenity-laced, political rambling that’s of little interest to me.
I find the skeptics are winning on Facebook comments. Lots of old people there. With money.
We’ve done well. A motley crew. Western Europe is going to falter. Trump was a great victory. They are at something like 2 to 3% of total energy. We are the 97%.
What you can do: Follow one thing on Facebook that writes 10% or more on climate change. One of mine is Phys.org. Call out everything that is wishful thinking or fear. Use good economic arguments. You have good arguments. Rely on the IPCC’s AR5. It’s not hard. WUWT ran the sciencealert story. Put a smile on my face. I started following them after the troll story. They’re going echo chamber or not.
JCH:
You have everything. And your results to date are what? Skeptical Science and the Guardian. Not much beyond that. If you had 50 new nuclear power plants in the United States, I’d say you won. You have a bunch of expensive renewables deployed. It’ll crash. You can see value JCH. And you know when you aren’t looking at it.
JCH:
I feel I need to add to what just said. How has your team made the world a better place? 5 tangible things involving results. Better coastal defenses or watersheds might be examples. Cheaper energy in fact maybe, like in my bill assuming I don’t have rooftop solar. I don’t mean less CO2. That’s not tangible to me and if it is, it involves and indirect argument thay I might not by and we will end up in the weeds. ExxonMobil made the world a better place. Coal mines made the world a better place. So maybe we won because you didn’t do anything.
We have a nuke. It was so prohibitively expensive the state legislature had to convene a special session and completely revamp how consumers would pay for it. I’m sure T. Boone was very aware of that outcome. T. Boone built an armada of wind turbines in West Texas. I guess you’re smarter than he was.
Incredible. But true.
Science of Doom did a deep dive into the fingerprint method of attribution and found that it relies on a flawed Hegerl et al (1996) paper which determined natural variability to be essentially zero. Science of doom found it flawed because it used unbelievable and unsubstantiated assumptions. Without a fairly accurate estimate of natural variability is it possible to know future climates?
Richard
What is a ‘fingerprint method’ and how many variations are there? Also, how many lines of evidence should one need to identify a fingerprint? I would hope it would include a lot more than just atmospheric data.
Jack
The topic of my comment was not about the fingerprint method, but rather about the use of unsubstantiated assumptions. The assumptions in the paper Hegerl paper were no more than the authors’ opinions.
Here is a link to the article:
https://scienceofdoom.com/2014/11/01/natural-variability-and-chaos-three-attribution-z-1963/
Richard
Correct link:
https://scienceofdoom.com/2014/11/01/natural-variability-and-chaos-three-attribution-fingerprints/
’twas nevah about
the science, – (whether,)
’twas evah about
the politicks, – (clevah,)
requiring yr complex
-fraught modelling of
interactive-atmospheric
‘n oceanic systems.,
OMG – boil and bubble
toil and trouble,- that
attribution* its a bitch.!
* h/t kim
===
https://beththeserf.wordpress.com/
Oo-oops, wro-ong link came up!
https://beththeserf.wordpress.com/2019/05/17/special-edition-global-warming/
Javier,
Thank you for fixing that.
Richard
Note: Typo in text. “B3.1. Of 105,000 species studied,9 6% of insects” A footnote number 9 from pdf has been rewritten as a 9 in the text. The real number is 6%. I have been following insects the last couple of years.
rmd,
Thanks for catching that! Fixed (in the original post at the FM website).
Judy, I find your “diabetes” allegory very to the point. I’m a diabetic for 10 years and I made the experience that it’s not an advantage, however one can adopt very successfull without the need of insulin injections ( as a comparison to geoengineering). 4get noodles at all, a low ( not NO carb) carb diet and some sports ( in my case biking) is appropriate to get the blut clucose ( as a comparison to CO2 level) in a tolerable field. The mankind should learn “to eat no noodles and biking” istead of crying about a damaged pankreas.
I had mixed emotions about ‘planetary diabetes’.
I didn’t like the description of CO2/AGW as disease.
Increased biomass means global warming has increased life on earth.
Difficult to make the case that increased life on earth is somehow bad for life on earth.
‘diabetes’ does have to do with energy distributions.
But type two diabetes occurs because of insulin resistance when energy storage is at capacity. Earth does emit more to space when CO2 enriched and has plentiful long term storage in the oceans, so i don’t think earth is energy resistant. Increased CO2, on climatological time scales, is more like having ice cream on a cheat day than long term diabetes. If one exercises ( earth sends more energy to space ) and has available capacity in their fat cells ( capacity for oceanic heat storage ) then once a week ice cream may not be a problem.
Finally, given the prevalence of diabetes worldwide, and that diabetes type two is self induced, and that diabetes is orders of magnitude worse for one’s morbidity and lifespan than AGW, it’s so wrong that people worry about the small mean temperature change of AGW. People are a far greater risk to themselves from their own daily decisions than global warming is!
Until you accept that about 18,000 years ago the last Ice Age ended and the present Ice Age began this argument is a waste of time.
Mother Nature maintains an average surface temperature of the earth in the mid 60’F. This means the loss of radiant heat to the black sky is constant. The black sky is absolute zero, -459’F. The radiant heat from the sun striking the earth is larger than that lost to the black sky.
The Vostok ice core shows the top 250 meters of ice began about 18,000 years ago with the top 10,000 showing an increase in C02 level. I assume both poles are similar. I have 2 questions.
1. Why is the CO2 rising if it is not from Man and the Industrial Revolution?
2. Where did the heat go from the making of the ice if it did not go into the atmosphere to replace that lost due to the increased area of water covering the earth thus more radiant heat reflected to the black sky? This is keeping the surface temperature of the earth relatively Constant.
The ocean levels began going down until the Ice Shelf began breaking off was equal to that breaking off. At this point the oceans began to rise until the quanty of ice breaking off equaled that of ice being made. that is where we are now. There is not that much ice shelf left. When the ice breaking off becomes less than that being made the ocean level will begin to drop until the radient heat reflected becomes low enough that radiant heat retained from the sun is less than that lost by the earth. That will be about 55,000 years from now.
GHGs only cause a tiny “GHE” of about 5K, with CO2 merely accouting for ~1K. The effect of doubling CO2 would have such a small impact that it could not be detected against the background noise of natural climate variation.
The problem is deeply rooted in the myth of a GHG induced 33K “GHE”. First: Surface emissivity is not a 100%, but rather 91%. In other words at 288K the surface is not emitting 390W/m2 but only 355W/m2. You will have to look up “hemispheric emissivity of water” and “fresnel equations” to understand the subject.
Second: The 33K “GHE” myth is extremely ambiguous on clouds. It relies on clouds massively blocking solar radiation, while not interfering with LWIR at all. Alternatively clouds get some “GH-forcing”, but even this concession will be forgotten in the next paraphrase and again all of the 33K will be attributed to GHGs alone.
In reality however, clouds are warming the planet over all!!! If you quantify it as “radiative forcing” (sic!), clouds block about 70W/m2 of solar radiation, but they heat the planet by over 80W/m2. As a logical consequence this leaves less than 35W/m2 (=150-35-80) to be possibly attributed to GHGs.
From these facts alone it is easy to see how climate sensitivity to CO2 is practically negligible.
Judith Curry, do you even know what the 4 factors of risk assessment are?
Ask this because you only seem to ever focus on one of them
“Early predictions of warming were 0.2 to 0.3 degrees Centigrade per decade are too high relative actual observations.”
And yet you don’t provide a shred of evidence for that claim of your’s. You’ve previously said:
“Read the literature and the IPCC.”
http://archive.is/q1pyZ#selection-1027.0-1043.81
Well, here’s what the IPCC said on this in their 2018 Special Report, backed up surface temperature analyses:
“Estimated anthropogenic global warming matches the level of observed warming to within ±20% (likely range). Estimated anthropogenic global warming is currently increasing at 0.2°C (likely between 0.1°C and 0.3°C) per decade due to past and ongoing emissions (high confidence) [page 4].
[…]
Given that global temperature is currently rising by 0.2°C (±0.1°C) per decade, human-induced warming reached 1°C above pre-industrial levels around 2017 and, if this pace of warming continues, would reach 1.5°C around 2040 [page 81].”
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/SR15_Full_Report_High_Res.pdf
The IPCC was right on that trend, as folks can easily check using sources such as:
http://www.ysbl.york.ac.uk/~cowtan/applets/trend/trend.html
https://climexp.knmi.nl/selectindex.cgi?id=someone@somewhere
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/testdap/timeseries.pl
For example, start 30 years ago in 1989, the year before the first IPCC assessment report, and see what temperature trend you get for global analyses. Current warming follows scenario B from the IPCC’s 1990 report, which makes sense since the observed greenhouse-gased-induced radiative forcing increase matches scenario B’s projected increase:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EC5jV5KU0AE3o6F?format=png&name=small
Figure A.9 page 336, “Climate change: The IPCC scientific assessment” [https://web.archive.org/web/20191013204337/https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf]
IPCC 1990 projected radiative forcing increase under different scenarios:
Figure A.6 page 335, “Climate change: The IPCC scientific assessment” [https://web.archive.org/web/20191013204337/https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf]
Observed radiative forcing increase:
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/aggi.html [ http://archive.is/DKLix ]
I suspect Curry’s reference to “0.2 to 0.3 degrees Centigrade per decade” is an attempt to bring in the BaU (business-as-usual) projection of ~0.3°C/decade, even though that scenario over-estimated observed forcings (observed greenhouse gas levels did not increase as much as in BaU due to mitigated methane emissions, the Montreal Protocol mitigating CFC emissions, etc.). So if you’re going to compare observed warming to BaU, then you need to note that BaU over-estimates observed greenhouse gas increases. Javier doesn’t do that in his above comment, but that’s par-for-the-course for him:
https://judithcurry.com/2019/10/16/climate-limits-and-timelines/#comment-901492
Anyway, folks should see the following link for comparisons of observational analyses to temperature trend projections:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming
Define ‘early’. My definition of ‘early’ does not include 2018. Try FAR, SAR, TAR, AR4
Re: “Define ‘early’. My definition of ‘early’ does not include 2018. Try FAR, SAR, TAR, AR4”
You didn’t read what was I said closely. I cited the 2018 Special Report for the observed rate of warming, and then cited 1990 FAR (First Assessment Report) for the expected rate of warming. So no, I already cited FAR. And you’re falsely treating my quotation from the 2018 Special Report as being a claim about the predicted expected rate of warming, when it’s actually an evidence-based claim about the observed rate of warming.
Anyway, referring to the other IPCC reports just makes your case even worse, since those reports forecasted a rate of warming that matches the observed ~0.2°C/decade warming rate, or is less than it. I already showed that for 1990 FAR. Here are the others:
1995 Second Assessment Report, ~0.14°C/decade:
“Climate change 1995: The science of climate change; Technical summary”, section F.2.1 on pages 39 – 40
https://archive.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sar/wg_I/ipcc_sar_wg_I_full_report.pdf
2001 Third Assessment Report, ~0.2°C/decade
“For the periods 1990 to 2025 and 1990 to 2050, the projected increases are 0.4 to 1.1°C and 0.8 to 2.6°C, respectively. These results are for the full range of 35 SRES scenarios, based on a number of climate models [page 61].”
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/05/SYR_TAR_full_report.pdf
2007 Fourth Assessment Report, ~0.2°C/decade:
“For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emissions scenarios [page 7].”
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ar4_syr_spm.pdf
2013 Fifth Assessment Report, ~0.2°C/decade [to one significant figure]:
“Overall, in the absence of major volcanic eruptions—which would cause significant but temporary cooling—and, assuming no significant future long term changes in solar irradiance, it is likely (>66% probability) that the GMST anomaly for the period 2016–2035, relative to the reference period of 1986–2005 will be in the range 0.3°C to 0.7°C (expert assessment, to one significant figure; medium confidence) [page 1010].”
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter11_FINAL.pdf
By the way, you should know this, since you discussed it back when you were making your false predictions on a supposed continuing “hiatus” or “pause” in global warming. So please don’t act as if you weren’t aware:
“Is the first decade+ of the 21st century the warmest in the past 100 years (as per Peter Gleick’s argument)? Yes, but the very small positive trend is not consistent with the expectation of 0.2C/decade provided by the IPCC AR4 . In terms of anticipating temperature change in the coming decades, the AGW dominated prediction of 0.2C/decade does not seem like a good bet, particularly with the prospect of reduced solar radiation.”
http://archive.is/3GNNa#selection-401.0-401.430
“Moreover, the estimates in these empirical studies are being borne out by the much-discussed “pause” or “hiatus” in global warming—the period since 1998 during which global average surface temperatures have not significantly increased.
This pause in warming is at odds with the 2007 IPCC report, which expected warming to increase at a rate of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade in the early 21st century.“
http://archive.is/kBVZG#selection-237.119-241.165
“the rate of warming over a particular period of at least 10 years is less than the warming projected by the IPCC AR5: “The global mean surface temperature change for the period 2016–2035 relative to 1986–2005 will likely be in the range of 0.3°C to 0.7°C (medium confidence).” This translates to 0.1C to 0.233C/decade. (Note the AR4 cited a warming rate of 0.2C/per decade in the early 21st century).”
http://archive.is/bJ3va#selection-157.3-165.10
I did, down to the exact quote in the 1990 FAR including a figure showing IPCC’s alarmist prediction performance in a comment above.
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/05/ipcc_90_92_assessments_far_wg_I_spm.pdf
Read point 3 in the first page. The warming predicted in 1990 was 0.3°C (0.2-0.5°C). The warming observed in HadCRUT4 is just 0.17°C, half the warming predicted.
Sorry but Judith is absolutely right as usual.
Regarding what will happen in 2030 or 2040 my guess is they will be equally wrong.
And the IPCC report says “Under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases,”.
It doesn’t say anything about atmospheric levels.
Nobody can deny that emissions have increased as much as expected or even more.
Re: “Nobody can deny that emissions have increased as much as expected or even more.”
I just denied it for methane and the CFCs. For example, methane emissions were less than for BaU, even if one grants that FAR contained a typo (gigaton instead of megaton or teragram) that erroneously exaggerated BaU’s projected CH4 emissions by a factor of 1000:
1990 IPCC FAR methane emissions projections:
“Climate change: The IPCC scientific assessment”, figure A.2(b) on page 33
https://web.archive.org/web/20191013204337/https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
Methane emissions:
“The growing role of methane in anthropogenic climate change”
“Trends in global CO2 and total greenhouse gas emissions”, figure S.1 on page 5 [https://www.pbl.nl/sites/default/files/downloads/pbl-2018-trends-in-global-co2-and-total-greenhouse-gas-emissons-2018-report_3125.pdf]
“The global methane budget 2000–2012”
And the cooling effect of mitigated CFC emissions (as per the Montreal Protocol) is well-established. For instance:
“Statistically derived contributions of diverse human influences to twentieth-century temperature changes”
“Considerable contribution of the Montreal Protocol to declining greenhouse gas emissions from the United States”
“The world avoided by the Montreal Protocol”
“The importance of the Montreal Protocol in protecting climate”
Re: “Read point 3 in the first page. The warming predicted in 1990 was 0.3°C (0.2-0.5°C). The warming observed in HadCRUT4 is just 0.17°C, half the warming predicted.”
You’re committing the usual contrarian distortion of cherry-picking BaU to the exclusion of the other projected scenarios, even though BaU over-estimated greenhouse gas levels much more so than do the other scenarios (scenario B, C, and D, going from more greenhouse gas increases to less). If you compare observed greenhouse gas increases and observed total radiative forcing increase from greenhouse gas increases to the projected scenarios, then this is what you get:
radiative forcing increase : scenario B
CO2 , N2O : roughly half-way between BaU and B
CH4 : roughly scenario D
CFC-11 , CFC-12 , HCFC-22 : less than scenario D
You’re also again cherry-picking HadCRUT4, even though it’s known to under-estimate recent warming due to its poorer coverage, especially in the rapidly warming northern high latitudes. It would better if you included analyses that have better coverage, such as ERA-I (which Curry lauds), ERA5 (the update to ERA5), GISTEMP, Cowtan+Way, Berkeley Earth, etc. See the following for more on HadCRUT under-estimating warming:
“The ‘pause’ in global warming in historical context: (II). Comparing models to observations”
“Reconciling controversies about the ‘global warming hiatus’”
“Recently amplified Arctic warming has contributed to a continual global warming trend”
“A fluctuation in surface temperature in historical context: reassessment and retrospective on the evidence”
“Geographical distribution of thermometers gives the appearance of lower historical global warming”
“Coverage bias in the HadCRUT4 temperature series and its impact on recent temperature trends. UPDATE COBE-SST2 based land-ocean dataset”
“Arctic warming in ERA-Interim and other analyses”
“An investigation into the impact of using various techniques to estimate arctic surface air temperature anomalies”
“A reassessment of temperature variations and trends from global reanalyses and monthly surface climatological datasets”, section 4
“Global warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty”, page 57
Re: “And the IPCC report says “Under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases,”.
It doesn’t say anything about atmospheric levels.”
The projected atmospheric greenhouse gas levels for each scenario are shown on page 333 of IPCC FAR:
https://web.archive.org/web/20191013204337/https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
It’s from these that FAR generates its warming projections (converting the greenhouse gas increases to changes to radiative forcing increases, and then converting that radiative forcing increase into a projected temperature increase, as per climate sensitivity).
It’s the atmospheric greenhouse increases that are relevant, since only CO2 that stays in the atmosphere causes warming. So, for instance, suppose human activity emits X amount of CO2, and then oceans, plants, etc. take up ~60% of that CO2, leading to atmospheric CO2 levels increasing by only 0.4X (40% of X). This 0.4X would contribute to further warming, not the other ~60% human-emitted CO2 taken up by oceans, plants, etc. Thus the greenhouse gas increase remaining in the atmosphere warms the Earth, not the greenhouse gases taken up. Since scenario B, in comparison to BaU, better represents increases in greenhouse gases remaining in the atmosphere (and especially the greenhouse-gas-induced increase in radiative forcing), then scenario B would be the better scenario to focus on, not BaU.
People should be sued and taken to court for suggesting that a 2 degree C – or even a 5 degree C – warming (OK, heating / roasting / incineration) of climate is likely to be catastrophic. When for 150 million years the dinosaurs lived on a planet (our planet) that was 5-12 degrees warmer than now, and the earth ecosystem was in pristine, rude health. It’s either egregious error based on ignorance of palaeoclimate, or it’s fraudulent. Such scare-mongering is simply a racketeering activity based on falsehood.
Climate changes! Life adapts and/or migrates, or dies! Humans have not and do not change climate, other than local changes. Humans can not cause or stop climate change due to changes in CO2! Climate naturally responds and counters everything that tries to cause too much warming or too much cooling. Thawed oceans promote more evaporation and snowfall and sequestering of ice. Frozen oceans promote less evaporation and snowfall and depletion of sequestered ice. This natural process of warming and cooling in the same bounds has worked for ten thousand years.
Are losses of biodiversity that are caused by human land use and ecosystem destruction, trousered as results of climate change? Is a difference recognised between climate and the existence of the human race? Or not – is that the whole point? Is climate a proxy for humans, climate change a proxy for population growth?
‘As far as I can tell the limits to climate change are some -10 and +12 degrees C. In as little as a decade in some places. Low summer Northern Hemisphere insolation and a cooler north Atlantic with glacial ice sheet growth. Or cloud evaporating away.’
https://www.facebook.com/robert.i.ellison/posts/10216129301567706
Under the banner.
https://www.facebook.com/robert.i.ellison/posts/10216129911502954
great post
thanks
again, a direct simple question to Judith Curry:
Judith Curry, do you even know what the 4 factors of risk assessment are?
I ask this because you only seem to ever focus on one of them, a common trait of those with no skill in risk
What are your thoughts on William F Ruddiman’s theory on anthropogenic climate change? That is primarily caused by deforestation starting several millennia ago and only more recently exacerbated by carbon emissions.
Also, extrapolating from historical patterns of glacial and interglacial periods, do you believe we are somewhat overdue for another ice age?
“Early predictions of warming were 0.2 to 0.3 degrees Centigrade per decade are too high relative actual observations. ”
A support for that opinion in terms of correlation analysis
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/09/08/climate-change-theory-vs-data/
The polar vortex forecasts for early November show strong blocking in the stratosphere over the Bering Sea.
https://max.nwstatic.co.uk/gfsimages/gfs.20191018/06/384/npst30.png
Ireneusz,
I am unfamiliar with the term “strong blocking in the stratosphere”. Can you educate me?
Richard
The high temperature in the stratosphere over the Bering Sea changes the direction of jet streams in the stratosphere. The jet streams move north over the Bering Strait. The air from Siberia directly reaches North America. The polar vortex lengthens over North America. It is a permanent circulation that will cause the inflow of Arctic air to the US.
Ireneusz,
Thank you for the reply
Judith Curry
“Early predictions of warming at were 0.2 to 0.3 degrees Centigrade per decade are too high relative to actual observations. ” ?
Great post
Judith Curry
“Early predictions of warming at
were0.2 to 0.3 degrees Centigrade per decade are too high relative to actual observations. ” ?Great post
May I propose a forum to be established, which serves two purposes. One, an average person can be informed in simple to understand terms about climate change and associated matter. Two, the forum serves up honest scientific data counter to politically and social justice infused alarmism from the IPCC.
The exchange between a reporter and Dr. Curry makes my point. Where does a lay person find plainly stated climate information, aside from the apocalyptic, tipping point, ‘the planet-is-going-to-hell’ alarmism? There are books and websites like cfan, but all this information is spotty and diffused and difficult to find quickly.
I suggest a small donation based non-profit group (may be $1M budget) with a few ‘system’ climate scientists, outreach coordinators and ‘translators’, who make special scientific lingo understandable. Further, include a dozen specialist discipline scientists on a retainer basis, and appointed on a roll-over time span. Beyond authoring basic statements, answering frequent queries and creating a glossary this core group is tasked with finding relevant news being published and incorporating these updates in the core statements. The statement discussion should include matter like range of uncertainty, future projections based on hindsight, direct measurements vs. assumption trimmed modeling, etc. Outreach publicity is important, so that the public can find this information source.
We could name it PC – popular climate.
Arctic warming is normal during each centennial solar minimum. Directly through negative NAO/AO conditions, and negative NAO/AO drives a warm AMO phase, and increases El Nino episodes which drive lagged major warm pulses to the AMO.
SST proxy for SE Greenland from 400 AD:
https://media.springernature.com/m685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41598-017-13246-x/MediaObjects/41598_2017_13246_Fig2_HTML.jpg
A critical review of Earth’s Energy Balance and the Greenhouse Gas Theory
Eddie Banner 18/10/19
As a physicist, I have long had doubts about the Greenhouse Gas Theory for global warming, and I recently came across a paper on this matter which enhanced my difficulties. This paper seems to base the theory on consideration of the global annual mean energy budget of Earth’s climate system, and shows a diagram by Trenberth and Fasullo.(1)
Several other published figures can be found on this topic on the internet, including some by NASA, with similar values.
There are a number of items here that I’m concerned about, but the main one is the claim for the downwelling back radiation of 333 Watts per square metre of Earth’s surface.
1. Where does all this extra energy come from, since the figure shows only (161+78), that is 239 Wm^-2 entering the Earth’s climate system from the Sun, and 239 being emitted to space, as required for energy balance?
2. The downwelling back radiation (333) is shown coming from the Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However, it is well known and fundamental in GHG theory that photons of energy emitted by GH gases are radiated equally in all directions; therefore there is equal energy radiated upwards and downwards. This upwards energy flux is simply not shown in the Trenberth figure, but it cannot be ignored. It must be 333 Watts per square metre, and together with the unexplained 333 downwelling radiation, this makes 666 Watts per sq.metre to account for, because this is in addition to the 239 shown emitted to space in the diagram, as required. But the TOTAL input from the Sun is only 341.
Moreover, the upwards energy would add to the 239 already shown emitted, making a total of 572 emitted to space, which clearly is nonsense.
So what is the explanation? I should be grateful for any helpful comments.
(1) http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert/trenberth.papers/BAMSmarTrenberth.pdf
Additional heat is due to the mass of the troposphere. At a pressure of less than 100 hPa, there is no greenhouse effect. This is the case on Mars, for example.
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/gif/zt_nh.gif
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/clisys/STRAT/gif/zt_sh.gif
In the stratosphere, radiation is due to ionization by UV and GCR.
Albert Einstein, in his 1917 paper:
http://inspirehep.net/record/858448/files/eng.pdf
says this about radiative heating of a gas:
During absorption and emission of radiation there is also present a transfer of momentum to the molecules. This means that just the interaction of radiation and molecules leads to a velocity distribution of the latter. This must surely be the same as the velocity distribution which molecules acquire as the result of their mutual interaction by collisions, that is, it must coincide with the Maxwell distribution. We must require that the mean kinetic energy which a molecule
per degree of freedom acquires in a Plank radiation field of temperature T be
kT / 2
this must be valid regardless of the nature of the molecules and independent of frequencies which the molecules absorb and emit.
Thank you, Ireneusz Palmowski, for your comment.
But where does the energy come from; please see my point 1?
Tropospheric convection follows a dry adiabat adjusted
by an empirical scaling factor typically around 0.6–0.9 to match
an observed mean moist adiabat in each atmosphere. The ratio
(γ ) of specific heats at constant pressure (cp) and volume (cv ),
respectively, (γ = cp/cv ) sets the dry adiabatic lapse rate, and
is 1.4 for atmospheres dominated by diatomic gases, such as
those considered here.
A common dependence of infrared
opacity on pressure, arising from the shared physics of
molecular absorption, sets the 0.1 bar tropopause. We reason
that a tropopause at a pressure of approximately 0.1 bar is
characteristic of many thick atmospheres, including exoplanets
and exomoons in our galaxy and beyond. Judicious use of this
rule could help constrain the atmospheric structure, and thus
the surface environments and habitability, of exoplanets.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.465.8585&rep=rep1&type=pdf
When the tropopause height in winter falls sharply, the surface temperature also drops.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_int/gif_files/gfs_hgt_trop_NA_f024.png
Zatem temperatura przy powierzchni zależy od gubości troposfery.
But where does the energy come from …
Simplified, all energy comes from the sun. How long is it present in the earth system?
We know from ice core data that some cold energy is stored in Antarctic Ice for 800 thousand years after the IR out that was used in forming it left the earth.
Positive Energy is stored in oceans and all mass and Cold Energy is sequestered in Ice.
Energy flows between these stores and is not accounted for in climate theory. Stored energy in the earth climate system is not acknowledged, it is not even suspected. IT IS REAL!
Energy Balance of the Earth Climate System
A standard consensus is that “Solar In” is equal to ”IR out” plus “Albedo out”.
There are large amounts of energy that has been left out of consideration.
There are large storages of sequestered ice on land. To produce ice, energy must be removed, that must result in IR out from the production of the ice. That IR out does not result in immediate cooling of earth, the cooling is stored in the sequestered ice and the cooling happens latter when the ice thaws, for some the ice, many years later. Some ice in Antarctica is 800 thousand years old. That ice was produced, resulting in IR out, 800 thousand years ago. That was not considered in energy balance equations for the earth climate system. That ice will produce cooling when it thaws, and it will be replaced by newer ice.
A large amount of IR out is producing water and ice, some of the water and ice does cause immediate cooling of the climate system, some of the ice is sequestered for cooling later. Sequestered ice is flowing and thawing and cooling the earth and water on the earth. Large amount of IR out in warmest times is used in the production of sequestered ice. The sequestered ice flows and spreads and reflects and thaws. The reflecting and thawing causes the most cooling in the coldest times when the ice extent is the most. The coldest times are coldest because the ice extent is the largest.
Over the last fifty million years, climate temperature dropped from 14 degrees warmer than now to 6 degrees colder than now, then settled in the modern normal ten thousand years “Paradise”, described by Leighton Steward in his book, “Fire, Ice and Paradise”.
The cause of this evolution was the changing of ocean currents, forcing more and more warm tropical currents into Polar Regions and increasing the evaporation and snowfall and sequestering of ice on land in cold places. It did not form snow in cold polar regions before warm tropical water flowed there, before that, sea ice prevented evaporation and snowfall.
As more warm water flowed into polar regions, ice ages cycled larger and larger. The largest ice ages sequestered ice on Antarctica that did not thaw and return to the oceans. The last major warm period and ice age finally sequestered enough ice on Antarctica and Greenland and cold places around the world, that the reduced oceans no longer support another major warm period and resulting ice age.
The climate we have had during the recent ten thousand years is the “NEW NORMAL CLIMATE”
Adjustments to the sequestered ice in each hemisphere is regulated by sea ice thawing when the oceans are warmer than the freeze thaw point and increased sequestering of ice until it gets too cold an sea ice forms. In the cold times with evaporation stopped by sea ice, the ice flows and dumps into the oceans and on the land until the ice is depleted to the point oceans warm again.
Look at ice core data from Greenland and Antarctica, the temperatures are regulated in the same bounds but the cycles in the NH and SH do not correlate with the length of the cycles or the timing of the cycles. Every other forcing factor, correlates with some change, over the shorter time, but does not push temperatures out of bounds over the longer time.
A standard consensus is that “Solar In” is equal to ”IR out” plus “Albedo out”. Over a long term average, that is right, but it does not consider the internal storage of energy in oceans and ice. Significant IR out is producing sequestered ice and significant cooling comes from the thawing of the ice.
The ice extent of sequestered ice on land and ice extended into oceans does regulate the temperature of earth. When earth is colder, it is due to more ice extent, reflecting and thawing, and that colder resulted from IR out in a warmer time. Ice piles higher in warmer times, spreads slowly and later causes more cooling.
For a third time, something that highlights the general absence of “Peer Review” in a forum like this, a question direct to Judith Curry:
“again, a direct simple question to Judith Curry:
Judith Curry, do you even know what the 4 factors of risk assessment are?
I ask this because you only seem to ever focus on one of them, a common trait of those with no skill in risk.”
You do certainly present yourself as knowledgable and skilled in not just climate but the risk thereof. Yet this is only an assumption on anyone’s part, including yours perhaps. If you can answer the above question that would indicate you have more than a pedestrian knowledge of risk.
I suggest you owe your audience an answer
BK
The “4 factors of risk assessment” sound suspiciously like a pile of BS made up by someone with a scare-mongering political agenda.
Not necessarily, but there are a host of risk analysis schemes, formulas, models, etc. Four factors sounds like a simplistic one. Not something anyone should be expected to know about. Someone’s pet.
Dr. Curry ==> This analogy:
is iffy at best.
The safest highway driving speed is one that matches the traffic around you. Cars that are traveling in the same direction at the same speed are safer from one another. It might be that if all regions warm evenly, such as in latitudes, things will actually be better climate wise for both human and environmental purposes.
The most dangerous speed on the highway is one that is at odds with the other traffic — faster of slower. Realizing this, some highways are now posted with Minimum Speeds as as well as Maximum Speeds. In climate, we have this now, in the present, wherein the Tropics are very warm and the higher latitudes are cooler with the difference causing more heavy weather.
It is only when one car is considered alone (without respect to other traffic) that the absolute speed increases risk of fatal crash — Momentum = mass times velocity –this higher speed equals more energetic crashes. Higher speed does not necessarily equal more likelihood of crashing — at least until one exceeds the design characteristics of the vehicle and the engineered speeds in the roadway design. For climate, we have no idea of the design limits.
Fatal accidents on Germany’s motorways, where speed limits often do not exist, are about 1/2 of those on US motorways, which are all speed limited to under 80 mph, most to under 70 mph.
The analogy is flawed when applied to climate and temperature — Firstly, because it is flawed in reality — applying it as an analogy does not improve it and secondly, it is difficult to think of a scientific instance of a climate “fatal crash”.
I would have used some other analogy.
Fatal accidents on Germany’s motorways, where speed limits often do not exist, are about 1/2 of those on US motorways, which are all speed limited to under 80 mph, most to under 70 mph.
In Germany, multiple lanes carry traffic at different speeds, only the fastest lanes have no speed limit.
pope ==> (have not yet been to Germany…) and yet, fatal accidents are 1/2 the US per miles traveled.
OK, what is the number of fatal accidents and what is the number of miles traveled in the US and in Germany? When the ratios are very large, tiny differences may not mean anything. How many of the fatal accidents can even be related to speed? Correlation is not causation,
I am not disagreeing with what you posted, you are right that going with the flow of traffic is the safe speed, if you cannot, move to the slow lane or take a different route.
Your posting was a really good posting, I tossed in a minor point.
pope ==> There is a Wikipedia link — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#Safety:_international_comparison which gives the numbers. Can’t vouch for them personally.
That is not true. When there is no speed limit, it applies for all lanes. Low fatality numbers have to do with fast response from ambulances among other things. Greetings from Bavaria.
If somebody is decapitated, ambulance speed ain’t gonna help.
In Germany, as I understand it, drivers have to take a large amount of training and pass extensive tests, including first aid. In Texas you can drive 85 mph in congested city traffic and not worry too much about speeding tickets.
The states with the fewest accident fatalities tend to be blue; the states with the highest number of accident fatalities tend to be red. Too incompetent to drive; too incompetent to vote?
https://i.imgur.com/e03NhDf.png
JCH
The states with the fewest accident fatalities tend to be blue; the states with the highest number of accident fatalities tend to be red. Too incompetent to drive; too incompetent to vote?
Just had this bizarre thought – wouldn’t it be totally weird if somehow one’s position in regard to global warming turned out to be correlated with whether one was democrat or republican leaning? I know – it sounds too strange to be true but I wonder if anyone has looked into some stats on that.
Kip is right, you have no idea what the speed of the natural traffic is, you have no way to even know which the safest speed could be, or even which lane is the best, history will make that call later. You might be going too fast in a slow lane or you may be going too slow in a fast lane. I am warming up to that analogy, when used properly. Do not try to fix something you do not even understand enough to know if it is even broke.
Thank you JCH for your comment copied below.
“Simplified, all energy comes from the sun. How long is it present in the Earth system?”
Exactly, and for energy balance the amount radiated to space is equal to the input from the Sun. So how can there be an extra 333 Watts/sq metre
from the atmosphere?
Gravity is a force that forces the surface temperature to rise.
Easy as pie.
A snowstorm may surprise you in Wyoming.
https://images.tinypic.pl/i/00990/olri5fvu95dm.png
Another forecast of the stratospheric polar vortex.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_z50_nh_f240.png
Whatever happens – cold or warm, snow or no snow, wet or dry, more or less storms, more or less fires, more or less droughts – it will all be irrefutable evidence of the process of anthropogenic global climate [scary word of your choice]-ing.
What a truly brilliant theory it is – it explains everything!
The journalist’s questions seem very reasonable and thoughtful ones – coming from an impartial, open minded and informed basis. What one has come to expect from journalists from Anglosaxon countries that continue to be a beacon to all the world in professional, politically impartial and constructive journalism – wonderful to be part of a culture that is such a “light on a hill” to all the world.
In the same constructive and impartial spirit I thought t might help to improve the journalists questions with the odd edit and correction here and there:
1. “From your perspective, has the instrumental record of how hot the Earth is getting been been adjusted sufficiently to make it scary enough to justify the anti-capitalism economy-wrecking actions that would fulfil the hard left’s political agenda?”
2. “What is the best figure that explains how global temperature has varied over the 500 million year history of multicellular life? Such as over 17 degrees C for instance. This would allow the magnitude of present and forseeable future climate change – e.g 2 degrees C – to be placed in its true context. The same can be said for the CO2 concentration in air. For both – how close are we to the optimum defined by the richness of species in the fossil record? This will tell us what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ climate and CO2.”
3. “How do the actions (or inactions) of the Extinction Rebellion, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, and the followers of George Soros and Greta Thunberg, bring closer a Nirvana of perfect climate and progressive politics in all the earth?”
@AtomsksSanakan
Rather than attacking Crockford, point out where she is wrong with the evidence to back up your claims.
Pingback: Status of Climate Change Science October 2019 – Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York
Question…what is a GHG forcing? I mean in the rel physical world?
There is no such thing as a forcing in the real atmosphere. The term forcing comes from differential equation theory, the basis of climate model theory. In differential equation theory, a forcing is a forcing function, a function, like a unit impulse function, applied to another function to force a MATHEMATICAL response.
If I have modeled an electronic amplifier with a differential equation and I want to know how it responds to an extreme forcing, such as a square wave (it will likely oscillate at undesirable frequencies called pole frequencies), I can apply a unit impulse forcing function or any forcing function, to see what response I can expect.
In the real world, I can build the circuit and test it. Then I can compare the real output to my theoretical output calculated with differential equations. That is not possible with climate models, yet here we are using the theory from unvalidated climate models, applying the jargon of theoretical mathematical conditions to the atmosphere.
If anyone is interested, here is an example of someone applying a complex forcing function to a very simple R-L circuit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDUgr17g9Ho
It’s very easy to build this circuit then apply a signal from a generator to replicate the complex forcing function.
I’d like to see both the math and the realization of a forcing function in the atmosphere.
If you want to model climate, atmosphere holds a small fraction of stored energy, the land and rocks and oceans and ice hold a larger fraction of stored energy.
Heat energy is stored in water and it can be retrieved by evaporation. Cold energy is stored in sequestered ice and is retrieved by thawing ice. Polar oceans are covered with sea ice when the temperature of the oceans are cold enough for ice to survive on salt water. In these times, the sun heats the oceans and the warm tropical currents flow under ice into the polar regions and contacts the bottom of sea ice, ice shelves and ice that was dumped by the great ice sheets and glaciers. The chilled water returns to the tropics in cold currents near the ocean floor. When the ice runs out, the oceans warm, the sea ice is removed and the process starts that uses energy from evaporating ocean to promote snowfall on the old sequestered ice to rebuild it and restored the stored cold energy in new ice. If solar in is not equal to IR out plus Albedo out, climate is said to be out of balance. It is just an accident that we started measuring these factors when they were close to in balance and that was picked as a standard consensus. There are cycles with more warm energy entering the oceans and cycles with the more IR out producing ice for sequestering. Climate is out of balance, back and fourth causing cycles that have been recorded in data and history.
This is disgusting.
There is a reason that the so-called climate change problem has been referred to as a ‘wicked mess.’
The evil people are winning because no one will fight back with understanding of causes of natural climate change.
Yes, the oceans have warmed since the coldest time of the little ice age and may well warm some more.
Rather than this being a bad thing, it is a necessary thing.
Climate has warmed because in the cold, little ice age, there was little or no evaporation and snowfall in cold places where ice is sequestered. The depleted ice retreated and caused this natural warming.
Ice core data shows ice accumulation on Greenland is most in warmest times. If you add up the ice accumulation recorded for the cold and warm periods, most of the ice on Greenland accumulated when the Arctic Ocean was warm and thawed.
They claim storms have changed with the warming. That is the truth, changing the temperature of the oceans does change evaporation and precipitation and storms.
The lie is that CO2 is responsible.
Every time the alarmist media covers any event, they point out anything that is worse for anyone, that cannot be defeated.
Natural causes of climate change can defeat CO2 as the cause of global warming and sea level rise.
Climate has changed and that cannot be defeated.
Climate is well inside the bounds of the climate change of the recent ten thousand years.
Climate is well outside the bounds of recorded data, that only goes back to the invention of the thermometer.
Study the natural causes of climate change and learn and teach that “Climate changes in natural cycles and the causes are much bigger than greenhouse gases”.
Saying that climate should not change is a dumb lie, promoted by the alarmists!
Saying that climate has not changed is a dumb lie, promoted by many Skeptics and Lukewarmers!
Climate has changed and will continue to change due to natural internal response to external factors. Climate change is normal, natural, necessary and unstoppable! Climate change is worse and better, in many different places.
Understand and teach natural causes of climate change.
Meanwhile, it is snowing in northern Texas. Frost in New Mexico. The temperature over the Great Lakes will drop below 0 C.
Judith,
Nice article in City Journal. https://www.city-journal.org/global-warming#.XbGKGtFqQQM.email
Is this the reporter you were interviewed by?
actually the City Journal article is months old. This was a verbal interview, that was originally translated into French and published in French magazine. Then the article in French was translated back to English. As a result, many of these are not my words, but I don’t have any objection to how the article turned out.
I’d say it turned out real well.
The author looks to be a significant heavyweight in Europe.
https://www.city-journal.org/contributor/guy-sorman_563
Not your “run of the mill” tabloid journalist.
In the Arcticle:
Does Curry recommend passivity, then? Not at all. In her view, research should be diversified to encompass study of the natural causes of climate change and not focus so obsessively on the human factor.
In nature, water with a thawed surface is required for evaporation and snowfall.
Ice core data and history show that cold periods with more ice extent have followed warm periods with open polar oceans and more ice accumulation.
Ice core data and history show that warm periods with less ice extent have followed cold periods with frozen polar oceans and less ice accumulation.
Ice cores have temperature, CO2, O2 and the time and depth of the sample. The depth and time increments do indicate the ice accumulation. The most of the ice on Greenland and Antarctica accumulated in the warmest of times.
This should be included in the study of natural causes of climate change
Currently, the Length of Day is shorter than it was when the atomic clock was started, this would not be true if sea level had increased over this time. Sea level is a difficult thing to measure and the change is small, the errors in measuring many places and averaging them together is very difficult and full of large errors. Length of Day is measured with an atomic clock with extreme accuracy.
the probability of a sea-ice-free Arctic Ocean during summer
Ice sequestered on Greenland and other cold places in the North Polar Regions is only there due to the time that the Arctic Ocean has been ice free.
Ice in the North Polar Regions, depletes faster than evaporation and snowfall build the ice in cold times when the Arctic Ocean is frozen year round. We have history and ice core data that prove this.
Warm times end due to increased ice accumulation over many years.
Cold times end due to decreased ice accumulation over many years.