Have the 1990 IPCC predictions been proved completely, unarguably and utterly wrong? Yes.
They predicted that if our emissions stayed the same, temperatures would rise by 0.3 C per decade, and would be at the very least 0.2, and the most 0.5. Even by the most generous rehash of the data, the highest rate they can find is 0.18 C per decade which is likely an overestimate, and in any case, is below the very least estimate, despite the world’s emissions of CO2 continuing ever higher.
Climate Scientist Matthew England called that “very accurate”. Since when did 0.18 = 0.3? (Shall we call it “climate maths”, or just call it wrong?) The IPCC had a whole barn wall to aim at, and a battalion of government funded gold plated AK-47s to hit the target, but they still missed.
Both England and the ABC owe Minchin an apology.
The un-Skepticalscience page uses a pea and thimble trick to argue the IPCC 1990 predictions were right (“Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC FAR”). As usual John Cooks site looks “technical” but uses complexity to hide the way they redefined the prediction in order to pretend it wasn’t wrong. Excuses excuses. Intellectual wordsmiths who bore you to death.
The un-Skepticalscience page essentially says that GHG forcing was lower than the IPCC predicted. So if you allow for the fact that the IPCC got the future concentration of CO2 wrong, then, hey, really their models are “very accurate”. Figure that estimating the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is far simpler chemistry and much less complex than getting the whole kit and caboodle of a climate model to work. If the IPCC don’t even know how big the sinks and sources of CO2 are, why would anyone trust them to get a multivariate equation with clouds, rain and ocean-turnover right?
Here’s how you can spot the pea-and-thimble trick in the un-SkepticalScience site:
1/ There is no direct quote of the IPCC prediction.
2/ The IPCC used the term “prediction” — but unskeptical science repeatedly used the term “projection”. They even retitle graphs.
3/ They didn’t use the original captions on the graphs, instead writing their own.
4/ The IPCC talked of “emissions” leading to a temperature rise. Skeptical Science talks of “radiative forcing”. (A clue, emissions are measured in gigatons, not in W/m2. The SkS page is discussing something other than the main point.)
But if you were a casual reader you wouldn’t know that unless you bothered to be skeptical, and go to the source to check.
Let’s quote the IPCC Prediction:
“If emissions follow a Business-as-usual pattern
Under the IPCC Business as Usual emissions of greenhouse gases the average rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century is estimated to be 0.3C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2C – 0.5C)” [IPCC FAR summary]
Note the wording is a prediction about “emissions” leading to warming. Radiative forcings are a subpart of the big picture, but “Business As Usual” means emissions as usual (and for 1990), not final CO2 ppm values “as usual” or radiative forcings “as usual”. We judge the prediction by the terms they set, not post hoc ignoring the parts that fail, cherry picking something they accidentally may have got right, and then calling it all “very accurate”. It’s not even a tiny bit “accurate”. The world has been warming for 300 years, so to say it will keep warming is the most obvious forecast, and that’s what happened. The favourite horse won.
Sometimes the IPCC gets it right (accidents do happen)
The IPCC actually thought that sticking with “100% of 1990 emissions” would lead to 390ppm Co2 or so by 2012. But our emissions were 25% higher by 2012, so you’d think atmospheric CO2 would be higher too. But no, in the end result was… accidentally, 390ppm. See Fig 4 FAR summary page xvii.
Fig 4 IPCC FAR summary. Note the words “100% 1990 emissions” which was supposed to lead to CO2 levels reaching 390ppm by 2010. (Click to enlarge and see the 2012 prediction point marked)
Adding up the emissions of man
We emitted more than 1990 levels as usual (see here or here). You can get the idea from this graph. That should have given the IPCC a bit of a booster pushing the global temps up just that much higher.
Did human emissions stay at 1990 levels? Not so.
Man made emissions of CO2 have increased since 1990 by 25%.
Since 1990, man-made emissions of CO2 have increased by 25%.
Data Source for the emissions graph: Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
…
Here’s the original IPCC prediction graph from the 1990 report with the original caption.
Check the wording. This graph predicts what happens if we keep emitting CO2 at the same rate.
The caption on Fig 8. IPCC FAR Summary makes it clear that the realized temperature is a prediction caused by Business-as-usual “emissions“.
Pretending that we can still call it “accurate because the IPCC overestimated how much the human emissions of CO2 would push up atmospheric levels (by underestimating global sinks) is just shifting their error.
The bottom line about climate models
In 1990 any halfwit could have drawn a straight line on a graph with a ruler through the last 100 years and come up with a prediction the Earth would warm by “about 0.15c per decade” . They’d have been more accurate than the multibillion dollar IPCC fan club, and a lot cheaper.
The models are not just a waste of money, they’re worse, because their inaccurate results are used to suck more public money into malinvestments and misconceived ideas.
The bottom line about un-SkepticalScience
The site may look superficially convincing but despite the effort to list references, they don’t quote accurately, don’t use the original headers or captions, change the words used by the IPCC, cherry pick one part of the prediction, ignore the parts that fail, and links to science articles that are essentially irrelevant. Streuth, even the name of the site is misleading.
What about other greenhouse gases?
The excuse will still come that methane did not rise as fast as predicted, which it didn’t, but it’s just another excuse. The IPCC don’t understand what drives atmospheric levels of CO2 or methane either, two accidents don’t make it accurate. And if they can’t do the basic factors there is no chance they can predict the more complex variable called “temperature”. [Click here for levels of methane, CFC’s and N2O from Cape Grim]. Methane has leveled off, but conversely the accidental production of HFC-23, a greenhouse gas 11,000 times more potent than CO2, rose by 50% at the same time. The increase was so large, it offset any equivalent CO2 reductions in the whole UNFCCC Clean Development mechanism in 2007 and 2008. (see Montzka, 2008)
It’s bizarre in a way that alarmists try to defend the IPCC in 1990 or Hansen in 1988. You would think they would wear the obvious and say “models are so much better now”. Instead, it’s telling that they think they can get away with audacious spin to say black is white, and 1.8 equals 3.
———————————————————————
PS: There is no chance the government will pay someone to audit, check or expose the mistakes and omissions on sites that un-skeptically support big-government policies. If you think it’s useful to have more articles like the one above, perhaps you can toss a few cents in the tip jar? Every donation helps. Thanks, Jo.
REFERENCE
Montzka, S. A., L. Kuijpers, M. O. Battle, M. Aydin, K. R. Verhulst, E. S. Saltzman, and D. W. Fahey (2010), Recent increases in global HFC-23 emissions, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L02808, doi:10.1029/2009GL041195.[abstract]
In the warmist circles history seen in climategate and beyond there was a common complaint about the skeptic bloggers like Anthony and McIntyre that since they are not climate scientists that they are free to lie. Projection I know but warmist scientists really believe that the skeptics are part of an evil conspiracy, Gleick’s forgery proves such. The warmmonger lament that their hands are tied because the cant tell the outright lies the McIntyre and Watts can get away with. Enter, John Cook an unemployed cartoonist who is free to say and do what ever the warmist side needs. Coincidence, you be the judge.
10
The global climate debate has distracted us from changing fear-based energy policies adopted by world leaders in the mid-1940s.
We desperately need leaders now – like former Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy in organizing the great creative talents of humans to confront the Sputnik threat in 1957 with the Apollo landing on the Moon in 1969 – to develop the energy (E) stored as mass (m) so mankind can continue to advance.
Fear-based policies promoted by the UN’s IPCC, the EU, the UK’s Royal Society and the US National Academy of Science threaten our survival, as noted in this draft letter to world leaders, editors and publishers:
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-55
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
http://omatumr.com
10
Warming within 0.12 degrees of predictions per decade, that sounds close too most. Sounds really accurate, over 10 years only 0.12 out, wow those models are accurate aren’t they.
Warming 40% less then predicted, hmmm not sooo sellable.
Warming nearly half of predictions, how are you going to sell that?
Don’t you just love spin.
10
Bang on! The unit of measurement or the quantity which on uses is so VERY important. 390 ppm sounds scarier than 390 parts pwer million or 0.039%.
10
I guess you are getting your error of 0.12 per decade from Jo’s comparison “since when did 0.18 = 0.3” in the post above. This comparison is misleading because her figure of 0.3 is wrong.
00
How much is it Mick?
00
I think you compare the 0.18 with a range of predictions which starts at 0.175 and goes up to 0.375.
00
Sorry, I forgot to say the 0.175 to 0.375 predictions are to 2030 and may not be predicting straight line increases.
00
Here is the first IPCC report Jo refers to.
Pretty clear that Jo’s statements are correct
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/1992%20IPCC%20Supplement/IPCC_1990_and_1992_Assessments/English/ipcc_90_92_assessments_far_overview.pdf
And yes the 0.12 is based on the 0.3 average prediction.
According to
http://www.climate4you.com/images/MSU%20RSS%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
it is very generous to allow 0.18 warming in the last decade.
00
Well from Jo’s silence after Matthew England’s defence at #85 on the ‘ABC Biased….’ thread, I just new there must be something substantial coming…. and I wasn’t dissapointed. A thorough & comprehensive takedown of the vascilating & pernicious, re-casting of the IPCCs miscalculation. by the Real Climate Scientists ( would they make better politicians?)
00
I agree with you that it’s a long blog post. But I can’t find the part where she responds to Matthew England’s points. He says that Jo does not acknowledge that the IPCC’s projected warming at the start of the century will be slower than the more rapid climb at the end of the Century. I can’t find her response to that. All she has done is repeat the same mistake.
00
Why would Jo respond to such a cop-out by England? The IPCC predicted 1DegC warming over 1990 by 2025.
You wanna do the math or shall I Buckley? (I’ll help you, that would be 1.0/[2025-1990][10] =???)
faster, slower, sideways or bassackwards, the prediction was for 0.3DegC PER DECADE
By the way, I responded to England about his furphy. Go read it.
00
“Why would Jo respond to such a cop-out by England?” Because he’s the published climate scientist and she’s the blogger. BTW, I solved your equation and didn’t get 0.3.
00
yeah 0.286… I assume we were multiplying the numerator not the denominator as shown.
00
This probably isn’t to significant though the early history of the IPCC and the 1990 assessment report was used to negotiate the creation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The IPCC was apparently created by two UN organizations, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 1988. I can’t find information on who authorized the UN to create the IPCC or if the UN Charter even supported its creation at the time.
The IPCC used available scientific information at the time to create the 1990 assessment report. This is why its likely to be full of mistakes.
00
WMO
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations. It is the UN system’s authoritative voice on the state and behaviour of the Earth’s atmosphere, its interaction with the oceans, the climate it produces and the resulting distribution of water resources.
UNEP
United Nations Environment Programme
To provide leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing, and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.
UN Org Chart
Bit of a “Where’s Waldo” — can you find the IPCC on the chart?
00
Hi John.There’s a fairly comprehensive history and background which may assist you at:
http://green-agenda.com/agenda21.html
Cheers
00
Hi Kevin,
Thanks, I’ll take a look.
00
I read over the Agenda 21 and Green Agenda sections and my first reaction was to compare it to something out of Frank Herbert’s Dune.
Keeping an open mind, it shouldn’t be difficult to confirm many of the context statements — people places and some of the more bizarre aspects.
The thing that struck me, several days ago when I started to research ICLIE, was how did we get into this mess. Was the UN ever Chartered for some of the agencies we’re finding and what member states (countries) agreed to all this.
I guess the only thing saving us from a bigger mess is the complete failure of the Sustainability ideas and programs.
American Thinker
October 28, 2009
UN Agenda 21 – Coming to a Neighborhood near You
April 30, 2012
Obama’s Epic Green Fail
00
Section B from the Arizona Senate Bill 1507. I really hope this passes into law and other States follow suit.
00
Shall I also mention the billions of tax payer per year funding that goes to coal and oil in your country?
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Screen-shot-2012-05-02-at-2.30.35-PM.png
The report, commissioned by the solar industry’s trade group, has a number of interesting conclusions:
Solar has had relatively small subsidies. That’s right, incentives for solar have been small compared to fossil fuels
Incentives are working. Long term, stable incentives have ‘bridged the chasm’ to get solar past early adoption stages and to market.
The employment potential for solar is even better than anticipated. Solar can create between 200,000 and 430,000 jobs in 2020.
Solar power will not only be competitive, but will be a robust addition to America’s energy portfolio. Expanding the use of solar would limit the impact of price volatility and supply disruption- just rooftop solar could provide 20 percent of America’s energy needs.
Did I say jobs? I meant hundreds of thousands of jobs. The report finds that between 200,000 and 430,000 direct, indirect, and induced jobs will come from the solar industry in 2020. A recent solar jobs census found that there are already 100,000 Americans working in the sector. The connection is clear: more demand and lower costs are accelerating employment in the installation, maintenance and manufacturing of solar PV.
The record profits of carbon based energy are breath taking.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/02/big_oil_banner_year.html
Ross J.
———————-
REPLY: Good grief Ross, 6.9 billion people are kept warm and mobile thanks to carbon based energy. Of course it is a big industry. And the “good” thing about solar is not how many people it employs, but how much electricity it provides, which is actually next to nothing, so all those people are wasting their efforts and our money. The bigger the numbers of “jobs” you trumpet — the more tragic the industry is. And name those subsidies? Those companies pay billions in tax, and usually the “dream list” of subsidies is just some greenoids wish list of how much more tax those companies could potentially be paying if only Bob Brown or Christine Milne could destroy the economy properly. What! They’re not paying $27billion extra in tax? Call that a subsidy. – Jo
00
Ross, you say here:
Man, when it comes to electrical power generation, you really do need to just hold off and not comment, because mate you are absolutely clueless.
Solar and competitive in the one sentence is so laughable, I wonder why you bothered to even mention it.
Solar currently provides 0.04% of all the power generated in the U.S. That’s 0.04%.
Solar Power link (second column bottom) compared to All power link. (bottom far right) You do the Math.
In the last four years that has risen from 0.02%, and while some may look upon that as an encouraging doubling, it’s almost less than nothing. That same total power from EVERY Solar source generated in ONE YEAR is produced by the coal fired sector in 10 hours, or by just ONE large scale coal fired plant in 35 days.
The ONLY reason any private sources are getting into Solar power is to have access to the humungous subsidies from Governments.
The whole of your comment is so bogus on nearly every sentence that I really honestly would not have any idea where to start.
Tony.
10
I agree with Jo and Tony’s comments Ross,
I have nothing against support for R&D in alternative energy and I even support research in Climate Science. The problem occurs when lobbies convince government to implement policies which launch solutions that are not ready for industrial use. These are inferior products which would never be purchased by industry because there isn’t any return on investment.
The US government jumped the shark long ago and wasted billions on wind fields that are now quiet towering monuments to governmental waste. This isn’t to say that it couldn’t have been done better at the time.
We simply have the wrong groups in charge of alternative energy solutions and, if we had our pick, the solutions would save the taxpayer money, improve the human condition, and not require the use of tax dollars because they would be best of breed definitive solutions.
I post this vid a lot because I like his systematic and holistic approach. Take a look and see solar energy’s potential role. Why waste money on community garbage when the taxpayer can generate their own power and save money across the board?
00
Dan Nocera: Personalized Energy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTtmU2lD97o
00
Ross brings out the old, tired claim of “massive subsidies” for Oil. When you actually look at how the Green Orgs generate these numbers, you find that deductions for expenses (what everybody in the world gets to do) is counted as a “subsidy”.
Apparently, oil companies should pay taxes on their gross revenues, not their net profits, like everyone else. Of course, no arguments are ever made as to why this should be so — they just hope you are too dense to spot it (like Ross).
00
As the planet cools..due to NATURAL solar variation, more CO2 is absorbed into the sea.
As the IPCC is a fraud so are their graphs.
00
The first step in all these calculations seems to be missing. Surely if you are going to predict what changes humans make you would first need to know what natural changes are happening. The arguments over whether CO2 has led or lagged temperature over hundreds of years make it obvious that CO2 was rarely stable. So how much and in what direction would the change have been without any human input?
00
An addition to the above thought. If the warmist opinion is that CO2 levels would have been stable then surely this means that there is a strong negative feedback within the carbon cycle. How could it be stable without a strong feedback? Not temperature feedback but a stabilising feedback of the atmospheric CO2 levels by the carbon cycle speeding up or slowing down in response to a change in the levels. Also if photosynthesis increases with higher CO2 levels does this not mean that the this atmospheric CO2 stabilising negative feedback increases nonlinearly? A CO2 feedback hockey stick! A nonlinear increase would explain the 25 percent error above and show that there is no chance of CO2 levels increasing beyond the point where the feedback hockey stick line goes vertical. Now if the CO2 warming is also nonlinear but instead of increasing sharply to a vertical line like the CO2 feedback it decreases sharply to a horizontal line then there is no chance of humans causing global temperatures to increase beyond the crossings of these lines.
Further this would show that the best way to reduce climate change is to drive CO2 levels up to this most stable point and keep them there!
00
Interesting article and in relation to above
http://www.europeanenergyreview.eu/site/pagina.php?id=3681
Are they feeling the heat yet?
00
One cannot help coming to a strengthening conclusion that climate “science” has very little knowledge of how Earth’s climate system works given how far out it’s alarmist prophet’s predictions have been.
All their graphs and statistical manipulations are pretty meaningless against historical weather events data, including extensive geological evidence of past weather events. These give powerful evidence that nothing much has changed with Earth’s climate outcomes over thousands of years up to the present time.
Floods, droughts and for example the collapse of Mayan cities and possibly their civilization due to “climate change” (a long lasting EL Nino episode?) have been the cyclical norm in that extended period of human history.
What they gloss over is the chaotic nature of Earth’s climate system which has many very powerful natural climate drivers in play and thus reveal how naive their presumptions are about the primacy of human fossil fuel emissions and land use in such a highly complex and obviously as yet obviously little understood system.
00
If the actual man caused carbon emissions were 25% higher than expected by 2012, yet the atmospheric PPM were the same as expected for 2012, the whole theory needs to be scrapped. As I see, it means:
They can’t predict even the simplest part of man’s carbon input and/or they have missed a huge natural sink for co2
00
Sort of sad really. If the Methane tipping point came like they predicted the world energy prices would have fallen due to the methane enhancing every combustion process and reducing the amount of other fuel required. It would even have reduced the amount of fuel that planes needed to carry. Very sad the cheaper energy would have been a great boost for humanity.
00
I predict that the IPCC will die a slow and agonizing death.
I predict that Hansen, Mann, Tremberth, England et. al. will be prosecuted for fraud.
I predict that Tim Flannery will become a toilet cleaner in a Westfield Shopping Centre.
I predict that Al Gore will become Tim Flannery’s chief side-kick in afore mentioned job.
I predict that Jo Nova and David Evans will prove them all wrong (they basically already have!).
I predict that the Climate will keep changing, as it has for the last 4.5 Billion Years.
I predict John Brookes, Catamon, Matt B, to keep their heads in the sand for eternity.
I predict Tony from Oz will become Chief Climate Commissioner under a Clive Palmer LNP Government!
I predict these predictions are totally true and have been tested against all climate models. 🙂
00
That should read “I project”. Never predict! That way, they can’t hold it against you when you are shown to be well wide of the mark. BA, you will have to present yourself immediately to Room 101 for a bit of remedial “re-education” in the proper use of Newspeak.
00
I predict never to project Winston!
Unlike Flannery, who has been projecting projectiles out of his mouth for years…
LOL…
00
How far into the future could you trust the predictions of an organization that called its 1st report the FAR, its 2nd report the SAR, its 3rd report the TAR and its 4th report the FAR, sorry AR4.
They never saw that coming?!
00
PAR for the course.
00
Winston. Perhaps based on a GCM Scale shouldn’t the next three be La, Te, Doh? Far Out!
00
Who wrote the article? Is this not the rather wild claim that Climate sensitivity will remain permanently in the low .12 Degrees to .16 degrees/decade based on eye ball graphing analysis. As I stated in another thread your established dogma of low sensitivity on this site is nothing but a beat up based on a rather wrong analysis of a very low PDO in present LATEST DATA.
Have read of the link to the IPCC provided in this article. This constant knocking of the IPCC is also an indication of the level of understanding of the science of climate. What over arches this is the dis belief not in the science but in the ramifications and impact on the industrial endeavour. Hence it becomes a political argument rather then a scientific one.
What I read of slow sensitivity was interesting but as CO2 rises, it does climate sensitivity does shift upward.
No-one here should ever assume that climate sensitivity will remain as a CONSTANT ( just linear). Just an analysis or eye balling graph or using primary school rulers is not exactly accurate. It can and will go higher.
Ross J.
00
Response to the questions posed by Ross
Who wrote the article?
Jo Nova?
Is this not the rather wild claim that Climate sensitivity will remain permanently in the low .12 Degrees to .16 degrees/decade based on eye ball graphing analysis.
Not that i am aware of, i thought it was a look at what was predicted/projected by the IPCC in 1990 as compared to the present day and how much the IPCC have got it wrong, the measurands looked at were temp and CO2 levels. I suppose one could estimate the sensitivity based on these figures but that is not expressed directly in the story.
Have read of the link to the IPCC provided in this article. This constant knocking of the IPCC is also an indication of the level of understanding of the science of climate.
Nothing could be further from the truth Ross, firstly it is not knocking but merely testing of a hypothesis which much to your dispair is how science works. Also the mere fact that the hypothesis is continually being tested suggests to me that the level of understanding re climate science is very high. I fail to see how anyone could come to an alternative conclusion.
What over arches this is the dis belief not in the science but in the ramifications and impact on the industrial endeavour. Hence it becomes a political argument rather then a scientific one.
How is testing a hypothesis a political endeavour?
What I read of slow sensitivity was interesting but as CO2 rises, it does climate sensitivity does shift upward.
This is not very good Jinglish Ross bt i think you are claiming that the more CO2 there is the higher the sensitivity? If so i would have to disagree.
No-one here should ever assume that climate sensitivity will remain as a CONSTANT ( just linear). Just an analysis or eye balling graph or using primary school rulers is not exactly accurate. It can and will go higher.
Correct Ross, the reaction of the climate system will change over time but not to the levels of CO2, we all know the log effect of CO2, therefore as CO2 rises the less effect it has. However climate will respond to all sorts of things in all manner of ways which is the whole point of the post Ross. Jo makes the assertion that the models are too stupid to account for all of this and therefore over a 20 year period they have got it wrong.
As with all your drive bys i do not expect you to put it in reverse and actually respond in any civil or worth while manner
Good bye and until next subject, next time Ross farewell
Crakar
00
Ross, you do sound a bit panicky! Sorry….
00
Ross,
When will you realise that it has always been a political argument. It has never been about the science (except that the science lends the politics some appearance of respectability) that is why the UN, through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which sponsors the IPCC, doesn’t appear to care that the scientific projections were wrong, other than being a bit embarrassed at how obvious the discrepancies have become.
00
Ross, climate is something that is beyond our control, it is totally controlled by external forces.
What we get is weather, as our unplumbed heat pump earth tries ever to reach equilibrium with ever varying parameters. CO2 does nothing in the grand scheme and your “forcings” are less real than unicorns.
Please enjoy the weather, variable as it may be, it is all we get.
00
The 1990 FAR projections are irrelevant. As I mentioned on the England thread science has moved on and it is well accepted that the FAR projections were a bit too high. England was wrong to defend them blindly, in contradiction of accepted science, and you are wrong to make it sound as though it matters. Science is not undone because some guy gets it a bit wrong on the spur of the moment on national TV.
I note your attack on skeptical science above…. even THEY say the 1990 FAR was too high!
00
Read- shifted the goal posts.
Read- the wagons have been moved into a circle!
Read- missed by a country mile.
Read- England should have chosen his weasel words better so they could have allowed more room for open interpretation to give him a fall back position if countered.
Read- Climate Scientists are held to a different level of account than other fields of scientific endeavour.
Read- Because our attempt to ambush a lay person with misleading “facts” and obfuscation has blown up in our collective faces.
Even SkS can’t defend the indefensible.
See, that looks better already, Matt.
00
Ok MattB we all accept that the IPCC got it completely wrong in 1990 but my question is what has changed since then?
How have the models improved to make them more accurate and no dont bother to reply if you are simply going to quote from the scriptures give me facts or nothing at all.
00
give me facts or nothing at all.
Six hours later i suppose it is nothing at all……………………
00
Hey look over there. Isn’t that Britney Spears.
Tony.
00
..and I have a bridge for sale Tony, do you reckon we can get him falling for that too?
00
MattB
Ross, you do sound a bit panicky! Sorry….00
Now come on guys, fair suck of the sauce bottle for MattB. You don’t seem to understand what he is trying to say on this and on the previous thread about science moving on with more powerful computers.
I’ll help me mate MattB by clarifying for you….
“The Commodore 64 computer couldn’t deal with the Climate Science input of 2 + 2 = 5, but modern supercomputers running on the energy use of a large town will be able to handle that input. If they can’t, well….we’ll get even bigger computers just like the Met Office did.
Now cut MattBs logic some slack please.
00
Umm, powered by?
Tony.
00
I did not say the improved science had anything to do with there now being better computers. I simply said that jsut as computers are better then they were, as are many many items, climate science has also advanced, as have many other scientific areas.
00
I went back to take another look at what you said…
Hmmm, it seems I got that wrong. My apologies Matt.
By the way, have you seen how the climate sensitivity (probably the most important factor in climate science) estimates have improved since 1990?
1990 FAR: 1.5 – 4.5DegC
2007 AR4: 2.1 – 4.4DegC
Much improved by the look of it Matt, much much improved, almost as much improvement as a modern computer over an old Atari 2600.
01
Yup Matt, just like all those advancements in Relativity in the past few years too.
Not!
00
I’ve worked on supercomputers. They are wonderful. You can produce the same set of wrong answers in a fraction of the time, compared to a regular mainframe.
The issue is not the size of your computer, it’s rather what you do with it that matters (no sniggering please).
If the software is rubbish, it produces rubbish, end of story. The models have so many linear and non-linear fudge factors built into them, you could actually be calculating the correct answers, and then fudging it into oblivion.
00
Yah, the Met Office. How’s that new hardware working out for them?
And today’s Telegraph Another month of rain as wettest April ever turns into miserable May
00
Matt
All climate projections are irrelevant. If you disagree, please give me some examples of how and why they are relevant.
00
I disagree, but I’d rather you wasted your time so like you I’ll choose to just state: “they are relevant. please give me some examples of how and why they are irrelevant.”
Be warned I reserve the right to wave away anything you raise.
00
Wave away dissent – said like a true Warmist MattB
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The task of instilling reality science into the broader debate on climate dynamics is a bit like shovelling grain with a pitchfork; it requires perstistence. But instead of grain, it’s the entrenched religion of CCC (Catastrophic Climate Change), promoted by faith healers, the IPCC and it’s paid “disciples”, Gore, Mann, et al, founded on the principles of FEAR, underpinned by DECEPTION to fuel the GREED of the annointed. This has been readily adopted by the gullible, just as all religions have operated for centuries; control by fear and a false promise of “salvation”. All we require is your complicity, money and freedom! Never questions.
Their ABC is just another “hall of worship”, where they make token sacrifices of “sceptics” deliberately out-numbered by “true believers”; the contemporary equivalent of show trials and burning at the stake in past “inquisitions”. Their ABC, typified by Q & A, complete with “high priest” (Jones) has copied the strategy of trashy newspapers; sensationalism, attack and villification unsupported by facts to create victims and villians, with a “hero” like a Mathew England tossed in to be the “judge”. With no right of reply or chance to present facts. The recent deliberate ABC set-up is a typical commercial “reality show” stunt; objectivity simply wasn’t intended to be in the script. And the great unwashed flock to the screen to get another dose of their adopted religion. Or “entertainment” for the ignorant, not unlike feeding another Christian to the lions in the coliseum as a deliberate distraction from the politics in play.
It’s nigh impossible to change a person’s belief when it’s entrenched with Fear and a sense of urgency to comply, hence CCC. It’s like expecting someone with a fundamentalist view of their religion to understand and accept an alternative and conflicting view has validity and theirs doesn’t. The response is either direct attack to defend, or silence if their belief is shallow. Ego will prevail.
Continuing to present facts and logical argument based on empirical science in the hope the warmist will change their belief is like shoveling grain with a pitchfork. You have the sharp argument and the grains of ignorance are many in number, but persistence wins in the end if fueled by truth. Nature’s dictates ultimately over-rule self-appointed purveyors of lies. How else do you build large solid haystacks (transparent science) out of a paddock full of sheaves of hay (empirical data)? Persistence, with sharp reality in your hand. That’s the way how societies have advanced, guided by reality, not as slaves dictated to by religion. The religion of CCC seeks to return us to the Dark Ages with penury and slavery. There are none so blind as those who don’t wish to see.
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O/T but look how Forecast the Facts continues to get major MSM coverage over a program that actually pushes the CAGW line!
2 May: Washington Post: Darryl Fears: Critics say Discovery Channel’s ‘Frozen Planet’ sidesteps climate change issue
Calling it “dangerous self-censorship” that only satisfies climate deniers, Forecast the Facts delivered an online petition with what it said were 10,000 signatures to the network’s Silver Spring headquarters. The petition criticized Discovery’s “decision not to explain the science, and human causes, of global warming.” A security official accepted the petition, said Brad Johnson, campaign manager for Forecast the Facts…
“Frozen Planet” executive producer Vanessa Berlowitz said the staff members and climate change scientists who worked on the series wanted to expose as many people as possible to “magnificent parts of the world” before they changed forever because of climate change.
“Our hope was that by bringing these dramatic images of change to large, global audiences, even those not willing to accept the scientific consensus that humans are responsible for the unprecedented rate of climate change could no longer ignore it,” said Berlowitz, a producer with the BBC, which produced the series with Discovery.
Critics remained unhappy that a direct connection wasn’t drawn in the series. “Hiding the truth to appease deniers is not acceptable,” Johnson said. “The idea that you need to hide the truth for political expediency or corporate profit is totally unacceptable.”…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/critics-say-discovery-channels-frozen-planet-sidesteps-climate-change-issue/2012/05/01/gIQAGBfXvT_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines
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No, Matt, they made a prediction and they were wrong. The science did not “move on”. The con artist posing as academics moved the goal posts when their forecast failed miserably!
While on the subject of goal posts. From Ben Santer et al.
The graph shown on the following link originated at WoodForTrees.org. and shows no warming for seventeen years.
http://www.Real-Science.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/ScreenHunter_201-Mar.-09-07.07.jpg
It will be interesting to see how they try to move the goal posts on this one, eh Matt? 😉
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Eddy can’t grab the link:
Here’s some trends from UAH: last seventeen years much the same trend as the whole record.
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Hi SillyFilly – the idea that it has warmed over the last 17 years or for longer periods within the satellite data record is not contentious. Can you explain the failure to warm from 1998 to now (14 years) given the fact that the CO2 concentration has gone up by approximately 28 PPM in the same timeframe?
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1) TSI
2) sunspots
3) and ENSO
And remembering of course that CO2 v temp is not a linear relationship.
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Hi SillyFilly – I’m not sure that we are arguing over anything here.
So TSI has been down over the last decade, Sunspots are down indicating a weaker magnetic field, increased cosmic rays impacting the atmosphere and hence increased cloud cover (Svensmark) resulting in a higher albedo, and ENSO impacts on global temperature.
Fair enough – but, I’m not sure what point you are trying to make?
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[Crickets]
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Can you please explain Greenland and the Vikings for me?
And why Polar bears are happy?
And why Climategate 1 and 2 where so enlightening?
Cheers
BA
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Can you please explain Greenland and the Vikings for me?
And why Polar bears are happy?
And why Climategate 1 and 2 were so enlightening?
Cheers
BA
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Silly Philly,
The link is valid but you will have to cut and paste, sorry about that!
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Some more interesting graphs and comment at “Reasonable Doubt on Climate Change”.
http://reasonabledoubtclimate.wordpress.com/category/global-cooling/
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James Hansen’s 1988 temperature predictions versus the observed:
http://orssengo.com/GlobalWarming/Hansen1988Scenarios.gif
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The Alarmists’ mantra is ‘Ever Forward!’ — don’t look back at failed predictions, debunked models, inconvenient truths such as LIA and MWP etc etc.
But continue to push the line that with more money, we’ll get it right tomorrow. They are always on the brink of getting it right, but they never do.
The Alarmists are in friendly Leftist company with their Forwardist movement: remember Comrade Mao’s “The Great Leap Forward”, Comrade Gillard’s “Moving Australia Forward”, Blair’s “Britain, forward, not back”, and now Obama’s “Forward 2012”. Even Lenin called his newspaper “Vperod” or “Forward.”
Leftists do not like looking backward in the rearview mirror, there’s too many things there that they would rather not see.
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Use the news cycle to stuff failed predictions straight down the “memory hole”.
It’s a very arrogant practice based on the false assumption that the rest of use are easily manipulated idiots with the memory and attention spans of a gold fish.
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The whole of the official facade of climate science is now one big mess of lies, half truths, misunderstandings, with occassional snippets of empirical reality thrown into the mix. I am intrigued by how such a situation could come about, and I look to deeper levels of frameworks to find the governing structures that produce these outcomes.
Some of the key features are the following.
[1] The absence of accountability for decision makers within the UN IPCC (and by extension the UN itself), for example, where has R Pachuri been held to account for anything that he has said or done.
[2] The absence of external, objective auditing of the practices of the UN IPCC to ensure that they conform with their mandate. Such an audit would reveal the widespread use of grey literature and advocacy where there should be none.
[3] Defining the mandate of the UN IPCC such that they are required to find Man Made Global Warming, where there is no equally funded “red team” to find the opposite, which you should do if you want a balanced assessment.
etc.
Points [1] and [2] basically assign power without accountability, and there is one section of human society who crave power without accountability – and that is psychopaths. REF http://www.hare.org/
So the framework surrounding the UN IPCC is directly supportive of the operations of psychopaths, hence it produces lies, rather than facts. This is not to say that the UN IPCC is full of psychopaths, the point I am making is that if you build an organisation with a “psychopathic character” – you will get psychopathic behaviour as the people working in that organisation adopt the governing frameworks (lack of accountability, lack of external audits) into their own work practices.
Every organisation needs to explicitly establish the means to hold every member of that organisation accountable for their actions, in this way we can all benefit from limiting the operations of psychopaths.
Why should we be concerned with psychopaths – because 1 in 100 people qualifies http://www.fisheadmovie.com/watch1, and given that 1 in a 1000 people have an IQ in excess of 150 http://www.triplenine.org/ it follows that for a population of 7 billion, there are 70,000 full blown highly intelligent pschopaths walking the planet, of which about 70 would qualify as evil geniuses.
These are people who excel at hiding behind masks of normality, of being a “pillar of society” while coldly, deceptively, manipulating those around them for their own benefit, they are without remorse, guilt, empathy, or compassion – the rest of us are simply a herd of cattle to be exploited, abused, and culled as deemed necessary by them.
These are the people who will be attracted to make a fortune trading in a fake currency (carbon credits) while promoting a great lie that such trade is for the benefit of the planet.
They are laughing at the rest of us, who they see as sheep to sheared, and when appropriate, skinned as well.
They are intra-species predators, and one of their key defenses is the lack of awareness of them by the general population.
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The whole Left/Green/progressive mess is built on psychology, and one expert has described the Left (which includes the mean Green people) as ‘malignant narcissists’.
I won’t rehash the material here, it’s all available at http://drsanity.blogspot.com , but the over-riding motivation of the Left/Green is simply: to make themselves feel good at other people’s expense.
That usually involves venting their inchoate rage by going around smashing things (see the subtitle of this blog) and by creating utopian fantasy futures which never come near succeeding.
Hence the rule: Any progressive agenda ends up delivering the exact opposite of what it was claimed it would achieve.
This will also be the fate of Comrade Gillard’s carbon tax (just a giant personal vanity project, really.)
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Jo, I’m glad you have reproduced Figure 8 from the IPCC report in this blog post. By comparing it to the graph David Evans constructed in the ‘ABC Biased …’ post a few days ago interested readers will see the misrepresentation David has made. As Prof Matthew England has pointed out, the IPCC’s predictions go out the the year 2100 and allow for slower warming at the start of the century. The IPCC’s temperature predictions are constrained by the curved lines in Figure 8 above. Unfortunately these curved lines are nowhere to be seen on David Evans graph. Instead David has drawn straight lines (i.e. assuming a constant temperature increase, contrary to Prof England’s advice) and shifted the lines so that they cross at the year 1990. The lines in the IPCC graph, Figure 8 above do not meet at the year 1990. They meet at the year 1850.
Your statement that 0.2 C warming per decade is the absolute minimum IPCC prediction is also incorrect. You have made the same mistake as David in assuming constant temperature increases all the way to 2100.
The IPCC report does make temperature predictions to the year 2030. By my calculations they estimate a warming rate of between 0.175 and 0.375 per decade from 1990 to 2030. We would have to wait until 2030 before passing an absolute judgement this and also be aware that the predicted increase may not follow a linear path.
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Mick, what part of my direct quote of exact IPCC wordings is misleading people? Their graphs are too low res to get decent numbers from.
Davids lines on the graph display what the IPCC wrote in the text. They said 0.3 per decade. They said 1 C by 2025. They said it in 1990. We are 60% of the way there. You can’t hide behind vagaries about “curves on graphs”.
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Jo, do you understand why you and David are being misleading or are you just going to ignore what Mick said above? Any climate scientist worth their salt is not expecting a straight line in the temp profile – why are you? Why do you ignore this when people keep pointing it out to you?
Just because the text of the report says “an average of x per decade”, does not mean we are expecting a movement of x EVERY decade. They’re two different things and you know it. If I said I’m going to put $1000 away at 7% interest and collect the total in 30 year’s time, I will NOT expect the early growth (per year) of my savings to be at the AVERAGE growth (per year) of my savings for the whole thirty years. The same applies to the projections. They are basically in line with IPCC predictions.
So I ask again, you’re not stupid, why do you intentionally mislead?
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Matt Bennett,
Like Goulds “Punctuated Equilibrium” theory of evolution,are you saying that the IPCC’s temperature predictions will move in the same manner?
Punctuated Equilibrium: instead of a slow, continuous movement, evolution tends to be characterized by long periods of virtual standstill(“equilibrium”), “punctuated” by episodes of very fast development of new forms.
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Any climate scientist worth their salt is not expecting a straight line…..?
And what do those climate scientists not worth their salt expect?
Cheap shot, but one day you will have to face up o the fact that many of those “climate scientists” are third rate.
But you are correct in saying that among their predictions you can find support for higher CO2 bringing higher temperature rises. The positive feedback claim. What Jo et al. are pointing out is that the REAL figures don’t support this claim of positive feedback.
The rise in temperature doesn’t fit. And rather than say we have to wait until 2030, 2099 or whatever, you could also look at the rise of CO2 v temperature from 1945 or even 1900.
There is NO EVIDENCE that temperature changes are not due to natural cycles. In 40 years since this hypothesis took off, no “climate scientist” has found ANY scientific evidence. There are just a lot of fudged statistics and alarmist claims.
There is NO CLIMATE SCIENCE supporting the CO2 effect. Why not provide one solid bit of evidence and convert all your critics?
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The IPCC said, “the average rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century is estimated to be about 0 3°C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0 2°C to 0 5°C)”. Note the words “average” and “during the next century” (their prediction is to 2100). Matthew England has pointed out that this allows for slower warming at the start of the century, faster warming later. If you plotted this type of warming on a graph you would see an upward sloping curve. Now take a look at Figure 8 above.
If you will continue to allege that Matthew England was wrong you are duty bound to at least address the point he makes in response to you.
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Mick do not make assumptions.
If the IPCC claim the average warming wil be 0.2 to 0.5C per decade til 2100 then it is reasonable to assume that we will see exactly that. If now claim that
Then it is just as feasable for us to get 0.1C warming until 2099 and then get 4.9C in 2100 and under these conditions the FAR predictions cannot be tested and are therefore useless would you agree?
Is there anything related to this topic left to discuss?
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Thanks crakar24. I don’t think the IPCC were saying 0.1C until 2099 and then 4.9 the next year, but let’s assume for arguments sake that they were.
Since we’re talking about trend here, the jump of 4.9 C in the year 2100 would become the baseline for all subsequent years. That’s definitely not useless! Given what we already know about the negative impacts of the relatively modest climate change which has occurred so far, even a prediction like this would be a stark warning.
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No, no, no, no, no, Mick unorisen.
You are attempting to defend the IPCC in a very poor fashion which to be honest only serves to make you look like a fool.
You are attempting to say this “The IPCC stated emphatically that the temps will rise by 0.3C (o.2C to 0.5C) per decade on average” However when it is pointed out to you that the IPCC has got it wrong you then claim “The IPCC said on AVERAGE so we could get stronger warming later on which will increase the average” therefore if we apply your logic to this debate it matters none what the IPCC claim because they dont actually claim anything………….and the sad part in all this is that idiots like you believe this shit.
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crakar24, I’m sorry but I can’t understand your comment.
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Mick Buckley
May 3, 2012 at 1:50 pm
Do you have any examples you could link that supports your claim of negative impacts?
Here are a few positive impacts of ‘the relatively modest climate change which has occurred so far’:
* It’s official: Australia no longer in drought
* The increase marks the eighth consecutive year of improving crop yields, a critical goal for China with more than 1.3 billion people and rising standards of living.
* While the Riverina’s crop this season was still relatively small – less than 20 per cent of that produced across the region in the pre-drought years – it returned an incredible average of 11 tonnes to the hectare, largely thanks to perfect weather conditions.
Of course we know that SPECIFIC natural disasters such as Cyclone Yasi and the Brisbane floods could not be directly linked to man-made climate change, the world’s leading climate change authority said.
Thanks in advance for providing the links.
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Are you serious?
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@Gee Aye
May 3, 2012 at 3:52 pm
That’s the essence of the question put to Mick Buckley and his unsubstantiated, unfounded claim.
Maybe you have a link Gee Aye, to help Mick?
Talk is cheap.
Links are free.
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sorry but you are saying those links you posted are support for claims of positive affects? this is a parody right? is there some science I missed?
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Are they negative?
If this the best you have, Gee Aye, it is no wonder Australians’ concern about the environment plummets.
Good luck convincing other people there is a climate crisis, because you fail here.
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I doubt that anyone will be rushing to add this line of arguement to their cannons. I can fully understand it if no one wastes their time with a reply but I can’t see how you can’t see this.
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By the way Jo, I agree that the IPCC graphs are too low res to get decent numbers from.
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MAtt and Mick,
Quoting the IPCC FAR Summary page xxii
Then, the killer.
Thus the IPCC predicted that if a miracle happened and the world stablized emissions at 1990 levels we would still get 0.2C per decade for the first few decades.
That’s why the IPCC FAR was a fail.
Mick — Since you thought that I was “duty bound to apologize”, that must doubly apply to Matthew England who is paid by the public to give the best most impartial advice he can give but was clearly unquestionably wrong.
Matt — Your grave and insulting suggestion that I intentionally mislead is abjectly false. What I quote above was freely available for your perusal before you made those accusations, so I expect that any honest polite commenter in your position would know what he needs to do.
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Jo, where did you get “duty bound to apologise”. I said you were duty bound to address his point. I see you are now doing that – thanks.
When I looked into this over at the other thread I found predictions to the year 2030. They ranged from 0.175 to 0.375 per decade.
In your post you give a warming figure of 0.18 which is within the range of my figures.
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Mick, I was not aware there was a journal called “in the other thread”? And even if there is, they are not the IPCC FAR 1990 report.
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Jo, my figures come from the the Executive Summary to Chapter 6 of the IPPC FAR (page 177).
I take this statement to be an interpretation of the graph in Figure 8 above, the same graph that is badly misrepresented by David Evans in the ‘ABC Biased .. ‘ post.
According to my calculations this gives low, best and high average warming rates from 1990 to 2030 of 0.175, 0.275 and 0.375 C per decade respectively.
We are currently about half way through this period and we should remember Prof England’s warning that the warming in earlier decades may not be as great as the warming later on.
BTW, sillyfilly has found another error by you. Would you care to respond?
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Jo, I think you should also respond to sillyfilly at comment #28. Your definition of Business as Usual struck me as questionable when I read the post, but I haven’t had time to look into it. I think sillyfilly’s comment deserves a response.
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Jo, as Mick pointed out immediately below your post, the 0.18 deg IS within the bounds of the model predictions, no argument there. But what you totally failed to do was engage with the whole gist of my point and thus I can only assume you intend to mislead.
Sticking to my banking analogy, what you are suggesting is that you’d go thundering in to your bank manager and accuse him of lying and not paying your interest if, after one or two year’s worth of saving, your bank account had not swollen by twice the yearly average projected over thirty years. You of course would not do that because you understand how compounding effects work. So why do you expect this of climate scientists?
More importantly, why do you repeatably fail to engage with this point? You must acknowledge that what you have falsely asserted with straight line graphs us not at all what scientists are expecting of the climate system..
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Matt Bennett, well said. I also forgot to say that the 0.175 to 0.375 predictions very likely allow for slower warming in the earlier decades also.
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Guys, I see only blank denial of the basic facts here. Everything I have said is correct.
Given that an eight year old with a ruler could have made a more accurate projection, No, I dont’ see any reason to pretend the IPCC predictions deserve to be forgiven for falling outside their lowest baseline estimate of what would happen in the next 20 years IF EMISSIONS WERE HELD STABLE.
But you are welcome to your religion if you need it, your apology is accepted for suggesting I mislead anyone.
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So, because the warmists’ supercomputers did almost as well as a linear projection, we should assume that everything they claim is true.
Let me see if I can summarize our warmists’s version of “proof”:
1) Sea levels have been rising for ~200 years
2) Temperatures have been rising for ~200 years
3) Anthropogenic CO2 emissions have been rising rapidly for ~ 60 years, and CO2 can cause warming.
Therefore, 1) and 2) are caused by 3).
Take a look at this graph of temperatures on the Greenland icecap over the last 1000 years. (You can see the start of the current warming at ~1820 — the GISP2 core stops about 100 years ago due to the ice not firmed up enough since then, but the thermometer record at this site shows about another 0.5 C rise.)
Note particularly the nearly straight-line rise between 800 and 1050 — that also could have been easily “predicted” by a child with a ruler. Perhaps that was also caused by the current anthropogenic CO2 emissions?
These guys haven’t quite grasped the logical point that, because it has been warming steadly for the last 200 years doesn’t mean that their explanation of why the warming has continued for the last 60 years is correct. (Particularly because they can’t explain the 140 years before that — their best shot is to try to convince everyone that it didn’t happen via flaky proxies like bristlecone pines.
Sorry guys — its not enough to construct models that indict CO2 as the cause of Global Warming and fit the models to the ongoing temperature rise. You have to actually develop some proof that your model is right — not just that it can be fit to past temperatures and almost matches temperatures for 20 years ahead (of when the predictions was made).
Of course, proof is not what the AGW promotion is about — else no one would be talking about “tipping points” for which there is NO evidence whatsoever. No, AGW is about using scare tactics to amass political power — proof is unimportant, as long as the power grab works. Scientists who go along are well-paid for their efforts — those who don’t go along are called “deniers”, demonized and defunded. It’s all there in the ClimateGate emails, if you choose to see.
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Another basic logical point these guys (warmists) can’t seem to grasp: Since emissions were not stabilized, but accelerated, you need to compare temperature rise to the prediction of what would have happened if emissions continued to rise (Business as Usual).
This is like the child drawing the wrong line on the chart, then later claiming high accuracy by saying that if the line had been drawn differently, it would have been right.
This is beyond a religion Jo — it’s a mental disability.
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Jo, I believe that statement by you and David Evans are misleading. I’m not a climate expert and I have surprised myself at how easy it has been to to find your errors. All I did was download the IPCC FAR report and look at the relevant sections.
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Ok Jo,
I can’t do anything more than I’ve done. You’ve repeatably utterly failed to engage with my analogy (I know why) and it has been noted by all on here for whom logic is important. I can’t do anymore…..
I’ll try one last time. Why do you and David (who supposedly have more than a passing skill in statistics), insist on using straight lines (yes, very easy for eight year olds with their rulers, I’ll admit) when that has NEVER been described as the expected function for either emissions or temp profiles? It’s a simple question, why the straight lines?
And no, I have not apologized yet, I’ll do that when you show me where I’m going wrong – I’ll gladly apologize because I’m a gentleman. But until such times I can only assume you intend to mislead (and that’s being charitable) considering the alternative is that you just can’t understand what I’m saying. Which is it? M
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Jo has clearly engaged, it’s simply because the IPCC wrongly state the probability as “Straight lines” on average. The true effect is that CO2 has a logarithmic impact and so the bulk of the rise for the next doubling of CO2 must mathematically happen earlier in the century rather than later.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong in showing that the current graph falls below the average rise forcast by the IPCC. Doing so clearly shows that the rate of temperature rise is far below the IPCC forecast. By suggesting that the true rate of rise can be hidden by natuaral variability over the last 17 years you are implicitly concluding fact that natural variability overwhelms CO2. The Corollary of this is that it implies that natural variability (other factors) contribute at least as much to global warming as CO2 and therefore less than 50% of the temperature rise since the Little Ice Age can be attributed to CO2. Apply this and you get well gee 1.5 deg per doubling against the IPCC central estimate – Hmm isn’t this about where the skeptics are forcasting?
Thank you for stating the sceptic case for us
Bob
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Mick Buckley
Well noted.
I also like the following statement and I am in agreement:
David Evans has also used the latest temperature data to determine climate sensitivity. Unfortunately this is from a low base caused by temporal cooling by a super La Nina over two years (2010/2011 into 2012 but now the temps are going up RAPIDLY and going negative – the typical PDO three month lag). It would be interesting to see a calculations of this “hybrid” kind from a high data ending with a El Nino. Of course both would be wrong and exaggerated. (-/+). Dog Tail Wag maths in other words.
Ross J.
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According to the BoM records, the following El Ninos occured during the period of steepest warming (1982-1998)
1982-83: SOI: Very strong
1987-88: SOI: Moderate to strong
1991-92: SOI: Moderate to strong
1993-94: SOI: Moderate
1994-95: SOI: Strong
1997-98: SOI: Strong
During that entire period, THIS ONE LA NINA OCCURRED
1988-89: SOI: Moderate
Of course we all know that this silly old codger named Ross will link us to all of his comments attributing the warming of the period to those many many El Ninos. (but don’t hold your breath)
Here is Phil Jones’ graph of global Ts
WOW!! LOOKEY AT ALL THAT TEMPORAL WARMING SINCE 1982 ROSS
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Baa Humbug,
Temporal temperatures fluxes -/+ are borne out.
Look at the trends my dear fellow:
Index February March Temperature change
NINO3 +0.1 +0.1 no change
NINO3.4 −0.5 −0.3 0.2 °C warmer
NINO4 −0.7 −0.4 0.3 °C warmer
BOM. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
Temperature tracking of EL Nino/LA Nina events are even more explicit:
The are exception when volcanic eruptions dependent on atmospheric suspended dust output even overwhelm El Nino heat from the ocean interaction with air temperatures by blocking sunlight.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
Temporal effects of La Nina seems to estimate to -.2 – Oceans acquisition heat
Temporal effect of El Nino seems to be approx. +.2 – Oceans expire heat
Now we all clearly see the dog wag of what is known as climate variability don’t we?
I have covered this more fully under another thread challenging David’s latest data assertions based on AIR temperatures.
Yep its cooling – no its not – but its cooling again.
What is it going to be?
Climate Variability with your proof graph at hand.
Air temperatures are then highly variable but still your graph proves global warming over time as the backgrounder.
That is the risk and fault in taking air temperatures – even 700 meter sea temps and drawing conclusions based on the dog tail wag estimates. Well we know one thing – it aren’t cooling. We are not resetting the heat gains causewd by greenhouse extra gases. We on the climate change (global warming) escalator.
We agree with the understanding then. Climate variability = The Temporal fluxes of -.2 +.2.
Global Warming = escalator graphing of temperature over time.
How many times are we going the hear about low sensitivity with the world’s cooling again.
Do not take me out of context.
Ross J.
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Ross, yes David Evans graph is a bad misrepresentation. It is surprising to see mistakes like this from a qualified electrical engineer. It’s a profession in which graphs are used quite extensively. Hopefully Jo will be able to give a response to the criticisms.
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Terrific back handed compliment there, Matt
so far so good……
absolute rubbish, an ad hominem by omission- Real Climate and SkS routinely moderate out inconvenient opinions, uncomfortable questions, in the latter case sometimes retrospectively!
Credit though for half way making a polite and gracious comment. Jo is extremely fair minded and encourages polite dissent.
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What a great thread!
Many thanks to Ross, Mike and Councillor Matt, for demonstrating the true meaning of psychological denial. The great thing about a good thread is that it’s chiselled in virtual WWW stone. Scholars decades from now can source this original text in an attempt to understand what went so badly awry in what will come to be known as “The Great Climate Hysteria.”
Not so bizarre really…
Environmentalism is literally an apocalyptic movement. It’s the secularisation of evangelical millenarianism. Hansen, Mann, Flannery, et al, are secular prophets. the IPCC is the modern Council of Nicea.
We would do well to recall that even great scientists like Isaac Newton became obsessed with The Apocalypse. Newton spent years studying The End Times and came to the profoundly deluded conclusion that the world will end in the year 2060. Bob Brown’s Greens would nod in approval of this date.
John Napier, the mathematical genius who first developed logarithms didn’t do so for scientific applications, but because he needed to work out the Number of The Beast more precisely!
The Apocalypse was one of the first subjects of the fancy new scientific analysis starting up in Newton’s day. By our post-modern age The Apocalypse -as a way to imagine the final stage of time – has been scrubbed clean of its ancient roots in the Abrahamic tradition and science-tified.
Once it was all based upon mysterious mathematics hidden in the Good Book and history. Now it’s about mysterious maths hidden in trees, ice cores or in institutional archives resistant to FOIs…
The American William Miller used arcane math and personal revelation to predict The Apocalypse would occur in 1843. (Today he would have made an award-winning documentary.)
Miller attracted tens of thousands of devoted true believers. When the world didn’t end in 1843, he found a slight misalignment in his calculations and called it for a few years later. His following swelled to more than 50,000. When the end still didn’t arrive, he simply predicted it a bit further into the future. And so on.
When the stubborn world simply refused to end the “Millerites” called it “The Great Disappointment.” They were salivating for The End. They would have gladly helped The Apocalypse along.
But the failure of apocalyptic predictions (or “scenarios” as the climate mob call them) never caused anyone to doubt their faith. Instead it simply showed how unfathomable the mind of God really is. Eventually, out of the Millerites arose the Seventh Day Adventists and to this day they are still eagerly anticipating The Apocalypse.
It’s a mistake to believe that evidence, hard science and reason will ever change the minds of true believers. To Warmists scientific evidence is like the deck chairs on the Titanic, adjust them however you like. The planet is still destined to go down.
Knowing the pathetic history of Apocalypsism, we can safely “forecast” that the Greens and the faithful Warmists will be with us for years to come as they transmogrify into some twisted image of their hubris.
When the evidence solidly turns against the Greens – as it already is – they will eventually renounce science altogether rather than abandon their faith…. When they are cast into the wilderness by the next election, they will turn away from the democratic process, something they have deep reservations about already…. As the Greens shed their moderate and fashionista groupies they’ll hunker down and delve into the twilight of extremist politics. The end result, somewhere in the near future, is almost certainly some kind of Green OWS movement….heroic effort by “other means” to validate their hubris, which might in the end become nemesis itself.
Unable to accept “The Great Disappointment” it’s possible that some future Green cult will seek to bring on The Apocalypse rather than avoid it.
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Hey Wes,
I’m glad you enjoyed the thread and agree with you that it will be very useful and entertaining for future social scientists. Probably for the opposite reasons though…..
Number one would be a study in how the owner of the entire blog fails utterly to engage with the meat of the very major issues of error that are patiently raised and repeated for her.
Many of the other points of interest will arise from your very own post!
(i) scientists from other ages who gave us fantastic and lasting insights into the way our world works also believed in some things that turned out to be wrong…. Wow, they’re human! Did this invalidate their gravitational theory, logarithms or orbital mechanics? No, it’s what we call a non sequitur…
(ii) you compare ‘mathematics’ hidden in a man made object (the Good Book) to empirically based and verifiable calculations based on nature’s records (ie tree rings etc) It’s like saying that because demons and dragons of literature turned out to be myths, we can’t verify the existence of dinosaurs using their very own skeletons. Hmmmmm….
(iii) you project onto others something they have not said (ie Mick, me, MattB, Ross) Not one of us suggested the end of mankind, let alone nature or the whole earth, the disasters to which you mistakenly allude. Read more carefully mate. We’re suggesting a massively inconvenient disruption to our current societies and an unfortunate loss of biodiversity – findings VERY firmly backed up by the evidence. Note – you having not read them, doesn’t mean they’re not true or important.
(iv) you launch into a barrage of political ranting. How does that invalidate science? I think you, like most humans, fear too much change too rapidly. Not much we can do about this part of our nature apart from keep reconnecting with our youth, society’s repository of unbridled optimism and energetic ideas not fixed by a lifetime of conformity and a habit of playing it safe.
(v) you say “when the evidence turns against the greens”… I’m sorry Wes, but it’s not the greens doing science and it’s the science you need to contend with. I know this is scary but you need to stop politicizing your thought processes and starting reading some scientific literature. The politics and the questions that dictate our course(s) of action are secondary to the science behind “is it happening and is it us?”….
Anyway, thanks for your thoughts, they’re VERY enlightening! M
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So … the ability to ‘predict’ that a warming that had been going on since 1820 would continue (like a kid with a ruler could) is, in your mind, proof that the last 60 years of the rise was caused by mankind. Never mind that you don’t have a clue what caused the first 140 (or anything that happened to the climate before that).
Matt, you and Mick are in a hermetically sealed virtual reality. I don’t think you’re going to get out of it. Hopefully, you won’t suffer too much from the ‘virtual’ “disruption to our current societies”.
The rest of us will continue to defend society from a much bigger threat to our freedom and prosperity — namely people like you who, not wanting to wait for your predicted catastrophies, are trying to engineer political catastrophies in their stead.
Remember, if it gets too bad, you can always take off the goggles and return to reality.
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Terminology. You point out that Skeptical Science uses the word ‘projection’ as well as ‘prediction’. In fact the IPCC also use the word ‘projection’, once in the Policymakers Summary and repeatedly in Chapter 6.
I’m not at all sure of the difference between the meanings of the two words and, unhelpfully, they’re not defined in the report. They seem to use ‘projection’ more often when discussing different future emissions scenarios – e.g. high, medium or low predictions of future CO2.
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Google The Triumph of Doublespeak – How the UNIPCC fools most of the people all of the time by reviewer Dr.Vincent Gray. This excerpt may help you understand the “difference”.
FORECASTING AND PROJECTING
The IPCC has abandoned any attempt to forecast future climate.
The first draft of the 1995 Report had a Chapter 5 “Validation of Climate Models” as in the First Report. I pointed out that it was wrong since no climate model has ever been “validated”, and they did not even try to do so. They thereupon changed the word “Validation” to “Evaluation” no less that fifty times and have used it exclusively ever since.
In addition, they do not use the word “prediction”. The models merely supply “projections”, which are the results of accepting the assumptions made by the models and by the “futures scenarios” which need to be used in association with the models to obtain the “projections”
“Validation” is a term used by computer engineers to describe the rigorous testing process that is necessary before a computer-based model can be put to use. It must include successful prediction over the entire range of circumstances for which it is required, to an acceptable level of accuracy. Without this process it is impossible to find out whether the model is suitable for use or what levels of accuracy can be expected from it..
The IPCC has never attempted this process, and they do not even discuss ways in which it may be carried out. As a result the models are worthless, and their possible inaccuracy is completely unknown. The IPCC has developed an elaborate procedure for covering up this deficiency which is well described in the IPCC document on “Guidance Notes for Lead Authors on Addressing Uncertainties” . .It includes attempts to “simulate” those past climate sequences where suitable adjustment of the uncertain parameters and equations in their models can be made to give an approximate “fit”, but they rely largely on the elaborate procedure for mobilizing the opinions of those who originate the models. Most of them depend financially on acceptance of the models, so their opinions are handicapped by their conflict of interest.
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Th UN IPCC has never had a “Conflict of Interest” policy. It is apparently not deemed to be necessary for such a fine, upstanding organisation of moral giants.
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ExWarmist
That is because they have never had a “Conflict of Interest”.
Everyone had the same interest.MONEY. 🙂
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Thanks KeithH. Vincent Gray’s understanding of ‘projection’ is similar to what I said. So has the word ‘prediction’ completely disappeared from later IPCC reports?
I don’t think it’s fair to say “the models are worthless” because they can’t be validated. How would we validate the models given we have no access to another Earth-like planet for experimentation?
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JKeith, just to expand on your definition of “validation: It is used in science or science related processes that require consistent operation and outcomes. That is anyone anywhere can use a validated method and get the same answer each time. Medical testing regimes, forensic science, weather testing stations all require validating prior to operation. Validation is required for accreditation and various regulatory, legal and quality control reasons.
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you and I think many here will find this paper interesting http://scx.sagepub.com/content/30/4/534.short
it defines the terms but also examines how climate scientists use the two terms. I have to say that many scientists confuse them but it is nothing that consulting a good statistician can’t cure. Predication and projection are distinct and in a debate like this it helps if they are used correctly.
If you can’t get the paper let me know and I’ll see what I can do.
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my first sentence should read
“You, and I think many here, will find…”
bloody punctuation fail
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Thanks Gee Aye. reading the abstract it looks like ‘projection’ should be used for possible future events, ‘prediction’ for probable ones. I’m guessing that the authors of the IPCC report and the authors at Skeptical Science know this, whereas Jo Nova does not.
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that is approximately it. You can make multiple projections but not really multiple predictions. With a prediction you have a level of certainty about the date going into your model so that your model will predict an outcome (these still include a range of probabilities or outcomes).
Multiple projections are possible because of uncertainty in many factors. As discussed here and elsewhere, climate projections plug values concerning future human behaviour, geopolitical factors, economic factors. Some of these values are little better than guesses.
Usually a scientist does not make too much of projections because of these uncertainties. So why bother?
Projections are usually done when models are robust. That is the algorithm that the projected values are plugged into have been shown to work using real data. So to project forward using a good model (this is a general comment, I am not assessing climate models)with plausible future data as an input should give a range of outcomes depending on what you are interested in. They are very useful for “whatif” questions as outcomes can often be surprisingly different from intuitive expectations.
So these whatifs are of academic and specialist interest; when they are used to inform public policy, it is usually done along with other types of data. With good reason.
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Gee Aye, thanks that’s very helpful. The choice of the word ‘projection’ or ‘prediction’ is informed by the level of certainty about the input data used by a model. I can see it’s a useful distinction. A prediction is essentially a best guess falling within a range of projections.
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So, let me get this straight. You suggest that- if you make a multiple “projections”, each with tweaking of various climate factors giving most outcomes, the fact that you get one of those projections somewhere in the ballpark of the observed rise in global temperature therefore “proves” your basic hypothesis, even though one of the central basic assumptions (emissions of human CO2 rose by 20%) is not factored into the projection parameters?
I would suggest that that is analogous to someone picking the Melbourne Cup winner by selecting 22 runners in a 24 horse field. That doesn’t validate your skills as a tipster or a student of race form. I would suggest you could take a rough glance at the past rise since 1880 out of the LIA, take no account of CO2 or any other forcing at all, anthropogenic or not, and get as close if not closer than the IPCC got in reality, no expertise even required.
The whole point being, if they can’t forecast even 20 years into the future, then there is no reason to believe that they will be more accurate out to 110years, much more likely they will be wider and wider from the mark as parameters they have not accurately quantified or accounted for become more and more influential at variance from their assumptions.
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——————————————————————————–
So, a prediction is a “guess”- how quaint. And for those observations that fall outside the projections, as the global temperature observations have done- obviously close enough is good enough, right Mick, even with a range of projections as wide as the Sydney Heads. If we weren’t wasting trillions of dollars on these best “guesses”, I “guess” it would be almost too amusing for words.
[]
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Winston, what’s happening here is that I didn’t know the meanings, in the modelling/climate change context, of the words ‘projection’ and ‘prediction’. Gee Aye had more information about those words and helped me to learn something new. I thank him for that. You seem to believe that we’re suggesting something, tweaking, and making false proofs. But in fact we’re discussing the meaning of two words.
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I would not define a prediction thus. Winston, I have a big problem with projections used in the way the IPCC uses them. They are a tool for exploring data and outcomes. Many models run with very complex algorithms that include chaotic factors for example, so plugging in different values is often an interesting and valuable exercise. The blurring of the distinction between prediction and projection is basically unscientific and is policy madness. This is a message I’ve conveyed to many in the last few years.
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Winston, my comment above is a reply to your earlier one, which starts “So let me get this straight…”.
In this comment I’ll reply to your later comment, “So, a prediction is a guess …”.
Yes, I’d be happy to agree that a prediction is a kind of guess. I think it’s specifically an informed guess about the future. I don’t agree with you that observations lie outside the range of predictions and I don’t think it is a waste of money to find out about climate change.
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Gee Aye- I agree wholeheartedly with your statements at 22.2.2.1.5
At least we can agree on this, and state that this does not necessarily completely disprove what the IPCC states, but certainly it does not prove or support the hypothesis in any way either. If the proof is there, I’m happy to be persuaded by it. If not then clearly our understanding is a work in progress. Unsubstantiated claims of accuracy only serve to undermine the edifice some hope to create, and the vastly expensive economic responses to that bear a measure of honesty into uncertainties transparently accounted for. The crux of Mick and Matt’s contention is that all is transparent, above board and close to what was predicted. I think I would disagree with that and that is at the heart of being held to account as part of any scientific process.
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O/T Bottled Air
Some people here may like to comment on this article at our ABC.
Those with high blood pressure maybe better to stay away. 🙂
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Keerist, we’re sharing the planet with some nutcases!
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So, the Australian “State of the Environment Report” has nothing bad to say about the present, BUT the future is awful! One wonders how they know…
What kind of buffalo-chip burners are you running on your roads down under? Here in the USA you can’t even commit suicide with a new car by starting it up in the garage.
I’ve lived in nearly the same area for almost 50 years, and I’ve watched the air get vastly cleaner during that time. You can’t see smoke from coal-fired power plants anymore, and cars don’t spew raw gas when you drive over the Continental Divide at 12,000 feet. (It used to literally gag you if you were on a bicycle.)
What do these yo-yo’s think is going to happen in the next 30 years to reverse all that?
Of course, this statement would have the same information content if it were worded like this:
“The Atmosphere chapter finds between two-thirds and one-third likelihood that within the next 20 years there will be decreased illness and death caused by motor-vehicle-caused air pollution.”
Doesn’t have quite the same ‘snap’ though…
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Gotta disagree strongly here BobC!
I have a CO detector in my garage. I can set it off by starting my truck OUTSIDE if the breeze is in the right direction (it’s happened several times).
I do agree that IF you do commit suicide this way with a new car the exhaust is so clean that your corpse won’t reek of fumes.
P.S. my truck has all the factory emission controls intact.
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Two questions:
1) How sensitive is your detector?
2) You haven’t been feeding your truck leaded gas, have you? 🙂
I was going by the latest emissions report on my jeep, which showed only trace amounts of CO — the O2 in the garage would be gone (and the CO2 levels would drive you out) long before the CO reached dangerous levels.
But, maybe my jeep is just better than your truck! 🙂
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No leaded gas that I know of. The CO detector is sensitive (I like them that way) but one wonders how discriminating they are. I set off a different CO detector in our living room last summer while running a gas powered pressure washer outside the house (preparing the siding for new paint). There were no open windows or doors but the muffler was “aimed” at the house.
Let me see: who demands these reports? AND why would they be interested in “adjusted” numbers?
P.S. my Dodge Ram 1500 Hemi is the same as your Dodge Jeep (except for mileage and Horsepower) 🙂
(Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Ram, SRT, Mopar and the Pentastar logo are registered trademarks of Chrysler Group LLC.)
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Mark,
The CO detector in my bedroom also claims it detects “combustable gas”. The only time it has gone off was the night after we switched the cat’s food (her bed is below the detector) and she started passing gas!
Presumably, it was ‘combustable’, but the cat wouldn’t cooperate with a scientific investigation.
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Sure, blame the cat…….
In our house “it” was the dog (till she went to dog heaven) now it’s the frog.
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Here is extra windmill warming
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9234715/Wind-farms-can-cause-climate-change-finds-new-study.html
That should get the juices flowing
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Ya gotta love Louise Gray. She is the only journo I have ever seen that could end an article with:
“This same strategy is commonly used by fruit growers (who fly helicopters over the orchards rather than windmills) to combat early morning frosts.”
Now, are the fruit growers flying helicopters in preference to flying windmills?
Or are the fruit growers contemplating flying helicopters over windmills in an attempt to get rid of the frosts in their orchards? Or perhaps it is a new form of extreme sport – “Blade-dodge” – last one left flying wins.
And if the fruit growers are combatting early morning frosts, how are the frosts fighting back?
Interested people would like to know.
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Ah the “missing sink/s.Yes it appears that for the amount of fossil fuel burnt by naughty humans there is just not enough CO2 in the atmosphere.But never fear the brave climate scientists are on the case.They think it maybe in the forests or could be hiding at the bottom of the ocean along with Kevin Tremberth’s heat.James Cameron is looking for it as we speak. 🙂
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(1) “There has been no significant warming for 14 years”
Basically true subject to tiny quibbles.
(2) “No, no, the last decade is warmer than the previous several.” Stated as if it proves the first statement untrue.
It is the “No no” that is the lie, the rest of the statement is true.
They are both true, look at a graph.
Consider the phrase “the last decade”, if it applies to the “Noughties” then (2) will be true until 2019 even if the Yarra starts freezing in 2013.
Perhaps I am being pedantic, but I smell a professional phrase-monger at work.
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This wasn’t so much a dissection of Skeptical Science as it was a vivisection. Nice job Jo! You weild the truth like a surgeon weilds his scalpel. Skeptical Science like Real Climate have become scientific alamos where climate frauds are bunkered firing off dis-information in a sad attempt to save face. All of us should be so very thankful for the far-fetched IPCC statement(s). They read just like alarmist depositions and the warmists can’t stray from them period without having the whole meme fall apart. It hangs around their necks like a millstone. The beauty of the IPCC statements is that they demonstrate flawed biased science, exposes the fallacy of basing most everything on computer models, rubs dung all over their “experts” faces while humilating their “peer review” process. You couldn’t even pay a hit man to do all that!!
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Jo,
A quick question.
You state this: “Business As Usual” means emissions as usual (and for 1990), not final CO2 ppm values.
While FAR says this:
“Four scenarios of future human-made emissions were developed by Working Group III. The first of these assumes that few or no steps are taken to limit greenhouse gas emissions and this is therefore termed Business-as-Usual (BAU)”
And this:
“The scenarios cover the emissions of carbon dioxide ICOT) methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen oxides (NOx ) from the present up to the year 2100. Growth of the economy and population was taken Loramon for all scenarios. Population was assumed to approach 10.5 billion in the second half of the next century Economic growth was assumed to be 2-3% annually in the coming decade in the OECD countries and 3-5% in the Eastern European and developing countries The economic growth levels were assumed to decrease thereafter. In order to reach the required targets, levels of technological development and environmental controls were varied”
So FAR factored in growth in emissions from 1990 levels, not static 1990 emissions as you seem to infer.
If you indeed have made such a fundamental error in your initial assumption, then it would surely follow that your additional analysis is rather baseless.
Care to comment?
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Sillyfilly
Jo has NOT inferred static emissions from 1990 but just stated the facts.
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sillyfilly, I think you are correct. Jo is wrong and once again misrepresents the IPCC report when she says “Business as Usual means emissions as usual (and for 1990)”. I hope that Jo will find the time to respond to your comment.
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See Figure 4. They projected that IF we emitted at 1990 levels, there would be 390ppm by 2010.
…
You can make all the excuses in the world. The summary for policymakers was written for policymakers.It had a clear message. They got the message, wasted billions of dollars on it, and the message was wrong.
…
I don’t see any clauses suggesting that their baseline of 0.2C per decade could be on the high side if we let the evil CO2 emissions continue unabated? Can you point me to that?
…
The policymakers reading this were not supposed to have to do radiative forcing calculations and projections for HFC-23 when they read the conclusions.
But the extreme dedication of the weasel word hunters to come up with some possible variations of subclauses where they can say, “yes but, if only X Y Z is considered, and P Q R ignored, really, the IPCC is very accurate”.
Who is in denial here?
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I agree, the science was wrong but the message for policy makers had already been crafted. It was policy makers that created the IPCC and used it to launch the UNFCCC. The WMO was one of the two agencies that created the IPCC. WMO falls under the UN’s Economic and Social Council as a Specialized Agency. Its an autonomous thing that’s coordinated by the UN at the intergovernmental level. This raises a lot of red flags for me.
What the heck is a UN specialized agency? This from the 2011 UN Org chart I listed in a comment above:
What the heck does this actually mean? Has the UN always been in bed with NGOs?
autonomous organizations working with the UN and each other
Sorry, I’m probably asking questions that have already been answered along ago.
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John
If you have not already done so you should download and read a copy of Donna Laframboise’s book on the IPCC. It’s an eye opener.
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Thanks Ross,
I’ll check it out.
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This is from a link on the IPCC website. The document, Global Climate Change, is from June, 1988.
Clearly, they had already made a Policy decision and simply wanted a range of possible responses supported by impact studies. The odd part, governments review and approve the Assessment Reports before publication?
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Jo, you are not answering the question. Both sillyfilly and I contend that your statement, “Business as Usual means emissions as usual (and for 1990)” is wrong. You have not addressed this question.
I feel like you’re taking us around in circles again. People point out where you are wrong, you respond but your don’t engage with the points raised.
At the moment the running total stands like this:
1. David Evans graph in the ‘ABC Biased’ thread badly misrepresents the IPCC’s Figure 8 above. He draws straight lines when they should be curved. He shows trend lines meeting at 1990 when they should not meet there. He plots the wrong temperature series.
2. You insist that when the IPCC in 1990 describe “average” warming “for the next century” they can be held to their predictions for every decade of that century. You insist with no justification at all that they are making a ‘linear’ prediction, even though their prediction (Figure 8 above) shows curved lines. No amount of patient explanation seems sufficient to have you address this issue.
3. You make the false statement, “Business as Usual means emissions as usual (and for 1990)”. Personally I don’t think this error is as serious as the others, but as the author of a popular blog whose subject is a serious global issue I feel you are obliged to respond. To the points raised.
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Interesting the graph of increased human caused CO2 increases that shows an increase of 25%.
I remember from awhile ago the comments that humans represent approximately 3% of the total CO2 in the atmosphere. (cant remember exact numbers)
A question does anyone know what that increase could represent in the total picture of CO2 in the atmosphere and how is it tracking as a total of the 390 ppm?
For example if we have increased emmisions but it only contributes a small fraction of the total increase then this drives a further set of questions in my mind.
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Who supplies the figures for ppm CO2 atmospheric content and how as it is not perfectly mixed is it measured?
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1 May: eScienceNews: A 100-gigbit highway for science
Climate researchers are producing some of the fastest growing datasets in science. Five years ago, the amount of information generated for the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report was 35 terabytes — equivalent to the amount of text in 35 million books, occupying a bookshelf 248 miles (399 km) long. By 2014, when the next IPCC report is published, experts predict that 2 petabytes of data will have been generated for it — that’s a 580 percent increase in data production. Because thousands of researchers around the world contribute to the generation and analysis of this data, a reliable, high-speed network is needed to transport the torrent of information…
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2012/05/01/a.100.gigbit.highway.science
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Would readers be interested in the following?
From the IPCC AR4 Summary for Policy Makers
Projections of Future Changes in Climate (pp 12)
Matthew Englands argument about slow warming early, fast warming later is debunked by the IPCC themselves.
All you others claiming that the IPCC didn’t strictly mean 0.15-0.3DegC every decade, but that this was just an AVERAGE, and who supported that activist Matthew England, and who accused Dr Evans of misrepresenting the IPCC projections need to speak up now.
Just in case you blind lot missed it, lets have that QUOTE FROM THE FRIGGING IPCC THEMSELVES AGAIN SHALL WE?
Get that??? PER FRIGGING DECADE for a period of ONLY FRIGGING 15 years. DO YOU COMPREHEND NOW???
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Baa Humbug, thanks for raising that. The figures you quote from AR4 (0.15 to 0.3 per decade) are in-line with measured temperature increases in the 1990 to 2005 period. The discussion between Jo, Prof England and others is over Jo’s (IMO incorrect) claim that the IPCC First Assessment Report (written in 1990) predicted 0.2 to 0.5 per decade.
The figures you quote from AR4 in fact tend to confirm Prof England’s position that warming in earlier decades will not be as great. Ok?
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To make my point absolutely clear I think I should have said, “Jo’s (IMO incorrect) claim that the IPCC First Assessment Report (written in 1990) predicted 0.2 to 0.5 per decade in the period 1990 to 2012“.
The IPCC do make a 02 to 0.5 prediction but it is for the period 1990 to 2100.
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I’m very new to this, so correct me if I’m wrong:
“The figures you quote from AR4 in fact tend to confirm Prof England’s position that warming in earlier decades will not be as great.”
But it’s not Prof England’s own personal position about warming in the earlier decades post-1990 (articulated as of 2012, remember, so with a very convenient 2.2 decades of hindsight…or did Prof England put this on the record in 1990? We’d like to see that!) that is under debate.
It’s Prof England’s position as to what AR1 (1990) itself was implying about warming between 1990 and now in its report. Remember, Prof England said “What Nick just said is actually not true. The IPCC projections from 1990 have borne out very accurately.”
Now if by “The IPCC projections from 1990” he meant 1. “The IPCC projections from 1990 until 2012 AS ADJUSTED through AR2 in 1996, AR3 in 2001 and AR4 in 2007”, then yes, the “projections” have borne out very accurately indeed. Because naturally, with each succeeding report, they’ve morphed from projections to hindcasts!
But if he meant 2. “the IPCC AR1 predictions themselves, unamended by AR2 to AR4 are very accurate” then he’s plainly wrong.
As to the 2007 AR4’s own statement that Baa Humbug points to, I believe it’s a devious statement that obviously wants to do 2 things. 1. Technically distance itself from the by-2007 hopelessly inaccurate 1990 projection by using the word “since” (meaning “exclusive” of 1990) yet, 2. Imply that there have been projections way back from just after 1990 (second meaning of “since”) that have been accurate for over the decade and a half since 1990, when in fact there were 2 reports, AR2 (1996) which undershot the temperature as inaccurately as AR1 overshot it, and AR3(2001), which with greater hindsight, coming home with a wet sail gets closer (surprise!) to the mark in its from 1990 “projection”. So I have no definite idea if AR1 did, at the time in 1990 intend a decade by decade accuracy. But certainly AR4 is wanting us to believe that (and is attempting to beguile us to thinking it happened). And if AR4 is of that mind re. AR1, who are we to dispute it? Points to Baa Humbug on that score.
Prof England’s statement also trades between the two positions. Which means he’s either wrong since the AR1 projection is clearly way off, or he’s saying something which is true, but trivially so (so what if AR3 in 2001 started to get a from-1990 projection closer to the mark? A kid in grade 3 could do that) and clearly not a substantive refutation of Minchin’s assertion, as Prof. England dishonestly (or stupidly) represented it to be.
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Hugh, you introduce lots of new possibilities, most of which have never occurred to me. Just about all the discussion I’ve been involved with before this has been about the 1990 FAR report. So your “but if he meant 2” above is the scenario I’m discussing and I think Jo’s post is also restricted to the FAR. On the contrary, I don’t think Prof England is plainly wrong.
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3 May: Australian: Fiona Gruber: Fighting ‘catastrophilia’ with wit
RICHARD Bean greets me in the foyer of London’s National Theatre. He’s a strapping man with the air of a pugilist. He has tight grey curls on a battering-ram head and a bluff northern manner to go with it.
He’s friendly, but you wouldn’t want to pick a fight with him. I discover this when I start on the subject of global warming. It’s apposite because we’re here to discuss his play The Heretic, opening at the Melbourne Theatre Company this month…
Every climate model has “failed laughably”, he says, and these are the models that are the whole basis for global warming alarmism. The scientists who push their gloomy predictions are politically motivated, he claims, and the politicians are too ignorant to understand the arguments.
“There’s one single bachelor of science in the House of Commons. They don’t understand a word of it and I bet your government is much the same.”…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/fighting-catastrophilia-with-wit/story-e6frg8n6-1226345167184
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All the IPCC graphics, even 2007, indicate straight-line or near straight-line temperature projections from about now and all project (or predict) about 0.8C-1C above 1990 by around 2030 (as far as eyeballing can allow).
As they say, a picture is worth…etc. and the IPCC sure know how to do scary graphics.
Picking up Baa Humbug’s 4:06 pm comment, none of the IPCC graphics recognise the role of the ocean cycles in recent warming and simply extrapolate recent warming into the distant future.
On that score Akasofu’s projection looks more plausible.
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I would like to propose that the UN henceforth get all its revenue from selling green energy in a free market.
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Jo your definition of BAU doesn’t match the IPCC’s FAR definition (see sillyfilly’s post above).
Their Figure 4 makes no mention of it being a BAU. I will concede the graph is out by 10.5% of the 1990-2010 ppm difference (or about 4ppm) as you have shown, but I doubt that is what Nick Minchin was referring to, he was likely talking about their global warming projections.
The Skeptical Science (SkSc) post clearly doesn’t bother defending the IPCC’s FAR CO2 projection, and they even happily point out that the IPCC were wrong about the radiative forcing they used (3.5W/m2 BAU rather than the now observed 2.8W/m2).
What the SkSc post did do was to follow the IPCC’s FAR methodology and reproduce the original projection using the lower 2.8W/m2 input condition. It is this scaled down version that they show closely matches GISTEMP warming.
So to summarise, you found one minor unrelated prediction error (2010 CO2 static emissions out by 4ppm), SkSc found one related non-prediction error (radiative forcing), and then SkSc found the 1990 BAU temperature prediction method works if you use the correct radiative forcing.
By all means take Mr England to task over what he said, but you will need to qualify your statements at least as well as SkSc has.
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I’m wondering how egregiously wrong the IPCC’s predictions have to be before its staunch adherents start to question the IPCC’s credibility. I can tell you why the IPCC’s predictions are wrong to save some of you the trouble of having to think about it: because the models are wrong and the hypothesis is false. It turns out that plant-food is going to melt the planet after all. Oh well, let’s move on to the next scare-campaign.
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Here’s a telling quote from the FAR SPM document (at top right of page xiii):
Allow me to translate this from Bureauspeak into plain English.
‘We know we’re being paid to spout scare stories but some of the people on the Team still have a modicum of scientific integrity that hasn’t been completely bribed out of them yet.‘
Basically the IPCC had no confidence whatsoever in their predictions.
Sillyfilly and her stablemates know all too well that defending the IPCC’s prediction is completely futile. Unfortunately they believe the next best thing to do is to harass Jo for any nitpick reason they can find, or even for no reason at all. You can lead the filly to water…. heheh.
I mean, does their discrepancy of a factor of 2 in the range of CO2 concentration
predictionsprojections not worry them in the slightest?And being wrong after 20 years means they will be accurate in the 110th year?? Get real!
Even if the models could hindcast the last 30 years, the model forecasts are pointless unless all the non-atmospheric factors they depend on actually happen as modelled.
Since nobody had been directly measuring temperature on a monthly global scale until the late 19th century, this claim was a complete bald faced lie. There was no way it could have data behind it. Ice cores don’t have decadal resolution, and weather satellites didn’t exist in 8000BC.
As for the late 20th century warming that we are commanded to worry about, a 30 year warming trend cannot be extrapolated linearly into the future. The history of the CET proves it. If you want to find out what causes a 0.5deg/decade warming, you have plenty of suspects.
Jo, I’ve got a scoop for you! Plot annual sales of clarinets against temperature! In true Gore fashion I’m sure they will “kinda go together”.
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Provided you include the Acker Bilk effect, and mitigate against the Benny Goodman factor, dividing by the Artie Shaw variance factor, etc etc etc! You get the drift Andrew. We seem to have similar thoughts as per my post at 22.2.2.1.2
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Yes indeed. We can’t believe history until The Adjustment Bureau at East Anglia and New York has done its work.
I’d not read that part of the thread yet, but there does not seem to be too much duplication. I agree the transparency issue in your 22.2.2.1.7 is also a major factor behind getting political traction and unfortunately keeping science itself respectable in the eye of the public. People should not think this Climate Seance reflects badly on all of science, but I reckon it must be having some effect and I’ve heard of a poll showing this but I cannot locate it right now.
Certainly this fraudster apologist called Climategate “one of the pivotal moments in changing the politics of climate change.”
Intriguing sidenote: I was only able to find that SMH article because it was cited by an old version of the Wikipedia page on Climategate which does not contain the quote today. The quote was removed by a user who has previously made such telling edits as this one.
This editor’s excuse for removing a governance professor’s comment that Climategate changed the politics of Climate change in Australia? “Removed statement from Sydney Prof, because it was exaggerated, today Australia has voted for a carbon tax“.
The false consensus justifies itself yet again!
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Climate Seance – Lol. Talk about waking the dead.
You are a fountain of useful info, Andrew. Keep up the good fight, soldier
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I can credit Matthew England with making me a sceptic way back in 2006. At that time I had no reason to doubt the IPCC. That was until Professor England of UNSW was being interviewed on talk back radio and he used terms like “Denier” and “Naysayer” to describe those who doubted his consensus view of climate science. I had never heard a scientist use such language and immediately suspected something might be amiss with the science. Professional scientists with solid arguments don’t use insults. Thank you professor England for helping me to see the light. I was also introduced to Jo’s site around the same time and now consider myself a well informed sceptic!
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The Great Gamble.
Nordhaus: The Climate Casino
However, the major problem with the conclusions of CHL is that they ignore the perils of the climate-change uncertainties. To illustrate, think of the issues as if we are playing roulette in a Climate Casino. Each time the roulette wheel stops, we resolve one of the uncertainties. Our best guess is that CO2 doubling will increase temperatures by 3°C, but if the ball lands on black it will be 2°C while a ball on red will produce 4°C. Similarly, a ball in a black pocket will lead to minimal damages from a certain amount of warming, while a ball in a red pocket will lead to much larger warming than we anticipate. On the next spin, a ball in the black will produce low growth and slow growth in emissions, while a ball in the red will produce rapid growth in CO2 emissions. And so forth.
But, in the Climate Casino, the ball also might land on zero or double-zero. If it lands on zero, we find significant loss of species, ecosystems, and cultural landmarks like Venice. If it lands on double-zero, we find an unanticipated shift in the earth’s climate system, such as a rapid disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
____________
Ross J.
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Ross,
Don’t you know- the “House” always wins, and the game is most definitely rigged in their favour, with a trip switch if the “lucky” player starts to win too frequently.
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So we are meant to deny coal to the third world and drive Australian investment offshore because some Italian fisherman built a city in a marshy lagoon island 1200 years ago.
Right, got it.
Then follows precautionary principle and unsupported statements of doom.
As for biodiversity loss, if it was ever going to happen then it would have happened before during the MWP. Extinction and speciation are natural annual events, but speciation is under reported almost by definition. To say Nature ever reached a stable species balance is Utopian thinking. It’s dog-eat-dog out there.
Warming has generally been good and so it remains for warministas to
A) admit the MWP was a real global period,
B) prove objectively that the WMP peak was some sort of climatic optimum,
C) prove solar trend research is bunk and that the next 50 years will take the world beyond the MWP into some sort of danger zone, AND
D) to do all of this without valuing polar bears above humans in impact assessment.
Venice has been subsiding for a long time. The fact the city has nearly ceased subsiding after artesian wells were banned is proof that peasant ignorance of hydrology was the main cause behind the incursion of high tides into the city. The 20cm/century rise in global sea level has been accelerating since 1700. Since high climate sensitivity to CO2 by strong positive feedback is without observational foundation, Venice will continue to see 20cm/century sea rise regardless of any AGW.
Outcomes which will not differ between alternative plans should be ignored when deciding amongst them.
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Ross, Get over it, global warming is finished, much like the ice age commeth of the seventies.
Same as the hoola hoop and the yoyo crazes, fading into history, time to count to ten and broaden your horizon, much scientific endeavour is expanding our horizons as to the real causes of fluctuations over time in our climate.
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Except that this roulette table has all the red holes plugged up ( No Hot Spot, Math says Max CO2 warming ever < 5 deg and Earths emission increases with temperature not decreases per the models), and has no Double Zero – (Catastrophic warming has no basis in fact or hypothesis – No CO2 tipping point occured in the climate right from the time earths atmosphere was 98% CO2 to todays CO2 deprived 385PPM). It has been a one-way trip to an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere on earth.
On such a roulette wheel it is pretty much certain of getting a black number – your only hope is one of the plugs comes loose from a red hole – but for now there is no basis for any need to take precautions
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Arctic Sea Ice caves in to the great melt down and falls off cliff after Watts Up thought it was rebounding.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_time
It aren’t getting colder folks.
That brief respite (Cooler Climate Variability) pattern promised hope to the skeptic is now dying or dead.
A great portion of USA and Southern Canada had the warmest March 2012 since records began from colonial occupation! That is approx 350 years.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/04/09/america-had-the-warmest-march-on-record/
While temperatures have been warming for months, it came to a boiling point in March, with an average of 51.1 degrees across the country (a typical average is 42.5 degrees) and records broken at 7,775 U.S. weather stations.
Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/04/09/america-had-the-warmest-march-on-record/#ixzz1tsBIAKNL
Drought is still not broken in Texas USA – Agriculture 8 Billion Dollar loss:
“These numbers are unprecedented,” says Todd Staples, Texas’ Commissioner of Agriculture, of the near eight billion dollars in agricultural losses due to the drought. “And this is a new record for the Lone Star State. Unfortunately, we like to set new records but this is not the direction we want to go.”
Records broken in the UK 2012:
The Met Office last night said that an average of 121.8mm of rain had fallen across the UK in the past 30 days, the highest amount since records began in 1910. The new measurement smashes the previous record of 120.3mm set in 2000 while the average rainfall expected during April is normally just 69.6mm. The latest figures are the culmination of two months of unusual weather in which March was deemed the third warmest and fifth driest on record.
Lines of evidence are mounting. Best we re-plot climate sensitiveness again in another 12 months.
Remember we are on a “temperature” rising escalator that appears to go backwards occasionally – but backward only a few steps.
Ross J.
—-
REPLY: Remember Earths been on a temperature conveyor that cooling for the last 100m years. We just seem to warm sometimes before the next drop. 😉 – Jo
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Ross, I’m calling you out as a warmist scaremonger. Look at this graph and tell me if you see a “scary warming signature” in the wet-drought history for USA 1900 to 2012?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/drought/wetdry/bar-mod-110-00/190001-201203.gif
NO! Nothing scary, nothing new.
From NOAA:
Do you see Ross? “Prolonged periods of extensive drought in the 1930’s and 1950’s” WHAT WAS THE PPM OF CO2 THEN ROSS?
Ross, stop with the propaganda, it merely shows how weak your argument is, it merely shows your confirmation bias.
[good graph image added] ED
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Yes we do drop I admit that but all my looking at data in greater scrunity and detail suggest that these fluctuations are more ENSO Climate Variability without any impact on overall trends to higher temps.
Just do the maths:
If we say are warming at the .18 per decade since 1970 – this is a compounding rate of rise. So if climate variability exists we should be able sight noise in any graphing data.
In 1998 we had a super EL Nino that overshot the present underlying greenhouse gas warming effect. This gave way to an entrenched drought over Australia broken by a very strong LA Nina ( condensation of very hot record breaking temps in the Coral Seas). In 2005 and 2010 without super El Ninos these were very plain and ordinary but matched or just piped under those temperatures of 1998. Remember if temps are high in oceans (EVERYWHERE Pacific Ocean related – 700 meter heat build up) we see entrenched drought in Australia. When La Nina of any good size develop we see good rainfall. This is one reason why we warmist’s link drought to Climate Change. Yes, it is not cyclic but becoming more in the extremes as Oceanic heat builds up – release mode. We will eventually over a course of 300 hundred years begin to expire vast amounts of heat stored in the oceans and there will be a reversal of CO2 acquisition. The oceans are not an IRIS effect on climate warming for ALL time even in climate variability right now.
When we compare Strong La Nina influences and match them on charts to temperatures we clearly drops without strong volcanic ash events but temps still rise and overwhelm these indicated “set backs”.
The effect of this cooling/heating is non-impacting when ENSO either -/+ are taken into account over time. They DO NOT IMPACT the over riding signal of greenhouse gases causing rising upward temperatures. They do not reset the temperature button at all. They do not buy us time either. Climate sensitivity must be much higher then realised by simple eye balling of charts.
Why do you think I would say that?
I do not and have never accepted the now soundly refuted IRIS effect – after all, Spencer is just doing a rehash of this hypothesis. Temps still continue to climb. And I expect feedbacks that were once negative begin to kick in more strongly as shifting to positive as we march toward 2020.
Cannot you see that eventually on this temp. escalator ride that even the lowest air temps from a La Nina will eventually be HIGHER then the El Nino 1998 high temps. situation.
Ross J.
—-REPLY:
Oi Ross, you missed my point. When I say “cooling for 100 million years”, it’s not an ENSO thing, its a tectonic plate thing. And no, I don’t “see” a Global Fate or Destiny for Life on Earth in those recent graphs. I see a 60year PDO cycle and lots of noise. I see a rising trend for 300 years that may have flattened off, but we can’t tell because agencies keep jiggering up the raw data. People reading those adjusty-mongered lines looking to project the future are tea-leaf readers. If the damn neanderthals had taken good temperature readings we might have enough data to actually figure out the causal forces and cycles. And Lindzen is soundly refuted by what exactly. More bluster… – Jo
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Uh…Ross, that’s a linear rate of rise. A compounding rate of rise would be something like “0.06% per decade”.
Perhaps you need to review your understanding of “maths”.
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Bob,
My understanding of maths.
I apologise as I stopped short in my sentence.
It should have have completed more thoroughly to read….
If we say are warming at the .18 per decade since 1970 – this is a compounding rate of rise of CO2 over that time.
For Example:
It is found that the perturbations have little impact on the rate of ocean heat uptake, and thus have little impact on the time-dependent rate of global warming. Under the idealized scenario of 1% yr−1 compounded CO2 increase, the spread in the transient climate response is of the order of a few tenths of a degree.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI4116.1
Ross J.
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Of course, this just assumes the point that must be proven — that CO2 is what is causing the warming. The rest of us are just a little bit skeptical because:
If CO2 caused the last 50 years of warming, what caused the previous 150?
So, your maths are OK, but you need to brush up on the idea of “proof” — what you just did is called “begging the question”.
(Kindly spare us the “Hockey Stick” again — the link is to proxies that are somewhat more reliable indicators of temperature than bristlecone pines, such as ice sheet extent, glacation extent, etc.)
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For Ross James, Mich Buckley and others of like belief,
You guys who are arguing need to look at evidence. Back to basics. You are talking about a temperature rise.
The BoM is talking about a temperature rise. They have released a new data set of temperatures for about 100 stations, called Acorn. It’s online. Then, you can go online to a different part of the BoM home page and get another version.
I’ll show you both. Then I’ll ask you which version I should use in this example (Darwin).
http://www.geoffstuff.com/Darwin3preExcel2010.xls
There are a couple of pages of data here, so you can DIY. However, if you look at the graphs, one of the products shows a warming Darwin, the other shows a cooling Darwin. If this exercise was studied and repeated all over the world, we might be able to conclude that most of the warming is manufactured by fiddling with numbers. I’ve done it for more Australian stations, similar conclusions.
If you are expert enough to comment on comparisons with IPCC, then you should be expert enough to tell us which of the graphs, both being handed out today by our BoM, should be used in constructing comparisons to IPCC. If you can’t do that, then you have failed to use due diligence in your science.
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Geoff,
I do not know your qualifications. Air Temperatures are very transitory. Skeptics tend to place too much emphasis on air temperatures alone and locale bias. This is just one line of the “evidence” out of a multitude of measurements. The Best analysis found in the global homogenisation process no untoward bias to warming. A study in which Anthony Watts was involved in found no Urban Heat up tick bias to warming.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/about/response-v2.pdf
http://berkeleyearth.org/available-resources/
Ross J.
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Hi Bob,
You know, you and I probably have far more in common than you’d ever care to admit. I love society, I’m proud of our robust democracy, I’d fight for your right to be heard in equal measure to any other on any topic, I believe in a fair day’s work and that the reward for hard work and risk-taking should not be stripped from that worker and be redistributed to anyone undeserving. I am a business owner, hold a degree in applied science and pay all taxes honestly.
But you see, I also respect the scientific method, respect those who know more than me about a given topic and am ALWAYS excited to find things out and to learn from others. I have no problem with finding out I’m wrong about something and relish the opportunity to update my knowledge. As I said above, it ain’t us using the ‘C’ word – the irony is I think we can do something about it and get through this together as we rearrange our economy an it’s you guys that insist it’ll be ‘catastrophic’…
Given that we both love and respect society, I think a common resource like the atmosphere (along with oceans, economies etc) needs to be managed to make sure it is fair and equitably ‘used’. Do you agree? Like, on a smaller scale, local creeks and rivers of the 19th century had to be better managed in terms of inflows, dams, outflows and pollutants to make sure that they didn’t become useless to everybody.
Just because YOU don’t personally understand the ins and outs of the details when it comes to climate science doesn’t mean that others can’t have an understanding that is much deeper than you or I could imagine. Like open heart surgery, neither you nor I would dare open someone up and ‘have a go’ based on our limited knowledge and skills, even if it was an emergency. It takes half a lifetime to get to the point where people trust you, deservedly, to do that. If you don’t understand the details of some surgery that’s about to involve your heart, you’d sure as he’ll read up on it and ask all the questions you want of your surgeon. What you wouldn’t do, as it makes no sense, is suggest changes to his procedure to suit you or worse still, tell him not to do it at all because you dentist said it wasn’t necessary.
Of course, you’ll deny it black and blue that this is what you’re doing with climate scientists, but unfortunately, it is exactly what you’re doing. It takes decades to get a visceral, mathematical and historical grasp of even a small subsection of climatology and it can take quite some time to even explain a tiny side issue, within its special context. This is the weakness scientists face when dealing with those who, for political reasons, decide that don’t like the direction your work is taking. They can throw all sorts of sound bites around in the media and if the relevant expert isn’t there to explain in detail why it’s wrong and what the current uncertainties are (and there are ALWAYS uncertainties!) it goes unchallenged and the illusion of ‘prolems’ with the science is propagated. The Matthew England post is a perfect example. It was pointed out to an amateur statistician where her graphs were incorrect and misrepresentative of the science as it stands and then…… silence. It doesn’t matter, the meme is out there, the suggestion of a level of uncertainty that isn’t there now self-propagates and so on to the next poorly understood ‘challenge’ or half-truth. As has been pointed out, throw enough mud……
So Bob, I challenge you, take the time to see if you can hit reset and, with mind wide open, take another look at the DETAILS of real, peer-reviewed climate literature. You might surprise yourself and find you’ve been looking at a reflection that hermetic seal. 😉
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This was a response to BobC at #48…..
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Uh-huh… I must have missed the “response” part.
Mark D sums it up pretty well. I once accused you of having only one argument, the fallacy of “argument from authority” — you seem to be determined to prove me right.
What I vastly underestimated was your profound arrogance. On a beach in N. Carolina once, I was charged by a 3 inch crab. This feels similar.
I seriously doubt that you have the slightest interest in actually knowing anything about my beliefs and knowledge (Actually knowing something might interfere with your solipsistic rants), but here are some posts that you could have read if you weren’t so interested in your own bellybutton:
On peer-review (and also here — and here is a list of over 900 peer-review papers which challenge various parts of the AGW hypothesis — what consensus are you ineptly defending again?)
On actually dealing with “experts”
On actually thinking about science and models (and also here)
*************
You’re a One-Trick Pony Matt – a Johnny One-Note. All you can do is let someone else do your thinking for you. And speaking of thinking, you don’t seem to be very practiced at it, or you would have picked up that logical fallacies don’t get much respect here.
Here’s my challenge to you: Read the Skeptic’s Handbook (on this site). Get back to us with a reasoned, valid argument why anything in it is wrong, if you can.
I’m pretty sure you’re not up to it.
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Wow Mark D, neither could I….! And look what we got.
A explicit confirmation that Bob hasn’t the slightest clue how to sift and filter real science for himself. And this:
“Here’s my challenge to you: Read the Skeptic’s Handbook (on this site). Get back to us with a reasoned, valid argument why anything in it is wrong, if you can.”
Well Bob, considering the look I’ve had at the Handbook (your Bible) it appears to confirm my accusation of throwing as much mud on as many different, disparate points as possible and seeing what sticks. It IN NO WAY presents a well thought out, internally consistent, research based alternative to the current climate consensus. But does this surprise me – no. You’ve already shown you don’t know how to assess literature for its relevancy, its standards and its rigor. There are certainly many fascinating questions and areas of conjecture within climate science, but one of them is not “is AGW real and dangerous to societal stability”… That has firmly been answered in the affirmative.
If you believe it is somehow wrong or that you know better, put up or shut up. Publish your findings and outline you INTERNALLY CONSISTENT alternative. Otherwise people will just continue to laugh at both your ignorance and your arrogance – talk about the pot calling out the kettle. By even entertaining the hotchpotch of illl-informed nonsense that is the Skeptic’s Handbook, you ably demonstrate your scientific illiteracy.
Considering the nearly two centuries of work that has gone into our understanding of climate, you’ve got a big job ahead of you. Tell me Bob, what are the two “killer” points, if you had to pick two, that you find irrefutable in your precious little go-to book? Just give me two, that’ll do for a start. (oh and be careful, given its variable content, that you don’t pick two points that contradict each other) 🙂
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I was wrong Matt — you have TWO arguments: Argument from authority, and baseless insults.
Your “response” to my challenge to find one single thing in the Skeptic’s Handbook that you could produce a logical argument against was a miserable failure. You couldn’t even find something to cut and paste. (Of course, that would be risky, as you wouldn’t have a clue how to engage in a logical argument in support of your copied “expert” opinion.)
I don’t know why I bother (you having showed no ability to digest logical arguments whatsover) but, for a “killer” point:
Actual measurements of the recovery time for an impulse of CO2 added to the atmosphere gives a recovery half-life of ~8 years and a long-term residual of less than 3%. This data plus simple math show that the anthropogenic contribution to the last 60 years CO2 increase in the atmosphere can, at most, be ~10% short-term. (Long term — more than 50 years — will be less than 1%).
Demonstrate your ability to “sift and filter real science” Matt — give us your analysis of this data.
(Oh wait, by “sift and filter real science” you don’t mean “analyze real data” — you mean “mindlessly parrot selected authorities”.)
Maybe you should start with something non-technical — explain why my post #44.1.1 “confirms” your statement:
Go through it step by step and show us how I “confirmed” that. Or is that just another baseless accusation?
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Wow! 5 paragraphs of “screaming argument from third party authority”
I can’t wait for BobC to reply!
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[…] http://joannenova.com.au/2012/05/the-ipcc-1990-far-predictions-were-wrong/ […]
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[…] […]
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To those who believe in the existence of God,no fact would prove them wrong.Whenever I engage proponents of Anthropogenic Global Warming in debate,I always ask them what would discredit their theory.The answer is always the same..i.e…nothing.Any AGW alarmist who answers in this fashion clearly demonstrates his/her abysmal ignorance of the rigors of scientific discipline.It only needs one anomalous result to disprove a theory.Is any alarmist willing to go out on a limb and claim anomalies are non-existent? I won’t be waiting with bated breath.
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I think this article is too harsh on the IPCC.. for example, concerning the “prediction”.
At the beginning of that report summary chapter (linked in the article), it has a table of contents and mentions a section called “How much confidence do we have in our predictions”
There, the first thing we see:
> Uncertainties in the above climate predictions arise from our imperfect knowledge of
> future rates of human-made emissions
> how these will change the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases
> the response of climate to these changed concentrations
> … Secondly, because we do not fully understand the sources and sinks of the greenhouse gases, there are uncertainties in our calculations of future concentrations arising from a given emissions scenario
> Thirdly, climate models are only as good as our understanding of the processes which they describe, and this is far from perfect
So they say that they recognize their limitations in understanding the climate, and specifically (point 2) in how the emissions will affect the concentrations in the air amid many natural processes.
However, they do say:
> Nevertheless, for reasons given in the box overleaf, we have substantial confidence that models can predict at least the broad scale features of climate change
If this article is going to define “prediction” to mean something akin to seeing the future with clarity, then the article is not using the meaning of the words as intended by its author and as described in the paper. This is why it can make sense to use “projection” as a more accurate term in order to capture the context above in more accurate English. So the attack against skepticalscience for this point was also unfair.
Skepticalscience was also interested in judging the models, and that is one reason they went away from emissions towards forcing. While I understand that, the graphs predicted by the software for FAR were off some.. as the IPCC anticipated could be the case because of their lack of knowledge in some areas. So the IPCC warned, yes, but about what did end up being a too-high computer prediction.
Should we not expect that with the ocean modeling improved and with a better modeling of emissions vs forcing, two areas they had forewarned about, that their current projections would be better?
Are we to throw science away because they published a piece at a time when there were more limitations to their understanding, so they ended up trending in the right direction but a little below the low end models (which were forewarned to be broken a bit)? The research was pointing to trouble up ahead. Would you as a climate scientist in the 80s find it moral to ignore the implications of your imperfect research and not treat it seriously by at least trying to communicate what the best models at the time indicated?
Additionally, throughout all of this time, skeptic after skeptic have said that the temperature was “now” going to head south, even strongly, perhaps because our current rise over the past few decades was significantly above the mean for the past few hundred years and further was already near the top of what one would expect natural variability to hold (judging by WMP standards). These skeptic predictions have been wrong. Who else made a projection whose error bounds were only a little off throughout the first 20 years?
Additionally, as it was made clear that the models had many limitations, especially concerning the oceans, if we remove ocean-based cyclical effects like El nino La nina and unpredictable items like volcanoes and the sun, then look at what is left — it clearly shows what can be a steady rising bias, which has been attributed all along to CO2 ghg effect: http://skepticalscience.com/foster-and-rahmstorf-measure-global-warming-signal.html
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[…] The IPCC 1990 FAR predictions were wrong […]
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