Finally climate scientists are starting to ask how the models need to change in order to fit the data. Hans von Storch, Eduardo Zorita and authors in Germany pointedly acknowledge that even at the 2% confidence level the model predictions don’t match reality. The fact is, the model simulations predicted it would get warmer than it has from 1998-2012. Now some climate scientists admit that there is less than a 2% chance that the models are compatible with the 15-year warming pause, according to the assumptions in the models.
In a brief paper they go on to suggest three ways the models could be failing, but draw no conclusions. For the first time I can recall, the possibility that the data might be wrong is not even mentioned. It has been the excuse du jour for years.
Note in the chart that while the 10 year “pause” passed the basic 5% test of statistical significance, by 13 years, the pause was so long that only 2% of CMIP5 or CMIP3 models simulations could be said to agree with reality. By 16 years that will be 1% of simulations. If the pause continues for 20 years, there would be “zero” segments that match.
Figure 2. Consistency between the recent trend of the global mean annual temperature and simulations with climate models: the figure shows the proportion of simulated trends that are smaller or equal to the observed global annual trend in the period 1998-2012 in the HadCRUT4 data set, Rhadcrut15.= 0.0041 oC/year. The ensemble of simulated trends has been calculated from non-overlapping periods of length n in the period 2001-2060. The climate models were driven by the emission scenarios RCP4.5 (CMIP5) and A1B (CMIP3). The inset shows an expanded view of the range 0% to 2% .
Why do the models fail?
Von Storch et al suggest three reasons why the models are flawed. Essentially, there might be more natural wobbles within Earth’s climate than they expected (“stochastic” or “natural” variability), there might be another forcing the models don’t account for, or perhaps climate sensitivity to man-made changes is too high.
They don’t make any conclusions, but it appears that they feel the first is more likely. Natural internal variability means factors like ocean circulation, sea-ice, land changes or ENSO could be more important and thus, man-made factors less so. It would mean part of the recent warming of the 1980s and 1990s was more of a natural swing than a man-made one.
They can’t rule out an external forcing like volcanoes or solar insolation, but make no mention of cosmic rays or solar magnetic effects. I would be interested to know why.
Lastly, they acknowledge that reducing climate sensitivity will help but not solve much. Other factors would have to change too.
As far as I can tell, the models are not matching the turning points in the trends (because CO2 emissions don’t match the turning points in the trends), which means that it doesn’t matter how much the slope of the line is increased or decreased, it still won’t fit the data. It means they don’t understand what factors drove those changes. They have no paddle.
The paper’s summary:
Hat tip to The HockeySchtick via GWPF
REFERENCES
Hans von Storch, Armineh Barkhordarian, Klaus Hasselmann and Eduardo Zorita (2013) Can climate models explain the recent stagnation in global warming? Academia
So that surely means that our 98% consensus beats their 97% consensus.
Is “all of the above” an option?
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Is “all of the above” an option?
Yes. They did acknowledge that.
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All of the above.
The summary could simply have read
“We have absolutely no idea why there is a pause, therefore we have no idea if the warming will start up again or if it will get colder in other words the billions you have given us over years has all is pissed away, its gone and we have nothing, absolutely nothing to show for it.”
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Or in political speak.
“We are not prepared to engage in speculation based on hypotheticals however we are not ruling anything in or out at this time.”
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Joanne said: “In a brief paper they go on to suggest three ways the models could be failing, but draw no conclusions. For the first time I can recall, the possibility that the data might wrong is not even mentioned. It has been the excuse du jour for years.”
Their, policy based science, paychecks are based on the UNFCCC. So that the data and the models are wrong would also mean that the UNFCCC is wrong. That would be like a priest in the Catholic Church raising the question if there, after 2000 years, might not be a God, as described in the Bible, after all?
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Thanks Jon
Such a priest would not be in the Catholic Church for long after making such a heretical statement.
Seductive beauty of the unfalsifiable hypothesis/ideology, of course, is that evidence can never overturn it.
Jesus, after all, apparently promised – or someone on His behalf did – to return in the lifetime of His disciples.
The fact that He has yet to do so – at least in the flesh and to my knowledge – 2,000 years later, did not overturn the Orthodoxy.
Too many “climate rationalists” seem to believe that evidence (eg: this paper) will overturn the DAGW/DACC Orthodoxy, without recognising we are dealing with what has become a secular religion.
An Orthodoxy, by definition, is a set of beliefs/archetypes that have become so institutionalised – and entrenched in the collective psyche of humankind – that removing them will take a long time.
Remember to remember: “climate debt” is a core concept in the UN ideology of “Sustainability”, the sole justification for its insistence of massive wealth transfers from the developed to developing worlds. Not something that they will let go of easily.
Not to mention the purveyors of alarmism that have turned prestigous science bodies – like the Royal Society, AGU, AAS, CSIRO, etc into advocacy groups all too eager to feed off public credulity.
Have they not put themselves in the same category as those “Christian scientists”, the learned chaps who provide the convoluted pseudo-scientific justification for miracles and sainthood, etc?
http://www.thegwpf.org/study-modern-climate-alarms-resemble-pre-modern-ideas-divine-punishment/
QED
Alice
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Up to a point Alice, but the Church is not God and no-one can make a promise on someone wlses behalf.
10
Uncertainty is not your friend.
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ROFLMBFAO
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I’m certain you’re not my friend.
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The very essence of OCD ideation summed up right there.
Ive been saying climate alarmists are Obsessional Compulsives havent I.
Well there you have it …in a nutter-shell.
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Better join a church then – its safer to believe in Allah than risk eternal torment in Muslim hell. And while you’re at it, I’d like to sell you some dinosaur killer Asteroid insurance.
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Or maybe Eric you should advise him to stay indoors 24/7 with a tinfoil hat and an S10 respirator…I have one I can sell…er, nooo, I like my S10!
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“WheresWallace
August 14, 2013 at 3:41 pm · Reply
Uncertainty is not your friend.”
Ive just had to return to this. It is so fantastically excellent as a total summation of the ideational set of the followers of the Thermagggeddon cult (whoever invented that expression, thank you).
As I said previously, the mind-set of these people is virtually indistinguishable from Obsessional Compulsive Disorder. OCD was once, when first identified, described as “The doubting disease”. Fear of uncertainy is its its funbdamental quality.
Clearly, to live is to be at ease with uncertainty. Nothing is possible if you fear uncertainty. When uncertain cannot be tolerated, life becomes intolerable.Look at the suicide rates among chronic OCD sufferers.
That is the ptinciple being imposed upon all of us.
Thanks to Wally, I shall be citing him until the proverbial cows come home.
But apply that
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Don’t worry about the model’s failure, KRudd is offering millions more to BoM so they can get it wrong even more, with lots of extra ‘forecasters’.
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They know the models are wrong, which is why GISS, BoM et al are fudging the temp figures to match.
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To get employment with BOM, the first question is “DO YOU BELIEVE !”
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ps.. I am willing to bet that NOT ONE person who disagrees with CAGW will ever get a job at CSIRO or BOM (if they state so in an application)
In fact I know of 2 guys who work there.. One is a true believer, and the other keeps his doubts well and truly hidden.
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Since 1986.
10
Imagine the headlines on tonight’s news – “Climate change models are all wrong and there are calls to immediately halt the billions spent on trying to change the weather”
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The models are all based on the political established UN convention on climate change, UNFCCC. So two things are wrong here. It’s fundamentally wrong to politicize science so that you end up with policy based science. And reality shows that both the UNFCCC and the models that are based on this convention all are very very wrong(falsified).
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.
Natural variation must be, by definition, positive and negative. That is, both warming and cooling. Otherwise it would not be a “variation”, it would be a trend, one way or the other. This poses two major problems when the climate cultists attempt to use it to explain the current “pause”**.
First, there is the Decade of Denial. Remember that? When we were told repeatedly that “the warming couldn’t possibly be ‘natural variation’ – it had been examined, but ruled out”. After a decade of denying that ‘natural variation’ (warming) was capable of causing the amount of heating that was involved, now we are supposed to unquestioningly accept that ‘natural variation’ (cooling) is capable of masking all the alleged heating, which allegedly is still happening.
Second is the rather inconvenient fact that if ‘natural variation’ is capable of “masking” all the alleged heating, then when the ‘natural variation’ swings the other way, it is capable of generating enough extra heat to bring about the alleged Thermageddon, regardless of what we do about CO2.
In that case, mitigation of CO2 production is pointless, and we should be aiming at adaptation.
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** You just have to love that term “pause”. Like it’s a foregone conclusion that warming will resume any day now.
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I’m gonna frame that one……
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If it was not positive but was a “Pause” caused by negative natural variation, just how bad would the cooling have been that CO2 helped to prevent? 50 Million climate refugees by 2010?
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Yes. I think that the previous interglacial “paused” for about 90,000 years.
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Perhaps warming only stopped for a pause, but then got to thinking:- oh sod it, I’ve had enough of this malarkey , the CO2 is rising fine without me now so I’m just going to sit back and enjoy the sunshine.
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If the agw movement were starting in 2013 they would not have the support of the models they have been using as a crutch for so long. Maybe it’s time to fess up!
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MemoryVault – re **
click on Collins’ name & get summaries of his previous articles – obviously knows nothing about climate science, yet he laps up the Met Office nonsense unquestioningly:
22 July: UK Telegraph: Global warming ‘on pause’ but set to resume
Global warming has been on “pause” for 15 years but will speed up again and is still a real threat, Met Office scientists have warned.
by Nick Collins, Science Correspondent
But in a set of three new reports, the Met Office claims that global warming has been disguised in recent years by the oceans, which have absorbed greater amounts of heat and prevented us from noticing the difference at surface level.
This process, caused by the natural cycle of the oceans, could delay earlier predictions of global warming by five to ten years but will not last forever, researchers explained.
Other factors including a number of volcanic eruptions since 2000 and changes in the Sun’s activity, could also have masked the effect of greenhouse gases by providing a slight cooling effect, they said.
The Met Office has predicted it could be another five years before surface temperatures begin to rise again, but said the current “pause” would not affect long-term global warming forecasts…
Scientists have long been aware that climate change would not happen at a fixed rate and could include periods where temperatures remain stable for 10 to 20 years, but admitted they had failed to explain this to the public in the past.
Prof Rowan Sutton, Director of Climate Research at the University of Reading, said: “Within the field we have taken for granted that there will be variations in the rate of warming, it is totally accepted and is no surprise …[it] would correct to say that wasn’t the message that we communicated more widely and that probably is a failing.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10195498/Global-warming-on-pause-but-set-to-resume.html
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.
That would be the same MET Office that gave us the “bbq summer” and “snow will be a thing of the past” forecasts.
At least they got the following bit right:
I doubt that London being under a mile thick glacier in a sudden Ice Age would affect their “long term global warming forecasts”.
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Now I was under the impression that the sea level data does not support the notion that the temperature of the oceans is increasing noticeably.
00
I’ve said it before.. They hindcast/calibrate to GISS and HadCrud pre-1979.
This means that there will always be a large manufactured/unreal trend in their calculations.
They can NEVER hope to be match reality.
They will ALWAYS have a trend that is way too high and is NOT REAL.
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That is why any data manipulation is the worst scientific crime of the lot. It prevents anyone else from discovering the true scientific relationships. If proven the book should be thrown at them … repeatedly.
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I thought the problem was not so much that they adjust data as that they then give their adjusted data the same weight as empirical data.
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The Catch 22 for them is that THE ONLY way they have a chance to get their models making predictions that are remotely likely is for them remove all the “adjustments” and to go back to the Real data.. which of course would then show very little warming.
Karma is a bee-arch, isn’t it !! 🙂
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Didn’t they throw away the raw data, and keep only the adjusted data?
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Many sites still retain the original data. Steven Goddard routinely has examples on his site: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/
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But von Storch and Co. have failed to notice that the heat is all going into the deep sea right now! The mechanism by which this happens is well known, and it is proven by the fact that we have boiled deep-sea fish floating to the surface.
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Then I wish somebody would explain it to me. I have written and asked Flannery, Karoly, Braganza the BoM, the CSIRO, the ABC, the Climate Institute and the Minister for Almost Everything, but I’ve never received a reply.
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Last time I wrote to the Minister that knows Crap about Climate asking him to explain this to me I received a pamphlet that totally didn’t explain anything that dealt with my initial request. Never the less I wrote back pouting out the flaws in the information required. I didn’t receive a reply that made any sense.
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Have you really? That’s funny. Must be hard on the public servants who keep being reminded that they have been well and truly scammed. Serves them right for being so gullible.
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Indeed Lawrie. The response I wrote needed a folder to go into which I paid for at my own expense. According to my local member I have “communist ideals” for pointing this out to them,as I sent her a response as well,as she saw fit to send me a copy of the same pamphlet.
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It is the public servants (who construct the actual policy out of the political policy sound bite, and monitor and control its outcomes) who have the most to loose if and when the scam collapses.
But they are tenacious beasts, and are not disposed of easily. (A mental picture of trying to kill cockroaches with fly spray comes to mind, for no apparent reason.)
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MV, I ventured over to the conversation and found this posted thread:
“The planet is building up heat at the equivalent of four Hiroshima bombs worth of energy every second.
And 90% of that heat is going into the oceans.
Right, now I’ve got your attention.”
.
“You sure have,” I exclaimed!
I then wrote this; 3 questions-
Q1. What happens to evaporation in the water cycle now with all that heat in the oceans?
(with a link to the water cycle)
Q2. What is the mechanism that causes the heat to bypass the surface tension of the water?
(As an example apply a heat gun to the top of a bucket of water. The heat is emphatically rejected because of surface tension, I said)
Q3. With 90% of the co2 caused heat now hiding in the oceans, what is the source of heat now heating the planet?
(I referred back to article, first line)
They deleted the comment.
Despite many articles at The Conversation about the inability of climate science to communicate the urgency, they chose to delete my comment and questions, claiming they have other threads about “the science.”
That’s a conversation, according to them.
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Thanks for the heads-up on The Conversation article, Handjive.
I just had a bash myself and posted the following.
Be interested to see how long it lasts.
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.
Slightly less than two hours.
My original comment is still there, but my four replies to critics have all been deleted.
There’s nothing like good, honest, open debate – especially when the taxpayer pays for it.
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Steve Goddard nails it:
twitter: John Cook, Four Hiroshima bombs a second: how we imagine climate change theconverstation.co …
SG: @skepticalscience Two Billion Hiroshima bombs since 1997 and no global warming.
Climate alarmists are suffering intellectual nuclear winter.
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I thought the elephants were the new empirical measurement of choice for the media, ie “it weighs the same as 16 elephants”. How quickly elephants lost their shock value and now we have moved on to “Hiroshima Bombs”. Im pretty good at sarcastic hyperbolae but Im not sure I can even think of what comes after Hiroshima Bombs on a scale that started with elephants….
30
Check the sea levels!
00
Hi Handjive and MV The Conversation piece by Holmes is a disgrace and is discussed here.
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Careful approaching the CSIRO MV, I hear they are a bunch of bullies:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/report-finds-pockets-of-concern-in-csiro-workplace-bullying/story-fn59niix-1226697092226
I wonder how many of the victims were skeptics of CAGW…
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My recent professional dealings with that august body do not contradict your link, Bulldust.
10
“Then I wish somebody would explain it to me.”
Pixies. Don’t you keep up with climate science at all?
20
All we need now is for Labor to put forward a seabed potato farm proposal, then we can get fish’n’chips for free.
130
With Canberra supplying the pickled onions?
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The pickle they got us into brings tears to our eyes, so yeah, I guess that’s close enough.
30
I think you could say that Canberra is supplying the potatoes; err, politicians.
10
Ah pickled onions with fish and chips, in the land of milk and honey this is a must however here in South Oz if you asked for a couple of pickled onions with your fish and chips all you would get is a strange look.
Note is steered away from the fush and chups jokes.
10
If the fish are from Canberra they will be European carp…. *puke*
00
MV it’s wormholes didn’t you know it funnels the heat past the atmosphere past the first 1000 meters to warm the depths. This is the same phenomena that allowed the wind sheer measurements to find the hot spot. They measure the speed of the heat travelling through these wormholes into the depths faster than thermometers could measure the rise.
Either that or its magic or unicorns or or……..
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No, its the whales, they come to the surface, take a huge breathe of superheated atmosphere and carry it down to the deep depths..
Sometimes they don’t make it and they bounce to the surface.. you’ve seen them in movies.
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Andy,
That’s the most plausible explanation I’ve read – not that I’ve been offered many.
I just didn’t realise there were so many whales . . .
Full points to Scott though, for the wormhole theory.
I didn’t realise whales had worms, either.
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“I just didn’t realise there were so many whales . . .”
Think Greenpeace stopping the Japanese whaling..
Obviously Greenpeices are the ones causing the deep oceans to heat to boiling temperature.
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Well, I can help there: Three reasons.
1. They are trying to use a deterministic model for a system that has an unknown number of unknown random events that occur at random times in unforeseen locations.
2. Such deterministic systems cannot, and never have been, capable of producing predictive outcomes, with any degree of accuracy.
3. Accuracy of output from any deterministic model, of any type, follows the inverse square law. Ultimately all possibilities become equally improbable.
150
That list of three could be reduced down to one.
1. Chaotic systems cannot be modelled.
50
It’s refreshing to see a peer reviewed paper by a real climate scientist identify GW stagnation in its title. Is Michael about?
50
Until Michael proves he is seeking the truth by declaring his falsification criteria, he can be assumed to be a committed fundamentalist immune to all facts and reason. Showing how he is wrong is still, unfortunately, necessary, but the purpose is educating the silent onlookers and not to actually change Michael’s opinion (since that is impossible for him in the absence of said criteria). It’s only been 4 days so perhaps he is still thinking about it.
120
Sigh
Sadly, it is the truth, Andrew. Personally I wouldn’t normally give the Michaels the time of day.
However, this site gets an awful lot of “silent readers”, as evidenced by the cumulative thumbs count on a popular article.
It for their sake that we must counter the BS with facts.
Even when it means having to do it over and over and over . . .
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Expect no appologies for being called ignorant and being told to do your homework each and every time too.
20
Agreed. I’ve been one of those silent readers until recently as a lot of the discussion here is a bit hard for me to contribute to,but I learn something from reading it.
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Don’t be bashful, Michael P.
Even asking a question or for clarification of a point contributes to the discussion.
It’s a safe bet that if something isn’t clear to you, then it isn’t clear for some other readers, too.
Many, many times Jo has amended or added to an article on the strength of matters raised, and answered, here in the comments section.
20
Hear! Hear! Michael P
and thanks to M V etc.
Doug
10
I’ve heard of silent listeners, but the concept of silent readers is new to me.
Do they read with their eyes shut?
Curious people would like to know.
30
There lips move but make no noise.
00
Uggh. That’s the second time today I have got my “there/their” mucked up. I must be sleep deprived.
00
Deprived or depraved?
I know which is more fun.
10
Do you use predictive text? I haven’t discovered how to turn mine off.
00
Michael tends to drop into threads when he hopes nobody is looking…. so that he can post his guff in the hope that nobody repudiates it…. so it looks like he won the argument.
He hasn’t had much luck with that plan however…. *snigger*
20
I prefer the simple explanation . Lies , deceit , hard line socialism and money , that’s why this is so .
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You forgot bloody-mindedness.
40
And righteousness.
30
So, apart from lies, deceit, hard line socialism, (spending) money, bloody-mindedness and righteousness … what has Labor ever done for us?
40
Why do models fail?
In a nutshell I would not have used that quite common and recent blog headline.
Rather I would put it as; Why have the climate modelers failed?
As in the failure of any significant technologically advanced development the human factors in the failure probably far outweigh the actual hardware / software problems or the data corruption and deficiencies problems.
Of course any data corruption or data deficiencies or lack of data should be immediately recognised and allowed for even before the model runs are initiated by any competent modeler and due publicly admitted allowance be made for those deficiencies.
I don’t know the type of psychology that takes to modeling of any type let alone what was the situation back in the 1970’s but it would be interesting to have a look at climate modellers psychological attributes.
A healthy dose of honesty and complete truthfulness being made a feature of such a study which would be a complete reversal and a quite contrary position to that of the Lewendowsky’s increasingly numerous survey debacles,
Hansen who trained as an astronomer and originally did his first modeling on the then alarmist global cooling for his boss of the times back in the 1970’s. And that was when climate modeling was still then a very fringe modeling pursuit. .
Other climate modelers either started out as modelers destined for some other science or professional employment and moved into climate modeling analysis as it was the up and coming field with the chances of solving and providing a full analysis of the global climate before the opposition got to that goal first
.
And that was more of an incentive than any humdrum modeling in engineering or oil field geology or some such. Such a modeling pursuit presented all sorts of kudos if the secrets of the climate could be revealed to the successful modeler.
But they started their climate modeling with minimal background in the then nascent climate science.
Others came into climate modelling from other scientific backgrounds which sometimes included extensive modeling but quite often with only minimal modeling experience or aptitude.
Perhaps some of the engineers and scientists from the other professions might like to comment on the psychological characteristics of the persona who are attracted to climate modelling.
I suspect that Tamsin Edwards in her blog “All models are wrong” is of a different psychology to most modelers as she is saying the equivalent of farmers saying that none of them ever get it right.
And thats after 12,000 years of agricultural experience and history. And if farmers and agriculturists can’t get the weather let alone the climate right after 12,000 years of history and cumulative experience, who can?
Let alone trying to guess and model the hundreds of years into the future based on the last thirty years of climate data which becomes increasingly ridiculous when looked at in the cold hard light of reality.
I think that most climate modelers probably started out with a very big belief backed by an excess of hubris that they would soon get this climate thing worked out and in doing so, beat the other climate modelers and groups to the undoubted kudos such a feat would bring.
Nature was to prove otherwise but by then the climate modelers were so publicly deep into their premature claims of being able to model the global climate and being able to accurately predict the climate for decades into the future and they had by then become so reliant on the publicly funded largesse from the various political sources which claims were required to access the lavish funding they by now enjoyed, that they were psychologically inhibited [ being kind here ! ] from openly admitting that this whole climate thing was far, far more complex than they ever bargained for.
Climate modeling also started around the same time as the initial assembly and analysis of climate data was getting under way and that poorly defined and poorly recorded data base also placed very serious impediments in the way of any reasonable analysis and modeling of the global climate let alone it’s future directions.
So after all that;Climate modelers have failed and failed completely, particularly in their ability to make any near accurate predictions about the future directions of the global climate developments.
I would put that failure down to some of these conditions listed below but there will be a number of other conditions not listed as well.
1 / Hubris and lack of experience and understanding of the most basic attributes of our global climate during those first developmental periods of climate models.
And those original climate models are the foundation upon which all the following models have been substantially based.
2 / The minimal data and the chaotic and often somewhat unintentional corruption of the original data used in the first climate models.
3 / The complete failure to actually start with a totally clean sheet and see where the climate models would take the analysis of the climate.
4 / The starting point of all climate models in that the entire premise of the models was to prove the anthropogenic nature of the warming then taking place.
So there was the introduction of an underlying fixated confirmation bias that has seeped into every aspect of climate modelling and grossly biased all model outcomes since.
5 / The total failure, to admit the just plain wrong and wooly headed proposition, endemic through out climate science, that believes that somehow this era of warming is totally unique and entirely separate from the long term global climate changes and trends as recorded in historical narratives and the paleontological records.
.
6 / The attitude that the last 40 or 50 years but mostly the last 30 years of climate are completely disconnected from any climate trends of the past due to the so called and claimed anthropogenic warming supposedly created by the increase in CO2 attributed to mankind’s burning of fossil fuels,
[ Something I am having increasing doubts about considering that CO2 is based on modeled fossil fuel consumption and the natural contribution to atmospheric CO2 is only very roughly known and assumed with the contribution from the land based life and oceans and ocean based life unmeasured and to all intents and purposes, unknown.]
7 / The sheer very badly misjudged complexity and subtleness of the global climate and the universal lack of knowledge of all the influences [ forcings ] at work in the shaping of that global climate.
In climate science and climate modeling there are
The “known knowns”
The “known unknowns”
And the “unknown unknowns”
Models, particularly climate models are GIGO.
And for their ultimate failure, only one source.
The climate modelers who put those models together and nobody else.
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That was quite a mouthful, and I think you are spot on.
Too bad the ones who REALLY need to read your message, won’t!
Regards,
Mark H.
20
Hmmmmm?
Garbage in means garbage out perhaps?
20
Hmm.
Wrong tool, used incorrectly, for the wrong purposes, by the wrong people, hunting for the wrong solution, to a non-problem, in a poorly understood system.
Computer models are deterministic tools, used to solve known networks of well proven physical relationships, within a well understood domain. They are best used by Engineers.
They are not supposed to be used as an exploratory tool to define the cause and intensity of a single pre-defined factor within a poorly defined phenomena.
There is a saying: “A fool with a tool, remains a fool.”
50
There are so many of these models. And according to the trolls every prediction they have made has been realised (only worse than predicted).
It has lead me to wonder if the various predictions come from different models, but no one specifies which model predicted what. And because some of the predictions seem to be counter-intuitive or would appear to cancel out each other (e.g. global warming means some places will get cooler) I wonder if the confusion for those of us who try to remain grounded in reality and objective measures arises because all the predictions are thrown in together. It is like a scatter gun – saw of the barrel of the prediction shot gun, take aim 9or not) and fire. You will hit something.
00
In the first place climate models have been very successful
http://web.archive.org/web/20111109144404/http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/mostmods.jpg
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-9-5.html
In the second place, with regard to your claims regarding climate modellers psychology, motivations etc. Or is it evidence free preujudical speculation from a “skeptic”.
As scientist I have had plenty of experience with modellers though not in climate change and they are all serious professionals,and I can see no reason to accept your entirely ad hominem, evidence free attacks suggesting that climate modellers are any different.
010
And this is proved by posting links to graphs that start in 1880 and 1900 respectively.
I’ve got sad news for you Phil. James Hansen didn’t bring out the first General Circulation Model (GCM) until 1988, meaning that over 90% of your graphs “prove” nothing but the ability of the GCM’s to “predict” the past.
Hell, I could do that with a mentally retarded abacus.
We’ll skip right over the fact that Tamino’s graph became an instant laughing stock when he published it, and the fact that the IPCC’s “prediction” graphs have been “adjusted” every second month or so ever since they were first published in their original form in the 1990’s, to take into account the ever diverging reality, and go straight to a graph that tells it like it is.
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““prove” nothing but the ability of the GCM’s to “predict” the past”
Yep, they seem to have enough fudge factor to manage that.
Pity the data they use to “match” to is so corrupted.
10
the only part I disagree with is the “un” in “somewhat unintentional corruption of the original data “
10
Why do climate models fail? As an engineer, I would suggest because they are trying to model something which has too many inter-related variables and is too complex.
Politicians and other PPE graduates may be impressed by vast computers spitting out their “results”. However, I would guess most engineers would not be. They might suggest that climate scientists need a little more humility: the ability to admit that they do not begin to understand either the dependencies between the variables they have chosen to include in their models or the overall complexity of the system.
190
Dr John
Can I suggest many climate “scientists” suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect?
(Too dumb to know how dumb they are.)
Cheers,
Speedy
70
Many novice experts just fail to grasp the significance of uncertainty.
60
And are thus destined to remain novices.
20
Given I do modelling of billions of dollars for budget purposes it always bemuses me no end when people get excited about a few million here or there in the estimates. The whole kerfuffle is dwarfed by daily movements in the exchange rate. A three cent variance in the exchange rate in the WA Budget is a billion dollar impact across the Budget of five years. Makes 10 million a year for solar subsidies a ’rounding error’ in terms of magnitude. In the last week or so the dollar moved from 0.89 to 0.92, so… what’s all the fuss about? It since moved down somewhat again.
Point is, any honest modeller has an intrinsic grasp of their model’s sensitivity to input parameters and the corresponding degree of uncertainty of the model output. I hear very little of this uncertainty when CAGW alarmists speak. Which is why they set themselves up to fail in the eyes of anyone vaguely competent. That and the fact that their models are obviously bunkum. The last part certainly doesn’t help. At least I know my models exactly replicate reality … probem is predicting the highly unpredictable input parameters.
30
Just another day, and another swing of the currency:
http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=AUD&to=USD
It moved approximately 1 cent against the USD in the last 24 hours … that’s an annualised budget-term swing of hundreds of millions of dollars. Just another normal day of currency fluctuations…
10
“any honest modeller has an intrinsic grasp of their model’s sensitivity to input parameters and the corresponding degree of uncertainty of the model output” – hear, hear.
It echoes something I said some time ago:
That said: it’s actually quite rare (in large, complex models) for a genuinely systematic sensitivity analysis to be performed. By that I mean conducting a series of simulations that select for parameters and exogenous variables by sampling from an estimate of the joint distribution of the parameters (rather than varying a single ‘key’ parameter).
The other thing that needs saying is that models are only bijective from the entire set of exogenous variables (including parameters) to the entire set of endogenous variables; in other words there will generally be many sets of values for the exogenous variables that will produce identical results for any subset of the endogenous variables.
That’s actually important, because it means that you have to run a massive Monte-Carlo style set of simulations in order to make sensible probabilistic statements about model outcomes (i.e., using the mean of the distribution of the [forecast paths of the] exogenous variables will not generally give the mean of the distribution of the [forecast paths of the] outcome variables-of-interest).
A further item of interest to me, is whether the parameters were estimated within the model i.e.,
– build the model,
– get some data,
– estimate the parameters in their systems context,
– do some hypothesis testing,
– then run the model in historical validation mode by driving all the residual terms to zero.
When I did this for the Commonwealth Treasury’s TRYM model (which I replicated, back when I was a PhD student in the 90s) I got very different results from the parameter estimates compared to what Treasury got when they did single-equation estimations. And the behaviour of the model in ‘historical validation’ mode was awful – really, really, really awful (mostly because of the debt block, which had a very idiosyncratic equation structure and massive estimation errors).
I know, for example, that most of the parameters used in the subsequent “analysis” of the economic impact of Thermaggedon, are imposed, not estimated. And they’re certainly not estimated within the context of the equation system in which they’re being deployed.
It all reminds me of the “epicycle theory” that geocentrist ‘scholars’ developed in the late Middle Ages to try to circumvent the fact that observations showed that their existing model did not hold up to observed reality.
00
[…] Finally climate scientists are starting to ask how the models need to change in order to fit the data. […]
00
CAGW will not be defeated until the public recognises crony capitalists exist on all sides of the politics:
13 Aug: UK Telegraph: Matthew Holehouse: Wind farm firm that won £4.5m is a major donor to Tories
A company that builds wind farms donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Conservative Party months after being awarded a £4.5 million Government grant, official records show.
Offshore Group Newcastle (OGN) will be given money from the Business Department’s Regional Growth Fund to build a new plant to produce steel foundations for wind turbine generators.
The grant was announced by the department in October 2012. The Regional Growth Fund was at the time overseen by Mark Prisk, a Conservative minister.
Electoral Commission records show that in the eight months before the grant was announced, OGN and one of its directors, Alexander Temerko, made donations totalling £49,905 to the Conservative Party. In the year that followed the grant, Mr Temerko and his company donated a further £298,250 to the party.
A Tory source insisted the events were unconnected, saying: “The Regional Growth Fund is doing a lot of investment in the North East.” …
Mr Temerko is a former top executive of Yukos, the Russian oil giant…
OGN, which also makes frames for oil and gas platforms, is owned by a parent company based in the British Virgin Islands…
Mr Temerko was one of twelve Tory donors who attended private dinners with the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Home Secretary this spring after making donations of over £50,000 to the Conservative Party…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10241250/Wind-farm-firm-that-won-4.5m-is-a-major-donor-to-Tories.html
50
more cronies…as if we didn’t know already:
14 Aug: Australian: AAP: Study highlights medical conflicts
MOST members of US panels that define conditions such as high blood pressure and dementia have financial links to drug companies, according to a new Australian study.
Bond University researchers raise questions about processes used for defining diseases and say about 75 per cent of members of US panels have declared conflicts of interest.
The study, under the direction of Professor Paul Glasziou, is part of wider research on over-diagnosis, where patients with mild symptoms or at low risk may be labelled as ill and receive treatments that may do them more harm than good.
“There is a clear conflict of interest,” says lead author Ray Moynihan, a senior research fellow at the university.
“If a panel of experts decides to expand the definition of a condition, then that is widening the market for the companies those experts are working with.”
He says US panels are influential globally, including in Australia…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/study-highlights-medical-conflicts/story-fn3dxiwe-1226696708984
20
So the models might have missed out on one factor that accounts for the 17 year aberration in warming. So what, they’re only models. Whoever imbued them with predictive qualities needs a sharp smack up side the head.
While the sharp warming of the 20th cent can only be explAined by blaming the Rise in CO2, can the sharp non-warming of the 21st cent. be explained by ceasing to take the rise ?
20
Models are extremely useful in industrial processes or even natural situations where ALL of the factors can be assessed and monitored.
The “models” claiming to describe CO2 levels linked to World Temperatures just cannot work because there are too many factors that are involved.
Many of these factors are yet to be found and many which are recognised have not and cannot be quantified.
These “things” are not models based on any measured reality, they are simply computer simulations.
KK
50
14 Aug: SMH: Peter Hannam: Labor pledges $58.5m to improve forecasting of extreme weather
The funds will go to the Bureau of Meteorology, and will include the recruitment of 42 additional meteorologists and 23 more hydrologists.
The government spending will also help set up a National Centre for Extreme Weather to enhance the research and dissemination of information about severe weather events. The centre will be housed within the bureau at its Melbourne headquarters.
“Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, like cyclone Yasi, the Queensland floods and the Black Saturday bushfires,” the government said in a media statement.
“This package will increase the bureau’s ability to inform and warn Australians before and during severe weather.”…
The Coalition’s climate change spokesman, Greg Hunt, said the funding was announced in the May budget “and to grandstand today was very Kevin Rudd”…
***”The Coalition will support the Bureau because we respect the work it does particularly in a country which is subject to severe and varying weather.’’
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/labor-pledges-585m-to-improve-forecasting-of-extreme-weather-20130814-2rwor.html
10
Maybe we can blame it on IBM. Back in 1966, I attended an IBM training class for the IBM 1800 process control and data acquisition computer system.
Part of the discussion was about really large computer problems needing very powerful computers to solve. They had built the first weather model and let it run for a long time. It appeared to develop the general patterns of weather flow. The instructor mentioned that they really need more computer power to do more. Since IBM is in the business of making and selling computers, it was a natural conclusion that IBM would be making and selling those more powerful computers.
The idea that still more powerful computers are needed to model the earth’s climate has been repeated almost endlessly since then. Maybe the effect of added CO2 had nothing to do with it. Perhaps it was IBM’s fault simply because they wanted to make and sell bigger and more powerful computers. It is another example of massively costly unintended consequences arising from an innocently ill conceived idea.
50
They fail because they all assume a positive feedback effect with increasing water vapor with the heating over the Tropics.
Spencer and others have shown no positive feedbacks and if anything a negative feedback.
20
Second paragraph – missing word:
“For the first time I can recall, the possibility that the data might BE wrong is not even mentioned.”
—
Thanks. – Jo
20
A licensed mechanical engineer (retired) who has been researching this issue for 6 years, and in the process discovered what actually caused global warming, has four papers on the web that you may find of interest. They provide some eye-opening insight on the cause of change to average global temperature and why it has stopped warming. The papers are straight-forward calculations (not just theory) using readily available data up to May, 2013.
The first one is ‘Global warming made simple’ at http://lowaltitudeclouds.blogspot.com It shows, with simple thermal radiation calculations, how a tiny change in the amount of low-altitude clouds could account for half of the average global temperature change in the 20th century, and what could have caused that tiny cloud change. (The other half of the temperature change is from net average natural ocean oscillation which is dominated by the PDO)
The second paper is ‘Natural Climate change has been hiding in plain sight’ at http://climatechange90.blogspot.com/2013/05/natural-climate-change-has-been.html . This paper presents a simple equation that, using a single external forcing, calculates average global temperatures since they have been accurately measured world wide (about 1895) with an accuracy of 90%, irrespective of whether the influence of CO2 is included or not. The equation uses a proxy which is the time-integral of sunspot numbers (the external forcing). A graph is included which shows the calculated trajectory overlaid on measurements.
Change to the level of atmospheric CO2 had no significant effect on average global temperature.
The time-integral of sunspot numbers since 1610 which is shown at http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/01/blog-post_23.html corroborates the significance of this factor.
A third paper, ‘The End of Global Warming’ at http://endofgw.blogspot.com/ expands recent (since 1996) measurements and includes a graph showing the growing separation between the rising CO2 and not-rising average global temperature.
The fourth paper http://consensusmistakes.blogspot.com/ exposes some of the mistakes that have been made by the ‘Consensus’ and the IPCC
80
Dan, The issue I have with the 2nd and 3rd links is that they are matching to HadCrud pre -1979.
This means they are most likely wrong..
I will believe these relationships when I see one that maintains the real peaks in the late 1800’s and around 1940 that have been well and truly squashed in the HadCrud/Giss record.
20
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/aug/19/climatechange.climatechangeenvironment
That’s pretty much what the Russians have been saying, the sun drives it.
20
And you are going to believe those crypto-communist Russkies?
00
Yes, because we are friends now.
We have been friends ever since they discovered they were sitting on one of the largest gas deposits in the world. Funny how attitudes change, isn’t it?
20
The answer to the problem is simple.
If you stop using models with the same scary pre-determined results, you might just get models which predict the future more accurately.
The problem is unless you promise scary pre-determined results from your models, then no one is going to fund you to produce a climate model which might be a tad more accurate.
Of course – perish the thought – this might just mean you cannot model something which does not exist, like CAGW.
30
The reason global warming stopped (and IPCC models didn’t predict this) is because the warming was 90% natural to begin with, and it’s amazing how a simple analysis of temperature and sunspot activity can reveal the natural forcings.
Here is the graph the IPCC doesn’t want you to see.
The green line is the smoothed sea surface temperature. If you can use the red and blue lines to reconstruct nearly all of the green line, then CAGW is dead in the water. Okay, let’s try it.
Note the blue line is obtained by subtracting from temperature its own 61-year moving average (leaving only frequencies shorter than 61 years), then smoothing that result so all frequencies shorter than 30.5 years are eliminated. The incredibly precise sine curve which remains is proof that a 61 year natural cycle in temperature was operating in the 20th century. Also note it is present through the entire 160 year temperature record, but the averaging windows prevent the ends of this underlying signal from being drawn. Imagine extending the sine curve forward in time and two interesting features result. Firstly the cooling trend would end in 1972 (yes it did), and 30 years of warming would have followed, ENDING in 2002 (yes it did).
That is what would have happened due to a natural oceanic cycle in temperature even if all solar factors had been equal.
Now look at the red curve which is a smoothed sunspot count curve. Here is where the Svensmark effect kicks in.
More sunspots => more solar activity => stronger solar magnetic field => less cosmic rays reach earth => less cloud cover => more insolation reaches the oceans => earth heats to a higher equilibrium temperature.
Sunpots were quite low at the turn of the century, so some warming from this point would have been expected anyway. But sunspots escalated to abnormally high levels during the late 20th century, producing higher than normal heating. At the point where the ocean cycle had gone into cooling mode, the sunspots ramped up to high levels, which then counteracted the cooling that would otherwise have happened in the 1950s and 60s. After 1972 the oceanic cycle would again be in warming mode, but the sunspots again ramped up at that time, leading to a double dose of warming. The unusually high rate of warming in the 1980s is then explained qualitatively without needing to imagine any man-made greenhouse effect.
The oceanic cycle is now in cooling mode, but it will take some time for the accumulated “double dose” from the sunspots to be radiated away from the planet, which is why temperatures have flatlined instead of dropping.
The sunpots and ocean cycle are the essence of Dan Pangburn’s climate model which reconstructs the temperature record since 1880 with 90 percent correlation, even with a CO2 sensitivity of zero.
We are now in the situation where sunspots have plummeted down to 1920s levels, and the oceanic cycle is also in cooling mode.
If you had to bet the global economy on warming or cooling for the next 10 years, which would you choose?
40
God dammit, when I started writing the above comment Stephen Harper’s was the last one on the page, and now I’ve clicked post i find Mr Pangburn himself has strolled in here to say basically the same thing plus more besides. I wouldn’t have bothered if I had telepathy. (Erm, great minds think alike… at precisely the same time??)
20
So the models’ suppositories are wrong?
10
Not exactly. Just not fitted properly.
00
Crakar you are a Craker! Best explanation of the whole shambozzles I ever heard. BTW the Russians though communism was the way to go yearsago you coukld repalce Gloabal warming with “communism” would read the same hahahah
20
The difference being that the Russians were able to learn from their mistakes.
10
For the record I was a communist in my younger dryas (years) haha Hopefully most of the younger Climate Freaks will be laughing at their stupidity in 10 years or so hahah
10
Andrew Mcrae To bad old Leif Svaalgard doesn’t seem to get it yet. The evidence is becoming incontrovertible.
10
Just FYI. For the second day in a row I am unable to access joannenova.com.au using the Internode public WiFi network in Adelaide.
Cheers,
RWTH
10
I hope it isn’t because the bloke who runs it is a warmist (he is). He also has a Pilatus PC12 as his private aircraft.
10
A couple of well worn links:
June, 2012– PNAS Identifying human influences on atmospheric temperature(pdf)
Dec1, 2012–
Santer: Climate Models are Exaggerating Warming – We Don’t Know Why
10
NB: Santer et al (2012) “Identifying human influences on atmospheric temperature” Says that CMIP5 models overestimate warming of the troposphere
10
Fess up, you aint Stimpy…you is impersonatin!
10
…I men you is an impersonatin.
00
Is that a Russian family name?
30
Ah, man!
The best cartoons ever made for TV.
Tony.
10
Arguably so…the imagination on display exceeded my ability to keep up at times!
10
Tony,
Around 1995, I was reading Sunday papers, and there was a dial a number-leave details competition to win a authenticated framed animation cell from Ren & Stimpy. I rang & thought no more.
6 weeks later, there was a knock on the door, and I have been the proud owner of an original animation cell from Ren & Stimpy, The Littlest Giant, proudly hanging on the wall.
Average price ebay: $1500. But I will enjoy the artwork & memories instead.
20
handjive,
odd, the first time I ever saw it, our daughter was, (umm, how do I mention this without it sounding bad) using the TV as a babysitter for our toddler grand daughter, still virtually a baby at the time. She was watching rapt that Saturday morning, and absolutely silent while the child’s mum (our daughter) and her Mum, (my good lady wife) were in another room. (You know, hey Dad, watch her while we have a talk will you.)
She would watch, rapt while the cartoon was on, and as soon as the ad breaks would come on, she’d look away, play, etc. Then as soon as the cartoon came back on, she’d drop everything and sit perfectly still, looking at the cartoon.
I did a double take at first, wondering how they could get away with putting something like this on during prime children’s viewing times.
I’ll bet if Mums knew what their children were watching they would be absolutely horrified.
Umm, I was hooked from that moment on, every Saturday morning, in my room, howling with laughter.
Funniest thing I’ve seen since The Roadrunner, and Yosemite Sam.
Tony.
30
Sounds like a scene from the home-life of gangsters as depicted in “Ghost Dog”…where they sit ernst, paying rapt attention to animation shows.
00
…I man sit paying ernest, rapt attention.
00
I know why the models are flawed: CO2 dosen’t cause warming. Problem solved. Glad I could help.
20
http://web.archive.org/web/20111109144404/http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/mostmods.jpg
13
Listen Philip, it is not permitted to post links here without saying something about what you are posting.
I hope that a mod simply deletes your post.
11
Apologies Bs but I thought any further explanation of my reply to Richards comment tht the models are flawed entirely supefluous. As to the claim that CO2 does not cause warming, I have addressed that elsewhere.
14
.
Not to mention the fact that you have posted the link to the same graph three times now in this one thread.
Bad form under any circumstances, but especially so when it has already been pointed out that it does not support your claims anyway.
So far you have posted it to “prove” computer models have been successfully predicting climate change for the past 153 years, when, in fact, they have only been around for 24 (post 14.4).
Then you did it again at post 36 below.
Now you post it again here.
Are you Michael under another pseudonym, working on the principle that if you just go on posting the same discredited crap over and over, we all might just give up and start believing it?
60
Seems that Phil is just another parrot… of the Norwegian Blue variety.
00
Actually memory vault, the time that models have been around are irrelevent. If you start a model run from a particular period with the physics that these models run on you can see that they are fairly accurate over the long run. Obviously in the short term there are fluctuations, but these fluctuations generally smooth out in the long term. This is what is occurring.
03
And anything from Tamino is pure JUNK SCIENCE anyway.
21
The models I dont like are not the ones that fail but the ones that dont show up!
10
Thank you for sharing that. /sarc
00
…but you should see the ones that do show up!
00
A good model that works cost the most, you get what you pay for Ace
10
No thats the wrong way around Crakar, they pay me, whether with cash or their modelling.
00
Geeez you must be a GLR if the models are paying you 🙂
00
What the fecks a GLR? Is that Strine?
00
Why its a Good Looking Rooster Ace, hence the models pay you.
00
PS what the hell is a Strine?????
00
strine
/strīn/
Noun
The English language as spoken by Australians; the Australian accent, esp. when considered striking or uneducated.
Adjective
Of or relating to Australians or Australian English.
20
Oh, thanks for the clarification Heywood.
ok well Ace no it is not strine it is a TLA…..sorry…i meant a three letter acronym.
Good as in good
Looking as in looking
Rooster as in boy chicken
All boy chickens are roosters some are just better looking than others, some are so good looking the models pay them 🙂
00
The claim of stagnation for 15 years requires cherry picking of the extreme el nino year of 1998. Even then there is no statistically significant difference between the temperature rise for the last 15 years (0.038 ±0.133 °C/decade) and that for the last 70 years (0.088 ±0.019 °C/decade).
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1943/to:2013/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1943/to:2013/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1996/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1999/trend
http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php
If you begin with 1996 not only is there no statistically significant difference, there is no difference in the headline rate (0.088 ±0.117 °C/decade and for 1999 the headline rate has largely recovered (0.071 ±0.140 °C/decade).
Strangely, having cherry picked the el nino year of 1998, the text acknowledges that models cannot predict el nino and el nina events because they do not occur at regular intervals, although their effects on global temperature average out in the longer term.
So how can the models have failed to predict the cherry picked start point when they make no claim to do so?
The models are extremely succesful at matching the dta over multi decadal timescales.
http://web.archive.org/web/20111109144404/http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/mostmods.jpg
07
On closer examination of the paper, the claims of low compatibility with the models seems based on a fundamental flaw. The paper takes only the hedline value of the trend without accounting for the error in the trends themselves, and then subjects them to a statistical analysis.
That is it says that the rate for Hadcrut4 data is 0.0042 °C/year and compares that to a model prediction.
But the actual value is 0.0042 ±0.0140 °C/year at the 95% confidence level.
That is at that level, the temperature trend is between a rise of 0.0182 and a fall of 0.0098 °C/year.
As usual trends for short term data sets are next to meaningless.
Yet the authors ignore these large errors and go on rediscover stistical rectitude to claim that the data amatches or does not match the models to x% probability ignore these uncertainties and then quote results of a 2% probabilies of a match with the data.
18
You say “As usual trends for short term data sets are next to meaningless.”
That would be short term , as in,- aaaw–let’s say , a couple of centuries – as an absolute minimum.
10
No. The 70 year linear trend is 0.088 ±0.019 °C/decade. That is a 95% chance that the true trend is between 0.107 and 0.069 °C/decade. That is a meningful .stistically significant warming trend.
Going back 150 years there is an excellent fit of temperature following CO2 concentration.
http://oi46.tinypic.com/29faz45.jpg
03
Philip,
Do we have thermometers that can measure to three decimal places?……….Let me clarify that, yes we do have thermometers that precise but what is teh precion of the thermometers we use to measure the temp?
I do not believe they are built to provide such accuracy, please explain how this accuracy is then achieved.
20
PS i cant look at you pic (big brother wont let me) but i believe i already know what it looks like.
Let me guess, the the co2 levels from 1863 to 1955 are basically an arse pluck prettied up so it looks good in an IPCC phamplet and stitched onto current day measurements, this line would be flat for a long time and then suddenly shoots straight up due to the selective use of scale, all in all it would be a nice smooth line.
Then we have the temp data which would squiggle around a bit, some times up and sometimes down then flat for awhile but overall the temp line will rise and then shoot straight up due to the same selective use of scale.
I am sure if i had 5 shots of whiskey, closed my eyes spun around 7 times then squinted with tilted head i too would claim the two were an excellent fit.
Love your work Phil, keep it up
20
No It’s a plot of temperature data against the log of CO2 concentration. Its a straight line, since temperature varies with the log of CO2 concentration. The temperature data is noisy, but the linear correlation coefficient is a very respectable 0.91 with a probability of no correlation between the quantities of less than 0.0001. Or if you prefer 2 decimal places, 0.01 %
13
Philip, I am not aware of any weather stations that concurrently measure temperatures and CO2 concentration. Can you point me to the source data please?
00
Pardon the sloppy editing in the last post. Should have deleted after “x% probability”.
04
Could the thumbs downers explain where my analysis is wrong?
05
Probably not. They seem to work in mysterious ways ,,,
20
RW,
Even though you cocked it up it is still a very good answer.
10
That was supposed to be in answer to #40, ho hum …
10
I think some moderator broke the magic of the threading.
20
No, that sometimes happens when they change the Matrix
20
Correlation IS NOT causation…. basic my dear fellow!
00
So the lower confidence level is negative and the upper is positive. Does that tell you anything about the statistical significance of the trend line?
Answers on a postcard please.
20
It simply means that the error is too large to know (with 95% confidence) whether the trend is warming or cooling. Th shorter you make the time period examined, the larger the error margin will be.
01
aww Philip, are you feeling bad that you weren’t among the peers that reviewed this?
Or are you saying that peer review is flawed?
10
The paper is not peer reviewed. see comment 37.1.1.1
Peer review is the worst method for assessing scientific papers except for all the rest.
01
Sorry Brian. Can you elaborate on this point?
00
It’s a paraphrasing of Churchill’s comment on democracy as a form of government. I simply mean that peer review is not perfect, but it’s the best method we have of evaluating manuscripts prior to publication grant applications etc. I speak from experience having been on both ends of the process reviewer and reviewed.
00
No problem. Just didn’t make sense.
10
Philip Shehan or “Dr” Brian??
Which is it?
10
Dr Brian Philip Shehan. I use my middle name.
01
Nowhere on Google…. sorry, but you are a nobody.
10
I googled Backslider and could not find anything. But you did not look very hard.
One source will do.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Philip+Shehan
02
Phil,
Still waiting for your response re four decimal placed temp readings so i thought i would speed things along a little
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/cdo/about/airtemp-measure.shtml
The above link is from the BOM and if you read the page you will find this statement
So now that we know the BOM use an accuracy to one decimal place how can you quote numbers to the fourth? And yes i know they are not your figures they were given to you by someone you must trust without question but i am asking you to question this data.
How can you turn data to one decimal place into data with four decimal places?
Think about it phil.
10
It is not a matter of decimal places but “signiicant figures”.
The trend for the last 70 years can be expressed as
0.0088 ±0.0019 °C/year
0.088 ±0.019 °C/decade
0.88 ±0.19 °C/century
They are all expressed to 2 significant figures.
I scientific notation it would be 8.8 x 10 (to the power of -3) °C/year
2 significant figures.
19.1 °C is expressed to 3 significant figures.
02
Gotcha Phil,
So by your example above we have been measuring temps now for about 100 years but lets say 70 and at best it has been to one decimal place and yet you produce a 4 decimal place reading (i dont give a shit how you came to that conclusion) but let me educate you a little bit.
Your figure of 0.88/cent is crap it can be 0.8 or 0.9 but not 0.88 understand Phil?
If we take measurements to one decimal place and you tell me the the trend is 0.0088 per year then you have measured no rise in temp. The trend must be 0.0 nothing more nothing less.
By now i am sure the realisation has begun to sink in that the numbers you are quoting are not real numbers, they are fabricated numbers this is not science Phil this is a special new branch of mathematics.
40
No. I must repeat (and this is something we have to drill into 1st year science students)it is the number of significant figures that matter, not decimal places when doing scientific calculations.
I have been in the business of calculating scientific quantities, and getting them published in peer reviewed journals for a long long time.
When looking at a rate you are not just looking at a single data point, you are looking at a set of points expressed as temperature/time. Suppose the average temperature sompleace for the 1960s was 18.1, 70s 18.2, 80’s 18.3, 90’s 18.4.
The data is to 3 significant figures. So the result can be expressed to 3 significant figures, and it does not matter if the rate is expressed as
0.0100 °C/year 3 sig figs, 4 decimal places
0.100 °C/decade 3 sig figs, 3 decimal places
1.00 °C/century 3 sig figs, 2 decimal places
10.0 °C/millenium 3 sig figs, 1 decimal place
The 4 decinmal place figure is a no more or less accurate measure of the rate than the 1 decimal place figure.
05
omg! go back and study maths or engineering instead.
learn about errors etc.. you sir, have LOT to learn !!!!!
50
Question
One of many correct answers is…
The rising slope of a long period sine wave (0.00 °C/millenium).
00
As soon as you mention HadCrud or Giss.. you know you are dealing with a man CREATED warming trend.
That man just happens to be P.Jone or J Hansen (or a collaboration)
20
The claims for global warming due to CO2 emissions require cherry picking, ignoring the very clear decline in temperatures between 1935 and 1975, a period when CO2 emissions were skyrocketing.
They also require ignoring natural variation, denying the MWP and LIA…. and on and on…..
50
No. As I apparently have to point out again and again and again,it is the starting point of AGW theory that man made contributions to global temperature are superimposed on natural forcings: solar variations, orbital variations, volcanic eruptions, ENSO etc etc etc.
Thus the difference in the results of modelling with and without anthropogenic contributions:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-9-5.html
To the extent that the MWP and LIA may be global and not merely North Atlantic phenomena (still an open question) a number of natural variations have been proposed such as solar cycles, volcanic eruptions, changes in ocean circulation etc.
Thus the temperature record since the industrial revolution took off show rises, dips, plateaus spikes etc. due to the additive nature of the various forcings, man made and natural, but over the last 150 years the corelation between temp and CO2 concentration is extremely good.
http://oi46.tinypic.com/29faz45.jpg
03
Also Phillip if you look at the actual ENSO data you can see that the 1991 to 2000 decade was predominantly warming el ninos in the high range and that the 2001 to 2010 decade was predominantly neutral to cooling la ninas. Theres your answer right there. If the 2001 to 2010 decade was still the hottest on the instrumental record despite strong natural cooling influences following a decade of strong natural warming influences then we have obviously continued warming. The next balancing predominantly el nino dominated decade will really see us in trouble.But the crowd here ignores natural influences and the science in their cherry pick.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/
06
If some natural force started warming the planet in the 1700’s (it did) and all our “records” happened after that, then the last decade would probably be the “hottest on record”.
That factoid doesn’t tell us anything about what caused the warming.
Confused people repeatedly make out that it does though.
80
What natural force started warming the planet in the 1700’s? Natural forces have been examined in multiple papers as well as the turn around in temperature since the LIA. As far as I am aware most of them put the turn around in the global turning trend to CO2. They have examined the natural factors and they are not enough to explain the rise. In the last 40 years, the time of the greatest rise, most natural factors have been in cooling trends.
So considering what I showed in relation to ENSO which was predominantly warming in the decade prior to the hottest decade, where natural factors like ENSO were predominantly cooling, is it not a natural assumption going on what we understand about the physics of the greenhouse effect, and going on the continuation of consequences that are consistent with AGW warming, that the increase is due to CO2.
01
The warming turned around after 1680.
85% of man-made emissions happened after 1945.
It wasn’t CO2 that caused the warming to start. The trend in the 1870’s was the same as the 1980s.
So CO2 didn’t cause the warming of 1870, and whatever it was that did, has slowed as the CO2 effect kicked in?
Shame the models don’t know what drives the climate eh?
30
Most of the warming has occurred since 1945, the BEST series shw 0.9 deg of warming since 1950 I think. All temperature reconstructions show modest increases until the 1900’s before going into sharp increases.
What I don’t get Jo is as an actual scientist you ignore the natural variations when using models and the 16 year eyball to decide that AGW is overrated. How do you explain that the 2001 to 2010 decade with its predominantly neutral to cooling la nina conditions is warmer than the predominantly warming el nino conditions (including the really strong el nino in 1998) of the 1991 to 2000 decade? Plus the continuing decline of the Arctic ice far in excess of predictions and any natural variations?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/globalwarming/ar4-fig-6-10.gif
00
BEST is a land-only dataset last I saw. It is showing no warming either for over a decade.
The IPCC AR4 report gives world temperature rise as 0.74 C during the century 1906-2005.
Which is explainable by the following:
0.33 C due to the Sun
0.28 C due to the ~60 year cycle in the ocean
0.13 for CO2 and everything else
Michael – you persistently refuse to address, discuss or even reply to my comments giving the science behind this breakdown, which is the subject of many many papers. Don’t you think this is important? Don’t you think this is an area which should be examined before we spend – waste – trillions? Or tax ordinary people into penury?
10
Well Bruce you cherry pick the period from 2002, again looking for the start date that best fits your confirmation bias while ignoring my key question poised to Jo above. Why is that? Your apparent science is from opinion blog sites with the very scientific names of hockeyschtick and friendsofscience.
The models from even back in the 70’s and 80’s showed that most of the warming would be over land and be amplified in the poles. I post heaps of science links to actual articles but due to critisisms (to much science) have slowed down on that a bit.
01
Michael – You have not addressed my comment, you are evading again.
There is a clear ~60 year cycle in temperatures if you look at 150 years of HadCRUT. That is easy to see and which corresponds to over a third of temperature rise last century. The Sun contributes a further half.
Why are you saying I’m cherry picking from 2002 when I’m giving you 100-150 years of temperatures? And explaining them? Which you’re not.
You can’t have it both ways, mate. Either you address the data and explain it or you have to admit you are ignoring inconvenient findings yourself. That would be called cherry picking as I understand the term.
10
Not sure what your trying to prove with your sine wave graph. Are you saying they are ocean cycles? Do you have any peer reviewed proof for that? If it was in that Mann link, I have downloaded it but have not had a chance to read it yet. I am happy to concede there are ocean cycles, as well as solar cycles, and many others, but what I see when I look at that graph is the underlying upward trend. What is causing that? Cycles by their very nature normally flatten out over the term of the cycle, such as ENSO, not exhibit a long term warming trend.
So considering that we should be in the downward trend of your cycle, and that 2001 to 2010 decade was predominantly cooling la nina affected and that the current solar cycle appears to be the lowest for 100 years, why are we still in the hottest temperatures on record territory? I mean the 2001 to 2010 decade is the hottest decade on record globally, over ocean, over land and in both hemispheres despite all the natural variations you are telling me about are in cooling phases.
Why is that?
01
Good try Michael, you are starting to address the actual data. Well done.
Yes, there are peer reviewed papers on the 60 year cycle. For example this one and this one and this one.
The paper by Mike Mann demonstrates that the AMO, which is cyclic has been in their words:
That is why I tend to call it the ~60 year cycle, since power spectrum determinations show peaks around 61-65 years.
Now why was 2001-2010 flat? Well the PDO and AMO are not in perfect phase, they are about 1/4 phase displaced. The PDO peaked around 2000. The AMO peaked around 2008 (some say it hasn’t yet peaked). The hottest solar cycle for 230 years peaked in 2004. There was a big el Nino in 1998 and another big one in early 2010. We are now at peak of solar cycle 24 too, even though it is a weakish peak.
But we are now seeing temperature trend down in most datasets. Furthermore the CET has been very cold this year so far. Which also suggests the AMO has turned, and likewise solar indirect warming – my small model of the CET is tracking extremely well as predicted. None of the IPCC models did this.
Also Michael, the IPCC models all predict a strong rise in temperature because of CO2. Flat temperature for the decade does not fit with that prediction. Let alone falling temperature.
00
Bruce you seem to be riding fast and loose with the facts. 2010 was a fairly weak el nino year coming after a decade of predominantly la ninas and was at the bottom of the sunspot cycle, which has been falling since the 1950 and 1960 cycles. The current cycle, like you said, being the weakest for a long time. So considering that 2010 is placed as equal hottest year in global data sets, it is hard to understand why without CO2 warming.
The scafetti paper seemed to be an exercise in statistical games without a physical mechanism, vague references at the end to other planets gravitational and magnetic influence. All very hairy fairy and makes much less sense than AGW.
Cycles also do not explain the long term warming trend over the top of every cycle?
I could not find the Mann paper I downloaded, do you have the link for that again?
00
Also Bruce you do realise that Hockeschtick (or whatever) is not an actual scientific or reliable source for science information. You really should read wider.
00
Hard for you to understand Michael. So tell us, what is the cloud cover data for 2010? You don’t suppose THAT might have something to do with things?
00
Michael – The Scafetta 2010 paper hypothesises an orbital reason for the ~60 year cycle. But he is coming from the actual data of the ~60 year cyclical variation in temperature (see his Fig 10).
I do not yet agree with his hypothesis, but he is seeking to explain the data. Kepler did not know what gravity was when he fit his data to ellipses.
The Mann paper is here: Knight et al 2005 GRL. Fig 1 in that paper shows the ~60 year periodicity of the AMO. He of course does not mention the like periodicities in HadCRUT 3v (which Scafetta used) or the PDO, Alaskan rainfall and sea level. Which I’ve linked to previously. Knight et al are linking the AMO periodicity to the thermohaline cycle, which is a hypothesis, as Scafetta’s hypothesis is a hypothesis. It took another 30 years and one apple for Newton to explain why Kepler’s orbits were ellipses. The apple has not yet dropped for the 60 year cycle. But it is real data, we just can’t explain it yet and the models aren’t modelling it yet (with the possible exception of the UK Met Office).
I would add a third hypothesis that a 64 year cycle is a neat multiple of average solar cycle length, which is 10.66 years. Quite a few resonances can be seen in the natural world due to resonant response to cyclical pumping.
The 2010 el Nino was initially quite strong. There was quite a lot of speculation at the time, in part because it was around the time of the Copenhagen conference. For example here:
Whether that statement is true I leave to your interpretation, I was going on memory. Lucia notes it was arguably strong, but not all that strong. I think she thinks the noise being made in the MSM at the time was excessive.
10
Michael – The Hockeyshtick blog does its own thing. That’s his business. But he links to the original paper in each case. I have assumed you would be able to look at the paper which was linked, or the abstract when it is paywalled. Shooting messengers is a bit of a low act.
When you raised FR2011 earlier you will note I addressed the data in the paper. I did not say anything about the blogs it was hosted at.
20
Your kidding, right? Any attempt to refer to sks comes with howls of ad hominim attacks, critisisms, links to websites pillioring john cook etc. Hypocrite. This is a site that has WON ACTUAL SCIENTIFIC AWARDS for correctly educating in climate science with a focus on the peer reviewed science. In my experience so called skeptic blogs often quote the science but misrepresent it to come to a different conclusion than the authors themselves.
So you guys need to be consistent, if you want to argue the actual science, then use and refer to the actual science, and not an opinion blog, clearly biased, telling you how to interpret the science for their own special interests. Otherwise readers should allow me to quote sks, read it, and argue on the merits of the article and not personal attacks. Nobody has done that yet, so look in a mirror before making such a silly comment.
02
“Otherwise readers should allow me to quote sks”
You have quoted SkS (an opinion blog) before as evidence of your argument, and expected everyone to read it. You claim that SkS links to peer reviewed research, so it is acceptable.
Bruce links to Hockeyshtick (another opinion blog) and you claim that it is mere opinion, and not “an actual scientific or reliable source for science information”, even though, like SkS, it links to peer reviewed research.
Can’t see the bias or hypocrisy there though can you…
Found that figure yet? Degrees Celsius?
20
Michael – I did not ad hom SkS.
I linked to them regarding their post of Foster & Rahmstorf 2011, which you raised.
I then proceeded to take it apart as I had promised. Using data which falsifies it.
This is called the sceintific method.
You then ignored it, which you always do when you cannot refute the data.
Who, sir, did you say the hypocrite was?
30
Please point out where. But now I know that you will take ALL blog sites seriously, and not ad hom but argue on the science, I will from now on. you cannot have one rule for yourself and a different rule for everyone else. We focus on arguing the science and referring to the peer reveiwed articles, which is what I have previously tried to do, or we post opinion blog articles that are telling you what to believe. I am glad I know which one.
02
Here for one.
00
lol, forgot that one. Bit of an own goal though. Did you look at all your responses. More proves my point than yours.
So no ad hom and you would argue it on the science hey?
01
Michael – Look at this graph of 5 yr smoothed ENSO. Tell me what you see.
Then tell me what will happen the next 30 years. Surely you can read an ENSO graph?
It is the ~60 year cycle. Its quite visible in AMO, PDO, ENSO, temperature and sea level. And yes it is persistent and periodic as Michael Mann found in his 2005 paper.
And if it is a natural cycle which contributed 0.28 C rise last century then that is 0.28 C which was not due to CO2. No this is not included in the IPCC ensemble models, but it should be.
50
Please show actual scientific sources. In my experience Goddard and opinion blog sites are not reliable sources of data.
01
Translation – They may contain evidence that doesn’t confirm to my bias so I will discount them, even if they do link peer reviewed research.
10
I have been caught by steven goddard lie and misrepresentations before. He frequenctly twists the peer reviewed science to make it look like something other than the conclusions say they are. Unless you say you are willing to accept and read with an open mind, and argue on their merits and not ad hominem accounts, some sks articles, then I do not see why I have to accept unsourced data from your priests.
01
Michael – I link to Goddard’s 5 year smoothed ENSO graph because it is the only one I have found online in years which treats the data in that way.
I could do it myself, perhaps I should. But the other renditions of the ENSO data show the ~60 year cycle also. Not so clearly perhaps, but quite obvious if you look. With open eyes.
Why don’t you try it yourself? The data is available here.
10
No need NOAA has a nice graph of the data. Not sure why you need it 5 year smoothed, is it not John Mcleans research that says it ony affects the climate for about 10 months ahead? If you look at the data from 1950 you do have the 1991-2000 decade as an anomolously el nino affected decade. I accept that. My question continuously has been (and not answered) is why is the 2001 to 2010 decade warmer when it has been predominantly la nina affected, and should be cooling by now. What is keeping the temperatures up to the same levels as the anomolously large el nino affected year of 1998. I cannot see any reason for this except that CO2 is overwhelming natural factors.
Add to that the record melts in the Arctic of 2007 and 2012, sea level rises, ocean warming, glaciers melting, in a decade that should be cooling. Do you have an answer?
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/
01
Yes I do have an answer.
The origin of the permission to promote this fudged data comes from Tom Karl of the NOAA, who regrettably wears a very bad toupee.
That is the source of the problem.
10
Michael – The point of 5 year smoothing is to make the 60 year cycle clearer to see by smoothing the short term variability. For about thirty years el Nino’s were more common, and the index above zero on average. The thirty years before that la Nina was more common and the index below zero. We have now in the last few years flipped back to the la Nina favouring phase.
Which corresponds with lower world temperature, on average, for thirty more years.
Did you see the update eariler this year by the UK Met Office? The significantly reduced their forward projection of temperature out to 2017, so that by that time the their expectation of world temperature would be that it was the same – ie still flat. The reason they made the change is they incorporated the AMO and PDO into their calcs. Which correlate with the ENSO and temperature 60 year signals.
But the UK Met Office has not yet incorporated the solar activity down phase. So temperature won’t stay flat, they’ll drop.
Another thirty years of cooler temperatures, Michael. What will that do to the climate fraternity whose paychecks depend on global warming?
11
Not interested in paychecks, in fact most scientists just research and measure and collate and follow the science where it takes them. I am pretty sure that if we get 30 years of cooling they will be happy due to their children and grandchildren being safer than they thought they would be.
Your cycle, that should even out to zero, does not explain the long term warming trend and does not explain why the la nina affected decade of 2001 to 2010 is the hottest decade on the industrial record globally, on every continent, on land and ocean and in both hemispheres. Nobody has been willing to explain that. Lets also throw in the record Arctic ice melts, the nearly 100% greenland surface melt and the rest of the deteriorating observations.
01
Hmm, as I said before, you don’t work in science do you? You have a very ideal view. Scientists are quite human in all respects. My experience is that government supported ones are the most anxious, as government policy changes at such a high rate. And in the last couple decades the impetus to bring in outside cash from industry and grants has been enormous. I know quite a few scientists at CSIRO, ANSTO and unis. I’m fortunate to have been in industry for 30 years, we only get a round of redundancies every four years or so.
As for the cycle not explaining the long term rise in temperatures, I did say there are two significant variables that the IPCC ensemble models leave out, didn’t I?
The other one is the solar activity increase. Which is worth about 0.4 C across the 20thC. That is the finding of a number of papers I have given you links for already and is my own finding: SC13 was 11.9 years long and SC22 was 9.7 years long: +0.4 C worth of difference.
10
Hi bruce I ave now looked at the Michael Mann paper and you did the typical false skeptic thing of ignoring the conclusion. It says it does not explain the warming of the last 50 years.
02
That’s el niño and la niña dumbo. Would you like me to teach you how to pronounce them also?……
Nah, I’ll just let you keep sounding stupid.
00
Where are all the global warming cultist trolls???
11
How about a reasoned abuse free rebuttal of my post?
14
Abuse free? You jest. But please tell your friend from Craptical Seance to come back. We’ve missed his wit and wisdom.
I’d still like you to explain why this paper passed peer review if it has the flaws you claim.
When you are done, tell Michael why his constant blather about the high value of peer review is well…..you tell us please?
41
The paper has not passed peer review.
Academia.edu is not peer reviewed. It is a social networking site for academics.
04
If we assume that you are an academic, as you imply at #36.1.7.1.1, and if you put a paper onto Academia.edu social networking site, which is read, and commented upon, by other academics, who are presumably your peers, then it as been peer reviewed, has it not?
In what way does your transfer of your paper onto the print media somehow give it more veracity?
40
Peer review is a system of evaluation of a manuscript prior to publication in a “peer reviewed” journal. It is an indication that experts have examined it and found that it passes muster for publication. A paper that is peer reviewed thus has passed a quality assurance procedure.
Anyone can publish anything in a non peer reviwed publication, on paper or online, and those of us who are not experts in a given field will have no idea of the validity of the data or the argument.
00
Philip – The order of veracity is:
1. Data
2. Its interpretation
3. The assembly of a paper
4. Peer review of that paper
5. Publication of it
6. Its wider dissemination and evaluation (since peer review is by at most 3 people)
I observe that you didn’t comment on my responses (#40.2.2 and #38.1.1.4) to you noting the data does not support the CAGW hypothesis. And observing your error in assuming CO2 is the sole driver of temperature rise, which it isn’t. Not even second most important. Yet you complain that Sonny has not responded to you…?
Prof von Storch’s data does fit with several similar studies. The fact that the paper is not yet
palpeer reviewed does not invalidate the data. IPCC ensemble models suck, because they omitted two significant variables during the validation phase and can’t extrapolate for nuts. Not even for very small nuts.I should note that I have been doing models professionally for more than two decades, amongst other things. The IPCC ensemble modellers are not worth of the name.
30
Apology, Philip, I see you were responding to #38.1.1.4 as I was typing.
I will have a look at what you have said and will reply there.
00
“experts have examined it”
NO.. If it is state of the art or ‘new’ work, no such experts exist.
One day you will realise just how LITTLE peer review really means.
ESPECIALLY when it comes to climate science !!!!!!!
21
I have no doubt that Cardinal Bellarmine would have been able to assemble three reviewers – and find a suitably august journal – for any article he or his chums wanted to write about heliocentrism, the Virgin Birth, the Assumption, or whatever took his fancy.
And given that we know (thanks to the tireless work of folks like John Ioannides) that “Most Published Research Findings Are False” in ‘hard science’ fields like Medicine, we can only speculate on how much more worser it will be in a self-interested self-referential tax-funded gravy-train like climate ‘science’.
There’s also a nice “Mea Culpa” from the former chief editor of the NEJM:
There’s also Begley & Ellis (Nature 483, 531–533), showing that 47 out of 53 studies in ‘landmark’ journals could not be replicated… even though – as they show in Table 1 of their paper, studies that cannot be replicated nonetheless result in just as many (higher mean, but wider range) citations in subsequent literature as reproducible studies.
So … you might want to revisit any faith you have in ‘peer’ ‘review’ – especially when the Upton Sinclair aphorism applies, i.e.,
00
.
Perhaps if you tried reposting it English, somebody might take you up. I mean:
is close to complete gobbedly-gook, even with “best-guess” substitution for all the typos.
30
Yes I did apologise above for my sloppy editing and complete lack of proof reading before submitting the submit button. Should have read:
Yet the authors ignore these large errors and go on rediscover statistical rectitude to claim that the data matches or does not match the models to x% probability.
03
Did it again. Will try to be more careful. So many replies to critics, so little time.
02
Phil,
Still waiting for an explanation as to how we get 4 decimal place measurements from a one decimal place reading from a thermometer.
You dont have critics you just have people you refuse to respond to.
10
I was typing my reply above as you were posting.
10
Its not rocket science. Models are merely projections under certain scenarios and still suffer from limited computer power. They still have large cell sizes and limited layers and even then can take months to run a particular scenario. They are necessary becasue you cannot perform eperiments on a global climate, it cannot be put in a test tube and isolate specific variables to see what would happen. So they help us to see what might happen,and have been remarkably accurate in many ways and successfully predicted what would happen in the Mt Pinataubo eruption.
The science is not based on them. Natural factors are obviously unpredictable but the long term trends are plain and obvious. The 2001 to 2010 decade was the hottest on the record despite following a predominantly el nino affected decade and being a decade predoinantly neutral to la nina conditions. Also heating cycling to the deeper oceans and the energy used in the record Arctic and Greenland melting are other sources where energy has gone. It is science that needs decadel time scales at a minumum and the majority of the decades over the last 100 years have been hotter than the previous decades, including the last 5. So basically I would only question the science if the 2011 to 2020 decade is less than the 2001 to 2010 decade. This is unlikely with hottest years on record happening each year in different areas. So considering the science, observations and data there is little doubt among the scientific community that AGW is occurring and mostly as expected and is a correct theory.
” The decade was the warmest for both hemispheres and for both land and ocean surface temperatures. The record warmth was accompanied by a rapid decline in Arctic sea ice, and accelerating loss of net mass from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and from the world’s glaciers. As a result of this widespread melting and the thermal expansion of sea water, global mean sea levels rose about 3 millimetres (mm) per year, about double the observed 20th century trend of 1.6 mm per year. Global sea level averaged over the decade was about 20 cm higher than that of 1880, according to the report.”
http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_976_en.html
08
Michael, crikey – if you have evidence for AGW that doesn’t come from models, rush – rush to the IPCC, don’t hold back! They need you.
Do tell….
80
Ms Nova:
The rise in CO2 concentration since the middle of the last century
http://tinyurl.com/aj2us99
is followed after a 30 year period by a similar curve for rising global tmeperature
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/AMTI.png
Plotting the temperature against the log CO2 concentration gives a linear correlation coefficient of o.91 with a less than 0.0001probability of no correlation between the quantities.
http://oi46.tinypic.com/29faz45.jpg
This data is in line with entirely mainstream scientific theory concerning the “greenhouse effect” of CO2 which has a history of almost 200 years.
05
So Philip (or ‘Dr’ Brian),
Michael can’t answer the question so maybe you can.
How much warming, in degrees celsius, will Australia’s CO2 emission mitigation strategies (ETS, RETs etc.) offset by 2100?
As I said, degrees C please.
10
Don’t have the figure offhand but it is very small.
What I am discussing here is global effects.
02
Does about 4/1000 of a degree C ring a bell?
20
I drove from Newcastle to Liverpool recently, and a friend , unbeknowns to me, drove from Gosford to Sydney the same day.
Amazingly we were driving behind each other for a good proportion of the time.
OBVIOUSLY my journey caused his, or his journey caused mine. (be Phil logic)
20
No. You are neglecting this part:
“This data is in line with entirely mainstream scientific theory concerning the “greenhouse effect” of CO2 which has a history of almost 200 years.”
03
oh.. so you are pulling “Consensus bit again..
No mustard here.. sorry.
00
Yes, there was a short period where Phil and James were able to make the CO2 and temperature records head in the same direction.
But that stopped 15 or so years ago.
The current crop of stooges at Giss and Hadcrud are nowhere near as manipulative. (but are still trying).
Will be fun looking at what happens Giss and HadCrud as UHA and RSS start to drop. 🙂
10
No.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1958/mean:12/normalise/offset:-0.05/plot/esrl-co2/from:1958/to:2013/normalise/scale:0.9/offset
02
So???? .. we KNOW that Giss has been manipulated… your point is ???
00
That SkS temperature graph is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Where did it come from?
HadCRUT 3v is very different. It can be explained quite neatly by the ~60 year cycle (sinusoidal line) and combined direct and indirect solar output in the run up to the multicentury peak in 2004.
The temperature record fits the low sensitivity hypothesis very well. It doesn’t fit the high sensitivity hypothesis, which is why the models have failed – they all have much too high a sensitivity fixed in them.
10
Robert way fit data averaged from 10 sources and fit it to a curve. Unfortunately he does not tell us what the function is, but the correlation coefficint of 0.82 is quite good for noisy data.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton-Myth-2-Temperature-records-trends-El-Nino.html
Here is another similar curve which is fitted to a 3rd order polynomial.
http://www1.picturepush.com/photo/a/11901124/img/Anonymous/hadsst2-with-3rd-order-polynomial-fit.jpeg
03
Seriously.. referencing SkS..
You truly ARE an IDIOT !!!!!!!
30
It’s all he has.
If he had some real peer reviewed data, to illustrate his point, he would use it. Remember how he was banging on about peer reviewed papers further up the thread? It seems as though that is a fall back position when he doesn’t have a valid point to make.
The quality of trolls is getting worse – perhaps Jo is running out of budget for the year, and needs to economise.
40
Philip – The polynomial is just a statistical LSR fit. I was interested in the temperature trace, which is unfamiliar to me.
I have just Googled it and the only references seem to be to that same SkS post. Which I have to say is interesting. Is it the subject of a peer reviewed paper?
The second graph is better as it is a polynomial fit to HadSST 2. Which is not a global dataset unlike HadCRUT 3v.
I am not especially familiar with HadSST 2 as I usually deal with the global ones. However I note the fairly recent paper by Gleckler et al 2012 who analysed SST’s and found a 0.125 C rise in 50 years due to human influence. I don’t have the paywalled paper but the graphs are available here. (Coauthors include Ben Santer and our own John Church.)
In this case I fully agree, but I note that you can calculate an implied 2XCO2 value from it like this:
2XCO2 = 0.125*log(2)/(log(390)-log(315)) = 0.4 C/doubling
This is compatible with the low sensitivity hypothesis, and not with the IPCC’s hypothesis.
I can add that my point with the sinusoidal fit to HadCRUT 3v is the same sinusoidal signal is present in many other datasets, including AMO, PDO, ENSO, sea level as well as temperature, which corresponds to 38% of the temperature rise last century (due to endpoint selection). It is persistent over at least millenia according to Dr Mann.
This signal is not included in the ensemble models, although the UK Met Office may be starting to incorporate it, since their recent reappraisal of temperature out to 2017 significantly lowered their original prediction and that they mentioned the AMO and PDO as one reason.
50
And seriously…. who the f*** thinks that a polynomial curve is in ANY WAY relevant to climate !!!!
Yes, its pretty, but that’s about it !!!
At least when Roy Spencer uses it he says its just for show, and is MEANINGLESS.
00
How?
The energy isn’t “gone” (as in “disappeared” or “hiding” – which is what is being claimed), Michael. It continues to exist as the LATENT heat associated with the phase change of the water from ice to liquid.
As LATENT heat incorporated in the phase change, it is not capable of “heating” anything. Not now, not ever. Certainly not in 40 years or so, when it is claimed it will “rise from the ocean deeps” and burn us all on the bum.
You need SENSIBLE heat for that.
60
Michael – Are you cognizant with ‘omitted variable bias‘?
You should read about it. The IPCC ensemble modellers should also.
Unless all the significant variables are included in a model it won’t extrapolate worth a damn. That is what Prof von Storch has pointed out.
Yes, the last decade was the warmest for centuries. But not because of CO2.
40
Michael. I’ve had a fair bit to do with writing computer programs using DOS. The first thing I learned was to make the code that I used available to anyone that asked for it. The same thing with the models. If the code that is used isn’t available for anyone to look at and critique how can it be trusted?
20
Not sure where are you coming from. As far as I am aware a lot of the data is publically available. Simple climate model code is basically open source as for more high level GCm’s, well that is very high level speciality code needing extremely high end powerful computers and still takes months to run.
THe majority of people trust the progrms on their computers without knowing the code everyday.
07
I’ve looked at the code from a couple of models. It’s swill. Code quality is “under graduate”. Algorithms are simply representations of formulae with quantities of fudge factors pulled out of thin air. Important variables representing natural phenomena are often simplified to a guessed constant.
Water in all its atmospheric and surface phases and their transitions isn’t modelled nearly well enough. It’s not worth trying to do an energy balance until the effects of water are better understood and modelled. A climate model that doesn’t properly handle water is prima facie, useless.
There seems to be no effort in the code to minimise the effects of rounding errors that are inevitable in iterative, numerical computations.
There is apparently no (mechanised) version control. Version control is essential so that changes to software can be audited and so that others to replicate the results independently. It’s not science if it can’t be replicated.
The outcomes of the model runs are substantially determined by the “quality” of the guesses.
The need for a supercomputer to run the calculations is a myth. While it was the case in the 1970’s and 1980’s when most of the models were initially developed, a new desktop computer can be configured to produce results that are just as valuable for generating further research grants.
40
I don’t think we are talking about the same code. What I have read is that the best models can take months to run on the best computers.
Anyway, if you are such a computer programming genius maybe you should offer your service, or writ a better model of your own and send it to them (and us).
02
This isn’t just for Michael the Fantasist.
The fundamental problem with the modelling of climate is that too much of the physical world is and will always be unknown. The inevitable result is that any model will have no predictive quality.
Climate “models” are very different to the physical models used in e.g. Engineering design because the physical models are bound by a small set of rules and pre-defined objectives. In an overall Engineering design, factors of safety are built into the system to allow for “natural variations” in both the nominal loads and the manufacture of the components. Every plausible factor goes into an Engineering design to ensure that the product is safe and performs the specified task within acceptable bounds. Engineers will almost always build prototypes or physical models to check performance in the real world. It’s not because they’re stupid, but it’s to help them to see what they may have overlooked.
Climate models fail to model a number of plausible factors that are known to be significant; because their modelling is intractible. Not because of size, but because too little is known about the underlying physical processes and their physical state. If the model doesn’t incorporate significant factors as they are in the real world, then the model is unrealistic and can only ever produce fiction.
Thus, there’s no point in writing even a single line of code to model climate because the model can never have predictive qualities; short of a steady flow of grants and super-computer sales.
00
Did you mean Michael the fantastic?
Most of science of the natural world is based on models. Models that repeatedly have amazing predictive value. We have never actually seen a proton or a quark, but our complete society revolves around the properties of the tiny almost invisible world of the particles in the standard model of quantum physics. Most of the properties and what we know are due to models. If your standards were to be applied to electronics we would still be doing calculations with an abacus.
Models are used in most facets of human achievement. They are needed because some things can only be understood with them or due to cost and time pressures. Climate models are very close and have done very well and will only improve as our understanding and computing power increases. You are minimising their value and success for your on purposes and in a nasty attempt at minimising our achievements and how much we do know.
02
Michael – I build models, gigabyte sized, for industry.
They are garbage in garbage out. If you leave out important variables they are wrong, period.
The IPCC ensemble models leave out ocean cycles (as Judy Curry herself points out today) and solar indirect warming via the Svensmark mechanism.
If they included these they might actually predict the global temperature a lot better. But if they did then the interpolated climate sensitivity would be well below 1 C/doubling and they would therefore prove CAGW cannot happen. And then be defunded by the governments who pay them, which is a fierce conflict of interest.
10
Michael –
You’ve obviously not been reading this blog for long or you would have recognized that I have built and used models as an Engineering professional to design and build structures. When the structures were aggressively designed and no longer compliant with the “back-of-envelope” structural design calculations according to the Standards, type testing was used to verify the strength of the structures. I even made bets on the range of results from the testing; after having reduced the known variability of key parameters (testing material strength and using as-manufactured dimensions) to within a tight range. I didn’t lose any bets.
Those models went back to first-principles of physics and materials science. It took a lot of research, unravelling a century of accepted Engineering practice (originating during the industrial revolution) to determine what safety factors were embedded in practice and working out for which variables they allowed. Those factors are important to consider because they reflect historic knowledge of manufacturing practice. With the variability of material strength and dimensional tolerances becoming narrower, such factors needed to be re-examined (the then Australian Standard of the 1980’s still embedded the same factors as the 1945 ASME code for steel structures; albeit converted to SI).
Of course such models are useful. Their difference is that they are based on what is physically known, incorporating all known, significant factors in the model.
The climate models do not incorporate the role of significant variable factors such as those of the main energy transport and storage medium of the climate system: Water.
That one variable is replaced by constants like constant humidity and constant cloud albedo. Both of those things are highly variable in magnitude at any one location over a period of time ranging from minutes to months.
One cannot get the right results without including the variables as variables. Almost all factors in the climate system are known to be variable, even if we don’t know exactly how they vary. Variables are coupled to others, requiring a detailed understanding of which couplings are significant, and those which are not; otherwise the thousands of non-linear coupling equations will each have thousands of terms. Moreover; a deterministic, physical model requires a knowledge of the initial state of the system before the simulation is run. It’s implausible that sufficient knowledge of our planet and the cosmos around us will ever be known well enough to define such a state.
Without such necessary complexities, the models aren’t physical and therefore have no predictive quality of any value.
20
AAD,
Policy is based on them. It isn’t rocket science. Predictions are made from models that say the earth is going to warm by “x” degrees by “y” year.
Governments then base their expenditure on mitigation on this alarmist figure without, of course, any cost-benefit analysis of exactly what benefit the mitigation strategy would have.
30
Considering that most predictions for AGW are worse than expected, such as the Arctic ice, sea level, acidification, weather etc, I would think that a lot of places stalling are now scrambling for mitigation policies.
As I undeerstand it, that is certainly the case for a lot of states in the US worried about storm surges, floods and droughts etc. They have really had their share of them in the last decade.
06
But global temperatures are “better” than expected. So much betterm the models are proven to be useless. Pretty much wipes out the whole scare doesn’t it?
Storms are at lows, antarctic sea ice is at record highs, droughts have broken. But the PR campaign rages on despite the facts.
90
Actually Michael,
Arctic ice is pretty much back to early 2000’s levels and recovering nicely,
Sea level rise has slowed, if indeed it was ever rising – lot of debate on that point at the moment,
(Ocean) acidification is perhaps the most unscientific crap of all the garbage ever produced by the CAGW crowd,
Weather extremes at historically low levels.
.
Sorry to rain all over your little green utopian power dreams Michael, but that’s reality.
60
“but that’s reality”
not for Norwegian Blues, it isn’t
30
Seriously Memoryvault, your memory is flawed. Sea levels are increasing at twice the rate of the 1900’s average, as measured by satelite. The Arctic fell to its lowest level last year by a long shot, and not only has acidification been measured in a variety of places there are many obserational examples of the consequences of acidification taking place. The Antarctic has moderately increased in extent but within normal variations (unlike the Arctic) but volume is falling.
So everything said above is incorrect and all the actual scientific data says that the consequences of AGW are occurring and mostly worse than expected.
01
For most of the 1900’s, sea levels weren’t measured by satellite.
20
15 Aug: Bloomberg: Matthew Carr: Brokered EU Carbon Trade Plunges as Banks Scale Back
Carbon trading via brokers including ICAP Plc (IAP) and GFI Group Inc. (GFIG) plunged to its lowest since at least January 2011 as banks scaled back buying and selling amid tighter regulation and a record glut of permits.
The volume of EU allowances handled by six members of the London Energy Brokers’ Association dropped 61 percent in July to 84.1 million metric tons from a year earlier, according to an Aug. 8 report by the lobby group. Trading in Certified Emission Reductions, the United Nations-regulated offsets, plunged 81 percent. Activity on ICE Futures Europe in London, the biggest exchange for carbon contracts, slid 19 percent in the month.
“A significant factor is that a few key players have exited,” Ilesh Patel, a partner in London at Baringa Partners LLP, said Aug. 9 by phone. “Banks need more money to trade carbon, power and other commodities because of new financial regulations that require them to set more risk capital aside.” …
Coal trading jumped 69 percent in July, according to LEBA. Demand for the fuel isn’t enough to boost trading activity much beyond compliance buying of carbon permits, Baringa’s Patel said…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-14/brokered-eu-carbon-trade-plunges-as-banks-scale-back.html
01
Just wondering, but given the purported excellence of hindcasting fit, what is the value for climate sensitivity, since this appears to be daily revised downward?
20
.
You obviously don’t understand climate science, Manfred.
Climate sensitivity doesn’t have a set “value”.
It is a variable, used in climate computer models to get the data to give the required results in any given simulation.
It is denoted in climate science formulas by the symbol ff, or 2f, which is an abbreviation of its full name – fudge factor.
.
You will find a more detailed explanation in the Harry_Read_Me file, which was released with the Climategate emails.
50
Hi MV
This may sound strange but I don’t understand how natural climate variation is applied to the models . What about one off occurrences , say a large volcanic eruption , solar activity or variations of earths orbit . Probably a silly question but I am on a relearning quest after a bump on the noggin .
Cheers
00
Can you point me to the best reading on this ?
00
.
It’s easy Raven.
If a climate scientist needs his computer run to show more warming, he just ups the fudge factor, meaning he increases the claimed amount that CO2 allegedly multiplies the effect of water vapour and clouds. It started off as X 3.3, and reality has been dragging it backwards ever since.
This is called “climate sensitivity”
On the other hand if, despite his best efforts, the climate scientist still ends up with some cooling, he goes looking for a conveniently timed volcano or change in the PDO or something to account for it.
This is called “natural variation”.
The Golden Rule is:
Climate sensitivity = CO2 = always warmer
Natural variation = we dunno = always cooler
.
Joking aside, Jo’s other half did an excellent little video which covers climate sensitivity.
You will find it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CiGa82CthU
50
Thanks for link MV . Problem now sorted , excellent clip btw .
Cheers
20
The main fudge factor used in tuning climate models to match the past climate from which follows the somewhat naive assumption that the tuned models will be able to predict the future climate and it’s trends, are aerosols.
Roy Spencer has 73 climate models listed in his analysis; STILL Epic Fail: 73 Climate Models vs. Measurements, Running 5-Year Means
73 climate models say there is lots of competition out there in the climate modelling world for the holy grail of climate prediction and the lavish grants that keep the modelers in the style to which they have become accustomed.
And if 73 very expensive climate models can’t even get one right through pure chance [ see Roy’s graphs ] and this after some 25 years of climate modeling then it gives a pretty good guide to the sheer inability of the climate models as presently constructed by the modelers to ever make any verifiable predictions.
On top of this it reveals the colossal ongoing waste of public resources chasing an ever receding mirage of climate prediction using the current crop of climate modelers and models.
A survey of over 30 main climate models a year or so ago showed that there was a very wide range of aerosol levels used by the various modelers as the main tuning input used to tune the models to match the past supposed climate as it is promoted after all the constant and ongoing temperature adjustments have made to the historical temperature record.
The sudden and embarrassing exposure of the aerosol level disparities used by the various climate modelers for their aerosol inputs to their climate models is why there is the sudden push to try and figure out the real level of atmospheric aerosols, their types, their reflectivity and their absorption characteristics in the various parts of the spectrum.
Embarrassing as the entire climate modeling and climate science community admitted that nobody really has a clue on just what effect atmospheric aerosols have on the global climate and exactly how much and which types and their spectrum absorption and reflection characteristics are the main drivers of so many aspects of the global climate..
And THAT is only just one major input into the climate modeling about which they haven’t really any clues as to what does what where and by how much.
If you haven’t caught up with it, Pierre Gosselin’s german to english translated NoTricksZone provides a good view on how the global warming climate scene is panning out in the heart of the global warming cult in Germany .
And it ain’t looking good for the believers with a very significant change in sentiment under way as 5 or 6 of the coldest consecutive winters recorded in Germany and Europe have just occurred and another is forecast for the coming winter [ the US corn crop is running way behind in degree growing days, GDD’s, as well ] plus economics and realism are taking their toll on the German public’s perception of the global warming hype.
Gosselin has quite a bit on the how germany’s climate types are losing faith in the predictive capabilities of the climate models.
70
Hi ROM,
Excellent post, but your link is busted. Here is the corrected one:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/still-epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-measurements-running-5-year-means/
.
Perhaps a kind mod will fix it and delete this post.
00
We ought to have a modelling party …
You bring the smoke, and I will supply the mirrors …
40
This link gives a graphical representation of how theoretical understanding of anthropogenic and man made forcings affect climate.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-4-1-2.html
Model seems to be a boo word here but model is just another term for theory. As in the Bohr model of the atom. Complex theories these days use computers to combine the theoretical understanding of component parts of the overall theory, thus compuer models. Of course complex theories have large uncertainties which will become smaller as more detailed understanding becomes available but as the above link and this one show, they are already succesful in accounting for the observed temperature changes.
http://web.archive.org/web/20111109144404/http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/mostmods.jpg
Irregular events like volcanic eruptions and el nino la nina events cannot be predicted beforehand but can be calculated in hindcasting, as has been done in the models in the link. But as they are transient events or events which even out in the long term they do not affect the long term trend.
05
The Ptolemaic model of the solar system is a model, Philip.
No matter how many epicycles you might wish, the IPCC GCM’s still suck. For the same philosophical reason why the Ptolemaic model sucks.
And CAGW is not a theory, it is a hypothesis. A falsified hypothesis. The alternate hypothesis of low equilibrium sensitivity looks awfully like its a theory in gestation, if Dr Kirkby at CERN can pull his finger out. I will be quite pleased when Prof Svensmark gets his Nobel prize for Physics.
As for linking to Tamino, please bring up Foster & Rahmstorf 2011. Please! It is so much fun ripping it to sheds, which I have done quite a few times now.
You do know who Tamino is, don’t you?
51
Are you aware of a computer model/simulation that accurately (or even semi accurately) predicts the activity on the stock market or commodities markets?
If so would you be willing to email me privately with a link to the information?
Im just figuring that if you believe the climate can be accurately modelled then you would figure the stock market would be a doddle and you might know someone I can get a copy of it from perhaps?
20
I have often said that if anyone can come up with an economic theory (model) that can factor in human fear and greed they will win a Nobel Prize and make a fortune on the stock market.
00
Well guess what?
In order for the cult of ManbearPig to genuinely justify their “The Sky Is Warming!”* screeches, they have to show that there’s a discernible negative economic impact as a result of the global average temperature changing by a poofteenth of a degree per year.
Recently they’ve been “leaking” preliminary nonsense to prime the public – and their latest nonsense purports to use the dodgy point-estimates of temperature change as an input into a supposed global model of economic activity… no surprises – the result is “If we don’t let the political class tax carbon, everyone will starve and horses will eat each other. Oh, and babies will be born with scales, and and and will instantly catch fire.”
As someone who understands the state of the art in economic models (both CGE and macroeconometric), I can say with 100% certainty that the economic output is bullshit that is not statistically different from ‘no change whatsoever’.
Why do I say this? Well, given that forecast uncertainty varies with the square root of the forecast horizon, the smallest uncertainty is in the 1-year forward look. Anyone who could accurately forecast the direction of grain prices with a 1-year horizon, could become a gajillionaire by taking leveraged bets in futures markets (it would be super-cheap, too – because all they would have to bet on is a widening or narrowing of contangos or backwardations).
There are no climate modellers in the Forbes Richest 100, ergo the ag-forecast models don’t work.
* note – “The Sky Is Warming!” has now been replaced by “Oh, the Sky? Umm, its’ not warming as much as we said it would… in fact it’s not warming at all. OK, so it’s cooling. But the extras warming that isn’t there is, um, in… the oceans. Yes, that’s it. Oceans. No, no no… you misunderstand. Not surface temperatures… deep deep ones that nobody measured systematically until after Jacques Cousteau’s 50th birthday. But give us more money, or we are all going to burn. BURN I say!”.
00
Isn’t it uncanny how the GISS has been hindcast to match all that noise , eh ?
From Tamino you say.
10
GISS rematching
20
Watch that US temp record buck like a bronco. Yeehahh…
20
Damn. Now I understand why one has to be a card carrying climate scientist.
30
The empirical value for climate sensitivity can be calculated from the data in my post at 31.1.1.
The rise in CO2 concentration from 1850 to the present (280 – 400 ppm) is 120 ppm. The rise in temperature since that time is 0.9 degrees. This gives a value of 0.0075 C/ppm. So doubling the present CO2 concentration gives a sensitivity factor of 0.0075 x 400 = 3 C. This is within the IPCC range of 2 – 4.5 C with a most likely value of 3 C.
The direct plot of temp vs log CO2 gives a value of 2.035 plus/minus 0.074 C
These values are in agreement within experimental error.
17
Hold up there a minute Phil,
Your claim that co2 levels in 1850 were 280ppm is pure speculation, you have no evidence to support this claim.
Your claim of a 0.9C rise since 1850 is also speculation as our temp records dont go back that far in any meaningful way and they are very, very, very sparse.
So here we have a classic case of guesswork based on guesswork to produce the desired outcome. For example lets assume for a moment (guess) the temps have risen by only 0.75C ( a reasonable assumption under the circumstances) and let us also guess the CO2 levels were higher in 1850, lets say 315ppm.
Now to the calculations
0.75/85=0.0088 x 400=3.5294C………..so as you can see by changing the variables slightly but within realistic variations i have changed the sensitivity factor you hold so dear by a large amount.
If i merely changed the temp and not the CO2 we get 2.5 by simply dropping the temp by 0.15C, do you now see just how stupid you look to everyone you force this crap onto.
51
And lets’ also ignore the peaks in temperature in the late 1800’s and around 1930. (we still have temperature records in many places from those periods)
….neither of these could possibly have been caused by CO2.
So they HAD to be got rid of. !! They didn’t exist, y’know.
02
Managed to fool my PhD examiners and a whole bunch of referees in peer reviewed journals then.
12
This seems to have gone in at the wrong place. It was a reply to
AndyG55
August 15, 2013 at 10:29 pm · Reply
ps.. It is obvious that your understanding of measurement and error analysis is severely limited.. you have work to do.
11
Not pure speculation. Based on ice core samples. I was reading the temperatures from the scale on the graph. Temperatures are based on measurements (they had thermometers in 1850 and proxy data.
You pluck some random numbers from I don’t know where. and then you come up with numbers well within the IPCC’s sensitivity range of 2 -4.5 C.
And note that I quoted my result to one significant fugure – 3 C. To a scientist using only one significant figure means I am recognising a certain amoint of error in the data and that the true figure is somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5 C.
And to 2 significant figures you get: 2.5 and 3.5 C.
Thanks for your support.
Feeling a little stupid now?
12
So how about this calculation of 0.4 C/doubling, which you haven’t responded to yet.
Or 0.7 C/doubling using the CET and peer review papers? Empirical data shows CO2 has only a small effect, provided you include the significant variables.
(BTW – I saw you are doing bioscience with NMR. I’d be curious to know what your current project is, if you can say. I used NMR for some years for structural organic chemistry, and it is really one of the best instrumental methods around, so I like to hear when people are using it for new stuff.)
10
Now I understand why your comments are intelligent and polite.
I can see nothing to object to in your analysis, but I have not had time to examine the link etc in detail. Take that as a compliment that I take you seriously.
As for Robert Way’s graph, I have had truoble tracking it down in more detail , but eyeballing his “all temperature index” which is an average of numerous data sets it appears to be virtually indistinguishable with individual data sets such as hadcrut 4 so I have no problem with it. Like I said, I wish he had given use the function which it is fitted with.
Now I know I am going to cop it from dave and co for this but I am “semi retired” doing some consulting work due to adverse reaction to my whistleblowing activities concerning a department at the University of Sydney. (The department no longer exists. A few years after my warnings it collapsed without a trace.)
My honours and PhD work wer on organic and organometallic compounds. That was way back on a 200MZ Jeol machine at La Trobe University. It was one of the first superconducting instruments in Australia in 1980.
My last position was in the Department of surgury at the University of Melbourne, Austin campus.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18636967
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15362871
The instrument I was (mostly) using was a bruker 600 MHz at the Bio 21 facility in Parkville. The NMR cave there is filled with spectrometers, the largest being a bruker 800 MHz. I was only studying small peptides so did not need the higher resolution and time on the big one is very competitive. In fact all instruments are in high demand operating 24/7 meaning lots of nightwork.
10
Rather amazingly we have travelled remarkably similar paths.
I used NMR at UniSyd, where I did my hons and PhD. I’m sorry to hear you had trouble with the university, but I have seen snippets suggesting they have gone downhill since the time I went through. At risk of my anonymity my PhD was in the same areas as yours (small world!). And my current work is as a semi retired consultant. The parallel is weird.
I did search the All Method Temperature Index which Robert Way graphed, and yes it is only an analysis by him. Which is not to say it is wrong, but I don’t have the energy to go and audit his calcs (to his credit he has posted an Excel spreadsheet). But it looks very unlike the HadCRUT 3v dataset, which I might add shows evidence of unremoved UHI, in my analysis compared with the CET.
This doesn’t change the calcs I mentioned below. When you have the Sun causing about 45-50% of warming last century, and ocean cycles another 35-40%, the residual fits very well with the low sensitivity measurements of Lindzen, Spencer and others who have directly measured it (rather than via models assuming CO2 is the only rising variable across the century).
Philip – I take this time and effort because you are a scientist and I still do love science after many years in it. It should not be warped the way the IPCC group has being doing.
00
Philip – Why are you assuming the temperature rise (which was 0.74 C as per the IPCC) was all due to CO2?
Indeed if you account for the ocean cycle and the solar based warming you get a value for 2XCO2 of 0.7 C. I used the CET since it is the cleanest and most internally consistent dataset.
That is the point that climate sceptics have been maintaining all along – it is an erroneous assumption to ascribe all the warming to CO2, and since those two variables I mentioned have now turned down, it is no surprise that temperature also is falling this last decade. CO2 appears to have some warming effect (ie empirically as well as theory), but not enough to overcome the variability in the Sun and oceans.
30
Actually Bruce.. most of it wasn’t so much a temperature rise, …
.. but a retrospective temperature decrease.
11
Bruce I note your complaint that I have not answered your posts. Apologies. The fact is I find your posts resonable and civilised and I find myself prioritising replying to personal attacks from people who make stupid statements.
I was not assuming all warming is due to CO2 and I recognise that the temperature record reflects natural and manmade forcings which is why it is variable. But over the last century and a half there is a very good correlation between CO2 concentration and temperature which supports the theoretical understanding that increasing CO2 concentration cause warming.
22
Philip – If you drew a quadratic polynomial onto this graph (which is just a detrended HadCRUT 3v) from 1900 to 2000 you would get the same rising curve.
If you were to do the same with Total Solar Irradiance from 1900 to 2000 you would get the same. It peaked around 2004, highest for centuries.
That is my point. If you have 3 covarying variables, and you leave two of them out of your model the multiple regression model will assign the variance to the one that is left…CO2. That is simple statistics, the omitted variable bias. IPCC ensemble models act like multiple regression models because the are validated to the 20thC temperature record.
Which is the mistake of the IPCC ensemble modellers.
Again I have no problem with CO2 causing warming, in theory. That is the Arrhenius calculation. In practice the world is a complicated place. The IR has to be present to be absorbed, and the hydrocycle is the thing preventing this from happening, by two mechanisms. First the heat is being transported from the surface to the stratosphere as water vapour, then radiated to space after condensation. CO2 in the air column therefore doesn’t see it. Secondly, cloud cover is modulated by the solar magnetic field (eg this paper recently published). Cloud is a very good diffractor of incident light – so the energy never gets to the surface.
The assumption that all or most of the temperature rise last century is due to CO2 is both the underlying assumption of the IPCC ensemble models AND is not supported by the data. So since the other two variables, the Sun and ocean cycles, have now turned down it explains why temperature is not tracking the models. Empirical equilibrium sensitivity is low. It is very hard to come to any other conclusion than this from the real climate data (ie not the model output).
30
This published work (below) suggests 1.84
Care to venture why ECS value has steadily declined over the years?
Earth Syst. Dynam. Discuss., 4, 785-852, 2013
http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/4/785/2013/
doi:10.5194/esdd-4-785-2013
A lower and more constrained estimate of climate sensitivity using updated observations and detailed radiative forcing time series
R. B. Skeie1, T. Berntsen1,2, M. Aldrin3, M. Holden3, and G. Myhre1
20
Philip Shehan
00
And your point is…?
01
And here is where you are in fairy land Philip. Since 1850??? Do tell us all what the emissions were way back then. Their effect would have been SQUAT.
Perhaps you can enlighten us as to what happened between 1935 and 1975 when CO2 emissions were skyrocketing? I can tell you Philip: SQUAT happened (apart from a little cooling).
The FACT is that you and you ilk are in DENIAL of natural climate change.
20
“CO2 emissions were skyrocketing”
“SQUAT happened (apart from a little cooling).”
Oh, you mean like the last 15 or so years ?? 😉
11
“And here is where you are in fairy land Philip. Since 1850??? Do tell us all what the emissions were way back then. Their effect would have been SQUAT.”
Precisely. That is why 1850 can be taken as the baseline preindustrial level of atmospheric CO2.
Once more for the slow learners:
“Philip Shehan
August 15, 2013 at 2:56 pm · Reply
No. As I apparently have to point out again and again and again,it is the starting point of AGW theory that man made contributions to global temperature are superimposed on natural forcings: solar variations, orbital variations, volcanic eruptions, ENSO etc etc etc…
Thus the temperature record since the industrial revolution took off show rises, dips, plateaus spikes etc. due to the additive nature of the various forcings, man made and natural, but over the last 150 years the corelation between temp and CO2 concentration is extremely good.”
01
Phil,
I think you will find the IPCC state 1750 not 1850 to be the beginning of mans influence perhaps it was a typo?
10
Not a typo. The industrial revolution started in England around 1750 but it did not get going to any significant extent there, and catching on in Europe and the US till the 1800’s, so up to 1850 “Their effect would have been SQUAT.”
00
Linear extrapolation – nice and simple – pity it’s wrong.
00
from Bloomberg, under the category “Wars on Things”!
15 Aug: Bloomberg: Eric Roston: ‘War on Coal’ Gains Steam Amid Wars on Terror, Crime, Drugs, Science, Christmas
Navigant Research estimates that there will be 137 plant closures in North America and 144 in Europe by 2020, Martin said, totaling 53 gigawatts and 49 gigawatts, respectively…
Elsewhere, notably China and India, the number of coal plants is growing…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-14/-war-on-coal-gains-steam-amid-wars-on-terror-crime-drugs-science-christmas.html
00
Why didn’t Nature publish Picasso’s climate paper?
They didnt like the abstract!
There you are…world premiere, for free.
90
.
Got to pay that one, Ace. Have a thumbs up.
10
Cheers MV…no hard feelins over my rants, you know me by now!
00
…well I hope 😉
10
.
Hell Ace, if we were all just going to agree with each other on everything, we might as well hang out over at John
Crook’sCook’s Septic Science blog..
I enjoy your rants – though I still haven’t worked out why Godzilla is always angry.
10
MV…glad you brought that up: Gordzirrer is always angry bcause his arms are too short for him to have a SNIP-CRUDE
00
…or to scratch his SNIP-NASTY
00
AndyG55 – The ‘normalized measured anomaly’ is a least-biased trajectory compiled from the average of the current GISS, NOAA, HadCRUT3, and HadCRUT4 reports. These are available on the web.
The reported peaks are artifacts of the measurement process and are not physically possible because of the huge effective thermal capacitance of the oceans. This is discussed on page 1 of the climatechange90 paper.
13
Ah I see, The data didn’t fit the theory. so they adjusted the data.. !!
30
Econonomic models on the “social cost of carbon” are also of less use than usual.
This just in via Junkscience.com, quoting an MIT “warmist” professor of economics and finance, Robert S. Pindyck:
20
Now let me get this straight… KRudd believes in CAGW and thinks the globe is getting warmer, but he wants to encourage businesses to locate and develop in what is already the hottest part of the country:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/election-2013/labor-pledges-lower-company-tax-in-new-northern-territory-economic-zone/story-fn9qr68y-1226697739374
Yeah, all makes perfect sense… Given that all the promises are beyond the time span of the Budget, one could say they are never never promises beyond the never never…
30
He didn’t use a napkin this time.. the idea came to him while he was s*itting.
10
Actually Bulldust,
I’m finding it all quite exciting.
The campaign is less than two weeks old, and already the Great Man has turned back the boats, reversed climate change, slashed my electricity bill, rescued the manufacturing industry, ensured my grand children’s education to PhD level, guaranteed me a solid gold wheel chair for my disability, opened up this vast continent for development, and turned Northern Australia into a mining and agricultural powerhouse.
And we still have over three weeks to go.
The way I see it, at this rate by election day there will be a Mercedes in every garage, a 30 foot launch in every driveway, free annual holidays on the P&O liner of your choice, a minimum weekly wage AND age pension of $5,000.00 a week, and free KFC or Maccas once a week so the Missus can have a night off.
What’s not to like?
40
Not to mention branching out into yummy candy for the masses .
http://potemkinsvillage.blogspot.com.au/
But I’ll mention it anyway .
10
Labor are so desperate they are throwing every ounce of mud they can find at Abbott. Even music fashionista Katy Perry got roped into the fray to put him in the hot seat. She’s not even Australian. The connections and favours being pulled here are extraordinary.
So what if this guy is “out of touch” with “modern Australia”? The entire argument is about which label you call legally-recognised bonds between homosexuals. Is it called “marriage” or “civil union” or some 3rd name we have yet to invent? Abbot is on video two years ago saying he personally objects to the word “marriage”, but not to the principle of gay people getting married. What does it even matter? This guy has to do whatever the public wants if he’s elected. His personal opinion doesn’t count in the end, so why use it against him?
Logic and Australian politics just don’t mix.
A word of caution about 2013electionwatch.com.au, several red flags:
– It’s run by university of Melbourne’s School of Government.
– The main staff are ex ABC, SBS, and The Age.
– One of their strategic partners is The Con, and ABC’s versions of VoteCompass.
So it’s basically an ALP re-election vehicle.
I only found it because I was searching for a summary of election promises. Which brings us back to your topic MV.
Is anyone keeping track of the costs of Labor’s election promises, because I’m not sure Labor is?
00
(4 pages) 14 Aug: NYT: NICHOLAS CONFESSORE/AMY CHOZICK: Unease at Clinton Foundation Over Finances and Ambitions
On one occasion, Mr. Magaziner dispatched a team of employees to fly around the world for months gathering ideas for a climate change proposal that never got off the ground. Another time, he ignored a report — which was commissioned at significant expense from the consulting firm McKinsey & Company — on how the foundation could get involved in forestry initiatives…
In March 2012, David Crane, the chief executive of NRG, an energy company, led a widely publicized trip with Mr. Clinton to Haiti, where they toured green energy and solar power projects that NRG finances through a $1 million commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative…
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/us/politics/unease-at-clinton-foundation-over-finances-and-ambitions.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0
14 Aug: UK Telegraph: Tim Stanley: The New York Times takes down the Clinton Foundation. This could be devastating for Bill and Hillary
It’s nothing new to report that there’s an unhealthy relationship in America between money and politics, but it’s there all the same. While the little people are getting hit with Obamacare, high taxes and joblessness, a class of businessmen enjoys ready access to politicians of both Left and Right that poses troubling questions for how the republic can continue to call itself a democracy so long as it functions as an aristocracy of the monied…
The reality is that this is a man who – in May 1993 – prevented other planes from landing at LAX for 90 minues while he got a haircut from a Beverley Hills hairdresser aboard Air Force One. The Clintons are populists in the same way that Barack Obama is a Nobel prize winner. Oh, wait…
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100231113/the-new-york-times-takes-down-the-clinton-foundation-this-could-be-devastating-for-bill-and-hillary/
00
Philip Shehan / Brian / Dr Brian etc etc
Biography of:
I am only writing this because every year or so Philip the expert arrives and then we slowly over the course of two or three threads find out about how smart he is with his own descriptions. He’s been coming here for years off and on, but only came today because of the link provided by Andrew Bolts blog. Here is his list of achievements and proclamations.
1. “In a post on Andrew Bolt’s blog the other day I pre-empted one of Nova’s jokes”
2. “what I am doing is supplying a counterargument to Ms Nova’s assertions”
3. “I have some experience in refereeing scientific papers”
4. “I am indeed a scientist”
5. “My sucking on the government teat involves biomedical research at The University of Melbourne.”
6. “If you ever suffer from bowel cancer you may have reason to thank us for a treatment.”
7. “As many people on Mr Bolt’s blog know, B is my first initial and I am called by my middle name”
8. “Neither I nor any others I know have ever been paid or falsified data to produce a desired result. ”
9. ” I was originally trained in the physical sciences,”
10.”my specialty being Nuclear Magnetic Resonance as applied to organic and inorganoic molecules”
11.”I moved into biomedical applications of NMR”
12.”Joanne. I am not a regular reader or contributor to this blog ”
13.”I have never been nor am I now a “true believer”
14.”My current understanding of the evidence leads me to accept that AGW is real and significant.”
15.” I have produced results that have lead to discontinuation of projects”
16.”You have no idea of how scince is undertaken or the motivation of those who choose undertake it.”
17.”at the age of 57 and with no children or grandchildren I am not sure I care much if the world goes to hell in a handbasket after my death.”
Additional: He hates Lord Monckton and thumbs down, but likes the Magpies?
Hope this will prevent up to 50 additional comments by Phil to slowly reveal his life
cyclestory, and all the rest is complete gobbedly-gook (peer reviewed MV etal)Chip on one’s shoulder – just for general information.
60
So basically, his knowledge of climate science is ZERO !!
40
Seems he get all his climate science from SkS. DOH !!!!
No wonder he is so badly misinformed.
20
Here’s a hint , Philistine..
Go and spent several day at WUWT..
ask questions
put your point of view..
then
GET EDUCATED !!!!!!
00
Here’s a hint , Philistine..
Go and spend several day at WUWT..
ask questions
put your point of view..
then
GET EDUCATED !!!!!!
10
I regularly put my point of view at WUWT and was subjected to torrents of personal abuse from his acolytes, moderators and Watts himself.
The last occasion was in a section where Watts and co. were running a smear campaign against Marcott, including running entire sections alleging graphs in his thesis and a paper he had co-authored were incompatible.
As usual, neither Watts nor the critics appear to have bothered to check the linked thesis. I did and in the face of continuing abuse directed people to the precise figures in the thesis that showed this was not the case.
Watts and the abusers made no attempt to point out where I was wrong, and suddenly the former killer point which Watts had repeatedly trumpeted became “minutiae” in an abusive response (my bold):
Anthony Watts says:
April 1, 2013 at 11:22 pm
Ah jeez Shehan, give it up, the Marcott study is toast and your focus on minutiae is a waste of everyone’s time . Stop defending the indefensible and get your head out of your posterior so you can see the mess they created. Start by reading Ross McKitrick’s essay on the main page.
I responded:
Philip Shehan says:
April 2, 2013 at 2:33 pm
Mr Watts. Well pardon me for focussing on “minutiae”. So much easier to make a general smear without examining the “minutiae” The accusations against Marcott were based on the “minutiae”, and I have examined them. That’s what scientists do. That’s what science is about. If you can’t hack having the claims in your articles examined, don’t put them up.
REPLY: Oh I can hack it, I just find your hacks tiresome and pointless- Anthony
Note that Mr Watts and his acolytes repeated false assertions on the “minutiae” which they had trumpeted loud and long were considered the least bit tiresome. Just my insistence that the abusers look at the data and tell me where I was wrong.
More personal attacks followed.
After one such highly personal attack Watts added:
REPLY: Well, he’s right, nobody DOES agree with you here, including me. As I said before, this argument of yours is becoming tiring. – Anthony
So being disagreed with by people who repeatedly failed my challenge to look at the data and show where I am wrong is tiring. Not the assertions by these people mind. Only my response to them.
More abuse followed and I appealed to Mr Watts that what was claimed as the World’s best science blog should not tolerate personal abuse. Watts savagely edited the comment and mocked it and his comment was followed by one accusing me of masturbation.
That was it. I had enough of Mr Watts and decided to sign off permanently from his blog by treating him to similar personal abuse, calling him a wanker among other things.
The banning was expected. The bare faced hypocrisy should have been but wasn’t. Here is what that colossal hypocrite (and I remind you what Mr Watts had started out by telling me to pull my head out of my rear end and let personal abuse and sexual abuse rain down on me ) wrote: (My Bold)
REPLY: All you had to do was take the hint and give it a rest. The point is that it was becoming tiresome. But, no sense of humor or of honor with this one, a trademark of AGW folks it seems. When you resort to name calling you’ve lost the argument. When you engage in abusive sexual slurs such as you have done above, it becomes a policy violation, and thus it has earned you a ban from WUWT. Congratulations on your self-escalation. – Anthony
The hint being that Watts simply will not tolerate reasoned counterargument on his blog for long, but gives free rein to his abusive attack dogs and indulges in attacks himself.
04
People get sick of wilful stupidity.. what do you expect !!
20
AndyG55My specialist knowledge of climate science is about as good as anyone else commenting here. What’s yours and Dave’s?
My training in science means I am better qualified than most to comment on data analysis and argument, the use of models in science, the peer review process, and various other aspects of science discussed here.
I also know that when people are incapable of challenging a scientific argument they abandon any attempt to do so and resort to personal abuse.
See Chip on one’s shoulder.
Dave:
1. False
2. True
3. True
4. True
5. And your invaluable paid contribution to society is?
6. Possibly
7. True
8. True
9. True
10. True
11. True
12. True
13. True
14. True
15. False
16. Too whom is that remark supposedly addressed?
17. False
additional: No. Think Lord Monckton is a buffon and a serial misrepresenter of of science as do such pinkos as Barnaby Joyce and Janet Albrechtson.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/blogs/greenlines/lord-monckton-is-on-the-fringe-barnaby-joyce-20100120-mlfq.html
Corrrect. Like magpies.
06
Using argument from authority ain’t gunna work with me.. bozo.
Have you been paid from the climate trough, do you work in the area of climate, temperature, rainfall etc?
You have already said that your studies have nothing to do with climate science.
Live with it, and stop pretending you know more than you do.
00
And again, your studies have to do with…?
Reread my comment on personal abuse as a substitute for argument.
You are an excellent fit for WUWT
04
…or SkS. It happens on both sides of the fence in case you haven’t noticed.
30
Absolute rubbish. SKS ghas rules against off topic and ad hominem comments that are enforced. Some of my posts have been deleted or failed to appear with an explanation that they contravene those rules, but they were utterly mild transgressions by WUWT standards.
05
Green blinkers off Brian.
I got abused, deleted and banned some time ago for the heinous crime of asking a question about climate sensitivity, which was on topic and without ad hom.
The cartoonist rules his little empire with an iron fist.
30
Heywood I don’t know exactly what you wrote, or the topic under discussion, but as I said they appear to be extremely strict on what they consider to be on topic and personal attacks. Not that I am accusing you of going feral, and I thought some banned comments might have squeaked in as on topic. I even have taken to prefacing borderline comments with “I think this is on topic…”. My “personal attacks” which were banned have been very mild and were remarks about the rottweillers on WUWT who attacked me on the topic under discussion on SKS.
SKS is light years ahead of WUWT in this sort of thing.
04
Phil,
SKS is a joke i ended a comment there with “cheers” and was showered in shit by all and sundry because everyone knows when you end a comment with “cheers” you are just being a denier.
You see Phil there was nothing wrong with comment so all they could do was attack the word cheers, just how pathetic would one have to be to have such a mindset?
30
“You are an excellent fit for WUWT”
Gees, Thank you. 🙂
Everyone KNOWS that it is the BEST science blog in the world.
Explains why YOU would avoid it…. like the plague.
20
I don’t avoid it I persevered for a long period being on the recieving end of abuse from Watts his moderators and his fans. That’s how they operate. I was banned for returning fire in kind.
04
I repeat
..
“Have you been paid from the climate trough, do you work in the area of climate, temperature, rainfall etc?”
Have you had ANYTHING to do with climate science?
I can answer ‘yes’ to both questions, can you?
Seems you are just a pretender.!
10
Now Dave is going to bitch because I give an answer to your question. I work in Biomedical research and my PhD is in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance.
Can’t detect any expertise in climate from the quality of your posts, but then when you hide behind a screen name to abuse people you can claim anything can’t you.
03
As I said, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with climate science.
Maybe you should take up cartooning or philosophy !!
Mine happens to be in Hydrology and Engineering modelling, with some pure mathematics (stuff you would never have heard of), plus chemistry and physics thrown in.
Do you know what hydrology is all about?
30
IN other words. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with climate science.
I face something of a dilemma here. If I respond to your false personal atttack here, “pure mathematics (stuff you would never have heard of)”, Dave you and others will add it to their list of my offences. But here goes.
I studied pure mathemeatics to 3rd year level before specialising in chemistry at honours and PhD level.
03
Yes i am sure you have Phil but therein lies the problem. The other day you claimed Co2 levels have been rising steadily since 1860 based on mathematics. You also claimed the planet had warmed by 0.0088C per year once again based on mathematics.
Therefore mathematically you have proven the correlation between co2 and temp, unfortunately the world around you does not behave the way you percieve it through maths.
Dont get me wrong maths plays a very important part in our world but not in the way you are trying to use it…….you are abusing maths with what you are trying to do.
Here is a good example, if wish to see the velocity of an aircraft in x,y and z to the 4th decimal place at a rate of 50hz i will use measurement equipment that can actually measure at that accuracy and rate. From this i can calculate the value every millisecond.
If i was to use equipment that can only measure to one decimal place i cannot measure it accurately enough can i????
If i was simply to calculate a trend and then divide it by a thousand would i have accurate measurements? Of course it would be an abuse of engineering principles but that is what you are trying to do Phil.
30
ps.. It is obvious that your understanding of measurement and error analysis is severely limited.. you have work to do.
30
Philip Shehan,
I was just quoting exactly what you typed in previous comments in every single point. (cut and paste actually).
All are true in what you said, as you are on record in 2011 for all of these on Jo’s posts.
I was just simply saving people here of your explanations of all your qualifications etc, that’s all. You take offence at your own quotes?
Then you say:
“My training in science means I am better qualified than most to comment on data analysis and argument, the use of models in science, the peer review process, and various other aspects of science discussed here. I also know that when people are incapable of challenging a scientific argument they abandon any attempt to do so and resort to personal abuse.”
Yes, you’ve been telling us that for ages Phil and that’s what I was explaining to the good readers here at Jo’s Blog. I was only quoting facts that you typed, and hoped that it may save you time in explaining everything about your “better qualified” outlook on this subject. Bold was your quote also Phil.
Would you like me to provide the links to each point – especially points 1, 6, 15, and 17?
Oh! So 17 could be wrong, you’d be 59 or 60 by now. My apologies Phil.
Sorry Phil, but I have this desire to check things, just a hobby though, not science or peer reviewed, just fact. Also didn’t correct your spelling to make sure of accuracy.
Dave.
20
By all means Dave, so I can view the context.
02
Phil,
Item 1. You said false to this: “In a post on Andrew Bolt’s blog the other day I pre-empted one of Nova’s jokes”
20
Thank You more than happy to claim that one. I did not realise you were referring to a two year old comment of mine. I assumed you were referring to the current discussion:
Philip Shehan
July 30, 2011 at 3:45 pm
This is utterly ridiculous.
Science is not a trial. CO2 is not a defendant.
Where were the government funded defence counsels for tobacco smoke and asbestos?
In a post on Andrew Bolt’s blog the other day I pre-empted one of Nova’s jokes here by refering to the anticancer grant scammers and the health industrial complex for urging the use of sunscreens when everyone knows that sunlight is essential to the production of vitamin D. Photons are innocent.
But I was being ironic.
In years gone by, and even now, proponents of AGW sufffered at the hands of conservative governments shooting the messenger. It is still happening, as Charles Monnet of the US Minerals Management Survey has recently testified.
04
Phil,
Item 15. You said false to this:” I have produced results that have lead to discontinuation of projects”
30
Phil,
Item 17. You said false to this:”at the age of 57 and with no children or grandchildren I am not sure I care much if the world goes to hell in a handbasket after my death.”
20
item 15. Again a 2 year old comment. I took your meaning to be that I had somehow closed down other people’s research.
The answer was in response to people claiming scientist’s lie to keep money for their projects coming in.
I have reported results that have lead to the group discontinuing a project.
17. I am 59 but it is so obviously an ironic comment that I gave the irony a further twist by declaring the statement false.
02
Phil,
Like peer reviewed papers, you have to read everything carefully ie:
I said “He’s been coming here for years off and on”.
Otherwise you tend to assume things and evade via irony.
That’s it from me Phil. Bye.
20
You think this for the sole reason that he has funny eyes. He’s not Marty Feldman you know? Very very articulate and intelligent person… maybe that’s it, you just can’t keep up with him.
10
You are simply showing that your claims to being a scientist of some sort are false. No scientist would make a ridiculous statement like that on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, claiming powers of mind reading. Show me anywhere where I have mentioned any aspect of Monckton’s appearence.
Nor did well known pinko warmists Barnaby Joyce and Janet Albrechtson:
Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, the eccentric UK climate sceptic, is proving too hot for some of Australia’s most prominent climate sceptics — including Barnaby Joyce.
Joyce, who famously said that climate change sceptics were being treated like holocaust deniers and likened environmental campaigners to eco-Nazis, believes Monckton is on the fringe of the debate and unhelpful to those who question human induced climate change.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/blogs/greenlines/lord-monckton-is-on-the-fringe-barnaby-joyce-20100120-mlfq.html#ixzz2c5Yr2xhs
01
He’s a buffoon in the nonsense he writes, his vacuous legal threats against anybody who points out that his nonsense is nonsense, and the blatant false assertions that he makes about being a scientist, being a mathematician, having a cure for AIDS, being a science advisor for Maggie Thatcher, being a member of the House of Lords, and all sorts of other gibberish. Utter buffoon.
10
When challenged by others, usually abusive terms that I know nothing of science or asked what my background is I supply answers. You have a problem with that.
Actually one of my pet hates is abuse from people who are too cowardly to give their real names and hide behind screen names. Pathetic.
03
I can guarantee to you Philip that anybody here would be perfectly happy to say whatever they think to your face.
The fact is that you march around here like king Farouk…. you talk like you are the only one who knows anything and that everybody else is an idiot:
You YOURSELF attract negative comments because of the way YOU are. If you don’t like it, then pull your head in…. or out of your own arse is perhaps better advice.
30
Oh please. I beleive I had this discussion the other day with another fearless character who snipes from cover.
03
“You YOURSELF attract negative comments because of the way YOU are.”
At least I have the courage to tell peple WHO I am and own my comments. Unlike YOU.
03
You have the courage of a gnat. You are just a sad little internet troll playing kindergarten games.
10
If he barracks for the Magpies, there is a second-level test for rationality that can be applied, in three parts:
(1) Is Harry O -> “Heritier Lumumba” ridiculous?
(2) Is Steele Sidebottom a passenger who shirks every contest and should be dropped?
(3) Should Travis Cloke kick right-footed from set shots?
Protip: the appropriate answers are (1) yes; (2) Oh hell yes; (3) couldn’t do any worse.
GO PIES!
00
First, let me say I am on the absolute opposite side of the
global warmingclimate changeextreme climate chaos alarmism to Dr Shehan.That said – I really dislike the personal invective; I am all for name-calling (I use the word ‘retard’ more often than the word ‘and’), but outright hatchet-jobs are infra dig and really should be left to the other side (who, being predominantly Leftists, are very comfortable with the idea of propaganda, even if it’s not true).
Speaking openly about educational accomplishments is not indicative of a ‘chip on the shoulder’: I would argue that hatchet-jobs on people with significant qualifications is probably more indicative of chippiness. Disclosing one’s academic ‘chops’ furnishes a basis for assessing the basis on which an individual holds an opinion.
If Dr Shehan was a mechanic from Dandenong, or ran a take-away shop in Springvale, he would have a lower ex ante probability of being right about a relatively complex scientific matter. That doesn’t mean that mechanics or take-away proprietors are incapable of forming rational opinions on complex scientific issues, but generally speaking they do not ‘come to the table’ with the skills necessary to evaluate competing arguments. (And I can only imagine what a hatchet job on a warmist from “Spiro’s HD Fix-It” in Dandenong would look like).
My own background is in Economics (and specifically, large-scale economic and econometric modelling); I was part of a team that was invited to advise Treasury on how to model expectations in financial markets (and how to estimate parameters in a systems context), and I was at one of the world’s leading CGE modelling ‘think tanks’ for most of the 90s during which time we consulted to half of the ASX50 on the ramifications of tax mix change. My PhD was about using systematic sensitivity analysis to enable sensible probabilistic statements about outcomes from a large-scale intertemporal CGE economic model, and I got H1s for all 4 Masters’ subjects before that, and a First at undergrad. As an undergrad I was awarded a Reserve Bank cadetship (one of only 4, Australia-wide) and a Vice-Chancellor’s Undergraduate Prize (the only one in my faculty). I didn’t finish my PhD, though – I didn’t want to be an academic, and left once my scholarship ran out.
So why did I bother typing all that?
Well, because it adds to the ability of third parties to form expectations as to whether I have any clue about what I’m talking about (which, in these sorts of arguments, is mostly about forecasting, model uncertainty and so forth). My training also entitles me to make declarative statements about most statistical analyses – for the simple reason that I have ‘elite’ level training in the necessary tools (Econometrics is just applied statistics, after all – and the stats theory in an Honours or Masters’ level Econometric Theory subject is pretty near state-of-the-art).
Seriously – maybe we ought to be better than the other side. Let them disgrace their side of the argument by descending to “You fink you’re a brainiac” schoolyard tropes, rather than giving them ammunition.
00
What a shame its not a 3% chance, then it would tie in nicely with the other 97% of the issue….
Damn I crack me up.
10
I must say, this has been, once again, very refreshing.
10
98%99% of climate models say that 97% of climate scientists (and alarmist media) are wrong!“Modelling Climate Alarmism”
http://climatism.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/modelling-climate-alarmism/
10
Alarmists who concluded high sensitivities to C02 always just assumed that the sun and ocean heat redistribution had little to do with 20th century warming, without any good reason to do so. It was a convenient belief. But a close look at the temperature trends should have told them something was wrong with the models long ago, even before the last 15 or so years of no warming-that is- the trends in the temperature didn’t match the trends in c02-they more closely followed ocean cycles and solar activity. Now it’s beginning to dawn on them that they got it wrong from the start.
What’s more, it seems another of the alarmists most basic and important assumptions could well be wrong; the assumption that climate sensitivity is the same regardless of the forcing-another likely incorrect assumption. E.G. If clouds and solar activity combine to enhance solar effects, (E.G. it is obvious to anyone who thinks about it that warmer days tend to be warmer with less clouds and vice versa) that this means that it is quite plausible that climate sensitivity is not the same regardless of the forcing-it could be high for the sun and low for c02-the exact opposite of what the alarmists have long assumed.
10
I was talking to a guy a few weeks ago who has been playing with the climate models wrt rainfall for several years.
Apparently about half of the models predicted more than average rainfall, and half predicted less than average rainfall. (How helpful is that, hey)
The average of all the model predictions is apparently proving to be quite accurate. 🙂
30
Models fail at interpreting climate because models rely on one source only for warming on decade time scales, and we all know what that is.
Observed “warming” through the period 1980’s – early 1990’s was predominantly N Hemispherical, and I believe an artifact of proximity of temperature measurement locations to tectonic activity.
Models have had the effect of ruling out GHG influence, although this genuine scientific result goes unrecognized. There are no effects consistent with GHG influences, absolutely none.
10
How Climate Models Get Top Marks
10
I referred to the German translated into English NoTricksZone blog previously. So an indication as to how the alarmist global warming creed is travelling in the centre of the global warming faith in Europe, the following on the role of models in climate prediction from a german climate science viewpoint might be of interest.
Quote from a section of the German NoTricksZone blog this morning,
Article; Vahrenholt Thrashes Leading IPCC, Former NCAR Scientist In Hamburg Debate! “The Wound Of Climate Science”
00
Greg Hunt takes a swing at the climate institute …calling it a politically motivated ALP backer .
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-15/climate-institute-coalition-carbon-policy/4888106
And Connor hits back .
10
There has been much discussion on the use of models in science here.
This from Catalyst last night:
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3826214.htm
01
It’s only a model. Keep that in mind no matter how “powerful” the siren song of the super-computer.
Nature doesn’t obey the rules we make up in trying to understand what nature does.
The models are at best a feeble imitation. They do not replace the need to observe the real thing.
30
If nature did not follow the rules there would be no science.
Any theory (model)is an approximation of reality. The more complex the system the more difficult it is to model reality. Newton’s model of gravitation, itself an approximation of relativity is far from feeeble, allowing rocket scintists to bullseye a plant at the edge og the solar system after whipping around other plants.
Of course computers are a tool, but they can be darned powerful ones, as in the clip where the model of the virus showed part of the RNA wriggling through a gap in the protein coat which was confirmed by observation in vitro.
Science works by conparing models , theories and hypotheses against observation and refineing the theory aginst the data.
01
Except when it comes to alarmist, politicised climate science.
10
How is this “politicised”, Backslider?
http://i56.tinypic.com/2jfavdv.png
Rignot, E., et al. (2011): Acceleration of the contribution of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets to sea level rise. Geophysical Research Letters, in press, doi:10.1029/2011GL046583.
Antarctica is melting. Fact. Shown by science.
It is raising sea levels.
The most alarmed are those who turn to denial as a coping mechanism.
11
In attempting to disagree with what I wrote, you’ve contradicted yourself.
You’re clearly in way over your head talking about physics. It’s a mistake to hurriedly throw “sciencey” words into a salad; trying to impress the few more gullible than yourself.
10
Pardon? How have I contradicted myself?
(Apologies for the typos)
01
In the quoted excerpt, you first state that nature follows the rules … then you state that observations are used to refine the theories; ostensibly because nature isn’t following the previously-defined rules.
We can only go by what you write.
10
“If nature did not follow the rules there would be no science.
Any theory (model)is an approximation of reality.”
The rules to which I am refering are the laws of nature. Not the theories used to describe them.
Science is the project of attempting to understand those rules as best we can by the formulation of theories. Science does not believe in miracles – occurences in the physical universe that contravine those rules.)
Newton’s law of gravity were formulated on the assumptions of absolute time and absolute space and describes gravity as a “force”. But people noticed that Newton’s model did not exactly account for the orbit of mercury. Einstein rejected the notions of absolute time and absolute space and said that they were combined as spacetime whch was variable and relative to the motion of the observer, and gravity was the bending of spacetime. This accounted for the orbit of mercury and he predicted that light would follow spacetime bending around large masses which was confimed by observing the positions of stars near the sun during an eclipse.
Relativity has to be taken into account for global positioning satelites,otherwise the positions would be off by kilometres due to the effects of the curvature of spacetime on massless electromagnetic radiation signals. However Newton’s approximation is good enough for sending heavy objects like satellites themselves to the end of the solar system
Note also that Copernicus’model of the earth revolving around the sun failed to match observation. This did not mean the church could run around proclaiming “The models have failed, the heliocentric system is false, the geocentric system rules.”
Kepler used accurate planetary positions as observed by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe to modify Copernicus’ model, changing circular orbits around the sun to eliptical orbits with the sun at one focus.
So the next time someone bitches that because in the light of further observations or refinements in the theory scientist change some or other aspect of current climate theory (say the sensitivity factor) therefore climatologists are making it up as they go along and the whole basis of AGW is shot, blow them a giant raspberry, remind them of Newton Copernicus and the whole scientific project, and tell them THAT IS HOW SCIENCE WORKS.
By the way, in spite of being “way over my head” as far as physics is concerned I have not consulted a single reference in typing this response.
00
Thanks Philip, that was a really nice way of tying scientific accomplishment together in a way I had not thought of before. Having already come up against somebody telling me today that the whole theory is false because some observations are WORSE than predicted, so throw out the baby and the bathwater, it is nice to see such a simple explanation of how science progresses over time.
As improvements are made to the current theories of the time science improves and progresses. More a case of stepwise refinement rather than giving up and starting again.
I am not as eloquent as you so I hope that made sense, but I really enjoyed your post.
00
Michael, Thank you for this and other supportive comments.
I usually don’t bother with replies to comments I am broadly in agreement with, but I have read yours and think them of high quality, not because I agree with them but because as with Bruce they are knowledgaeable and well argued and unlike so many knucklewalkers here, you and Bruce understand that scientific discussion can involve exchange of differing views without abuse. (Yes a certain irony there but I am not naming names. And they deserve it.)
10
Philip – You’ve just described why climate sceptics are right.
The real world is not so pure as Copernicus’ thought. Not perfect circles, but Kepler’s ellipses. Which in turn are warped by planetary gravitational fields and relativity.
Same goes for climate. Once you put Arrhenius’ calcs into the real world you get something quite different. 2XCO2 is lower than theory because of the impact of many other variables. Which are the subject of many new papers in the last two or three years, some of which I’ve linked in this thread.
And regarding the climate models, because they have left out two of the most statistically significant variables why is it a surprise that they cannot model the last 15 years of temperatures?
21
The real world is perfect. Our theories are not.
Copernicus’ theory concerning planetary motion was basically correct but it has been refined over the time, with better theoretical understanding and more accurate and precise data yielding a more complex but more accurate theory, as you point out.
Climate is a very complicated system with a great many variables and climatology a relatively young discipline. The link you supply correctly notes “the 20 or so models from different science groups disagree considerably with each other about the amount of warming that will be caused by adding CO2 to the atmosphere.”
At this stage sensitivity is a very complex and not well question, thus the disagreement, and so the most recent IPCC range is 2 -4.5 degrees with a most likely value of three. (Links within your link led to some spam sites so I can’t check the individual papers you mention but it is my understanding that the current favoured range is lower than 3 C) That’s fine. It does not invalidate the theory, it is a refinement of it, as with planetary motion.
I noted above purely empirical evaluations of temperature-log CO2 data was 2.035 +/- 0.074
http://oi46.tinypic.com/29faz45.jpg
and my own calculation based on other graphical data was 3.
Crakar, attempting to be a smart alec shot himself in the foot by showing the effect the arbitrary of arbitrary variation of the data had on the value:
Philip Shehan
August 16, 2013 at 11:29 am · Reply
Not pure speculation. Based on ice core samples. I was reading the temperatures from the scale on the graph. Temperatures are based on measurements (they had thermometers in 1850 and proxy data.
You pluck some random numbers from I don’t know where. and then you come up with numbers well within the IPCC’s sensitivity range of 2 -4.5 C.
And note that I quoted my result to one significant fugure – 3 C. To a scientist using only one significant figure means I am recognising a certain amoint of error in the data and that the true figure is somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5 C.
And to 2 significant figures you get: 2.5 and 3.5 C.
Thanks for your support.
Feeling a little stupid now?
Actually Crakars calculations are instructive as they show that increasing the accuracy of temperature or CO2 data will not in themselves be of much help in refining the theoretical sensitivity range.
With better theoretical understanding of factors affecting sensitivity, a more accurate and precise value for sensitivity will be obtained (Note to non scientists, accuracy means how close the figure is too the real value. Precision means a narrower error range.)
More generally climate models also can be expected to improve. Hansen’s 1981 model included only 3 forcing parameters – solar variation, volcanic eruptions, and CO2. Yet is gave a pretty good fit to temperature data. Fig 5 here:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1981/1981_Hansen_etal.pdf
Over the last 3 decades many other forcing factors have been added each understood to a greater or lesser degree. The results are not perfect but pretty good and with further understanding and addition of additional forcing factors you say are not represented or inadequately represented (what are they?) the models should improve.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-9-5.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20111109144404/http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/mostmods.jpg
01
Philip – That calculation requires all temperature rise since 1850 to be due to CO2.
Solar modulation of cloud cover and ocean cycles have covaried with CO2 until the last decade. They are now diverging from it and temperature is falling thereby.
You are omitting two significant variables, which is why all the variance ends up with CO2. That is not statistically correct, it is a classic statistical error in model generation.
The IPCC ensemble models are the same, since they backcast to the 20thC. They leave out the same variables.
What you have to do to justify intervention is prove the cycles and solar indirect forcing are wrong, which you have not done (nor even discussed…although Michael has been). Until you can show these do not exist you are in an immoral position by advocating action. And you will have trouble proving they don’t exist since they do.
20
Bruce. I know the quick and dirty empirical calculations I used/made ignore other climate drivers or assume they will average out over 150 years, (not a bad assumption). My point was that as a rough first order evaluation they come out within the (wide) range of current theoretical estimates.
I also note that some people claim we are actually sliding into another ice age on “natural” forcings which would mean attributing all the temperature change to CO2 would underestimate the actual CO2 contribution and put such empirical calculations on the low side of the real sensitivity figure.
02
Bruce. Continuing my reply to your post. If I understand you correctly, you are saying I am ignoring other forcings affecting temperature. Not so and I have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that CO2 is only one factor.
It is the people who say “Temperatures have stalled for the last x years (leaving aside matters of statistical significance) while CO2 concentrations have climbed therefore AGW theory is shot” who are ignoring other factors and why they are WRONG.
You write:”Solar modulation of cloud cover and ocean cycles have covaried with CO2 until the last decade. They are now diverging from it and temperature is falling thereby”. If you mean other perameters were formalling reinforcing the warming effect of CO2 and now are acting against it, addding a cooling contribution, that is precisely the point I have been making. It explains why there has been a slowdown or pause in the rate of temperature increase while CO2 levels have continued to rise.
The relationship between CO2 concentration since Muana Loa readings began shows how short term weather events and “natural” forcings have modulated the effect of CO2:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1958/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/from:1958/normalise/scale:0.75/offset:0.2
02
Once again, pardon the typos and nonexistent proof reading before hitting the submit button. “Formalling” should have been “formerly”
01
Philip – You are trying to have your cake and eat it.
If the most significant reasons for the rise in temperature from 1906 to 2005, which is the IPCC’s chosen base century, are solar modulation of clouds (3/6ths) and ocean cycles (2/6ths), then CO2 caused only about 1/6th of the warming last century.
Therefore sensitivity is only about 1/6th of IPCC’s median of 3 C/doubling…ie 0.5 C/doubling.
That is what I find by two separate independent calculations. That is what both Lindzen and Spencer found from the satellite data.
You cannot cede large amounts of the temperatrue record to natural factors AND say the climate is very sensitivie to CO2. And if sensitivity is low then CAGW is impossible, carbon taxes are immoral, and impoverishing poor people and starving them, is evil.
Can’t have it both ways.
30
By the way, the quick and dirty empirical estimation of the sensitivity factor using the entire Muana Loa data set (yes ignoring other factors or assuming an averaging of them since 1958) can be calculated thus:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1958/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/from:1958/normalise/scale:0.75/offset:0.2/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1958/trend
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2
Rise in CO2 level 85 ppm
Rise in temperature (raw data difference, first and final temp readings) 0.45 C = 0.0053 C/ppm x 400 = sensitivity = 2.1
Rise in temp (least squares fit line difference) 0.70 C = 0.0082 C/ppm x 400 = sensitivity = 3.3
Averaging 2.7 – on the low side of the theoretical range (2 – 4.5 C0 but close to the empirical value using data ranges from 1850 (3) which is also the theoretical most likely value.
02
Do you guys not have lives on a Sunday? Seriously?
10
Philip – See the bottom of the red trace in your first graph?
That is the bottom of the 60 year cycle which then peaked in 2000 or so.
You are repeating the same problem that Michael made when he tried to invoke Foster & Rahmstorf 2011.
See this comment from the other thread – the 60 year cycle is seventy percent of the rise in that period. Because it cycles up and down by 0.28 C or so every 60-65 years.
You are drawing a linear trend line up the slope of a sine wave, from the trough to the peak.
If you remove that seventy percent the sensitivity calc drops under 1 C/doubling, and that even is without the solar component.
I use the Mauna Loa data in my small model of the CET, with back extrapolation for the period from 1659 to 1958. The model works very well – if you look at the updated graph to end 2012 in the photostream.
00
Gee another dilemma. How to respond to Bernd’sMasterful critique of my knowledge of physics without being pilloried by dave and co.? Dave and co.
‘You’re clearly in way over your head talking about physics. It’s a mistake to hurriedly throw “sciencey” words into a salad; trying to impress the few more gullible than yourself.’
Maybe I will just repost my answer to this knock down critiqe:
AndyG55
August 15, 2013 at 10:29 pm · Reply
ps.. It is obvious that your understanding of measurement and error analysis is severely limited.. you have work to do.
Philip Shehan
August 16, 2013 at 11:14 am · Reply
Managed to fool my PhD examiners and a whole bunch of referees in peer reviewed journals then.
21
Why don’t you e.g. explain HOW Newton’s model of gravitation is an approximation of relativity instead of waving around blunt rhetorical tools and applying classical fallacies?
Just because you’ve gotten away with being wrong previously, doesn’t make you right.
11
Likewise, in Germany here is an interesting debate of the veracity of the climate models.
Its rare that scientists from both sides engage in a real debate. Notable that the debate also addressed the von Storch paper, which we’re discussing in this thread.
The result for the IPCC lady, Daniela Jacob, was not good:
Prof Vahrenholt’s book is out in an English translation next month. Should be good.
40
Yes competing models are contested. As far as as the good Professor’s claim about 15 years of stagnation, I beg to differ and we are back to where we started:
Philip Shehan
August 15, 2013 at 9:56 am · Reply
The claim of stagnation for 15 years requires cherry picking of the extreme el nino year of 1998. Even then there is no statistically significant difference between the temperature rise for the last 15 years (0.038 ±0.133 °C/decade) and that for the last 70 years (0.088 ±0.019 °C/decade)…
23
SO tell us about the Medieval Warm Period Philip. Why did it warm then?… and why did it then drop into the LIA. You can then go back to other almost equal periods.
Considering that the MWP was warmer than today, where is your evidence of catastrophe?… or the Roman Warm Period, which was also warmer than today……
30
Groan. How many times do I have to answer the same idiotic questions from “skeptics”? This is the third and last time I have posted this here:
Philip Shehan
August 15, 2013 at 2:56 pm · Reply
No. As I apparently have to point out again and again and again,it is the starting point of AGW theory that man made contributions to global temperature are superimposed on natural forcings: solar variations, orbital variations, volcanic eruptions, ENSO etc etc etc.
Thus the difference in the results of modelling with and without anthropogenic contributions:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-9-5.html
To the extent that the MWP and LIA may be global and not merely North Atlantic phenomena (still an open question) a number of natural variations have been proposed such as solar cycles, volcanic eruptions, changes in ocean circulation etc.
Thus the temperature record since the industrial revolution took off show rises, dips, plateaus spikes etc. due to the additive nature of the various forcings, man made and natural, but over the last 150 years the corelation between temp and CO2 concentration is extremely good.
http://oi46.tinypic.com/29faz45.jpg
21
Backsider, I just noticed that the reply above was to the same question you proposed earlier.
Pardon me while I become rude. Are you a complete idiot or just a time waster?
21
Where in this thread are those questions (plural)? You have not answered these questions at all and all you can do is to dodge and weave using abuse.
You may think that, however it’s far better than being a fuquwit like you.
10
Backslider, I think we’ve established you are both misinformed and hard-to-educate.
Your mistakes have been explained to you over-and-over again over the years, and yet you have learnt nothing.
14
Hi Phillip.
I have had the same problem with BS. I have decided to ignore his posts as it became a huge time waster the silly and repetitive questions that I would continue to answer but keep getting as if I never answered them ad nauseum.
It might be wise for your sanity to do the same.
22
No, it is not an open question at all. Geologists have shown conclusively from the study of glaciers that they were both indeed Worldwide. This only further shows the bias warmists have, only rely on their temperature reconstructions while ignoring the rest of SCIENCE.
10
Philip – You may not have seen this amazing graphic which manages somehow to summarize evidence for the global MWP in one neat sheet. To me it certainly seems to have been global.
10
Actually a fancy graphic may look pretty but isn’t a very scientific way of determining how global it was. Global meaning virtually everywhere and at the same time. Unlike the 2001 to 2010 decade which was the hottest over the oceans, land, on every continent, in both hemispheres and globally all at the same time.
“Past global climate changes had strong regional expression. To elucidate their spatio-temporal pattern, we reconstructed past temperatures for seven continental-scale regions during the past one to two millennia. The most coherent feature in nearly all of the regional temperature reconstructions is a long-term cooling trend, which ended late in the nineteenth century. At multi-decadal to centennial scales, temperature variability shows distinctly different regional patterns, with more similarity within each hemisphere than between them. There were no globally synchronous multi-decadal warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age, but all reconstructions show generally cold conditions between ad 1580 and 1880, punctuated in some regions by warm decades during the eighteenth century. The transition to these colder conditions occurred earlier in the Arctic, Europe and Asia than in North America or the Southern Hemisphere regions. Recent warming reversed the long-term cooling; during the period ad 1971–2000, the area-weighted average reconstructed temperature was higher than any other time in nearly 1,400 years.”
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/ngeo1797.html
02
Oh all right. I don’t have as much on the MWP as I do on recent temperature, but I have bookmarked a few. Here’s two:
Analysis finds the Medieval Warming Period was global and unrelated to CO2
The Medieval Warm Period was global & explains the Current Warm Period
10
And two more:
New paper finds more evidence the Medieval Warming Period was global
Review finds the Medieval Warm Period was global & generally warmer than the present
You’ll have to read them since I haven’t been much interested in the MWP and RWP, although sometimes I do read of Bond Events when papers appear (the LIA may have been a Bond Event, the cool period after the RWP almost certainly was).
Of course the difficulty with determining the areal effect of the MWP is that the tropics tend not to be affected so much and we of course have no human records much from the southern hemisphere.
But the events were pretty warm. They’re still finding RWP artifacts appearing out from under glaciers.
10
Yes the MWP seems consisitent but the LIA is not.
11
Also, Backslider, the supposed “MWP” (in support of which there isn’t much data) was *not* “warmer than today”.
Not sure where you got that idea from, but you should probably re-visit your climate change education and check up on some of the things you believe.
24
Philip – Why a straight line trend? Why not a sinusoidal trendline? Going up to ~2005 and down since? Nature is not necessarily linear, even if Excel can’t do that particular trend option.
Since the signal is also in the AMO, the PDO, ENSO and sea level as well as temperature. Consensus, indeed, without human input.
As I said, that signal alone is worth 35-40% of the temperature rise last century. And the Sun adds another 45-50% to that.
All from peer reviewed papers published by climate scientists too.
30
Sorry again if I do not get to all your posts.
Straight lines fir data well enough for short term (multidecadal) low signal to noise data but not over the longer period since the increase in CO2 concentration following the industrial revolution.
The sinusoidal fit is good but what is the theoretical explanation for the sinusoid and its overall upward slope?
01
1. Decade variation from known events such as the ENSO.
2. UHI. In case you didn’t notice, the rural continues to become the urban throughout the world.
3. You are a complete idiot and a bottom of the class gymnasium student can toss you on the floor easily. You don’t even provide competition around here.
10
1. ENSO is a cycle that evens out over the long term. ie not increasing global warming over time.
2. UHI has been repeatedly found to be an insignificant factor in the temperature trends.
3. Totally unneccessary, not sure why posters feel it important to throw in an abusive remark so often. Do you think it helps your argument?
“We observe the opposite of an urban heating effect over the period 1950 to 2010, with a slope of -0.10 ± 0.24°C/100yr (2σ error) in the Berkeley Earth global land temperature average. The confidence interval is consistent with a zero urban heating effect, and at most a small urban heating effect (less than 0.14°C/100yr, with 95% confidence) on the scale of the observed warming (1.9 ± 0.1°C/100 yr since 1950 in the land average from Figure 5A).”
http://www.scitechnol.com/GIGS/GIGS-1-104.php
01
Michael – UHI does seem pretty large. Also the corrections for it are backwards. You should be correcting urban temperatures down and not raising rural site temperatures (or cooling the past as GISS does, for example at Mackay’s sugar mill, which has been green fields for a century).
20
As for ENSO being a cycle, yes. With a 60-ish years period, which means anyone like Foster & Rahmstorf who are doing 30 year trends are introducing a big incorrect bias in the trend.
And again you need to start your trend and finish it in integer numbers of cycles to avoid getting the same bias. This is why the IPCC’s preferred century of 1906-2005 introduces a cycle-based upwards trend – because the cycle was at bottom in 1906 and at peak in 2005 one-and-a-half wavelengths later.
If they corrected this bias they would get a much lower calculated sensitivity, which is what this paper is saying.
20
Sorry, Philip, I missed your reply earlier.
We don’t yet know what causes the ~60 year cycle. There are hypotheses, as I mentioned to Michael. All three are plausible IMO.
That we don’t understand it does not mean it is imaginary. Quite the opposite since it appears in so many primary datasets. Which is why it should be included in the IPCC ensemble models, but isn’t yet.
The same goes for solar modulation of cloud cover: the most significant driver of the temperature record last century. Svensmark has the best hypothesis so far, with support from the CERN project.
20
See Bruce this is where you prove my point above. The CERN experiment said nothing about cosmic rays influence on climate. It was a laboratory experiment, and they specifically said it was to early to make any comments about the climate with it. Actual data of cosmic rays and temperature have shown that they are travelling in opposite directions over the last 30 years, indicating that something else is influencing the warming. That your blog site misrepresents it against the explicit directions of the authors of the experiment proves my point.
Also if we already have a likely, scientifically valid theory that explains observations then it is unproductive to throw it out for statistical games which cannot find any basis in reality for them. WIth enough variables you can make any model say anything.
Try and make an argument referring to the actual science and not a blog site, you might learn something.
01
Can you not read Michael? I believe I said “with support from the CERN project”.
The support being that they showed that radiation of the sort which atmosphere penetrating GCR’s represent can increase cloud nuclei when the chemical circumstances mimic the tropospheric conditions. This is supporting. Even NASA acknowledges this mechanism.
Prof Svensmark has shown that under the conditions the pre-CCN droplets grow rapidly to active CCN size. I did mention Svensmark, didn’t I.
I also described his hypothesis as a hypothesis.
Underlying this is the fact, demonstrated in data, that the Sun has a large indirect impact on global temperature. That is the data.
Which you may now refute. Unfortunately you can’t, because the data is quite impeccable. The mechanism is being further explored by Dr Kirkby as we speak.
10
The claim of catastrophic temperature rises based upon a period of unprecedented solar activity, manifesting as successive el Niño events for nearly 30 years, is cherry-picking.
Observing that the measured stagnation in temperature, one even recognized by the Imperious Priesthood of the Church of Climatology, represents a strong deviation from any of the “accepted” climate model projections/predictions/prophecies should be ringing the alarm bells to tell people that they are doing something very wrong. “More of the same” in terms of the models is absurd. Hypothecating that “the heat is hiding” is childish. It’s a travesty.
20
1998 was part of one of the largest el nino events after a decade of mainly el nino influence. So then how do you explain the fact that the 2001 to 2010 decade was hotter than that previous decade even though it has been mainly neutral to la nina affected? In fact it should have drastically cooled by now. This is despite a lot of energy being taken up by record Arctic ice melt and the measured moving of large amounts of energy into the deeper oceans?
Yes real scientists look at the whole picture and not only that which proves their bias.
12
It wasn’t. 1998 was supposed to have been the hottest year … until people started looking at the archived meterological data, before it was homogenised to fit the climate models.
10
Yes, Bernd, Richard Muller got funding from Koch to prove the temperature record was wrong, ……and he discovered it was right.
Meanwhile, there’s an ex-weatherman uni-dropout who thinks he can prove the same thing, but for some reason he still won’t publish his proof……maybe he discovered the same thing Muller did, eh?
So I’m not sure what your assertion is based on Bernd – wouldn’t be wishful-thinking would it?
14
LMAO!!… So show us all Michael where this has been measured.
How do you get your data, since Argo deployment was only completed in Nov 2007…..? How are you able to show any statistical significance when we simply do not have enough data? Let me guess….. number fudging.
20
Von Storch’s study limits its scope and as a result provides a misleading conclusion: the IPCC models do not project from a peak in 1998, and von Storch’s choice of that year as a start year is all you need to notice and remember about the value of his contribution.
13
All those models must fail, inevitably being trash, because 5 major input parameters
are completely omitted. Omitting one or two parameters/variables might still produce
a mediocre result, but 5 of them are too many. Website: http://www.knowledgeminer.eu/eoo_paper.html
J.S.
—–
REPLY: Thanks JS. I’m looking with interest. Will email. – Jo
20
Very interesting JS.
How does your model do when you hindcast against the Hadcrut3 temperature data prior to 1988? (Of course I recognise that the accuracy of the temperature data decreases the further back you go.)
01
Also JS, your model matches the 1998 peak generally attributed to an el nino event which is in turn attributed to changes in Pacific ocean currents.
As your model consists of “5 micro-drivers: Ozone concentration, aerosols, radiative cloud fraction, and global mean temperature as endogenous variables and sun activity as exogenous variable” does this mean the model attrbutes the “el nino” peak to one or several of these variables rather than ENSO or does it mean the variables are responsible for ENSO?
01
Interesting stuff Joachim. We’ve been discussing Nic Scafetta’s work on solar-lunar orbital influences elsewhere in this thread.
On the paper re Akkad, however, the Akkadian fall corresponds with Bond Event #3, one of the clearest in the climate records. And the colonisation of the Nile valley with Bond Event #4. The fall of the Roman Empire post RWP fits Bond Event #1. Meteorite strike is of course not ruled out as when these coincide it can make things a lot worse, as in the speculative events surrounding the Younger Dryas re-entry to ice age.
10
Meant to include a link about Bond Events.
10
Thanks Bruce. Was wondering what a Bond event was.
10
Bruce – Just noticed in the ref that Bond events are related to our discussion earler about whether or not the Little Ice Age was a global or North Atlantic event. Very useful reference. Thanks. Unfortunately seems not to tell us anything about WMP.
00
I’m not completely convinced about the real nature of Bond events, but the spacing of civilization collapses/changes with the roughly ~1470 year periodicity is interesting, since there are quite a few of them. I mentioned the fall of Akkad and the colonisation of the Nile Valley (which is a fascinating phase of archaeology as the semi-nomad peoples moved out of the forming Sahara region: look up the Nabta Playa site, which was finally abandoned around the 5.9 kY event).
One which you may have seen recently is Neil Oliver’s Ancient Britain series which was repeated on SBS a few weeks ago. He covers the transition of the Bronze Age to the Iron Age in Britain, with lots of interesing info about the (disastrous) climatic changes between c. 800-600 BC. Which on the chronology is Bond Event #2. He doesn’t mention it as one, but it all just adds to the intriguing evidence. Good series – we don’t get many programs so scientific on free-to-air anymore.
10
Bruce: Sorry unfamiliar with your work and what the graphs you have referenced are meant to be showing without some background information. A bit too specialized for me.
However if I have it correctly then again I entirely agree that various “natural” cycles affect climate. Where we differ is to the extent that increasing CO2 concentrations also affect climate such as the ENSO AMO and Bond Cycles you have mentioned in posts above and others as well.
I was going to answer Andrew McRae’s post at # 27 but did not get around to it but it is relevant here as it deals with sunspot cycles.
Andrew has however smoothed the living daylights out of his graph which disguises much of the data so I have reduced the smoothing to 12 months. I have also removed the isolate function as it does not show anything instructive.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1855/mean:12/mean:69/normalise/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1855/mean:12/mean:69/normalise
The sunspot cycle shows a very good correlation with temperatures except for the last 15 years were temperatures rise while sunspots decrease. In fact a case can be made on the basis of this data that the apparent flattening of the temperature rise recently corresponds to a minimum in the sunspot cycle, masking a rise due to the CO2 contribution.
The underlying temperature trend corresponds with the upward curving CO2 concentration over the period in question which I have linked above.
Temperature is not a smooth upward curve because of the contributions you mention plus sunspots and other factors.
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Bruce, that comment was meant to go under your remarks at #57. Also excuse the sloppy edit in para 2. It should read:
However if I have it correctly then again I entirely agree that various “natural” cycles such as the ENSO AMO and Bond Cycles you have mentioned in posts above and others as well affect climate. Where we differ is the extent to which increasing CO2 concentrations also affect climate.
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Sure – But the problem is you cannot say that ocean cycles plus solar indirect warming cause 85% of temperature rise last century AND then say that the climate is highly sensitive to CO2. If CO2 is only responsible for 0.11 C of temperature rise last century…well you can work out the approximate 2XCO2 from that as well as I can.
Climate sceptics pretty much across the board agree with the existence of AGW, they just maintain empirically it isn’t much. Certainly not enough to do anything serious about. We’ve as a species already spent trillions already with no observable benefit, except the malnutritioned bodies of poor Africans and millions upon millions of splattered birds and bats from the obscene policies which the consensus advocates.
That is why I’m so passionate about this. First do no harm!
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But where does the 85% figure come from?
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Philip – I’ll repeat what I’ve said and linked upthread.
IPCC AR4 give temperature rise in their century 1906-2005 of 0.74 C (Google AR4 0.74 and you’ll get the relevant pages of the report).
Of this about 0.33 C is due to the solar indirect forcing according to Rao 2011, the eminent Indian astrophysicist. Scafetta says 50% ie 0.37 C in his paper this year. I myself get about 0.4 C from the solar cycle length approach as outlined in Butler & Johnston 1996, which I used for the CET model.
So about 50% comes from the Sun. This is the subject of the proposed Svensmark mechanism, which has support from the results at CERN by Dr Kirkby’s team.
As I said before if you look at the ~60 year cycle in the HadCRUT 3v series you will see a trough to peak of about 0.28 C ie 38%. Canty et al 2013 got that too. So lets say 35%.
The ~60 year cycle does not warm anything, but it was at bottom in 1906 and at peak in 2005, so it lends an artefactual component to the temperature rise the IPCC quote.
50% plus 35% = 85%.
If about 5/6ths of the temperature rise was due to natural processes in the Sun and oceans there can only be 1/6th left for CO2 and everything else.
Of course we have some climate scientists saying its hiding in the oceans or that it is masked by aerosols and volcanoes, but these excuses really don’t stack up in the actual data. They’ve just been fiddling with the parameters to make a high sensitivity work in the models. It doesn’t. Occams Razor says the heat is gone to space, and CO2 just does not have the empiric effect that the IPCC consensus thinks.
I can give you links if you want them to anything out of this, eg the Rao paper, I’m just making sure this doesn’t disappear into moderation late on a Sunday night!
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Philip, you show no sign of learning from the evidence.
The isolated series in blue was entirely instructive, I spelled out carefully what it meant about the modern climate. Clearly you have learned from the best in the business. Because you refuse to admit natural climate cycles exist you had to “hide the sine” in true Mannian style.
The data did not have “the daylights smoothed out of it” as the choice of 138 months is not arbitrary. Perhaps you did not notice that 138 months is 11.5 years which is the average length of solar cycles. In fact that choice of smoothing window illustrates the underlying natural forcing better than 12 months smoothing. But again you are a natural climate change denier so of course you would wish to diminish this illustration of sunspots forcing the overall shape of the 20th century climate. Again, Dr Mann would be proud.
Ideally I would have recreated Pangburn’s sunspot forcing component, but this requires the integral, but the integral has to decay according to a 1/x^4 convolution shape (due to radiative cooling) otherwise the integral just turns into a wavy diagonal line. No power law decay is available in woodfortrees so the smoothing was the next best thing to approximate the shape of a decaying integral.
Finally of course you have fallen victim to your own obfuscation efforts. You claim the sunspot shape cannot explain the temperature rise of the last “15 years” even though you probably mean 1975 to 1998, because for the last 15 years the temperature rise has levelled off just as predicted from PDO and Sunpot activity. You’re unable to use your graph to attribute the temperature rise to natural causes because you just deleted the component that explains it – the blue oceanic sine curve is still in effect and was in ascendency between 1972 and 2002. It is now in descending mode and that’s why over the last 12 years temperatures have been decreasing and will continue to decrease. All at a time of record high CO2 emissions.
It is really amazing to see the mental backflips you go through to avoid the obvious conclusion. When there is a decrease in sunspots you are eager to claim that it is merely masking the CO2 warming, but you fail to realise that if the sunspot activity was strong enough to cause cooling when it is removed then it is strong enough to cause warming when it was added – just as it was for the late 20th century.
There is a promising career ahead of you in the IPCC – for as long as that sham organisation survives.
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If you use the sunspot time-integral with ocean oscillation you get 90%. http://climatechange90.blogspot.com/2013/05/natural-climate-change-has-been.html
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Solar-Terrestrial-Climate 101 (.pdf)
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related:
sun governs multidecadal atlantic hurricane rates
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