Former director of International Arctic Research Center says: "Global warming has paused"

Recent studies by the Hadley Climate Research Center (UK), the Japan Meteorological Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of East Anglia (UK) and the University of Alabama Huntsville show clearly that the rising trend of global average temperature stopped in 2000-2001.
Very odd. Hadley have this on their webpage :
Over the last ten years, global temperatures have warmed more slowly than the long-term trend. But this does not mean that global warming has slowed down or even stopped. It is entirely consistent with our understanding of natural fluctuations of the climate within a trend of continued long-term warming.
Not to mention “Anyone who thinks global warming has stopped has their head in the sand.”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/news/warming_goes_on.pdf
Somebody has their wires crossed.

Mean while CO2 is increasing http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/carbon-dioxide-levels-rising-fast-scientists-surprised-we-arent-4596. Temperature down CO2 up, maybe the models are not as correct as thought.

John Philip,
Likely it’s you who has his wires crossed. Just because Hadley’s official statement is one thing doesn’t mean they haven’t conducted studies which show something contrary to the official position. Kind of like the Argo data vs. what you hear coming out of the Goddard institute.

Same old same old!
If you don’t look to the ‘original data’ (whatever that means in this new supersophisticated world of double-speak) you simply don’t know what’s really going on.
First this expert says x, then this other expert says not x. And generally, people have become so intensely involved with protecting their reputation, their jobs and certainly their egos (see Richard Lindzen’s paper), that nothing will be admitted, nothing retracted, no position abandoned. Remember phlogiston. Remember the luminiferous eather.
I am driven to the conclusion that people are the same everywhere, and that they have always been this way.
Apparently the scientific method is only a veneer of respectability hiding a much deeper well of human nature, and it is human nature to win, to be right and never ever be seen to be wrong.

“BBC investigated after peer says climate change programme was biased ‘one-sided polemic’ ”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1063110/BBC-investigated-peer-says-climate-change-programme-biased-sided-polemic.html
Note: The peer in question is WUWT’s good friend, the well respected Lord Monckton (unless you are the BBC). – Anne

Likely it’s you who has his wires crossed
Always a possibility. I remain puzzled, though. The Professor asserts that there exists a Hadley Centre study showing the pause in warming. Hadley, however, tell us anyone holding this view has their head in the sand. Maybe the powers at WUWT, who after all, chose to cross-post the article, can enlighten us as to where the HC study was published? Thanks.
BTW not everyone holds the veracity of Viscount Monckton in such high regard … Arthur Smith, for one
http://www.altenergyaction.org/Monckton.html
JP.

DOE data shows a pre-industrial concentration of atmospheric CO2 of 288 ppm. This concentration of atmospheric CO2 increased to 368.4 ppm in October, 2008, an increase of 80.4 ppm. The contribution by natural causes was 68.52 ppm and the man-made contribution was 11.88 ppm. The ratio of natural CO2 emission to man-made CO2 is 5.76.
The Global Carbon Project (GCP) report gives the yearly increases of CO2 as: During the years 1970-1079, the increase was 1.3 ppm per year; During the years 1980-1989, the increase was 1.6 ppm; During the years 1990-1999, the increase was 1.5 ppm; and during the years 2000-2007, the increase was 2.0 ppm. Given the ratio of natural emission to man-made emission of 5.76 (before the year 2000), man-made CO2 contributed 0.226 ppm per year during 1970-1979, 0.278 ppm per year during 1980-1989, and 0,25 ppm per year during 1990-1999.
Now it seems that everyone assumes that the CO2 concentration increase of 2.14 ppm per year (Mauna Loa Station) is entirely man-made (GCP). What happened to natural CO2 emissions after the year 2000?

Mr. Philip:
Perhaps Hadley is being a bit disingenuous.
These are the Hadley numbers, from Hadley’s site. I used Hadley’s 2008 projected average temp, which is no danger of actually being reached.
If you plot and trend the data, its a negative trend since 1998. If you exclude 2008, its still slightly positive. If you start from 2001, its negative, regardless.
Just for giggles, plot and trend from 2005 to 2008 (4 years). It gives a negative trend of -0.5 deg/decade COOLING.
Using these 4 years, R2 = 0.9872, BTW.
1998 0.600291
1999 0.354782
2000 0.307351
2001 0.424473
2002 0.484325
2003 0.50359
2004 0.493032
2005 0.530529
2006 0.463274
2007 0.41
2008 0.37

Les,
Its more usual to use a 5-year mean to smooth the inter-annual variability. If you do this I think the 2000-2007 and the 2001-2007 trends become positive? Anything under a 20 year time period is more properly described as weather than climate, however. A 4 year trend is certainly meaningless.
BTW, which data set are you using? I have HADCRUT4GL here and the numbers are subtly different to the ones you posted.
JP

Global Warming Theory really has become the paramount example of the adage that “something that explains everything ultimately explains nothing”. Everyday it seems that we are presented with new data that would appear to contradict aspects of Global Warming Theory, but it’s always somehow presented as something much less than contradictory. Present researchers always first pay homage to the Gods of Global Warming, and only then can they present their data and the lesser theories they have uncovered or are working on.
It reminds me such much of the Creationism-Darwinism argument from the 1920’s. If you think about, Al Gore really is becoming the William Jennings Bryan of our time. The man is telling the young and naive to engage civil disobedience to prevent power plants from being built. That really sounds crazy.

It doesn’t matter what news releases Hadley et al publishes, the data speak for themselves. Global warming advocates (including many in the climate “science” community) have sold their souls and hinged their reputations on AGW and the IPCC so-called consensus. They will not go down easily.
Now that the Arctic did not meet its doom and the NH is approaching winter with indicators it will be gripped in brutal cold, what will these prognosticators of catastrophe have to offer us next year as reassurances it is only temporary? Ah, that’s right…..it’s the long term trend we are concerned with and must therefore wait 30 more years for confirmation of a cooling period and falsification of the modeling industry.

Retired or alone
AGW ended for you
http://www.usnews.com/articles/science/medical-science/2008/09/16/social-isolation-makes-people-cold-literally.html

Cringe.
I am convinced that CO2-driven warming is probably too small to measure, and that there is still ZERO evidence of it, but it bugs the heck out of me when scientists make silly statements:

The first [natural component that causes long-term climate change] is the recovery (namely, warming) from the Little Ice Age.

This is equivalent to saying “the warming is the cause of the climate change.”
I expect better of the former director of the International Arctic Research Center.

Walter great MPFC “Dead Parrot” rant.
I think we all have to face it that it will take 15 years of cooling to have anyone in the AGW camp admit something is going on.
Which I find amazing because only 10 years of warming in 1988 started the call to arms.
All I can say if rate of change is important, as AGW supporters point out with the rise, I think that 5 years of cooling would be required, so 2013 would be the closest mark to for them to even start any debate.
Of course one year of El Nino in the next 5 and we will see the greatest media blitz to date. Did anyone notice the huge amount of Arctic Ice stories coming out ahead of the September Average to try and stem any sort of traction for the increase?

John Philp (Hadley Climate Research Center (UK)): “Over the last ten years, global temperatures have warmed more slowly than the long-term trend. But this does not mean that global warming has slowed down or even stopped. It is entirely consistent with our understanding of natural fluctuations of the climate within a trend of continued long-term warming. “
Would you be more specific on your understanding of natural fluctuations: what they are, what are their dynamics, how we could expect they to behave in future? Now every AGW proponent says that the deviation from the model predictions in the last years are “natural fluctuations”, but no one bother to explain the nature of these “natural fluctuations”. Yes, every complex process oscillates over a main trend, and the magnitude of this oscillation can not predicted (theory of determined chaos), but the main reason for this is that every chaotic process is a result of vectors with different and changing values. So, when some one says that he understands a chaotic process we should expect at least that he would be able to identify the processes that drive the oscillation over the main trend. Saying that here are natural fluctuations is not a knowledge itself.

Anthony,
I did not get it until Ric Werme pointed it out. The picture is LOL hilarious.
Jeff

Bobby Lane (22:25:59) :”This is a great example of what Richard Lindzen’s paper says, about the transition in science from theory tested by observation to simulations (or models) tested by observation. (See the paper, a MUST read, here: http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.3762.pdf)”
Regret this URL doesn’t work for me, is it correct?
Thanx

Reply: Try http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.3762.pdf – Anne

Here’s a hypothesis: When the Professor writes
Recent studies by the Hadley Climate Research Center (UK), the Japan Meteorological Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of East Anglia (UK) and the University of Alabama Huntsville show clearly that the rising trend of global average temperature stopped in 2000-2001.
we should read this as ‘my interpretation of the data from the HADCRUT, NOAA and UAH datasets shows a flat trend over the last eight years. (HADCRUT is a joint effort of the Hadley Centre and the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, bit of double counting there).
Fits the facts huh? Explains why Hadley put out a contradictory statement and explains why nobody is able to find a link to these ‘studies’ from the institutions concerned.
This 8 year period ends in a La Nina and an unusually quiet solar activity phase, both effects which over the short term are capable of masking the GHG forced warming. The IPCC projections from the TAR, treated as a straight line, would project an increase of 0.132C over the period, the peak-to-trough variance from the solar cycle is estimated at 0.1C, and there is considerable noise in the signal, which has a standard deviation of about 0.1C.
Since 1970, there have been 6 other periods when the eight year delta was flat or negative and one where the rise was 0.43C. Global warming continued regardless, average temperatures are now approx 0.5C higher than then and the top 11 warmest years occurred in the last 13 years. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071213101419.htm
The Professor is a distinguished scientist but holds no qualifications at all in climatology.
Reply: Nor does James Hansen (astronomy) and Al Gore (politician). Should we exclude them too? – Anne

Walter Dnes, it’s a Norwegian Blue parrot. I’d love to see its picture here one day. Blue with Norwegian cold, no doubt.
John Philip: Have you read Monckton’s reply to Smith’s reply? Monckton replied in clear mathematical and scientific detail to Schmidt’s rude reply “Cuckoo Science” to Monckton’s Telegraph article – and Schmidt never replied to that reply, in fact Schmidt recently referred to Cuckoo Science as if that were the last word. You’ve got to google for replies to the rebuttals, remembering that Nature and New Scientist often refuse to give such replies space, as they should do and used to do and still do for other issues.
Glenn – thanks for that admirable account of Akasofu’s story and credentials.

What I want to know is why people STILL believe that because global temperatures do not rise in a straight line that long term global warming has stopped? It has paused many times since the industrial revolution only for it to continue afterwards, as it will undoubtedly do again.
Nobody has ever doubted that other factors influence temperature besides the greenhouse gas element. So why do sceptics still argue that AGW supporters think that greenhouse gases alone affect temperature?
But I see no evidence of temperatures plummeting today despite the much trumpeted cyclical reduction of solar activity. Why?

John Philip,
The point about not being a climatologist is, as usual, a complete red herring. The point you make requires little more than basic statistics to understand. Why cloak it in the climatology religion?
But having seen this point – that previous interim peaks have been followed by temporary declines – let me ask the key question. Can climate science PREDICT when theses peaks and declines will occur? After all, the science is settled, isn’t it? Or is climate science making claims it can’t back up when faced with new data?
David Hume would be spinning is his grave – but then again, he wasn’t a climate scientist either.

Re John Philip “The Professor is a distinguished scientist but holds no qualifications at all in climatology.” Neither does James Hansen – he’s an astronomer, nor do virtually all the modellers in fact probaly none if you consider the inaccuracy of all models.
Re your comments on Monkcton. Before publication he submitted his paper for detailed consideration by an experienced physicist and then replied point by point to the typical nit picking and ad hominem attacks from the likes of Gavin none of whom were capable of responding to his response.
Regards
Paul

There is an instructive folk tale in Greece about how people stick to their opinions through hell and high water and contradicting and even endangering data.
“A new couple start arguing about how to clean a fish for cooking. The man says, ‘you clean it with a knife’ . The woman says ‘no, you clean it with scissors’. One heated argument follows another, and the man, a typical MCP puts the wife in a pail and starts lowering her in the well, trying to impose his opinion. He asks her from the top? ‘What do you use?’ she replies ‘scissors’. He starts dipping the pail in the water up to her mouth. The reply is still ‘scissors’. He lowers her completely in the water. She lifts her hand and makes a scissors gesture with her fingers.”
That is where the story ends.
More to the point “I have made up my mind, don’t bother me with the facts” even if the facts are the Thames freezing over.
Unfortunately there is more at stake to global warming sticktoitivness. Already there are food riots because of the misguided, by global warming scares, ethanol policy, third world people are starving. If the policies that are proposed are imposed, millions will die in the third world if not billions.
More to the point “I have made up my mind, don’t bother me with the facts” even if the facts are the Thames freezing over.

M White (02:09:20) :
“…I’ve got candles.”
And I can curse the darkness.

dennis ward:
What I want to know is why people STILL believe that because global temperatures do not rise in a straight line that long term global warming has stopped? It has paused many times since the industrial revolution only for it to continue afterwards, as it will undoubtedly do again.
Straw man argument there, dennis. No one says the long term GW has stopped.
The question is, why do you believe the warming will “continue afterwards”?
But I see no evidence of temperatures plummeting today despite the much trumpeted cyclical reduction of solar activity. Why?
Another straw man, dennis? Come on. You people really are desperate, aren’t you?

Bruce Cobb (06:08:57) :
“…Another straw man, dennis? Come on. You people really are desperate, aren’t you? ”
Cognitive Dissonance is a wholly unpleasant experience.
It always contains an opportunity for growth and maturity, but there is NEVER any guarantee that either growth or maturity will happen, and ALWAYS the danger of the opposite – stagnation or even regression, i.e. a person can become more stunted and more immature after an episode of Cognitive Dissonance than he or she was before it.
And please remember we are only witnessing the first stages of Cognitive Dissonance.
We are going to have a very harsh and cold winter this year.
That by itself is not much of a problem for the warmers. They have in the past already told us that cold weather is caused by warmer climate.
What will be the difficult and painful problem for the warmers this winter is the widespread public mockery.
“Global Warming,” even if it is re-branded as “Climate Change,” will be subjected to public (and political) ridicule this winter as never before.
“We thought we had the public (and the politicians) on our side. How could they turn on us like this?”
By next summer, “Global Warming” will have ceased to be a subject of discussion even for stand-up comics.
“Success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan.” – unknown

I have to add that here is where the koutsoyannis et all publication ( see CA threads) applies. The UK certainly is not a continent, as some say that the climate model predictions are for, but a small area of the planet.
Actually if one makes the effort to go through the AR reports on all the other variables except temperature it is all there in spaghetti colors how badly the predictions fit the current data, for cloud cover for anything. It is just the optical illusion of treating the spaghetti width as if it is an error that confuses the eye not to see the bad fits. Follow the individual threads.
I am amazed how on such bad to horrid science a public station is trying to pull the wool over the eyes and other senses of the UK public. A lot of politics must be riding on this to try to stampede the public.

I met Dr. Akasofu once before I graduated from UAF. He asked me to stay on as a graduate student, but I had other plans. I still think he is a great scientist, and the descriptions above prove it.
It has long since been time for this subject to be turned back over to good scientists, whatever their opinions are. For too long it has been in the hands of scientists who are more alarmist and politician than they are scientists.
While I think some fellow physicists have messed this thing up, any good physicists should be well trained in subtracting known features from data so that they can explore the unknown. Any discipline of physics would demand that the warming data be shown to have the characteristics of the theory, or be told to go back to the drawing board and reexamine both the data and the theory.
Yet somehow, it has been acceptable to claim that the known past really didn’t happen, and that there were no normal variations, so that they could claim all the warming was man’s fault. Then when the data started going the wrong way, all of a sudden they admitted that there are normal variations and that the variations are masking the horrible truth. Though they still claim that the past didn’t happen. And they have been allowed to turn logic on its head. Except for a teeny fraction of heat due to things like tides and radioactive decays, all of our heat is due to the sun. Yet somehow they hold that the sun can’t be at fault for any warming.
And all the data is horribly flawed. Yet it seems more important to spend money on massive computer calculations of future woe, then it is to give the experts the resources to design and take better data to prove any of the fears. Instead, we rely on horrendously difficult feats of data manipulation and rush to make major harmfull changes now in order to supposedly save us from our fears of future harm.
There are scientists who have the skills to invent new mathematics to explore strings and m-branes and parallel universes. Others have the mathematical skill to use infinities to cancel out each other, leaving behind incredibly accurate predictive theories. Yet nobody has shown that any part of the known warming is actually following the known increase in CO2 based upon an acceptable theory of how CO2 should be warming the planet.
There should be CO2 based warming happening. It should be somewhere between what Dr. Akasofu is saying and what the others are trying to scare us with. If the past 150 years of data are trustable enough to use to change our whole economy, then that is more than enough time to be able to reliably subtract the vulcanos and MDOs and see if the remainder is due to CO2. If the remainder doesn’t have the right signature, is the theory wrong? Or can we tease the right signature out of some portion of the data, especially the more recent data with the rapid increase in CO2? Or maybe the data is not good enough to support the claims, and we need to go back to the drawing board and design a system good enough and wait long enough to get data to prove or disprove the claim.
But taking time to do good science isn’t in the alarmist’s plans. So they intimidate and manipulate to make sure their scare wins the day. Their behaviour almost makes me ashamed to be a scientist.
Thank you Anthony for working to get the known problems recognized and removed from the data. And thanks for the contributors who are trying to do good science as they look at this and other possible man-made and natural causes of the warming we have seen. And thanks for keeping us informed.

John Philip: Yes, it goes positive with a 5 year moving average, and a 2007 end point. Also, as I said, a linear trend also goes positive if 2008 is not put it.
Just like you didn’t put in.
With 2008 data, the slope goes negative, using a 5 year MA. Its a negative linear trend since 1998, with 2008 data.

It is entertaining to see John Philip and John Philips arguing over whether the trend is negative or slightly positive.
Either way the IPCC predictions were wrong.

Anne: Reply: Nor does James Hansen (astronomy) and Al Gore (politician). Should we exclude them too? –
Where did I request exclusion? Hansen has a distinguished academic publication record in climate science, and Gore’s political advocacy is informed by the position of the vast majority of climate scientists. Here we have a retired professor from another, related discipline stating his opinion, in what seems to be a regional news website. I have absolutley no problem with that. But I note that while the Professor cites a ‘study’ from the Hadley Centre, the Hadley itself, which contains one or two actual climate scientists, has a press release that flatly contradicts that opinion.
Re: Monckton
Before publication he submitted his paper for detailed consideration by an experienced physicist and then replied point by point to the typical nit picking and ad hominem attacks from the likes of Gavin none of whom were capable of responding to his response.
The ‘reviewer’ was unsure of the difference between forcing and feedback, rendering his review meaningless. While Monckton attempted a response to Smith’s first fairly short criticism, he has yet to respond to Smith’s more recent list of 125 separate errors or flaws.
http://www.altenergyaction.org/Monckton.html
Perhaps you would care to rebut a few? The outgoing chair of the APS Forum on Physics and Society which published the article explains:
“Earlier this year, the editors ran a piece submitted by Gerald Marsh, a frequent contributor to FPS, in which he questioned the accuracy of climate change predictions and estimations of anthropogenic contributions to it. The article gave the editors the idea of devoting an issue to debate about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s statements regarding human-induced global warming.
Being unfamiliar with the field, they asked Marsh to suggest authors on both sides of the argument, and sent out requests. Physicists David Hafemeister and Peter Schwartz kindly contributed a tutorial on the physics of global warming. Marsh also suggested “Christopher Monckton of Brenchley”, who the editors assumed was a climate scientist. Monckton submitted what appeared to be a highly technical piece refuting the notion that global warming is occurring, much less induced by human activity.
The editors ran both articles, and encouraged feedback. They also prefaced the issue with an unfortunate editorial stating that there is “considerable” debate within the scientific community about the IPCC statement that global warming is anthropogenic.
Within hours of the issue appearing on the web, an angry physics community responded. The editors then learned that Viscount Monckton – who they had addressed as “Dr Monckton” in their correspondence, a misconception he did not correct – was actually a British journalist and global-warming sceptic. His article presented claims that he has been circulating for years and that climate scientists say they have debunked”
I don’t believe Monckton’s ‘science’ holds water and Dr Stephan Harrison agrees with me: http://www.turnuptheheat.org/?page_id=27
Smokey:
Thank you for finally admitting that the effect of CO2-induced global warming [if it exists at all], is so tiny that numerous other climate effects drown it out completely.
No. The pattern we see is one of shorter term (a few years or less) but powerful events superimposed upon a slow-acting but gradual and basically linear forced warming. Over these shorter periods, events e.g. cooling from volcanoes and warming from ocean current oscillations such as El Nino add ‘noise’ to the trend, allowing the less scrupulous to take short periods of low or little warming and claim GW has ‘stalled’. To see the trend you have to use statistical smoothing techniques, such as looking at the mean of several years or doing a linear fit of the data. Either of these reveals a decadal trend in line with the predictions and the theory.
Les – Thanks for the response. There are various Hadley datasets – some variance adjusted others not. I was just curious which one you had as I was not aware of one that has figures to 6dp (spurious accuracy in my view). Do you have a link? I use this page http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/#datdow
The differences don’t affect the analyses AFAIK. BTW if 8 year periods are significant, what do you get if you plot the trend a year earlier, that is the eight years to 2007? GW ‘paused’ or on ‘play’? 😉
Patrick H – The distribution of the IPCC model projections over such a short peiod as eight years easily encompasses flat and even negative trends … http://tinyurl.com/3zzwjf
JP

Mr Philip says “BTW, which data set are you using?” …. with not the least sense of irony.
isn’t this just the point?
I bet Mr Philip never asked the IPCC which data set THEY were using as long as the rsult suited his own prejudice.

So which IPCC scenario are we running close to?
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/ipccchart.jpg

There is absolutely no proof that this gradual warming since last century, long before anthropogenic CO2 started its climb, is due to the CO2 rise. All measures of CO2 show that the bulk of the increase lags temperature ..
I guess you mean the century before last? Our best estimate is that GHGs started making a contribution to the rise from the start of the 20th century, along with natural forcings, and became dominant around the century mid point.
All fingerprints of great postive feedbacks are missing in the data, let alone of anthropogenic additional CO2
Simply not the case. Water Vapour is increasing as predicted …e.g.
Anthropogenic greenhouse forcing and strong water vapor feedback increase temperature in Europe http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005…/2005GL023624.shtml
and as examples of a greenhouse ‘fingerprints’ the height of the troposphere has increased
Contributions of Anthropogenic and Natural Forcing to Recent Tropopause Height Changes http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/301/5632/479
and the Stratosphere has cooled http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/aboutus/milestones/ozone.html
Among other flaws, the graph uploaded to icecap shows only the central mean trend for each scenario, without the variation about that mean (error bars). Bad science and hardly conclusive. See here for a more informed discussion … http://tinyurl.com/4mjjvp

Icecap fans …
The icecap graph you posted
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/ipccchart.jpg
is labelled as TS Fig 26 updated. That is, Figure 26 from the IPCC Technical summary, which is here …
http://www.ipcc.ch/graphics/graphics/ar4-wg1/jpg/ts26.jpg
In the icecap graph, the scenarios start at 2000, but, strangely, the observed temperature at this time is at least 0.15C below the scenario projections. However, in the original IPCC graph the observed and projected are no more than 0,01C apart at this point. This discrepency seems to be because the IPCC graph uses a 10 year moving average to smooth out the interannual variability whereas the ‘icecap’ graph simply plots the annual values. That 0.15C represents about 7 years projected warming so it is not surprising the scenarios appear to be doing so badly. Not the most honest science. An accurate update of the graph using the same smoothing would look very different.
Confirmation bias?
Glenn, please reread my post. the water vapour post was in response to anna’s asertion that we are not seeing feedbacks. We are.
In a nutshell, climate models are wrong.
Oh please. The precipitation results demonstrate that the measurements do not match the model projections, and the paper considers the possibility that the timescales are too short to be conclusive or that the satellite measurements are incorrect. If it turns out that the satellite measurements are incorrect and the models correct, it would not be the first time this has happened (The Christy / Spencer TLT saga)

Sunil, it would be even more depressing if the trend quickly reverses.

I am sorry to be repeating here stuff I put up in the other thread , but I have already given references for the non fit of humidity feedback of CO2;
John Philip (16:55:17) : on the cooling thread
“Smokey
That graph turned out to be invalid … A few days ago I posted a story highlighting the drop in water vapor in the atmosphere which initially looked like the entire atmosphere due to a labeling issue by ESRL, but turned out to be only at the 300 millibar height and not up to 300mb as the ESRL graph was labeled.
JP.”
mislabeled, not invalid.
Quoting from a later and more thorough examination:
“” http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/21/a-window-on-water-vapor-and-planetary-temperature-part-2/
“So, what do these time series tell us?
To begin with, what atmospheric moistening is believed to have occurred is at altitudes basically well below the surface altitudes of the major ice shields, Greenland and the East & West Antarctic and much of Earth’s land surfaces.
Secondly, the atmospheric region of most interest from a weather/climate perspective appears to be on a drying trend, contrary to that expected under the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis.
Simply eyeballing the time series suggests the 1977 Pacific phase shift is a much better fit with changes in trends than is the steady increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Bottom line is that the regions climate models are programmed to expect atmospheric moistening are not actually doing so, making either the models or the atmosphere wrong. ”
Thus the fourth point: that the huge humidity feedback driven by anthropogenic CO2’s tiny contribution, predicted by the models, is invalidated. “”
Also this :
There is a very good mathematical reason why any linearized models as these GCM models are, will diverge from reality when applied to real data. If you know mathematics, follow this:
The GCM models make grids (boxes) of the atmosphere and apply linear approximations to the solutions of SOME of the differential equations that have to apply at the boundaries. Let us ignore SOME.
It is very well known that coupled differential equations lead to chaotic systems. This is because the beats of the different solutions that are pushing and pulling in mathematical reality can unpredictably build up enormously, or disappear ( the seventh wave, the 100th lightning,…). This means that linearity in any modeling can be reasonably applied for a limited number of time steps before the true nonlinear nature of the solutions explodes. These same models are used to predict the weather for next week, with different boundary conditions than when they are turned climate. It is evident for even non mathematical people that the time stepping of the models fails after ten days or so.
When the meteorology models are turned into climate models, i.e. even more linearization of the true solutions by applying many more average values at boundaries, this stepping problem does not disappear; the approximations will inevitably fail after some steps because the true solutions are drastically not linear. They do not fail in a week because of the averaging, but they do fail in ten years.
Now SOME, like the PDO. I have read the paper of Keenlyside et al, they are trying to include some of the SOME to save the sinking boat and keep up the AGW mantra. It cannot be done. The only solution is to go the chaos way, as Tsonis et al have done in a limited way ( PDO and the Atlantic Oscillation) in a fairly recent paper using neural nets for the modeling. Complexity is a subject that crosses over all scientific disciplines and is at the frontier of research at the moment. I have a hard time understanding the tools ( I am retired and follow interesting lectures in my region) but I think it is the only way to go for weather system modelings.

I don’t see how you can call D’Aleo’s data point vs data point as not the most honest. Perhaps both data sets could be subject to 10 year averaging, but the point Joe was trying to make was that the recent PDO-induced cooling is taking the temperatures away from the IPCC projections.
Let me expand further (and btw the graph seems to originate from John Christy) … The IPCC scenarios are the mean of a series of model runs. Individual runs show a fairly wide variation about this mean: http://www.realclimate.org/images/runs.jpg
which corresponds to the relatively wide variation in the observed global annual mean temperature.
To compare like with like the IPCC graph plots the smoothed 10 year moving average. Christy plots just the mean of the scenarios, without showing the spread, and compares these with the actual annual observed values, effectively comparing apples and oranges.
Secondly, as a scientist Anna will confirm that when you give a quantative value, you must also state the uncertainty in that value. On a graph this usually done by the use of error bars. Now the smoothed observed temperatures are actually well within the scenario uncertainty range, so what does Christy do? simple, he erases the IPCC error bars!.
So labelling this as an ‘update’ of the IPCC graph is less than scrupulous. The IPCC figure is good science, Christy’s graph is closer to scientific fraud.

Dee
I have to request that you retract the claims you made using a poll in this comment
And I am going to have to disappoint you. I merely reported the results of a poll, with a link to a more detailed summary from the Harris Organisation. They state that the details you seem so interested in are available on request, so may I suggest you contact Harris? Be sure to post their response here.
You are entitled to your view that the poll was either reported or conducted in bad faith, but it is not a view I share; Harris seem a reputable firm.
The poll results are in line with other evidence. For example, the American Geophysical Union, the professional body that most US climate scientists belong to, has this position statement …
The Earth’s climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of the climate system—including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the distribution of precipitation, and the length of seasons—are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century.
http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/positions/climate_change2008.shtml
Does this reflect the views of most of their 20,000 members or is there a conspiracy going on here?
And in this smaller scale poll of senior climate scientists the most popular response by a large margin was:
The scientific basis for human impacts on climate is well represented by the IPCC WG1 report. The lead scientists know what they are doing. We are warming the planet, with CO2 as the main culprit. At least some of the forecast consequences of this change are based on robust evidence.
with a further 10% agreeing with:
The IPCC WG1 seriously understates the human influence on climate. I agree with those scientists who say that major mitigation responses are needed immediately to prevent catastrophic serious warming and other impacts projected to result from human emissions of CO2. We are seriously damaging the Earth’s climate, and will continue to face devastating consequences for many years.
http://climatesci.org/2008/02/22/is-there-agreement-amongst-climate-scientists-on-the-ipcc-ar4-wg1/
JP.
PS Dee – about one in five posts here makes an unsupported claim of some sort, e.g. global temperatures are falling, the IPCC scenarios have been falsified, some of the additional CO2 is natural etc etc – I look forward to your repeated and indignant demands for detailed, supporting evidence.

JP: Does this reflect the views of most of their 20,000 members or is there a conspiracy going on here?
Please. Not the same, tired, AGW “conspiracy” strawman argument. Can’t you people come up with anything new?
I’m sure you know, and are therefore simply being disingenuous, that the AGU position statement on AGW is simply put forward by their BOD, and was never voted on by the members.
As far as the position statement itself, it’s simply boilerplate AGW propaganda. It’s amazing that anyone with half a brain still even believes that crap.

As far as the position statement itself, it’s simply boilerplate AGW propaganda. It’s amazing that anyone with half a brain still even believes that crap.
Presumably those with fully functioning brains believe therefore that the position statement is unrepresentative and the membership are biting their tongues and sitting on their hands?
Tell me, does the same evaluation apply to similar endorsements from these groups of ‘half-brainers’ : The American Meteorological Society , The Royal Meteorological Society, Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society,The International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences, The European Academy of Sciences and Arts, The Network of African Science Academies, The US National Research Council , The European Science Foundation, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, The Federation of American Scientists, The World Meteorological Organization, The Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, The International Union for Quaternary Research, The American Quaternary Association, The Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London, The International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, The International Union of Geological Sciences, The European Geosciences Union, The Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences, The Geological Society of America, The American Astronomical Society, The American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, Engineers Australia, The Federal Climate Change Science Program (US), The American Statistical Association, The Hadley Centre and the Tyndall Centre, The US National Center for Atmospheric Research, NASA Goddard Institute of Space Science, US Environmental Protection Agency, and The American Chemical Society (the world’s largest scientific organization with over 155,000 members) ….. ?
Anna:
Over at the Blackboard Lucia has exhausted the statistical means by which a trend can be evaluated in the data, and the trend shows diminishing temperatures. Are you saying that if the errors are included in the IPCC spaghetti the trend is diminishing?
You hope to discredit the IPCC with an unreviewed weblog? Yes. Or more accurately over the short period considered by Lucia, a diminishing trend is entirely consistent with the range of temperatures projected by the IPCC. All Lucia has ‘falsified’ is the ‘central tendency’. So what?
It is impossible to learn this from Christy’s dubious graph that you presented for us, however. I see it quite simply: to evaluate model projections vs observed temperatures one could plot:
(a) The results of all the model runs showing the variance between runs.
(b) The mean of the above, with error bars.
(c) The actual annual temperatures, demonstrating the large annual variability.
(d) The averaged temperature, a running mean or a linear fit, with error bars.
Seems to me comparing (a) and (c) is meaningful, comparing (b) and (d) is meaningful but as either of these would validate the scenarios Christy chooses to compare (b) without error bars and (c). Doing this and labelling it an ‘update’ of the IPPC graph is simply not legitimate; I don’t see how you can defend it.
Dodgy Geezer:
Is it just me, or does this seem like an instruction
No, it is just you.

John Philip (05:48:07) :
Let me repeat the direct quote from the AR literature, from chapter 8 that is supposed to evaluate the models:
” 8.1.2.2 Metrics of Model Reliability from the AR:
“The above studies show promise
that quantitative metrics for the likelihood of model projections
may be developed, but because the development of robust
metrics is still at an early stage, the model evaluations presented
in this chapter are based primarily on experience and physical
reasoning, as has been the norm in the past.””
To paraphrase, you can control some scientists for a long time, and many scientists for some time, but not all scientists all the time. That is why there is some scientific honesty digging through the AR and truth can be found; 600 scientist do not all tow the line and the line enforcers do not have the IQ to catch everything.
You say:
“It is impossible to learn this from Christy’s dubious graph that you presented for us, however. I see it quite simply: to evaluate model projections vs observed temperatures one could plot:
(a) The results of all the model runs showing the variance between runs.
(b) The mean of the above, with error bars.
(c) The actual annual temperatures, demonstrating the large annual variability.
(d) The averaged temperature, a running mean or a linear fit, with error bars.
Seems to me comparing (a) and (c) is meaningful, comparing (b) and (d) is meaningful but as either of these would validate the scenarios Christy chooses to compare (b) without error bars and (c). Doing this and labelling it an ‘update’ of the IPPC graph is simply not legitimate; I don’t see how you can defend it. ”
THE BARS IN THE ORIGINAL PLOT ARE NOT ERROR BARS.
They are what the modelers believe their error bars are, and anybody treating them as error bars, i.e using them to get a chi2 per degree of freedom compared to data ( or whatever the statistical fashion is now) is off.
There IS meaning, if presented with a scenario and if I have the data available, to look at the fit of the scenario to the data which is what Christy has done.
The bars are there in the IPCC plot so that the hoi polloi can be mesmerized that: this is “SCIENCE”, look, there are error bars.
Sorry for the capitals, there is no easy bold or whatnot on this board.
p.s. likelihood has to do with error bars

A cooling anecdote from Whistler:
“Mother Nature Skips Fall
Whistler Blackcomb received over 6 cm/2.4 inches of snow in the alpine Sunday night making Whistlerites wonder if Mother Nature forgot a season. On the first day of fall, Whistler Blackcomb mountain tops were covered with at least six centimetres of snow. With 65 days until the winter ski season and 79 days until the opening of the PEAK 2 PEAK Gondola on December 12, the countdown is on. ”
If all the snow had melted, that would have been a sure sign of AGW (doesn’t that stand for “Al Gore’s Warming”?)

Presumably those with fully functioning brains believe therefore that the position statement is unrepresentative and the membership are biting their tongues and sitting on their hands?

In a word, yes. Most probably have careers to consider and have seen what happens when you don’t toe the consensus line. I don’t believe in conspiracy theories for the most part, but we’re talking facts here. People have lost their jobs and funding if they express skepticism about the “consensus”. Which is why we’re mostly hearing from tenured professors and retired scientists.

Bobby Lane (22:25:59) :
Thank you very much for the reference to the paper written by Richard S. Lindzen.
It is one of the most disturbing things I have ever read. It confirms some of my worst fears about what is going on in ‘science’ today.
You are correct; it is a must read.

Graeme , Roger pielke has asked the very same question of the Real Climate heroes. They refuse to put any testable conditions on their climate models. In fact they claim there can be no testable cases that will invalidate them. It is even laughable that oc/decade falls within their models.

One more not-a-climatologist-but-knows-better-than-them type scientists. Retired, so he’s never really got a handle on them newfangdangled scientific methods using climate modelling – you know, actually trying to follow where the energy goes, where all those complicated atmospheric processes take it and what it does along the way -much preferring the good old fashioned look at this graph look at that graph, and how can we make them appear to match method. People here like that. Thinks it’s something else than GHG’s. Even better. His science career centered on sun interactions with polar atmosphere. Hey, we have a winner here. Or do we?
So does he think it’s mostly the sun? No. So he’s in disagreement with lots of the commenters here. Are the it’s-the-sun-stupid crowd calling him stupid and ripping his it’s-not-the-sun stance apart? No. As long as he doesn’t put it down to human GHG’s he can be held up as more right than those who do?
And Warmers get accused of picking and choosing!
Still, he’s slightly more credible than the it’s-been-cooling-since-1998 crowd, even if he actually appears to read the graphs the same way. Has he too failed to spot the major flaw in the it’s-been-cooling-since-1998 claim? That it relies on the hottest year ever (if you don’t count 2005 or think the hottest year in the US is the same as the hottest year in the world) to show anything like cooling? Assign 1998 a neutral value and hey, looks like it’s still warming. Make 1998 a really hot one like it was, and through the magic of pseudo-logic you get cooling “trend”. How does adding a hot spike into the middle of a warming trend magically turn it into a cooling trend? It sure isn’t because it’s really cooling. Hot plus hot equals cooling? Wake up guys – that just ain’t how it works. E&E might be happy with that but you ain’t gonna fool a real peer reviewed scientific journal with that little shell game.
I want to claim back 1998 as evidence of global warming. Using it as “proof” of cooling may be very amusing but it leaves your credibility in shreds. Hot plus hot equal hotter, not cooler. When people tell you otherwise you don’t need credential or webcites to tell you they are wrong.
Think that cooling is real, it’s clear and strong? Try the Year After 1998 Challenge. After the 1998-99 cooling “trend”, what happened? Has it been cooling since1999?
A real trend doesn’t need a single hot year to prove it’s cooling, right? 1999 ought to an easy bar for clear cooling to limbo under – 6th hottest year of last century after all. Slipped to 13th since then. Go figure. Still one of the top 15 hot years on record. So dodge all the controversy, and those cherry picking accusations and ditch 1998. If you are a climate change skeptic you can’t tell me you like seeing that hot spike – good evidence of warming by the way – sticking out like a sore thumb. You don’t really want to rely on the hottest year to prove it’s cooling, do you? Be brave. Ditch 1998 and measure your cooling trend from 1999. If it’s real it will be clearly revealled.
Check out the perfectly good graph of Global temps here. Complain to them at GISS if you really think they are wrong and you aren’t worried they’ll laugh.
Check out the year Coolers don’t want to talk about.
Reply – Both 1998 and 1999 are outliers and are bad dates from which to measure any trend. I like 2001 myself using the RSS data:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2001/plot/rss/from:2001/trend
We will always comeback to the how long makes a trend debate – 10, 20, 30 years?
The really clue is the discontinuity from 2007 to 2008 and is worth keeping an eye on for further developments. – Dee Norris

Old construction worker says:

Hay Smokey
When I first hear about our planet cooling, the modelers said “CO2 induced warming” would be back in 2009. Now they say 2015.

You are quoting results from two papers here, one from a group at Hadley and one from another group. In both cases, they are attempting to extend the use of climate models in ways that they have not been used before (i.e., to predict short-term trends using specifically initialized initial conditions). This is an admirable thing to try to do, but it is also fraught with potential difficulties and the rest of the scientific community is yet confident that they have done this correctly. In fact, the Keenlyside paper claiming there will be no significant warming until about 2015 has been greated by quite a bit of skepticism by the scientists over at RealClimate: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/the-global-cooling-bet-part-2/langswitch_lang/in
Time will tell.

REPLY: Oreskes had and continues to have an agenda. …
ROFL! Pot meet Kettle, Kettle, this is Pot.
The criticisms of her work are warranted.
So where are the credible rebuttals? Are you relying on Benny? http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/10/peiser_admits_he_was_97_wrong.php
REPLY: No I’m not relying on Benny. I’m not relying on you either. – Anthony

Dee, yes we could argue about how many years to make a climate trend. The trend over the previous 10 years, including that 1998 hot spike at the beginning (according to rss msu) is plus 0.169 degrees per decade. So even with 1998 included rss msu shows a warming trend. It’ll show even stronger in 2009. With a five year trend line, sure it’s going down. So what? That’s happened before. Didn’t last long. Hardly a dimple on a 30yr (warming) trend line (which rss msu doesn’t do yet).
You have nothing but speculation to support expectations this is more than another dimple. It’s post-LIA thawing and Multidecadal oscillation. No, it’s a shortage of sunspots. It’s anything but GHG’s and no evidence required? Not very convincing.
So it’s still a warming trend – since 1998, the hottest (unless you count 2005 or you think the US is the whole globe) year on record. And that isn’t even a contradiction.

Couple links for y’all …
Syun-Ichi Akasofu is in the news again …
“Two other contrarian scholars were cited (in Sarah Palin’s polar bears study) . One was Syun-Ichi Akasofu, formerly director of the International Arctic Research Centre, in Alaska, who argues that climate change could be a hangover from the little ice age. He is a founding director of the Heartland Institute, a thinktank that has received $676,500 from ExxonMobil since 1998″
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/01/sarahpalin.climatechange
And a climate modeller discusses Dr Lindzen’s paper …
As is often the case with people who are too sure of themselves, he turns out guilty of some of the things he accuses his opponents of. He politicizes and conspiratorializes rather than simply addressing the problem dispassionately. His personal characterization of other scientists is grossly excessive in at least one occasion. I am inclined to extrapolate that his understanding of specific events is similarly skewed. …
Likely this paper will be a Palinesque effort, energizing the “base” who have preconceived notions along these lines, and having little effect elsewhere. It’s a shame. We do need to rethink how science is done. This sort of injured and injurious argumentation will do little to advance that prospect.
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2008/09/lindzen-diatribe.html

John Philip (05:24:34) :
Please, does it give you pleasure to hear of the billions given to AGW inclined institutes?
What is
“$676,500 from ExxonMobil since 1998″ “, 67.000 a year, but peanuts? Not even a shoe shine for Gore.

Graeme –
1. Make a definitive testable prediction, that if it does not come to pass would categorically break the hypothesis that man made emissions of CO2 are causing a dangerous level of global warming. I.e like If CO2 reaches 550 ppm and average global temperatures are cooler than the current values, then hypothesis AGW must be false.
Check out the post ‘You bet’ on Tamino’s site. It specifies how long the current flattish trend must continue for it to be statistically significant and hence falsify the existence of an external forcing.
3. Could you also explain why computer models of climate should be trusted to the extent that our societies (western civilisation – no one else seems to be listening to AGW or doing anything) should radically alter our energy sources at great expense and hardship to most of the (especially the poor) members of our societies and arguably to the detriment of the developing world.
It is a fallacy that the AGW concern requires computer climate models at all. Here are the main elements of the ‘theory’, just considering CO2 for a moment …
1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, whose radiative forcing potential is understood with reasonable certainty.
2. Atmospheric CO2 has significantly increased as a result of human activity and will continue to do so.
3. The equilibrium global temperature increases approximately 3C for every doubling of the CO2 concentration.
If these three simple points are true, then Houston – we have a problem. 1 and 2 are trivial to verify. There are multiple lines of evidence that indicate 3 is correct. Simulations from models is one but these are confirmed by empirical paleoclimate studies of past forcings and response that involve no modelling, e.g. we can estimate the climate forcing effect of a large volcanic eruption and measure the effect on the planetary temperature and so estimate climate sensitivity. See this study
http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d5/jdannan/GRL_sensitivity.pdf
Re : Syun-Ichi Akasofu
Actually it was Directorship of the Heartland Institute that I found interesting, I wonder why the original piece did not mention it when listing Syun-Ichi Akasofu’s credentials? At the start of the thread I puzzled over Akasofu citing an apparently nonexistent study by the Hadley showing a flat trend and the Hadley themselves asserting that anyone making this case had their head in the sand. Seems to me being a Director of the Heartless Institute, an ExxonMobil project that earlier this year organised a climate sceptic’s conference, goes some way to explaining this apparent contradiction ….
BTW The conference concluded with a ‘Manhattan Declaration’ on climate, which since March has attracted over 1,000 signatories from the global public. If you are stuck for something to do check out the list of ‘citizen endorsers’ and do a search for the word ‘coal’ 😉
http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=54
Re Naomi Oreskes. I see Naomi, who is a Professor at UCSD, was promoted to Provost of the Sixth College in July. Not bad for a source of unreliable research. Of course she is biased – as a member of the History of Science Association she is biased in favour of the science.
http://www.ametsoc.org/atmospolicy/documents/Chapter4.pdf
JP
PS Ric W, please do not misrepresent me. I explicitly wrote: I did not mean to imply that retired=decrepit

Apologies, I must have misread the TLT channel’s 0.169 degrees per decade as for the most recent decade rather than over the 79- 08 of RSS MSU data, so a ten year trend from 1998 is still down. From 1999 when this year is over it’s going to show warming and I don’t agree 1999 is a strong outlier. Or that 10 years is a too long period. It looks to me that 2008 (still not over) could be more of an outlier. ENSO and all that stuff- but perhaps the cooling claim looks better if you provide less rather than more information? So ignore ENSO. LIA, MDO, sure, but not ENSO? Picking and choosing to suit (create?) your preferred result? It will need a few more years of clearly dropping global temps to be more than a blip on the global warming trend.
I have to say I’m dreading the next el Nino. Believe me, I won’t cheer when warming makes it existence clearly felt then. Where I live is strongly effected and not in a good way. Let’s see how much cooling after that rather than after a la Nina.
BTW, using satellite data in isolation tends to be (to use an arctic but still inappropriate metaphor) like arguing over the shape of the tip whilst ignoring the iceberg. And your preferred site for looking at trends allows for no comparisons of trends over fixed periods of time – comparing a 10 yr trend with a 7yr trend can only be misleading.

“I have to say I’m dreading the next el Nino. Believe me, I won’t cheer when warming makes it existence clearly felt then.”
“Recent El Niños have occurred in 1986-1987, 1991-1992, 1993, 1994, 1997-1998, 2002-2003, 2004-2005 and 2006-2007”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3%B1o-Southern_Oscillation
So who is ignoring ENSO?

“I am concerned about the inevitable backlash against science and scientists, when the public learns the correct information about climate change.”
“[replace ‘r’s with ‘l’s first 🙂 ]”
Oh, that makes perfect sense, Leif.

Draft response to Syun-Ichi Akasofu from IPCC
[snip – this blog is not your own personal forum to vet letters, use your own media or send the letter directly to him] – Anthony

John Phillip:
1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, whose radiative forcing potential is understood with reasonable certainty.——wrong, that is if you try to include what the feedback effects would be.
2. Atmospheric CO2 has significantly increased as a result of human activity and will continue to do so.——most likely, but who knows what Nature will do?
3. The equilibrium global temperature increases approximately 3C for every doubling of the CO2 concentration.—-Steve McIntyre has asked for the provenance for this at Real Climate and NO ONE has done a decent job at showing this to be true. They go as far as to say this can’t be done.

Leif, I don’t buy that:
http://bp0.blogger.com/_0oNRupXJ4-A/SANF6KvP1sI/AAAAAAAAATQ/FP8y3DPkssY/s1600-h/image277.gif
There has not been demonstrated to be a linear relationship between CO2 and Temp.
Actually Leif I am surprised this is coming from you with your dispassionate attitude towards solar cycles and Temp. There lacks the proper data to draw such conclusions

What can one make of the fact, if such can be determined adequately from cores, that a temperature rise is followed by a CO2 rise which inevitably, though not temporally predictably, is followed by a temperature drop? One might wonder that CO2 ameliorates, or stops, or even, might I ask, reverses the temperature rise. Probably seeing a connection with little enough correlation that causation can certainly be called into question. But still, it always cools some time after a CO2 rise.
=========================================

Bob
1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, whose radiative forcing potential is understood with reasonable certainty.– wrong, that is if you try to include what the feedback effects would be.
I fear you are confusing cause and effect. The magnitude of the forcing effect of CO2 is independent of the magnitude of the resulting feedback. The RF of CO2 is calculated using line by line radiative transfer codes and has an uncertainty of around 10%.
2. Atmospheric CO2 has significantly increased as a result of human activity and will continue to do so.– most likely, but who knows what Nature will do?
If all the anthropogenic CO2 ever emitted was still in the atmosphere, the resultant concentration would be over 100ppm higher than it is. The difference is the amount that has been absorbed by natural sinks, mainly the oceans. There is evidence that the rate at which these sinks absorbs our CO2 is falling however.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6665147.stm
Adding CO2 to the oceans increases their acidity, of course. Potentially very bad news for marine life, especially corals.
3. The equilibrium global temperature increases approximately 3C for every doubling of the CO2 concentration.-Steve McIntyre has asked for the provenance for this at Real Climate and NO ONE has done a decent job at showing this to be true. They go as far as to say this can’t be done.
A McIntyre Myth. Climate sensitivity to CO2 was first estimated by Svante Arrenhuis in his 1896 paper ‘ “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air Upon the Temperature of the Ground”. He thought doubling CO2 would increase temperatures by 5-6C. In the modern era Jule Charney came up with a range of 1.5C – 4.5C in his 1979 report and most studies since have confirmed this range. There’s a good discussion here – http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/309/5731/100.pdf
As for RealClimate, here’s a direct quote …”We have often made the case here that equilibrium climate sensitivity is most likely to be around 0.75 +/- 0.25 C/(W/m2) (corresponding to about a 3°C rise for a doubling of CO2.”
cheers,
JP.

John Phillip–more on the lack of a proper analysis on doubling of CO2:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2528

Adding CO2 to the oceans increases their acidity, of course. Potentially very bad news for marine life, especially corals.

Actually it reduces alkalinity, not the same thing as increasing acidity. But ALL marine life currently in existence evolved during MUCH higher CO2 concentrations both in the oceans and the atmosphere. And they’re still around…

Anthony,
Firstly let me apologise for my hasty and slightly boorish remark.
Secondly, an observation. The internet in general and blogs in particular seem to me a good illustration of Sturgeon’s Law.
By which I mean that I could, in a few minutes, find sites and blogs that ‘prove’ that the HIV virus does not cause AIDS,
that eating blueberries cures cancer, that the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled explosions. They will have charts
and they will have equations and figures, and some of them are written by PhDs…
Time is finite and precious. I need a filter. Peer review is not perfect, however review by experts in the field and exposure
to further scrutiny in the academic literature makes a study at least worthy of investing some time in its assessment. The
IPCC reports are based exclusively on peer-reviewed literature, of course.
In this particular instance, Bob B finds a couple of Steve McIntyre’s blog posts describing his failure to locate a
satisfactory ‘engineering quality’ explanation of the concensus estimate of climate sensitivity, more compelling than the
body of published studies on which the IPCC bases the conclusion that such sensitivity is likely to be in the range 2 to
4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C, and is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C
Fine by me. But here is just a handful of the studies that Bob is dismissing in favour of McIntyre’s musings …
Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific
Assessment” National Academy of Sciences Ad Hoc Study Group on Carbon Dioxide and Climate (1979).
John Farley (2008). The Scientific Case for Modern Anthropogenic Global
Warming . Journal of Geophysical Research.
Kerr (2004). Three Degrees of Consensus. Science
Andronova, N., and M. E. Schlesinger. 2001. Objective Estimation of the Probability Distribution
for Climate Sensitivity. J. Geophys. Res. 106
Annan, J.D., and J. C.Hargreaves, 2006.
Using multiple observationally-based constraints to estimate climate sensitivity . Geophysical Research Letters
On the other hand, McIntyre has posted this which is discussed here and this which is discussed here
Clearly, as these criticisms of McIntyre originate from the unreviewed blogosphere. they can have no credibility.
Er …
JP

John Phillip, as Anthony has suggested the climate community needs an ISO 9000 type oversight of it’s work. It has become a much too important issue at this time to be left to PEER review. Steve McIntyre is but one man and can only take up a few things at a time. But just looking at the “hockey Stick” he has found foul play and just basically bad science. The same could be said for his audit of GIStemp. Anthony has done a great job exposing just what crap the surface station data is. Climate science at this time is a complete mess and just a plain disgrace. If half of the “climate scientitsts” were in typical industries they would be fired for their sloppy work.

“Have you adopted a new signature?”
No it’s quite obvious, you seem to have. Of course, I don’t know about “new”.
but a supposed authoritative scientist such as yourself would not claim no water on Venus, just to mention *one* blatant error. You make so many of them I don’t need to illuminate them all.
“Please refrain from lowering the standards at this blog.”
Who’s standards? You question motives quite often, Leif.

“Yes, I know, but I’m only human and I have endured a fair amount of outright abuse from this gentleman, so now and then [rarely] I bite back, even when I shouldn’t [Psalm 37:11].”
I have endured quite a bit of abuse from you, Leif, and not always have I responded to it. But to capture your own phrase “to put this in perspective”, you claimed there is no water on Venus. Had I not called you on this clear falsehood, some may have accepted your word for it. And as you say, this blog is a good place to learn more. Venus’ atmosphere is said to contain .002% water vapor, from your own previous Wiki reference. How does that match your “the amount of Venusian water vapor is about one-half of one-billionth of the Venusian atmosphere”? I’m not real strong on math, but .002% is 20 parts per million, not 0.5 parts per billion. Don’t go off again on CO2 or unequivocal statements about what you think Venus had eons ago or the Sun.
It makes for nice rhetoric, but is and was irrelevant to your original statement and the truth.
Note – It would be wise if you and Leif took a break from this for a while as it seems it is becoming a battle of personalities, not data. – Anne

Well, John, my objection here is much the same as the others. The direct forcing alone doesn’t do it. (And yes, the degree of direct forcing is in some dispute.) The biggest objection is to the feedback effects..
Well, I have directed you towards numerous studies, both paleo- and modelled that indicate that the effects of the feedbacks after a doubling of CO2 is in the range stated. The earliest of these is nearly three decades old and so has stood up to that amount of scrutiny.
The major feedback is the increase in water vapour, and an interesting confirmation that the models treat the water vapour feedback correctly came after the eruption of Pintubo. This caused a significant and measurable global cooling and enabled a valuable planet-wide experiment – was the resulting drying of the atmosphere consistent with that predicted by the models? Here’s the answer.
McIntyre is engaging in little more than a rhetorical trick – ask a question then continually declare yourself dissatisfied with the answers. His complaint is the lack of a ‘proof’ of the feedback estimates in the literature, when the method by which climate sensitivity is calculated is actually laid out in detail in the IPCC reports and supporting papers. (WG1 Chapters 9 & 10. )
(As an aside, Viscount Monckton claims to have discredited the IPCC climate sensitivity calculations in his APS <a href=”http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfmpaper” paper, whereas Steve McIntyre claims not to be able even to find these calculations. Can anyone explain? ).
The second half of the trick is to take the normal conservative language used in science and emphasise and exaggerate the discussions of the uncertainties that exist, then complain about lack of ‘engineering quality’ or ‘proof’. This, of course, is a misunderstanding of basic scientific reality. Science deals in the balance of evidence, not proof; there are not two categories of science – ‘settled’ and ‘not settled’, there are degrees of certainty.
No, what McIntyre (and others) have to do is either show (preferably in a professional manner ) where the large body of studies are wrong in their methods or conclusions or else produce his own estimate for climate sensitivity and present it for review. So far he has done neither.
JP.

“No, what McIntyre (and others) have to do is either show (preferably in a professional manner ) where the large body of studies are wrong in their methods or conclusions or else produce his own estimate for climate sensitivity and present it for review. ”
Steve McIntyre is doing what he knows how to do. He is auditing. That is what he does. There are not many people watching what is happening in the cozy climate science community, but because of the efforts of McIntyre, our host here, and a few notable others, the truth is getting out.

No, what McIntyre (and others) have to do is either show (preferably in a professional manner ) where the large body of studies are wrong in their methods or conclusions or else produce his own estimate for climate sensitivity and present it for review. So far he has done neither.

He’s done exactly that with respect to the hockey stick and the way many studies have used the same denrochronology data. They’re basically making crap up.