No cause for alarm at five-year mid-point of the Armstrong-Gore climate “bet”
By J. Scott Armstrong
In 2007, University of Pennsylvania Professor J. Scott Armstrong’s attention was drawn to former VP Gore’s concerns about global warming. Having spent five decades studying the science of forecasting, Armstrong decided to examine the basis for the forecasts of global warming. He was unable to find a single scientific forecast to support the claim that the Earth was becoming dangerously warmer or colder.
Instead, he found that some scientists were using improper forecasting methods to make forecasts. Professor Armstrong alerted Mr. Gore to this fact and suggested that they cooperate in a validation test of dangerous global warming forecasts. He suggested a 10-year bet for which he would forecast no long-term trend in climate, while Mr. Gore could chose forecasts from any climate model.
After a series of emails, Mr. Gore declined, apparently sticking with his claim that no time could be devoted to further study, because we were near a “tipping point,” a position backed by James Hansen of NASA. Professor Armstrong claimed that nothing new was happening, so there was neither cause for alarm nor need for government action.
Professor Armstrong nevertheless determined to pursue his proposed test of the alarmist forecast. By using the commonly adopted U.N. Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change forecast—3°C of warming per century—to represent Mr. Gore’s position, the theclimatebet.com has tracked the Armstrong-Gore “bet” with monthly updates.
Mr. Gore should be pleased to find that his grave concerns about a “tipping point” have turned out to be unfounded. As shown on theclimatebet.com, Professor Armstrong’s forecasts have been more accurate than Mr. Gore’s for 40 of the 60 months to date and for four of the five years. In fact, the latest global temperature is exactly where it was at the beginning of the “bet.”
Professor Armstrong was not surprised. With some minor exceptions, his forecast was consistent with evidence-based forecasting principles. In contrast, the IPCC’s forecasting procedures have been found to violate 72 of the 89 relevant principles.
When he proposed the bet, Professor Armstrong expected to have a somewhat less than 70% chance of winning given the natural variation in global mean temperatures for a ten-year period. In light of the results to date, he expects an even better chance of winning, but as Yogi Berra said, “It’s not over till it’s over.” Furthermore, policy decisions will require validations testing for hundreds of years, not for just one decade. At the time of writing, there has been no trend in global mean temperatures for 16 years.
January 19, 2013
I have a $1000 dollar bet running witha U.S. friend that the trend will be down between 2005 and 2020. At the rate dollars are being printed by Obama, it’ll probably buy us a rice beer each by then.
I’m winning at the moment though.
It’s called putting your money where your mouth is, and Mr. Gore obviously prefers taking money from where his mouth has persuaded gullible others to put it. Not the same thing.
How much money would Al Gore need to “put his money where his mouth is”?
The mean of the models is .2C per decade. Seems as though Armstrong has violated the principle of understanding the actual forecasts.
Tallbloke, I hate to sound cynical, but I hope the powers that be that are apparently adjusting temperatures to suit the needs of the AGW theory don’t cause you to lose your bet.
@krb981. Why do you think POTUS is printing money as if there was no tomorrow?
Mr. Mosher:
Please explain, and do incorporate details:
A how you derived or obtained the number .2 C
A1 if you did not derive, what is your source
B. name the models and their versions
C. the principle ( one, by your writing ) that has been violated
thanks and regards
Steven
‘Mr. Gore should be pleased to find that his grave concerns about a “tipping point” have turned out to be unfounded.’
But that doesn’t scare people into giving up their dreames,rights, future, and most important, Money that algor wants.
Steve Mosher~ There’s still time to take your money off algor.
Ah, another cryptic put down by the mighty Mosh! Do you think he knows how puerile it makes him seem? Enough folks on other sites have pointed it out. Maybe it’s due a social skills deficiency. Or perhaps he truly is incapable of explaining even the simplest of things in terms that are denuded of childish spittle. Whatever it is, it has reinforced my decision just to quickly gloss over his eviscerations…
re Steven Mosher
Bet has been running 60months or 5 years.
5/100*3= .15C above 2007temp
graph looks right to me, care to help us out?
With nearly every month above the 1981-2010 average, seems like that’s evidence right there. If there was no warming, shouldn’t it be cooling?
“The mean of the models is .2C per decade. Seems as though Armstrong has violated the principle of understanding the actual forecasts.”
That would equate to 1.75 C by 2100 provided business as usual continues, which would be no cause for alarm and look very bad for Gore. He wants something = or > 3, at the very least.
tallbloke says:
January 19, 2013 at 12:03 pm
I have a $1000 dollar bet running witha U.S. friend that the trend will be down between 2005 and 2020. At the rate dollars are being printed by Obama, it’ll probably buy us a rice beer each by then.
I’m winning at the moment though.
===============================================================
It could be worse. My step-grandfather immigrated to the US from Germany between the wars. He never told exactly why he left but he did lament the day the price of a glass of beer went from 4000 marks to 8000 marks.
Speaking of putting one’s money where one’s mouth is, how would that work with an endoproct like Gore?
@Steven Mosher
>The mean of the models is .2C per decade.
I think that the mean of the models varied with time. Are you saying that the mean of the models is presently 0.2 dec C/decade?
It certainly was not 5 years ago! The model means I have seen do not ‘average’ 0.2 it is more like 0.3 but that does not mean I have seen everything nor everything recent.
If the current crop of iterations come up with 0.2 it may only mean that the ridiculous 0.8/decade models have been put into the paper shredder and that saner programmers were hired.
Removing the silly models could easily bring the ‘average’ down to 0.2 but they would still be wrong, of course. If and when it reaches the point of matching reality (zero) we will be having real progress in the dark art of climate forcasting.
my birthday present to myself tomorrow is a very white hemisphere .. not all evidence can be falsified ,,,
Steven Mosher says:
January 19, 2013 at 12:16 pm
“The mean of the models is .2C per decade. Seems as though Armstrong has violated the principle of understanding the actual forecasts.”
I am eager to learn more about the “actual forecasts”, Steven, and, oh, you have violated principle #1 of the IPCC: Never use the word forecast. Always say “projection”. We don’t want anything that can be validated or, egads, falsified, now do we?
Kindlekinser says:
Evidence of what?
And no, just because there is no warming doesn’t mean there should be cooling, and just because there was some warming doesn’t mean it will continue. The reality is:
1. We don’t have much in the way of really accurate temperature measurement.
2. The concept of a “global temperature” is laughable. It’s meaningless. Assigning meaning to it is self-delusion.
3. Using 1981-2010 as a baseline is, as with any other baseline, arbitrary and meaningless.
4. We simply do not know enough about climate drivers to make predictions of either higher OR lower temperatures. The safe bet is always going to be “Stable”.
Steven Mosher says:
January 19, 2013 at 12:16 pm
The mean of the models is .2C per decade. Seems as though Armstrong has violated the principle of understanding the actual forecasts.
Perhaps, since the bet was made in 2007, Armstrong was using the TAR as a reference which says:
For the end of the 21st century (2071 to 2100), the mean change in global average surface air temperature, relative to the period 1961 to 1990, is 3.0°C …
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/vol4/english/101.htm
It’s obvious that there’s been a 50% reduction in IPCC alarmism between the TAR and AR4 – humiliating enough but more to come!
Considering were on the downside of cycle 24 and that the ENSO is going cold I would predict that AL is going to lose the bet big time… If the math holds true, it will be a decline of .1 to .2 degrees C in five years…
Mosher got it right.
For all those jumping all over him, cryptic though his answer is (which by all means rake him over the coals for) he does have the facts correct.
Sensitivity to CO2 doubling has had a consensus estimate of 3 degrees since AR4.
Current Warming Rate based on BAU emission scenarios has had a consensus estimate of 0.2 degrees per decade since AR4, and this estimate appears to have been carried into AR5 based on the leaked version.
Of course if one wants to debate the matter from the perspective of actual science, it is ludicrous to attach a linear trend to a logarithmic effect super imposed on a cyclical system with a negative feedback that is exponential. A linear number is easy to calculate and easy to express, but as Einstein would have quipped, that’s not right, that’s not even wrong!
Professor Armstrong will win this bet, Cycle 24 seems to be winding down and the effects of such a weak cycle are only just beginning to be noticed, alarmists are now hoping for business as usual for Cycle 25, I was thinking this is why the met office cooled their prediction to the end of cycle 24.
One can obtain the CMIP3 (AR4) multi-model mean from the KNMI Explorer.
Over the period Jan2008-Dec2017, the OLS trend in global average surface temperature is 0.019 K/yr.
Mosh comment like cryptic bunny carrot.
Where are these 89 principals listed and justified?