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?
Don’t forget Hansen’s brilliant pronouncement from March, 2011.
“Finally, we can mention one other high probability bet, relevant to a Congressional hearing later this week. Dr. J. Scott Armstrong, a marketing professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania will testify about climate change to a committee of the House of Representatives. Armstrong, we are told, has made a bet that a prediction of no temperature change over a 10-year period starting in 2007 will prove more accurate than predictions of global warming. Observations (Figure 21 of Reference 3) show a linear warming rate over the past 50 years of 0.17°C per decade. Our climate model slows this down to about 0.15°C for the near future because of the change in GHG growth shown in Figure 2(b) above. That bet, warming of 0.15°C/decade would have a high probability of winning over a bet of no temperature change.”
Hopelessly off topic, but when looking at the Arctic ice extent in the resources pages, can someone explain why there is “more Canada” in 2013 than there was in 2007.
Looking at the side by side comparison from Cryosphere Today, I initially noted that the 2013 main body of ice just looked smaller in the middle, ignoring the bits on the edges, the sizes just seemed smaller.
Then I noticed the just west of those polar Canadian Islands in the middle of Canada there is visibly more area designated as land.
I don’t understand this, but it sure will make a comparison rather difficult.
At this rate, Mosher will soon rank below me as a nobody 😉
…Armstrong’s forecasts have been more accurate than Mr. Gore’s…
——————————–
Yeah, so what? What kind of legitimacy can Armstrong have after his confession that he had been using drugs?
And you peeple think your so smart!
Reblogged this on This Got My Attention and commented:
Algore, skilled at fleecing the Al Jazeera crew when he sold bankrupt Current TV to them for a half billion bucks, doesn’t seem to be very good at predicting future temperatures. Perhaps he was thinking of his own hot air? He doesn’t seem too concerned with his own carbon footprint.
18 Jan: UK Daily Mail: Black ice alert: Britain to be stay white for TWO WEEKS as country faces ‘once in a decade big freeze’
Met office warns of treacherous conditions as yesterday’s snow turns to ice with temperatures staying below freezing
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2264917/UK-weather-Treacherous-black-ice-causes-travel-chaos-country-forecasters-predict-snow-afternoon-Heathrow-cancels-200-flights.html
> Ah, another cryptic put down by the mighty Mosh!
A safer bet might be against Steven Mosher explaining his one-liners …
Al Gore cannot be expected to make a prediction and bet on that. This is asking too much from a non-scientist and Al Gore is man enough to admit it. Al Gore has agreed to consult an expert on this matter and has already contacted his proctologist.
He coauthored a paper Polar Bear Population Forecasts: A Public-Policy
Forecasting Audit chastising the methods used to predict climate had endangered the bears. While alarmist were predicting the bear populations would soon crash, Inuits argued it is the time of the most polar bears, and the most recent surveys again show the alarmists were wrong and indeed it is the time of the most polar bears!
tallbloke says At the rate dollars are being printed by Obama, it’ll probably buy us a rice beer each by then.
Tallbloke you sound like someone from the Austrian school of monetary value. yes?
@mosh. Does it matter what the mean of the models is, if indeed that is a correct number? Did the bet propose to be against the mean of the models or against the IPCC forecast based upon models.
No point wasting time and energy on arguing what it’s not just to find something wrong with it. You’ll end up a contrary old bastard just like me ( please mods, there is no insult intended there, it’s common parlance here )
Ignore that last comment. Seems that they shade of grey they use and only sleepy eyes don’t mix well.
Steve Mosher is ever predictable, just like the continued lack of warming. You can tell when he’s upset because he always drops some contemptuously cryptic put down that no one understands but him. Mr. Mosher, or is it doctor…I’m an open-minded person. I’m interested in contrary view points. Help me understand what you’re talking about.
Shame on Prof Armstrong from taking advantage of a clueless snake oil salesman. A civilized person of acomplishment and wisdom does not make bets with people who are obviously impared.
What’s up with the academics in Pennsylvania?
Michael Mann is very upset that wunderkind Nate Silver has found Scott Armstrong to be so convincing. He sulks and bitches at length in http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-e-mann/nate-silver-climate-change_b_1909482.html
“Armstrong is a well-known climate change denier with close ties to fossil fuel industry front groups like the Heartland Institute, which earlier this year campaigned to compare people who accept the reality of climate change to the Unabomber, and secretly planned to infiltrate elementary schools across the country with industry-funded climate change denial propaganda.”
Does that sound like a pillar of the climate community displaying his cool objectivity?
“the IPCC’s forecasting procedures have been found to violate 72 of the 89 relevant principles.”
Is this written up anywhere is a form intelligible to non-specialists?
“as Yogi Berra said”
Who? Is that a typo for “Yogi Bear”?
Professor J. Scott Armstrong is the guy who wrote papers like “Bafflegab,” American Journal of Nursing, September 1982. and Wanted: Dull, Obscure Research Absolute MUST READS
More Armstrong Papers are listed with links here.
jim Steele says:
January 19, 2013 at 2:52 pm
“tallbloke says At the rate dollars are being printed by Obama, it’ll probably buy us a rice beer each by then.
Tallbloke you sound like someone from the Austrian school of monetary value. yes?”
At some point in the near future – when they have enough trade agreements using Yuan, Gold or barter trade in place – the Chinese will cut the Yuan loose from the USD. That will be the moment when the USD goes into freefall.
Hmm, thinking about it, the Chinese ALREADY control the value of the Dollar.
Mark and two Cats says:
January 19, 2013 at 2:23 pm
Took me a few seconds to realize what you were talking about. LOL.
In so many words Steve Mosher just said proper predicting is chasing red lines off into the future. Best not to let him manage your portfolio.
Can someone tell me: are the models used for predicting climate temperature based on the assumption that there WILL be a rise, or do they treat the data impartially?
@ Mark & 2 Cats … at least Armstrong finally realized the game was up and stopped digging. Same problem, different game for Al et al. LOTS of money as incentive to keep the hole deep and dark and hot!
RoHa: Yogi Berra: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra
Armstrong made a better bet than Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev made. In 2005 they bet $10,000 with climate modeler James Annan that global temperatures during 2012-2017 would be cooler than 1998-2003. Armstrong bet against a rising temperature.
Speaking of bets, Nate Silver in “The Signal and the Noise” quotes Gavin Schmidt:
“I could easily give you odds on the next decade being warmer than this decade,” he told me. “You want 100-to-1 odds, I’d give it to you.”
Tallbloke, you might want to talk to Gavin.
Apparently, it was once much warmer in the northern latitudes than it has been recently: “In addition, melting patches of ice that had been in place for thousands of years in the mountains of the Canadian High Arctic revealed a treasure trove of ancient hunting tools.” http://news.yahoo.com/storms-turn-lard-wwii-shipwreck-203802175.html
The implication is rather OBVIOUS.
Mann is such a whiney baby. On the other hand, maybe he has reason to since the edifice he built his career on is crumbling like clay in the rain.
Will Gore declare bankruptcy before the bet is up?
Dallas Beaufort says:
January 19, 2013 at 4:52 pm
Will Gore declare bankruptcy before the bet is up?
Gore has been bankrupt practically for ever. Intellectually bankrupt, that is.
Another drive-by from Mosher. Not only predictable but sadly becoming the norm from him.
To the Annonn who posted the comment “Mosh comment like cryptic bunny carrot.”
Please note that this comment is not sufficiently cryptic to properly mock Mr. Mosher.
This guy? Gotta love the initial comment on scientific forecast / forecasts by scientists …..
Oldie but goodie. ;*)
A. Watts says above:
“At the time of writing, there has been no trend in global mean
temperatures for 16 years.”
Have a look at smoothed HadCRUT3, or even UAH smoothed by the
smoothing method used for smoothing HadCRUT3. It looks to me that
only the last 11 years (HadCRUT3) or 12 years (UAH) had a flat linear
trend.
So let’s see now.
We start off with a fake bet. Anyone think that if I made a fake bet with Anthony and built a web site around that it would be in any way legitimate?
Then we have:”He was unable to find a single scientific forecast to support the claim that the Earth was becoming dangerously warmer or colder.” Did he not look or did he just close his eyes when evidence appeared like the anti-Darwin loons do.
And then we have a supposed expert in data analysis propose a bet based on a statistically invalid short 10 year time span. We know from the noise in the measurements and the natural variability in the climate system that this is too short a period.
And the bet started beginning 2007 which means the 10 year period is up end 2016. 4 years to go.
Methinks passing judgement on this fake bet now is premature.
Reblogged this on RubinoWorld.
As an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D.) I have been delighted over the years at the efforts of a Penn professor to challenge forecasts of climate change disaster and am equally delighted that a lower grade academic from Pennsylvania State University has gone apoplectic because an intelligent person like Nate Silver finds agreement with Dr. Armstrong. The incredible thing about Mann’s Huff Post piece is his smear of Nate Silver because he got a degree in Economics from the University of Chicago. That Silver is a self-described liberal suggests an open mind on his part. Pity that Michael Mann’s mind is so closed.
Donald L. Klipstein says:
January 19, 2013 at 8:11 pm
A. Watts says above:
“At the time of writing, there has been no trend in global mean
temperatures for 16 years.”
To the nearest year, there has been no warming at all for 16 years, statistical or otherwise, on several data sets:
1. HadCrut3: since May 1997 or 15 years, 7 months (goes to November)
2. Sea surface temperatures: since March 1997 or 15 years, 10 months (goes to December)
3. RSS: since December 1996 or 16 years, 1 month (goes to December)
See the graph below to show it all.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.33/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.0/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.1/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.25/plot/rss/from:1997.0/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.1
This analysis indicates for how long there has not been significant warming at the 95% level on various data sets.
For RSS the warming is NOT significant for over 23 years.
For RSS: +0.126 +/-0.136 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1990
For UAH, the warming is NOT significant for over 19 years.
For UAH: 0.143 +/- 0.173 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
For Hacrut3, the warming is NOT significant for over 19 years.
For Hadcrut3: 0.098 +/- 0.113 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
For Hacrut4, the warming is NOT significant for over 18 years.
For Hadcrut4: 0.098 +/- 0.111 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995
For GISS, the warming is NOT significant for over 17 years.
For GISS: 0.116 +/- 0.122 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1996
Lazy Teenager,
Dr. Armstrong is an expert in data analysis and he understands well the “bet” that he has made. The IPCC’s AR4 report stated their confidence that the earth’s average surface temperature would increase by an average of 0.2 degrees C per decade going forward from the date of the report. If one takes the decadal average of the GTA from the 1880’s to the 2000’s (using NOAA’s database) and then does a first difference of these decadal averages in order to make the time series non-stationary, the standard deviation of this once-differenced time series is .098 degrees C. This is not surprising since the standard deviation of once differencing the GTA time series for one year, two year, five year, 10 year, etc. period is about 0.1 degrees C over whatever period one chooses.
So Dr. Armstrong has chosen a 10 year period because he knows that the standard deviation of a detrended time series of the GTA is 0.1 degrees over any given period and choosing the 10-year period means he has chosen a length in his forecast that would be seen as meaningful by people who understand statistics. This means that his forecast of no change in the GTA over a 10 year period can be statistically tested against the IPCC’s forecast of a 0.2 degree C increase decade-on-decade since the difference between the two forecasts is two sigma or the standard statistical measure of significant difference between these two data points.
In other words, those who have a clear understanding of statistics can understand well that if the GTA trend over the 10-year period of Dr. Armstrong’s “bet” is zero, then the claim that the decadal increase in the GTA will be 0.2 degrees C over time is statistically refuted. Lazy Teenager, you and others who seem not to have a clear understanding of statistics always claim that periods of a decade (or whatever) are too short to make valid comparison are in fact completely wrong. Lazy Teenager, you are the one who does not understand the natural variation in the climate series and it is you that does not understand that a 10 year period is sufficiently long to make a test of a decadal temperature forecast given the nature of the forecast made in the IPCC’s AR4 report.
Sorry,
I should have said stationary time series earlier rather than non-stationary in my above post. Once differencing a time series eliminates linear (or close to linear) trends and makes a non-stationary time series stationary. A stationary time series is effectively noise and its variation over time can be analyzed in order to understand the natural variation in the data after any trend has been eliminated. Thus, the once-differenced standard deviation of the GTA tells us the natural temperature variation in the climate over any given period, This natural variation is, according to the GTA data, about 0.1 C over whatever period length chosen.
>>
davidmhoffer says:
January 19, 2013 at 1:48 pm
. . . but as Einstein would have quipped, that’s not right, that’s not even wrong!
<<
Einstein may have appreciated credit, but I believe Pauli’s considered the quote’s original author.
Jim
In his video’d talk Armstrong makes a distinction between “scientific forecasts” (those that are based on the principles of scientific forecasting, a topic on which he is a specialist) and “forecasts by scientists,” which he considers to be mere expressions of belief, as poorly based as predictions by other groups of experts, like economists.
=========
I don’t think the head post was written by Armstrong, although he is given the credit for it, because it refers to him in the third person.
If you subtract 0.29 deg. C. from the UHA satellite data set for the lower troposphere from 1998 on then the trendline is virtually flat. What happened in 1998?
100,000,000 plus reason say St Gore has already won no matter what the facts .
Is Steven Mosher says: becoming a once only event on these postings?
Don B said on January 19, 2013 at 4:21 pm
Looks like Galina and Vladimir should win that bet. Though that might depend on what was agreed as the yardstick, and the exact start and end dates.
I don’t know how you get Wood For Trees to show separate means. Guess I have 5 years to find out.
@ Jim.
Thanks. That article solves a problem. Yogi Bear is internationally famous, and I and my friends used to wonder why he was called “Yogi”, since he didn’t practice any sort of Yoga. It seems he was named after this baseball guy.
“Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters consider global warming to be at least a somewhat serious problem. However, they remain closely divided as to whether it’s caused primarily by human activity or by longer term planetary trends. And few are willing to pay significantly higher utility costs or taxes in an attempt to address the global warming issue. Forty-nine percent (49%) are not willing to pay anything more. Another 25% are willing to pay only $100 a year. Just 19% are willing to pay $300 a year or more. ”
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
Does anyone have a link to the Nate Silver article endorsing Armstrong that has offended Mann?
“Michael says:
January 19, 2013 at 2:02 pm
Where are these 89 principals listed and justified?”
If you’d been paying attention, you would notice that Prof. Armstrong has written on the subject voluminously in peer reviewed journals and at least one book.
http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Forecasting-Researchers-Practitioners-International/dp/0792379306/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358690353&sr=1-1&keywords=scott+armstrong
LazyTeenager says:
January 19, 2013 at 8:33 pm
Methinks it would be nice if you followed your own advice. 🙂
RoHa says:
January 20, 2013 at 5:16 am
> It seems he [Yogi Bear] was named after this baseball guy.
Yep, they both reached the public’s attention in the 1950s.
He played for the New York Yankees, which were managed by Casey Stengel. Both of them managed to torture English into timeless nonsense statements that say more than were meant at the time.
A couple “Stengelese” comments:
On his three catchers: “I got one that can throw but can’t catch, one that can catch but can’t throw, and one who can hit but can’t do either.
Stengel remarked that he had been fired for turning 70, and that he would “never make that mistake again.”
Kelvin Vaughan asks “What happened in 1998?”
Release of heat into the atmosphere from the 97/98 El Nino.
Kelvin Vaughan says:
January 20, 2013 at 3:07 am
> If you subtract 0.29 deg. C. from the UHA satellite data set for the lower troposphere from 1998 on then the trendline is virtually flat. What happened in 1998?
Huge El Niño. The warmed water gradually migrated to higher latitudes. Bob Tisdale keeps pointing out that El Niños do a better job heating the planet than La Niñas do to cool it.
The really serious bet is for those who have invested their monies into carbon schemes. They may lose their shirts, unless they have hedged their bets with big oil.
BBC pension investments.
http://www.iigcc.org/about-us/members
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/12/breaking-the-secret-list-of-the-bbc-28-is-now-public/#comment-1146022
Ric Werme says:
January 20, 2013 at 6:34 am
….Bob Tisdale keeps pointing out that El Niños do a better job heating the planet than La Niñas do to cool it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So far….
We have not yet seen what happens when we get wimpy El Niños or La nada and lots of La Niñas but that may be what we will be seeing in the future.
Even the EPA shows the SST has gone flat recently graph There has to be a way for the oceans to cool and I would thing the ratio of the number of El Niños and La Niñas over time would be it.
So the heat from the 97/98 El Nino has not escaped into space. It has just sat around in the lower troposphere ever since?
@Gail
TI had no idea the EPA publishes graphs of Sea Surface Temperature !
They should be defunded and sent back to their core duties. Climate science should most definitely not be part of their remit.
“So the heat from the 97/98 El Nino has not escaped into space. It has just sat around in the lower troposphere ever since?”
No, it remained in the oceans as warm water being slowly distributed around the world for years afterwards, keeping atmospheric temperatures a fairly high level.
And technically, it’s the major La Nina from 1994-96 that actually created that huge pool of warm water in the western pacific. The 1997/8 El Nino just distributed it across the Pacific and around the world. This was followed later by the massive double La Nina years of 1999-2003, that created more hot water, and later distributed it in the 2005 El Nino. Those two major La Ninas and subsequent El Ninos are what has raised air temperatures worldwide. ANd yet, even that later cycle didn’t create a new high temperature level, it merely sustained the same levels created by the first wave. As the ENSO patterns have changed, with the PDO going negative, there’s no sign yet of any any further increase in atmospheric temps in the works. That’s why many think we may begin to see an actual reduction in atmospheric temps in the coming years.
That’s why it’s also a bit misleading to say that El Ninos warm the atmosphere, while La Ninas cool it. La Ninas trap ocean heat at deep subsurface levels in the eastern Pacific, while El NInos actually partially release that heat into the atmosphere, where some of it gets lost to space. (Other parts travel in subsurface columns around the world even for years, surfacing and releasing their heat more slowly into the air). So as far as heat content goes, El Ninos are actually cooling events, and La Ninas are warming events. But it depends on how the cycles actually dominate one another. The cooling effect of La Ninas on the air has to do with it creating upwellings of cold deep water in the eastern Pacific, that then dominates the equatorial region with cold surface water. But as this water warms at the surface, and piles up in the western pacific, this creates an overall warming of the oceans, not a cooling.
As the PDO goes negative, the La Nina pattern becomes fairly consistent, but not excessive, allowing the warmed water to be retained in the eastern pacific at moderate levels, and the El Ninos never develop sufficient strength to redistribute the water worldwide. The effect is a general cooling effect.
@Ric
“Yep, they both reached the public’s attention in the 1950s”
Maybe the American public. The rest of the world only noticed Yogi Bear.
@Ric.
Hence our puzzlement at his name.
Mosher’s point is a fair one, but maybe this is what Al Gore predicted when they talked? A lot of what he claims is well beyond even the most ludicrous statements issued by IPCC.
Heck, Al’s duck-out excuse was “tipping point” wasn’t it?
Mosher’s point is a fair one, but maybe this is what Al Gore predicted when they talked? A lot of what he claims is well beyond even the most ludicrous statements issued by IPCC.
Heck, Al’s duck-out excuse was “tipping point” wasn’t it?
Put your money where your mouth is Mosh.
I am talking small money because of my income. £20 which is 2/7 of my weekly income.
DaveE.
A recent thread was Great Moments in Failed Predictions
Professor Scott Armstrong also looked at “expert predictions” and essentially said the experts are no better than anyone else at getting the predictions correct.
Forecasting: Of Suckers and Seers
Armstrong is well worth reading. His courses must be very popular given his ability of taking a dry subject and injecting humor.
@Mosher: You wrote 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.
+++++++++++
If you bothered to read the assessment of the IPCC at the time, it reads as follows:
“An expert assessment based on the combination of available constraints from observations (assessed in Chapter 9) and the strength of known feedbacks simulated in the models used to produce the climate change projections in this chapter indicates that the equilibrium global mean SAT warming for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), or ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’, is likely to lie in the range 2°C to 4.5°C, with a most likely value of about 3°C.”
Question for Mosher. So where do you get off changing the goal post again?
El Niño events are net cooling events, not warming events – energy stored in the ocean leaves the earth system. Similar to what happens when ice cover is lost in the Arctic ocean by melting through infusion of warmer water from lower latitudes or by open water exposure from ice movement and breakup caused by wind storms. Heat is released from the ocean by radiation and conduction, passes through the atmosphere by convection and radiation, and then disappears to the dark spaces between the stars and galaxies beyond, never to return. They warm nothing with any permanence, and they in no way attract or can attract more solar energy than they release.
You should have specified constant or real dollars. You can have some fun by suggesting the terms of the bet be retroactively revised to be paid in 2005 dollars. The response will tell you much about your opponent’s confidence just now in his wager.
For Prof. Armstrong and Mr. Gore
I think that this is not based on accepted scientific indicators, nor does it have anything to do with the real causes of climate change.
The real causes of climate change are directly related to the interaction between the planets, the Sun causing changes, and the appearance of the sun, in the opposite effect, changes the conditions on the planets, and even climate change.
These are many different cycles of action and duration.
Could addresses of these two gentlemen, I put forth ideas to them for all time to know what this whole issue. Of course, if they accept the following agreement. I think they are so powerful that they can provide the technical and commercial terms to perform this huge undertaking.
“They warm nothing with any permanence, and they in no way attract or can attract more solar energy than they release.”
Not entirely true. By changing the pattern of cloud cover over the tropical Pacific, ENSO conditions can actually change the total solar energy received by the oceans. They can also store that solar energy deep within the oceans, and distribute it around the world, resulting in actual changes in the total energy balance of the climate system.
Any appeal to equilibrium on a global scale necessarily invokes timespans well beyond the reach of accurate measurement. It is therefore useful and used as a fudge factor.
A bit late, but another paper by Armstrong & Green 2007 concerning Climate forecasting should be required reading. The paper also discusses the “Seer Sucker” theory mentioned by Gail Combs above. So if we are “deniers” then warmists could be seen as “Seer Suckers”*. Love it!
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/4361/1/MPRA_paper_4361.pdf
* “No matter how much evidence exists that seers do not exist, seers will find suckers”.
Mods, please correct Typo as below:
* “No matter how much evidence exists that seers do not exist, seers will find suckers”.