By Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger and Patrick J. Michaels
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is in the midst of finishing its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) on the topic. Based on a series of content leaks, it seems as if the AR5 has so much internal inconsistency that releasing it in its current form will be a major fiasco.
The central issue of climate change science is the earth’s equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS)—that is, how much the earth’s average surface temperature will increase as a result of a doubling the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. New and mutually consistent re-assessments of this important parameter are appearing in the scientific literature faster than the slow and arduous IPCC assessment process can digest them (presuming it even wants to—given that they are making the current AR5 look pretty bad).
Further, even if the IPCC is able to do an adequate job of assimilating this evolving and quite convincing science, the vast majority of the rest of the IPCC’s report will also have to be changed as it is highly dependent on the magnitude of the climate sensitivity.
By now, though, it’s too late in the game (the final report is due out in early 2014)—the cows have all left the IPCC’s barn on these subjects and it’s too late to round them all up and rebrand them.
The First Order Draft (FOD) of the IPCC’s AR5 was leaked/made public back in December 2012. In the FOD, the IPCC recognized the significance of the earth climate sensitivity, calling it:
[T]he single most important measure of climate response because the response of many other climate variables to an increase in CO2 scales with the increase in global-mean surface temperature.
The IPCC went on to assess the current scientific knowledge as to the magnitude of the climate sensitivity this way:
Despite considerable advances in climate models and in understanding and quantifying climate feedbacks, the assessed literature still supports the conclusion from AR4 [the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report published in 2007] that climate sensitivity is likely in the range 2–4.5°C, and very likely above 1.5°C. The most likely value remains near 3°C. An ECS greater than about 6–7°C is very unlikely, based on combination of multiple lines of evidence. [emphasis in original]
The IPCC’s “mostly likely value” in the FOD is 3.0°C. This is interesting in and of itself because according to the same First Order Draft the average climate sensitivity produced by the climate models used by the IPCC is 3.4°C, which is already some 13% higher than the IPCC’s 3.0 degrees.
If the IPCC thinks there was something systematically wrong with the models it was using, then it should just come out and say it. The fact that the IPCC (currently) will not do so does not exactly inspire confidence in its ability to stand up and criticize. In reality, the average climate sensitivity of a collection of results published within the past 2-3 years suggests that the value is closer to 2.0°C, and recent observations of the pace of global temperature rise hint at a value even a bit lower than that.
The IPCC has come under growing pressure from the scientific community—especially members of the commission directly involved in climate sensitivity research—to reflect these new, lower estimates.
There are some indications, though, that the IPCC times may be a–changing.
According to The Economist, which claims to have seen the most recent draft of the IPCC’s AR5, the IPCC’s assessment of climate sensitivity has now been altered. Here is how The Economist describes what is in the new IPCC draft concerning the equilibrium climate sensitivity:
Both the 2007 IPCC report and a previous draft of the new assessment reflected earlier views on the matter by saying that the standard measure of climate sensitivity (the likely rise in equilibrium temperature in response to a doubling of CO2 concentration) was between 2°C and 4.5°C, with 3°C the most probable figure. In the new draft, the lower end of the range has been reduced to 1.5°C and the “most likely” figure has been scrapped. That seems to reflect a growing sense that climate sensitivity may have been overestimated in the past and that the science is too uncertain to justify a single estimate of future rises.
If this is true, the combination of the IPCC lowering the low end of the range of possible climate sensitivity values and the IPCC deciding not to provide its assessment of the “most likely” value strongly suggests that the average climate model sensitivity of 3.4°C is even further removed from the science on the topic and less justifiable. Just how far removed the climate models really are is kept under wraps by the IPCC by its no longer supplying a “most likely” value. If the “most likely” value were to be assessed at 2.5°C, then the climate model average would be 36% too high compared to the science. If the “most likely” value were to be 2.0°C, then the model average climate sensitivity would be some 70% too high.
Because, as the IPCC admits, the change in many other climate variables “scales with the increase in global-mean surface temperature,” the climate impacts derived from the model projections (which essentially is what the IPCC is all about) are also (substantially) too high.
The IPCC has three options:
- Round-file the entire AR5 as it now stands and start again.
- Release the current AR5 with a statement that indicates that all the climate change and impacts described within are likely overestimated by around 50%, or
- Do nothing and mislead policymakers and the rest of the world.
We’re betting on door number 3.
On a final note, the problem of large government climate change assessments being scientifically outdated even before they are released is not atypical of “group science,” which is hugely expensive, grossly inefficient, and often is designed to justify policy. We noted the same thing in our comments on the recent draft report of the U.S. effort at assessing climate change impacts, the “National Climate Assessment” (NCA), stating:
To the extent that the recent literature ultimately produces a more accurate estimate of the equilibrium climate sensitivity than does the climate model average, it means that, in general, all of the projections of future climate change given in the NCA are, by default, some 40% too large (too rapid) and the associated (and described) impacts are gross overestimates.
Our recommendation is that an alternative set of projections be developed for all topics discussed in the NCA, incorporating the latest scientific findings on the lowered value of equilibrium climate sensitivity. Without the addition of the new projections, the NCA will be obsolete on the day of its official release.
And to think, these national and international assessments are undertaken to justify policy actions.
Scary thought.
Maybe (just maybe) the AR6 will have an update to these important issues, after another lustrum or two of no warming has had time to make its effects felt.
“GlynnMhor says:
July 26, 2013 at 4:38 pm
Maybe (just maybe) the AR6…”
IMVHO the chance of there being an AR6 is, at this time, best described as “very slim” if not anorexic!
Hoisted on their own petard. Sensitivity will be found to be even lower once the ocean cycles and solar variation effects are properly quantified and included.
I do hope you’re correct, Green Sand.
But I fear the parasitic paradigm will burden us for another decade before the reality becomes unmistakable.
I don’t think this can possibly be right. Did you reverse these two?
BTW & OT: I really enjoyed your Carbon Tax Temperature Savings Calculator, incorporated by reference herin
This is exactly the kind of effort needed to demonstrate the insanity of climate mitigation strategies. Lord Monckton does it with long (but eloquent) posts. Your approach is better IMHO.
BTW & OT, part 2. Thanks to Joanne Nova for the write-up and link to your calculator.
BTW & OT, part 1.5 (correction).
“herin” should be “herein”. [never post in haste, or after more than 2 glasses of wine].
Gavin will fiddle up the temperature of the globe just in time to save the high estimates. Combined with a little cooling of the past.
Some history books will have to be corrected. The Dust Bowl was obviously just dusty, not hot. Unternehmen Barbarossa got stuck when liquid oxygen started raining down on the Wehrmacht. There, fixed that. BTW everyone was happy in those days of eternal frost. Nobody needed fridges. In fact, nobody had a fridge. Coincidence? There ain’t no such thing as coincidence.
The Team engages in government-funded group grope “science”.
Get ready for the doomers to concede that the models are worthless. But they’ll say “so what? The ‘established physics’ still holds, and we’re still moving headlong toward doom.” Yeah, because the ocean has eaten the heat or something.
No, fact is the current 15 year temperature stall, and the current lack of any semblance of a connection between CO2 & temperatures… puts this “established physics” in question.
The climate is clearly not responding in the way that the “established physics” indicated it would. The “established physics” is incorrect, or something else about the warmists’ thesis is terribly wrong. Maybe “Gaia” is a homoeostatic system with lots of mechanisms to keep temperature within narrow limits. Much like the body of a mammal. Who knows? But one thing, I look at the temperature evidence, and I don’t see any major perturbation. Now we have a 15 year stall which is inconsistent with theory, and before that, for well over a century, we see the temperatures at low and higher CO2 times rising and falling at the virtually the same rate (so CO2 is having NO effect): http://www.c3headlines.com/2013/06/ipccs-gold-standard-hadcrut-confirms-co2s-impact-on-global-temps-statistically-immaterial-insignific.html
@ur momisugly Alan Watt
“more than 2 glasses of wine”
Well that explains it.
(3.4 – 2.5) / 2.5 * 100 = 36%
(3.4 – 2.0) / 2.0 * 100 = 70%
4. Shred all copies, recycle and reissue as extra soft double ply tissue with perforations for the publics convenience.
“Climate sensitivity” to a doubling from fictitious “pre-industrial” levels would be around -0.00000001 C.
To arrive at this figure you of course have to ignore all the evidence that temperature drives atmospheric CO2 concentration at all time scales.
Next reduce those ludicrous figures for DWLWIR slowing the cooling of the earths surface by 71percent. LWIR doesn’t effect the cooling rate of water that is free to evaporativly cool.
Now as the troposperic lapse rate created by convective circulation is near the adiabatic limit, there is little need for ajustment here. However speed of convective circulation and mechanical energy transport from the surface should be increased for higher radiative gas concentrations.
The ERL argument can be safely ignored as it is junk science. In a moving atmosphere, warm air masses are transporting energy high above the level of maximum IR opacity, where they always radiate more than the air at the altitude they are rising through.
You should find that radiative gases act to cool the atmosphere at all concentrations above 0.0ppm.
The IPCC however should continue to do static atmosphere calculations and assume surface IR absorption based on emissivity. Otherwise they won’t get paid.
ippc climate sensitivity = [agenda x income] -[regard for truth x ECS].
Dunno, maths seems perfect to me.
estimate 2.0 to 4.5
@John West
Thank you. I see now I did not read carefully enough. I took the phrase “the science” to mean measured temperatures and the sample ECS values to be plugged into the models.
Just using common sense (you know, that ability which is above all other areas), the predictions within a non-linear chaotic system, which by their nature become wider over time the further ahead you go, should be illegal as they are worse than astrology.
That said, there is a slightly linear element to the CO2/temperature relationship which does not exist in models but records, CO2 has risen by 50%, the temperature has risen 0.8C which is not all due to the CO2 officially. Therefore as we know no delay mechanism (what’s that Sooty, the deep oceans, come on, that’s a myth) then without a new law or two of physics to be discovered (like the ones in James Hansen’s mind) the sensitivity has pretty much been established around a level of 1, ie neutral. Expecting more than that actually dismisses the entire 1850-2013 data altogether, to quote Chris Folland of the Hadley Centre,
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”
QED
Here’s my recommendation. Scral the IPCC. Immediately.
Put yourself in their position. If you were on the IPCC gravy train would you rather:
(a) Keep taking the money for the next decade whilst looking foolish
(b) Become unemployed
The IPCC is a Watermelon organization and must be disbanded without delay.
Excellent, concise summary of where things are at re AR5 – and easily comprehended by those without degrees in physics or maths.
This is the kind of stuff that keeps me coming back here!
The IPCC has three options:
1. Round-file the entire AR5 as it now stands and start again.
2. Release the current AR5 with a statement that indicates that all the climate change and impacts described within are likely overestimated by around 50%, or
3. Do nothing and mislead policymakers and the rest of the world.
4. “It’s worse than we thought. 98% of the scientists in our pocket agree. The oceans are becoming acidic or alkaline. We’re all gonna die! Think of the children! Gaia demands we act! We must employ the precautionary principle immediately.”
It is notable that none of the impacts are significantly different from 0. I.e., doing nothing.
The IPCC should sequester AR5 in the deep ocean so it can be fully cooked by all the atmospheric heat that is hiding therein.
Well of course what should happen is that this political animal should be put out of our misery, having been totally discredited, finally and far overdue.
But we know that the real agenda still exists and won’t go down for the count so easily. So they’ll find a way to crank up the propaganda machine and fight desperately for the power they desire.
“The central issue of climate change science is the earth’s equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS)—that is, how much the earth’s average surface temperature will increase as a result of a doubling the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.”
??? —- doesn’t even crack the top 10! (that’s a factorial)
Rodney Dangerfield moment.
The real question is how many late-Holocene hominids will even notice?