IPCC has never waited for 30-year trends, and they were right.
Guest essay by Barry Brill
Under pressure at a media conference following release of its Summary for Policymakers, AR5 WG1 Co-Chair Thomas Stocker is reported to have said that “climate trends should not be considered for periods less than 30 years”.
Some have seen this as the beginning of an IPCC ploy to continue ignoring the 16-year-old temperature standstill for many years into the future. But even the IPCC must know that any such red herring is dead in the water:
1. When James Hansen launched the global warming scare in 1988, there had been no statistically significant warming over the previous 30 years and the warming trend during 1977-87 was 0.0°C. The IPCC was also established that year.
Source: Woodfortrees plot
2. At the time of the first IPCC report in 1991 (FAR), the warming trend was barely 11 years old.
Source: Woodfortrees plot
3. Most significantly, the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 adopted the UNFCCC treaty on the basis of a 30-year cooling trend followed by only 12 years of warming. That treaty dogmatically redefined “climate change” as being anthropogenic and eventually committed over 190 countries to combat “dangerous” warming.
4. The latest WG1 report bases its assessment of sea level rise and ocean heat content on the trend in satellite readings which have been available for only 19 years, coupled with ARGO reports for a period less than a decade. There is no apology for the short periods.
5. In 2007, the AR4 made much of the fact that the warming trend over the previous 15 years exceeded 0.2°C/decade. In 2013, the AR5 plays down the fact that there is no significant warming at all during the previous 15 years. (But AR5 cites 0.05°C/decade without mentioning that this figure is ±0.14°C).
6. If the IPCC wants to focus on 30-year trends, why did it make no comment on the fact that the current 30-year trend has fallen to 0.174°C/decade from the 0.182°C/decade trend that was the (1992-2006) backdrop to the AR4? Particularly, as the intervening 6-year period has been characterised by record increases in CO2 emissions.
7. Dr Stocker’s criticism of short-term trends as being influenced by start and end dates, ignores that long-term trends are similar. He picked a 60-year period (1951-2010) to produce a 0.12°C/decade trend, when a 70-year or 80-year period would have shown a much-reduced trend of 0.07°C.
8. WG1 scientists found it appropriate to include a statement in the AR5 SPM that
“Models do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10 –15 years.”
3 months later, this crucial sentence was disappeared by a secret conclave of politicians/bureaucrats – not by scientists.
9. Dr Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), told journalist David Rose that his question about the standstill was “ill-posed”. The WMO issues manuals on best practice for climatology and regards itself as the premier authority on measuring temperature trends. Here is what its manual WMO GUIDE TO CLIMATOLOGICAL PRACTICES (3RD EDTN) has to say about 30-year periods:
Chapter 4.8.1 Period of calculation“A number of studies have found that 30 years is not generally the optimal averaging period for normals used for prediction. The optimal period for temperatures is often substantially shorter than 30 years, but the optimal period for precipitation is often subtantially greater than 30 years.”And (at page 102):“The optimal length of record for predictive use of normals varies with element, geography, and secular trend. In general, the most recent 5‑ to 10‑year period of record has as much predictive value as a 30‑year record.”
Prior to release of the SPM, Bloomberg reported that some countries (notably Germany) wanted to wholly ignore the temperature standstill and pretend that the 20-year-old paradigm was still intact.
Few expected that would happen, predicting a sharply-reduced best estimate of sensitivity and rueful acknowledgment that natural factors had been under-estimated. The fact that days of debate culminated in this absurd canard about 30-year trends is a powerful indicator of just how desperate the climate establishment has now become.
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The IPCC represents a dying ideology long bereft of honesty, integrity or respect for the intelligence of the human race.
When I read this I decided to to see what I could find in the IPCC Summary For Policy Makers. Here are just a few results from the first 5 pages out of the total of 36 pages.
Further to my last comment can you imagine the number of periods less than 30 years in the full IPCC report? Thomas Stocker was caught off guard.
To put the thirty years in context it is worth remembering that the Summary does not mention a requirement for thirty years’ worth of trend and this post shows why. So where does it come from?
The response, that claims you need about twenty to thirty years of trend, came about because Rose of the Daily Mail asked how long it would take to falsify the climate models.
The significance of the unprepared answer is not that the answer was wrong but that it was unprepared.
There should be a way to falsify a model if it is scientific model. There was no prepared answer because the climate models are not falsifiable.
They express faith not knowledge.
Of course trends shorter than 30 years are used by the IPCC. The whole “we lost the heat in the deep sea, whoops” argument depends on the ARGO floats that aren’t thirty years old. But there are worse things wrong with Thomas Stocker’s evasion than that.
We need to also remember that around 1991 is when Hansen started making wholesale adjustments to the GISS record…
How much of that trend was real, and how much was created !!!
Well, 30 years for averaging local parameters such as rain falls, or temperatures, but for a real physical parameter supposed to be “constant” such as total energy there is no reason to process in the same way.
All is about what people call natural variablity, it means that they assume is a sort of equilibriulm state of climate only depending on external/gloabl forcings exits…how can they be sure about that???
“Prior to release of the SPM, Bloomberg reported that some countries (notably Germany) wanted to wholly ignore the temperature standstill and pretend that the 20-year-old paradigm was still intact.”
Makes sense that Germany would want to do this considering the massive sums of money they have committed to alternative energy (mainly wind and solar). It is far too politically embarrassing to admit that you’ve made that commitment on the basis of a false CAGW narrative.
Here in the U.S. we have committed billions to wind and solar as well, but not as much of our budget as Germany and other European countries. They’ve gotten themselves in a deep hole now. Sooner or later, they will all have to stop digging it deeper and crawl out of it. It’s just a matter of when rather than if.
M Courtney:
This is one of those rare occasions when I agree with you.
In your post at September 30, 2013 at 4:11 am you accurately identify how and why the ‘30-year period excuse occurred’. And you conclude saying
Yes, and the worst is that the previous IPCC Report made a prediction (n.b. NOT a “projection”) “the first two decades of the 21st century” which is already proven wrong by the halt in global temperature change.
The explanation for this is in IPCC AR4 (2007) Chapter 10.7 which can be read at
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-7.html
It says there
In other words, it was expected that global temperature would rise at an average rate of “0.2°C per decade” over the first two decades of this century with half of this rise being due to atmospheric GHG emissions which were already in the system.
This assertion of “committed warming” should have had large uncertainty because the Report was published in 2007 and there was then no indication of any global temperature rise over the previous 7 years. There has still not been any rise and we are now way past the half-way mark of the “first two decades of the 21st century”.
So, if this “committed warming” is to occur such as to provide a rise of 0.2°C per decade by 2020 then global temperature would need to rise over the next 6 years by about 0.4°C. And this assumes the “average” rise over the two decades is the difference between the temperatures at 2000 and 2020. If the average rise of each of the two decades is assumed to be the “average” (i.e. linear trend) over those two decades then global temperature now needs to rise before 2020 by more than it rose over the entire twentieth century. It only rose ~0.8°C over the entire twentieth century.
Simply, the “committed warming” has disappeared (perhaps it has eloped with Trenberth’s ‘missing heat’?).
This disappearance of the “committed warming” is – of itself – sufficient to falsify the AGW hypothesis as emulated by climate models. If we reach 2020 without any detection of the “committed warming” then it will be 100% certain that all projections of global warming are complete bunkum. And that is before the next IPCC Report (AR6) is scheduled.
Richard
lemiere jacques says:
September 30, 2013 at 4:13 am
Well yes – that is the whole basis of the AGW meme – that everything is pretty well constant (except [anything] derived from CO2, of course) and therefore all and any changes are most likely the result of CO2 and hence are anthropogenic. There are so many flaws in this basic reasoning it defies belief. In some ways it saddens me that the alarmists have drawn the skeptic scientists into arguning on the warmistas ‘terms’ – because the fundemental assumptions of AGW ‘theory’ are false – and demonstrably so, because we know there is a very large degree of natural variability. This simple fact shoots down the majority of AGW scientific basis simply because we cannot (and will likely never be able to) discern a human signal from the natural variability without many many decades of very good data……the warmista use short term data to suit, and make claims that data is too long [or] too short according to which argument they are using at the time. In truth, ALL such arguments cannot be scientifically supported.
Rajenda Pachuari wearing a sandwich board with the message which reads:
“IPCC predicts humanity is doomed”
Meets Realist wearing similar sandwich board which reads:
“RIPCC humanity will not be attending your funeral.
This is not about trends , it’s about divergence. The observational data is now outside the confidence levels given for the model predictions. That matters _now_ , we do not need to wait another 5 ,10 , 15 or 20 years. The models have failed.
1. When James Hansen launched the global warming scare in 1988, there had been no statistically significant warming over the previous 30 years and the warming trend during 1977-87 was 0.0°C. (…)
and
2. At the time of the first IPCC report in 1991 (FAR), the warming trend was barely 11 years old.
You didn’t prove that. You’re using GISTEMP LOTI and have referred to WFT, which presumably is using the most current GISTEMP LOTI version for your plots.
GISTEMP has been re-masticated, re-ingested, re-digested, and re-excreted so many times, it cannot be said that the past it shows now is the past that it showed in the past, nor that it shows what actually occurred.
Currently it shows if you shift that range forward just two years to 1979-1989, the warming has surged to 0.90°C/century according to GISTEMP.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1979/to:1989/plot/gistemp/from:1979/to:1989/trend
Greg:
re your post at September 30, 2013 at 4:34 am.
Yes, the models have failed. Indeed, for years I have known the models are failures because in 1999 I published on why the Hadley Center GCM does not model the climate system of the real Earth, and in 2007 Kiehl published that a variety of climate models are similarly wrong.
But the important point is that the disappearance of the “committed warming” falsifies the hypothesis of AGW which the models attempt to emulate. The ’30 year excuse’ attempts to hide the fact that the AGW-hypothesis is falsified by the halt in global temperature change.
(see my post at September 30, 2013 at 4:27 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/30/to-the-ipcc-forget-about-30-years/#comment-1431679 )
Richard
This is arguing science against politics. The SPM just has to allow the CAGW politicians to hold their positions for another few years. EPA in the US and the EC in the EU will continue even more rigidly enforcing new ‘carbon’ emissions and creating new taxes. With the failed media happily and uncritically chanting the press releases. As all the SPM chicanery was going on in Stockholm another UN group under pressure from the EC was creating a new carbon emissions trading scheme worldwide on all aircraft.
Do not fool yourselves that by deconstructing the SPM here or in ‘friendly’ media that the politicians or their bureaucracies will stop. The only thing that will grudgingly stop them is if as in Australia the politicians are voted out and those taking power take immediate action to curtail the bureaucracies that have been built. This will NOT be possible in the EU there is no mechanism to remove or stop the bureaucrats pushing carbon limits and carbon emissions taxes and trading. There will be great difficulty in the USA even with a landslide to Republicans in stopping the EPA killing industry and power generation by regulation. Behind both the EU and USA regulatory activities are a large number of financial institutions hoping to make fortunes salami slicing ‘their share’ of carbon tax monies and running their operation who are promising untold riches to politicians and bureaucrats, These are supporting questionable ‘green energy’ schemes and subsidies that worldwide run into trillions of dollars of laundering schemes to political ‘supporters’.
Does anyone really think that this will be stopped by saying – but you said previously climate metrics over 10 years was good enough?
Thanks, Barry. Good article.
Trends in a chaotic systems have little predictive value. Trends evaluate the past, the lenght of the trend is part of the evaluation.
The IPCC has commited suicide by publishing AR5. Weasel language is suspect from the go.
The 30 year trend makes sense only if the IPCC accepts that primary driver of the climate change is natural variability, i.e. the AMO and the PDO.
If so, I welcome the Thomas Stocker’s initiative to covertly disassociate ‘future IPCC thinking’ from now falsified ‘forever rising global temperatures in step with the rising CO2 atmospheric content’ and start serious study of the natural variability
This is an excellent post. Although Hansen’s 1988 testimony was a significant event, he was already dead certain years before, using a 15 year warming trend.
In 1981, Hansen relied on 15 years of temperature change as his ‘dramatic evidence’ of global warming- “They have found that the Earth’s average temperature rose 0.2 degrees Centigrade from the mid-1960s to 1980.”- Eleanor Randolph, in The Pittsburgh Press, August 15, 1981
There are several problems with this. First, from 1965 to 1980, HadCRUT now gives 0.06C rise, GISS now gives 0.12C rise and HadSST now gives 0.02C DROP. So, Hansen hung his hat on a temperature increase that is smaller than the noise in the measurement. Remarkably, he was fitting the flat tail of an exponential curve to noise. Second, we now have 15 years of no temperature increase, while annual CO2 emissions are 2.5 times higher. Third, Hansen started his 15 year temperature trend in the mid 1960’s, right after the Class 5 eruption of Agung. Presumably Hansen would never have exploited a volcanic temperature dip at the beginning of the trend. Presumably Hansen felt it ‘didn’t matter.’ Yet Hansen now blames aerosols from almost nonexistent volcanic eruptions to explain the pause in temperature rise over the recent 15 years.
Paul Ehrlich testimony 1974, page 269 indicates that he was comfortable using less than 15 years of temperature data (1960 to 1974) to clang the cooling climate cowbell-
“When meteorologists talk about normal weather, by convention internationally they’re talking about the average weather period 1930 to 1960. It turns out that was the most extreme period of good weather in the last 1000 years. We are now clearly coming down off of that peak.”
From the 1974 Senate testimony of Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren in hearings on the “Domestic Supply Information Act” held by the Committee on Commerce and Committee on Government Operations (Serial No. 93-107).
Further undermining their credibility, re: decades-long trends, is their recent attribution of seasonal events or even single occurrences to proclaim as evidence of global warming, e.g., Colorado flood, US west coast wildfires.
While the SPM and associated spin are helping the warmists in winning the public arguments for now, there must surely be a good handful of AGW-faithful scientists who were waiting for the IPCC to truly tackle the pause ‘head on’, but are thinking – er, is that it?
As we know, all good scientists are sceptical.
Ian W:
I completely agree with your post at September 30, 2013 at 4:46 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/30/to-the-ipcc-forget-about-30-years/#comment-1431697
Indeed, I have repeatedly said the need now is to mobilise people with real expertise in political activity (e.g. Lords Lawson and Monckton, Senator Inhoffe, ex-President Klaus, etc.).
However, the media will continue to assert that the IPCC presents scientific information on AGW. It is necessary to clearly determine the information which demonstrates that assertion is a falsehood so the assertion can be refuted. For example, in this thread Greg W states how we know the climate models are falsified, and I state how we know the AGW hypothesis is falsified. The ’30-year-period-excuse’ is an attempt to obscure those falsifications and, thus, to defend the political promotion of AGW from refutation of its supporting pseudoscience.
Richard
The problem is that , yes, the science can be proven to be pseudoscience by its lack of falsifiability but, no, that doesn’t matter.
The [proponents] in the political world don’t care if the science is false. They will just ignore the inconvenient information and use the enthusiasm that they have whipped up. The science is just a tool to be used to politicians. And a tool they can no longer dare to put down having taught the next generation of voters that to doubt the impending doom is evil.
Politicians have no interest in a quest for truth.
Sadly that goes for Journalists too, which is less explicable.
(Although here is a guess as to why from my experience of [still] being pre-moderated at the Guardian. I, and others, are unable to dispute the catastrophists who have thus created a small focussed community – that may be a useful product for marketing purposes).
@Ian W
I wish there was a thorough mapping out of the links between all the organisations involved, and how it all relates to the overall aim.
Is it about global governance (and a government needs a taxation system) ?
And to what end… I mean, what developing nations would relinquish control to a global government?
95% of IPCCs scientists can agree on this:
They have data models that can predict a) the human effects on climate with 1% certainty, b) the natural effects on climate with 1% certainty, so this leads to the conclusion that their models fail to predict climate with 98% certainty, either the cause being man or nature, for the period 1951-2012.
This can be derived from their claims of 95% certainty that humans have caused 50% of the climate change in the period (that is: nature 50%), and the simple fact that only 2% of all their runs of climate models are able to correctly predict the most recent temperature development; The stasis in 1998-2012.
So therefore, 95% of IPCCs own scientists admit that their models failed to predict climate, with 98% ‘success’, in the period 1951-2012. Is this progress? Can anyone believe their propaganda any more?
In trying to hide the temp flattening, they have exposed that their models are useless, and even though they have 98% faith in their own models failing, they still believe they can attribute 50% of climate change to humans. But mind You, they are only 1% certain of this… Remarkable.
When foolishly trying to explain the lack of temp rise in the period mentioned above, they use volcanoes and warming of the deep oceans as an excuse. This however, is a total surrender to natural causes of climate variability, argued for by the skeptics for 30+ years. Volcanoes are not caused by human emission of CO2, and the deep oceans can emit heat in everything from 1 to 2000 years. The deep ocean heat also, can not be measured correctly by anyone yet.
I can not see the 5th report as anything but a total surrender of the IPCC.
[“They have data models” or “They have
datamodels …”? Mod]what to make of this?
30 Sept: BusinessSpectator: Tristan Edis: IPCC – a primer for conspiracy theorists
How did all this come about, you might ask?
Well, the story explained to me by Neville Nicholls, past-president of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, suggests something rather innocent. Back in the 1980s at a conference of meteorologists, one hailing from Africa complained she was getting lots of requests for information from her government on the possible impacts of human-induced global warming. She wasn’t well equipped or resourced to answer them. She asked whether it might be possible for the meteorologists to arrange an assessment that could summarise what was known about global warming, which could be used by governments such as her own. And so the IPCC Assessment report process was born…
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/9/30/science-environment/ipcc-primer-conspiracy-theorists
Nicholls missed an opportunity here to tell the tale of the African Meteorologist himself:
24 Sept: Monash: Neville Nicholls: Explainer: what is the IPCC anyway, and how does it work?Professor Nicholls is the immediate Past-President of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society and was a Coordinating Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report “Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation” that was completed in 2011.
http://monash.edu/news/show/explainer-what-is-the-ipcc-anyway-and-how-does-it-work
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