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.
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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T o wait 30 years to be told an historical fact is ony of use to the historians . The science that can look at much shorter trends and make projections for the near term environment is what really matters . Would you wait 30 years before you are told that the market has gone down before you take action
Reminds me of the expression “don’t bother me with the facts”. It is amazing how all the hysteria is based on the warming during the 1980’s and a projection that rate would continue until doomsday. I find it unfortunate that most of the media is still buying the IPCC garbage as gospel. I saw that on the Weather Channel yesterday. Only Fox gets it right here in the US.
herkimer:
Sorry, but you completely fail to understand the existing situation when you make your post at September 30, 2013 at 5:59 am which says in total
The AGW-scare was killed at the failed 2009 IPCC Conference in Copenhagen. I said then – and I have repeatedly said since – that the scare would continue to move as though alive in similar manner to a beheaded chicken running around a farmyard. It continues to provide the movements of life but it is already dead. And its deathly movements provide an especial problem.
Nobody will declare the AGW-scare dead: it will slowly fade away. This is similar to the ‘acid rain’ scare of the 1980s. Few remember that scare unless reminded of it but its effects still have effects; e.g. the Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD) exists. Importantly, the bureaucracy which the EU established to operate the LCPD still exists. And those bureaucrats justify their jobs by imposing ever more stringent, always more pointless, and extremely expensive emission limits which are causing enforced closure of UK power stations.
Bureaucracies are difficult to eradicate and impossible to nullify.
As the AGW-scare fades away those in ‘prime positions’ will attempt to establish rules and bureaucracies to impose those rules which provide immortality to their objectives. Guarding against those attempts now needs to be a serious activity.
The ’30-year-excuse’ is provided by bureaucrats to ‘buy time’ which keeps the defenestrated chicken running while they rush to establish the bureaucracies before the ‘chicken’ falls over and stops moving.
Richard
AR4 says: “The multi-model average warming for all radiative forcing agents held constant at year 2000”.
The earth’s albedo changes with the clouds from minute to minute, hour to hour and day to day. Their whole church is based on a constant albedo, but a quick look into the sky confirms that indeed clouds do form, dissipate and move about.
They fail by assigning a constant value to a dynamic variable: The albedo.
Their pseudo science has no answer to this, and neither have their activists. It’s a very basic, simple and devastating fault right in there at the core belief.
herkimer says:
September 30, 2013 at 5:59 am
From your post – it seems you are prepared to bet/accept policy on short term trends, yes? In that case, perhaps you can clear this with the alarmist crowd as a sensible approach because – lo and behold, we are in a flat/cool period, and fairly likely to cool further. Bingo ! – you have convinced me that AGW is definitely deceased and all the carbon environmental crapola is just that !
I’m late to this thread but I am hoping someone will see this and respond. Various time periods for the “no warming” trend have been put forth…… 10 year, 15 years, 17 years. Why is there no agreement on the length of the period?? Can someone explain ? Anybody……
“climate trends should not be considered for periods less than 30 years”.
===============
In that case, that would be the entire satellite record….
…and there has been no warming for the majority of the satellite record
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/no-warming-for-the-majority-of-the-satellite-era/
Sorry but you need to understand that the ‘time scale ‘ is itself a function of what the result does for ‘the cause ‘. Therefore, there is no ‘time scale ‘ requirement for that which supports ‘the cause ‘ while the time scale requirement for that which challenges it is 0 to infinite.
So not only can they do this, they already do, the massive hypocrisy this involves them in means nothing to them. For after all their ‘saving the planet ‘
They aren’t just moving the goal posts, they’ve broken out the camo paint.
David in Michigan:
At September 30, 2013 at 6:30 am you ask
I answer:
It is because there are several data sets which attempt to determine global temperature using different methods so they differ, and they each provide a different time from now since when there has been no discernible trend (at 95% confidence) in global temperature.
This cessation of discernible (at 95% confidence) in global temperature change is the halt (often misleadingly called the “pause” or the “hiatus”). The different estimates of global temperature provide different indications of when the halt initiated which are all in the range of 17 years to 22 years.
So, either it is accepted that
(a) the halt to changing global temperature started at least 17 years ago and has yet to end
or
(b) it is not possible to determine global temperature change with useful confidence.
Either possibility indicates there is no valid reason for the scare concerning anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) global warming (AGW)..
Richard
– – – – – – –
Barry Brill,
Your essay is a source of excellent intellectual ideas. Thanks for your work.
If the bold part of your above quoted paragraph (the last paragraph of your essay) is a conclusion by you, then I do not see how it necessarily follows from your essay.
I offer a different conclusion that perhaps is closer to necessarily following from you excellent essay. I offer as an alternate conclusion the following.
CONCLUSION proposed by JW:
The IPCC Bureau is proclaiming its explicit irrationality, finally, and displaying it as a requirement for exclusive membership in its post-modern based ideology.
John
“AR5 cites 0.05°C/decade (warming) without mentioning that this figure is ±0.14°C”…
This illustrates yet again why Climastrologists should never, ever be referred to as scientists. Real scientists understand that measurements that fall within the uncertainty (or variation) of the measuring device are meaningless. “Real Climastrologists” are simply be alarmists with Ph.Ds.
If there is a 56 or 58 or 60 year natural cycle, as some see in the records, then a policy of 30 years would be maximally foolish.
I agree. They will keep pushing because this thing has become to big to fail, but what else can we do? This is a behemoth that is being chipped away at bit by bit. The consensus if cracking, the media are now asking better questions etc. But I agree that even if we went into 15 years of cooling they would not surrender. A paper would be rushed out to say that 30 years of no temperature increases are not unusual, forgetting our co2 was supposed have driven surface temps higher.
What will stop this, as you say, is voter backlash against high energy bills.
If you are a climate scientist reading this: please think about your future reputations. Dr. Judith Curry will come out of this relatively unscathed as she saw the light just in time.
PS What did Dr. Gavin Schmidt say about the period of time that would elapse for him to reconsider AGW?
Kev -in-UK
You said
“lo and behold, we are in a flat/cool period, and fairly likely to cool further. Bingo ! – you have convinced me that AGW is definitely deceased and all the carbon environmental crapola is just that !”
You are right on!
Three major long term climate forcing factors like the sun , the oceans and the Arctic are all pointing to global cooling and are already into their cool cycle mode , so IPCC may very well be toast as Judith Curry so well stated . Looks like it will take some very cold winters to make the rest of the world to see it as well. These cold winters are just around the corner starting in this decade.This may last for the next 20-30 years as they did from 1880-1910 .
if indeed the effect of C02 is logarithmic shouldn’t we be about done with any athropogenic contribution to the warming anyway? Clearly natural forces are in control.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/
– – – – – – –
herkimer,
If your screen name is associated with your location, then I might be within 50 miles of you.
: )
John
herkimer says:
September 30, 2013 at 7:37 am
My apologies – I misread your initial post to take it you had an alarmist stance! (at least it seemed that way to me!)
richardscourtney says:
September 30, 2013 at 5:21 am
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.).
Mr. Courtney
Peter Lilley is well known moderate sceptic, active member of the UK Parliament, currently on the Energy and Climate Change Committee, hence well position to make an impact on the government climate policy.
This inconsistency in the requirement for long trends, and in particular the short trend before James Hansen’s 1988 Congressional testimony, has been pointed out before at numerous times and places. Have main stream media and popular science publications ever taken note?
vukcevic:
At September 30, 2013 at 9:01 am you say to me
Yes, and other AGW-sceptic politicians exist in several countries. They need our help, support and encouragement.
Importantly, and as I tried to say, people with political experience need to be mobilised to publicise the truth about the IPCC, its nature, Role and lack of veracity. We have won on the science, and now we need to stop the political agenda for which ‘science’ was always merely a front.
Richard
John Whitman
We may be neighbours . I live in Southern Ontario, Burlington.
Kev-in UK
I accept your apology. The point that I was trying to make is that one does not have to wait 30 years to see a different developing trend already happening like the last 16 years and take what ever action[ or no action ], if any, as neccessray . In addition the next 30 years may have very little to do with the factors that affected the weather in the past 30 years , so relying only on the trend of a past 30 year period becomes meaningless if the factors causing the trend are changing significantly. It is like predicting fall or winter based on the trend of the summer, it does not work.. With the IPCC forecast , they are trending their 100 year prediction based on trend of a cyclic pattern that was just in the warm mode, yet totalling ignoring that long range factors that cause global cooling have already started with our 16 year pause and the past 30 years is no indication of the future. So what is the sense of waiting for 30 years to get old weather data .
herkimer says:
September 30, 2013 at 11:11 am
”So what is the sense of waiting for 30 years to get old weather data .”
Oh, that’s easy – it’s because ‘waiting’ for the data enables a sh$tload of extra snaffling at the AGW feeding trough!
Kev-in Uk
You are so right . Just follow the money. I have said it many times that there would far fewer climate problems and threats if the free money were to suddenly dry up.
herkimer says
This may last for the next 20-30 years as they did from 1880-1910 .
henry says
You are right about the cooling being here, how did you come to this date?
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
Kev-in UK and herkimer:
The issue you are discussing is much, much more profound than ‘snouts in the trough’. Please read my post addressed to herkimer at September 30, 2013 at 6:14 am: this link jumps to it
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/30/to-the-ipcc-forget-about-30-years/#comment-1431752
Richard
HENRY P
You said
“You are right about the cooling being here, how did you come to this date?”
I use the the period 1880-1910 for my analysis since that period was the most recent period that had similar long term climate factors as we may have for the next 20-30 years , namely somewhat similar solar cycle phase [ three low solar cycles in a row ], an ocen cycle that was starting a cooling mode from 1880 to 1910 and in sync with the solar cycle [ both in decline mode] and a much colder arctic than normal [see Don Easterbrook garphs] . The cooling of the Arctic part is just starting but I think it will cool much more in the next 20-30 years . Parts of the Canadian Arctic are already showing some cooling the last few years.
richardscourtney: “The ’30 year excuse’ attempts to hide the fact that the AGW-hypothesis is falsified by the halt in global temperature change.”
But what is the AGW-hypothesis? Before you get a bee in your bonnet; Karl Popper had a few ideas on that. A valid hypothesis is one that is:
1) Accepted as scientific by the scientists in the relevant discipline
2) Falsifiable in principle
3) Testable now, or expected to be testable ‘at some point.’
This may be too fuzzy for your taste, but it does require that the thing be at least written down somewhere. Nor is there any need that there be just one. eg. Relativity used to have various frameworks from Newton, Lorentz, Poincare, and Einstein. But it does require that it is written down. And if there are more than one they require different names to distinguish them, even if it’s just bolting on the name of the fellow responsible for it or cheerleading it the hardest.
I don’t mention these things to pick on you. But if your argument is that ‘it has been falsified’ then your argument relies on both the hypothesis and the test of it. If either of those is improper to the task, then the conclusion doesn’t follow. But that requires that there be a specific hypothesis written down somewhere and attested to as valid by the climate scientists that you are arguing.
But what is it? If it exists and you didn’t provide it, then you haven’t produced a proper argument. If it doesn’t exist at all, or there’s not at least one scientific theory on the point, then there is simply no science. There is simply nothing to refute. And in either case, there is no necessity that AGW is falsifiable. Is it a general field of study or is it a single theoretical framework? It’s only in the latter that ‘AGW is falsified’ makes any sense.
Your burden, in making an argument about the theory, is only to reference the theory. But it is the burden of the climate theorists — whether under AGW or not — to write the theory down in a proper way and have it broadly accepted by their peers as a scientific one. With all that in mind it should be obvious that the cart is put before the horse if it is stated that something that doesn’t exist, isn’t written down, or is simply a general field of inquiry ‘is’ falsified.
Now models represent a hypothesis in their own way. But they need not bear any relation at all to a scientific theory. For example, lots of weather forecasting models include economics as a part of the model. One would hardly state that Federal Reserve policy on loose or tight money is causal to tornadoes. But that doesn’t mean that including Federal Reserve policy produces a model that is not capable at minimal skill in prediction.
But the issue with such forecasting models is that they are, often, purely unfalsifiable. They are not expected to be accurate. In fact, they are expected to get wildly out of joint with respect to reality over time. There whole worth is in how closely they approximate reality in the near term, and the degree in which they get out of whack in the long term.
But arguing that requires no foundation of science. It only requires that the given model has been tested against reality enough to be able to construct the actual error bounds over time. (Rather than any putative and non-empirical expectation.) Such that if it is stated that the model is to be good or used at decadal forecasts, then 10 years on: How off is it? Is it randomly distributed about the actual value or no?
So far as I know the conversation revolves around the skeptic side stating that the forecasting model disproves AGW. (Commonly, not solely.) But that supposes that AGW is a theory rather than a discipline. That there is a single scientific theory regardless. That the model can falsify the theory. And that the model has been run long enough to even get a grasp of its statistical properties in an empirical test.
Also, so far as I know, that last part hasn’t been accomplished. And seemingly the modelers have no intention of accomplishing it. After all, if it were otherwise, we wouldn’t be talking about reality being outside the a priori error bounds of the model. We’d be talking about the error bound established at X years in the future produced by the difference between the model and reality. And from that we can begin to speak of what may or may not be falsified, if anything, and the utility of the model, if anything.
None of which is meant to pick on you are be derogatory in any sense by responding to your post in particular.
richardscourtney says:
September 30, 2013 at 11:34 am
Richard, Sir – with respect, I do agree with your observations – however, the bullet point still remains – many people are feeding from the AGW trough and have wholly invested their careers in the continued promotion of the scam instead of practising science. They are so far in it that they simply cannot back down – whole careers have been built on this frenzied feeding trough. As long as there is a chance, they will fight – and if that means moving the goal posts; they will do that too!. I reckon it will take another 10 to 20 years for the major players to be retiring, with their fat pension funds, and ‘acquired’ Nobel status and after dinner speaking engagements ! Until then, the feeding will continue.
Personally, I’d line ’em all up against a wall……..for the scientific shame alone. As for the grant grabbing lying sh$tface academics masquerading as ‘scientists’ – well – I’d just throw them to the freezing poor people and see how they explain to them why they are freezing in fuel poverty!
Jquip:
I am replying to your long post at September 30, 2013 at 12:15 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/30/to-the-ipcc-forget-about-30-years/#comment-1432043
I do not intend to get involved in a philosophical discussion in this thread. I write to answer your specific question, viz.
The AGW hypothesis is the idea that anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) emissions of greenhouse gases GHGs) notably CO2 will enhance the radiative greenhouse effect (GE) of the Earth to raise global temperature in a manner which will provide risk of harmful global warming (GW).
This hypothesis is implicit in all IPCC Reports and was the reason for the Kyoto Protocol which attempted to limit emissions of a “basket” of 6 GHGs.
You claim that for the hypothesis to be “valid”
No, it only requires that the hypothesis is understood and agreed, but a formal statement of it is required for its falsification. And that formal statement is provided by the emulation of the AGW hypothesis written as the climate models. Hence, as I said, falsification of the predicted “committed warming” falsifies the AGW hypothesis. Any dispute of this is merely semantics.
Please note that I don’t think you are “picking on me” and I do not know why you suggest I would think that. Perhaps it is because you know I would be very tempted to ‘bite’ the ‘red herring’ of a discussion on the philosophy of science. This thread is NOT the place for a debate about the philosophy of science and I reject the strong temptation to ‘bite’ that ‘red herring’ which would deflect the thread from its subject.
Richard
herkimer saisys
Parts of the Canadian Arctic are already showing some cooling the last few years.
henry says
in fact temps. in Anchorage dropped by as much as 2 degrees C since 2000.
Nobody noticed????
to counter your arguments
a) solar observations of those times are dubious
b) my current observations of drop in maxima show a 90-100 year weather cycle as most probable
I would much appreciate your comment (s) on my final report on this
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/is
@herkimer
sorry
correct link is
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
Moreover, 30 years is just about the worst possible timeline to choose when there is a clearly evident 60-ish year cyclic component in the data.
richardscourtney: “This hypothesis is implicit in all IPCC Reports ” versus: “No, it only requires that the hypothesis is understood and agreed, but a formal statement of it is required for its falsification.”
Which is one of my points. To state that the AGW hypothesis is ‘implicit’ is to state that AGW is not a science, whether it is a field of study or a single theory; it’s simply not science. So while you are correct to state that a model is a theory unto itself, that only speaks to the model itself.
“Any dispute of this is merely semantics.”
Well yes, obviously. We’re not quibbling over syntax and spelling errors. But if you’re keen to state that meaning (semantics) are meaningless, then that’s a dive in the Humpty Dumptser I’m not going to participate in. Especially not when your statement is that the ‘implicit scientific theory’ of AGW can be divined from the semantics of the IPCC report.
“Please note that I don’t think you are “picking on me” and I do not know why you suggest I would think that. ”
Just covering my bases as there are a lot of hypersensitive folks involved in this debate. If you’re not one, then kudos, ignore it.
Jquip:
This is my last reply to your twaddle and it is made in response to your post at September 30, 2013 at 1:06 pm.
I suggest you find an Open Thread and go there to discuss your irrelevant hair-splitting with Terry Oldberg and John Whitman. The three of you can then go round and round in circles to your hearts’ content.
But leave this thread alone. Your so-called logic has no place on this thread.
Richard
Author Barry Brill says, “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.”
Thomas Kuhn’s “paradigm shift” is the new basic unit in science. Never mind Popper, stated hypotheses, or falsifiability. Let’s spot the paradigm.
The article continues: “When James Hansen launched the global warming scare in 1988…” The details are conveniently filled in later by armies of experts but the “paradigm shift” is handed down from the “community” of “researchers.” These researchers control and shape what questions are asked, how to interpret data, and which tools are used to gather the data. – That is why so many of NASA’s stated missions include “understanding climate change.” This allows paint-by-number science and calls for progressive policies (the need for these is immediate, action is required now).
Free Gratis, here is an example in agronomy, to see if you can spot the paradigm shift:
Good luck! And don’t expect too much of yourself at first (;
jquip,regardless of models. the hypothesis is widely understood to be,from a laypersons point of view,that increased emissions of co2 from the burning of fossil fuels will create unnatural runaway warming of the atmosphere that will be catastrophic to life on earth.
every single layperson i have spoken to about this issue has roughly the same definition. their,and my definition has been reached as a result of information broadcast and printed through the mainstream media.
argue semantics all you like,the simple fact is the general populace have been misinformed,indeed i believe lied to,in the quest to demonise ordinary people for making their way through life as best as they can.
these same ordinary people are the ones that will decide which policy makers sit in governance the world over. the ordinary australian people have already made their decision. the way the mainstream parties in the uk are running scared of new comers like ukip is an indication they realise the electorate are getting restless .
again ,you can argue the semantics,but richard s courtney is absolutely correct in the statement that the hypothesis is not only well defined,understood AND agreed by a wide cross section of the populace (academics are a very small sector of this populace,fortunately in the case of those promoting cAGW),it is also widely recognised by that populace that the hypothesis appears incorrect,as it has indeed been falsified by several metrics,not least the lack of tropospheric hotspot,no increasing trend in atmospheric water vapour,the halt in warming despite increasing co2 emissions and no increase in severe weather events.
current statements from climate “scientists” ,that the heat has gone into the deep ocean,indeed the deep ocean between 2000 m and 3000 m,and 3000 m and below, are not sceintific,they are pure conjecture,or in laypersons terms,straw clutching.
looking at the examination of the supporting “science” section in the IPCC report,to my uneducated and untrained eye there are several glaring errors. i look forward to seeing those errors highlighted and disseminated on this very blog,after which i forecast many more straws being clutched at from the IPCC.s “scientists”
(apologies in advance to richard s courtney if i have attributed anything beyond the intentions of his previous post to jquip in the fourth paragraph of this post)
bit chilly:
Please be assured that you have no need to apologise to me for anything you said in your post at September 30, 2013 at 2:29 pm . Indeed, if you have managed to halt the side-track into sophistry then I am grateful.
Richard
Climate trends should not be periods less than 60 years as these lengths alway have a cooling and warming cycle within them. Stick by this rule then the AGW rubbish would have never been mentioned in the first place. It should be a period of warming overall over 60 years, for anything that may be different from natural climate. All we are seeing now is this expected 60 year cooling and warming cycle continuing similar to what it has always done.
The alarmists can’t be hypocrites though and suggest something that they didn’t meet in the first place.
bit chilly: “the hypothesis is widely understood to be,from a laypersons point of view …”
And I think that’s an accurate statement about laypeople. But that says nothing about what the scientific hypothesis, or hypotheses are; presuming any exist. Nor does it say anything about what is necessary in stating that an experiment has falsified a scientific hypothesis.
“argue semantics all you like,the simple fact is the general populace have been misinformed …”
It is my personal belief that the populace has been misinformed. And I assert that this has been done by dressing up rhetoric that is none of logical, empirically based, or scientific as science.
And if your statement is that we ‘should’ dispense with any issue of science and logic and produce rhetorical arguments for the sake of the rhetoric itself, then that’s fine. I’m not going to sign onto it in general, or specifically for a discussion about science. But it’s a rather normal course of things in politics and various religious disputes.
If this is not your argument, but you wish to carry your water on the idea that the people have been ‘duped’ by the use of rhetoric that is contrary to science then I would ask you to explain why the preference should be to ‘dupe’ them in the same manner to a different conclusion. Or, as a separate question, duping them into an awareness of science so that scientific conclusion can follow thereafter.
[1] eg. The hypothesis must necessitate an outcome, and the experiment must succeed or fail on the necessitation only. Which says nothing about the illogical notion that a lack of failure demonstrates that the underlying metaphysical model is both complete and inarguably true.
– – – – – – – –
Jquip,
I see richardscourtney(September 30, 2013 at 1:15 pm) has included me in your dialog with him. Thanks richardscourtney.
Out of civility, I had previously hesitated to interrupt your comments directed specifically to richardscourtney and with his subsequent replies specifically to you.
I see you have some interest in the use of AGW ‘theory’ refered to on this thread in discussion of the ’30 year is climate’ topic. It looks like your interest comes from a context of science history & science epistemology versus current climate science.
As you have done, it is important to ask fundamental questions as to what are the clear meaning of the things we consider so highly important to discuss at this venue.
I am responding to your initial inquiry to richardscourtney about what is stated in writing as a AGW theory.
Often skeptics are presented with a series of sequential statements, which when taken together are implied to be the AGW theory.
Here is an example:
A composite of statements often implied as the AGW theory roughly goes like this: a) the Earth-Atmosphere System (EAS) has warmed; b) CO2 gas will produce a ‘greenhouse’ effect in the EAS; c) CO2 from fossil fuel burning has a significant contribution to EAS warming; d) EAS warming will continue in step with fossil fuel burning.
So what do you make of that as a valid theory?
I think it isn ‘t even an argument, much less a theory. : )
John
HENRY P
You have clearly put a lot of thought and analysis into your findings . Far be it for me to find fault in it as I am researching this topic myself and I do not have the total picture either. You are also projecting cooling as opposed to warming which shows that your analysis is taking you in the same direction as mine and that of many other climate researchers.It would help however if you highlighted clearly the key findings or projections that you are making in a summary way in the front or back of your article well highlighted and you could show more clearly the years on your graph. Glad to see that you doing your own number crunching rather than blindly accepting what some biased or politically controlled scientist might say
John Whitman — “Out of civility, I had previously hesitated to interrupt your comments directed specifically to richardscourtney and with his subsequent replies specifically to you.”
No worries, it wasn’t intended to be specific to richardscourtney. Though I seem to have failed to make that distinction properly.
“Often skeptics are presented with a series of sequential statements, which when taken together are implied to be the AGW theory.”
As a general consideration, even purely rhetorical and counterfactual arguments are a series of sequential statements. The interest is a dedicated dissembler is to make as long a chain as possible, with the first mis-step occurring as early as possible. With the hope that argument can be restrained to valid arguments from false and unknown, or unknowable, premises.
Staying strictly within the bounds of your implicit-AGW exemplar. Both c) and d), as presented, rely on the both of a) and b). But a) is largely independent of b). If b) is correct, to whatever degree, then it is not necessary that a) is the case. So the presentation as given isn’t suitable on it’s own.
When the game isn’t going like you want… MOVE THE GOALPOSTS!
The choice of showing 1/1/1977 to 1/1/1987 apears to me as cherrypicked to start at the beginning of a year that was warmer than nearby years, and to end at the end of a year that was cooler than nearby years.
The “natural variability overwhelmed AGW recently” means it is potent enough to do so. Since it is hopelessly implausible to suggest natural variability itself has recently varied upwards, that means natural variability has always been dominant.
In short, if ever, then always.
Jquip.. you sound like a politician , buzz off.
I think you missed the major motivation of the IPCC. By moving the goal posts, they make themselves relevant for 15 more years, allowing them to legally steal our money for 15 more years.
Is this not the final version of the AR5 SPM?
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5-SPM_Approved27Sep2013.pdf
From there;
The language change is a better reflection of the full facts, not just a slice – although it includes the slice of interest. GCMs generally do not do well at short-term ‘predictions’ on these time scales, so why not say so in a general way in the summary? They go into detail for the 1998 – 2012 period in the main report, beginning with;
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5_WGI-12Doc2b_FinalDraft_Chapter09.pdf (largish download)
That may not be the headline some people prefer, but it seems reasonable to me, and takes in the main factors that have been argued in the blog wars on it.
PS, it would be great if the bureaucrats kept their paws off these reports, but someone would then complain that the scientists are pontificating from their ivory tower etc etc. Seems the scientists were backing a more ‘skeptical’ wording. Fancy that.
– – – – – – –
herkimer,
Thanks for your response.
I had thought you might be in Herkimer, NY. I am in the Southern Adirondack Mtns, in the Town of Northampton, NY for my annual autumn leaf stay at our lakehouse.
I see that Burlington, ON and Town of Northampton, NY are separated by the east-west length (~200 mi) of one of the big inland ponds (Lake Ontario).
Neighbors but not quite cozy ones, in the distance sense anyway. ; )
John
Herkimer says
Glad to see that you doing your own number crunching rather than blindly accepting what some biased or politically controlled scientist might say
Henry says
Thanks for that comment/
I will see to the improvements, 1) short summary in front and 2) dates rather than counted years
Note that I looked mostly at maximum temperatures to give me the lead
(=energy in)
What earth does with that incoming energy and what it happens to produce itself at this point of time in history is somewhat of a different story which may either cause delays or strengthen the trend.A lot of it depends on how much heat is stored in the oceans during the “warming” years.
But I think I solved the puzzle. If 2016 equals to about 1927, then, according to my projection, it follows that the dust bowl droughts can be expected to start around 2021. It will also get progressively drier and cooler at the higher latitudes from 2000. (e.g. check Anchorage!!)
I am pretty sure that my results are repeatable, if you all were to look just at maximum temps. in your own backyards. Pity though that there are still only a few of us who have seen that global cooling is coming.
(Although my wife still laughs at me when I talk of a drop of about 0.3 -0.5 until 2039. Current cooling trend is about -0.1 /decade but I wonder if someone has already started hiding the decline?)
See here. (and thanks to Barry)
And what was to follow Hansen etal’s ‘trick’ in 1988 was…. (the New World Order)… mass adjustments to the global temperature records, manipulation and massive deletion of which temperature stations are even included in the charts manufactured with the sole purpose to alarm the naive public and the clueless politicians. It’s really not that hard to dig and find out where all of the hypothetical “global warming” originated. Both NOAA and GISS publish time series graphs showing the circa +0.7°C adjustments made to the temperature records to hike the trend line, it’s not like they are hiding the truth from anyone, its just so few people actually get up off their hinds and exert the effort to find out for themselves, and that includes most who call themselves scientists evidently.
wayne,
as the statistically non-significant flat trend for 1977 – 87 remains in the current GISS record, it looks like they forgot to include that decade in their ‘manipulations’. There is a small, statstically significant trend for the 30 years prior – almost flat, though – so it looks like they didn’t utilise that period for for manipulation possibilities either. And if they are manipulating the temperature record to fake increasing trends, they obviously forgot to include the last 15 years, which shows a slowdown in every data set.
Considering every data set from proponents and critics (UAH Spencer, Christy) alike shows statistically significant warming over the last 30 years of similar magnitude, even with raw data, and that this result has been corroborated by climate critics on blogs who actually bother to do the work (eg Jeff Condon at The Air Vent), and similarly for Anthony Watts paper regarding average US temps, one wonders what you are talking about.
Hansen predicted warming from 1988. The magnitude was wrong but the sign was right. Not bad, considering surface temp trends from the three decades previous had not given much indication of the future.
The people who got off their hindquarters crunched the numbers and came up with pretty much the same conclusions as the institutes doing the temp records. Armchair critics don’t even bother to use their mouse to check this information.
There is no longer any doubt the world has warmed over the last 30, 50 or a hundred years, particularly as there are many more indicators other than surface temperatures corroborating. The reality-based debate has moved on to other points. Come join us.
AndyG55 says: @ September 30, 2013 at 4:13 am
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 !!!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Most of it!
Jo Nova’s graphic comparison of Hansen’s GISS of 1980, 1987 and 2007 vintages.
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/giss/hansen-giss-1940-1980.gif
Steven Goddard’s look at The Size Of The USHCN Adjustment:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/quantifying-the-size-of-the-ushcn-adjustment-fraud/
E.M. Smith’s look at the data biases introduced from the thermometer drops
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/assume-a-spherical-cow-therefore-all-steaks-are-round/
What the plants are saying about climate change in the USA:
http://www.sturmsoft.com/climate/suckling_mitchell_2000_fig2_3.gif
Oh, and don’t forget the The Goat Ate The Data or was that My dog Ate my Homework?
Mark:
Your post at September 30, 2013 at 9:18 pm says in total
Sorry, Mark, but it seems you have “missed the major motivation of the IPCC” for “moving the goal posts”. It is much, much more serious than stealing money for a mere 15 years.
I explained the reason and its seriousness in my post at September 30, 2013 at 6:14 am and this link jumps to it
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/30/to-the-ipcc-forget-about-30-years/#comment-1431752
Richard
barry says:
“There is no longer any doubt the world has warmed over the last 30, 50 or a hundred years…”
There never was any doubt on the part of skeptics. There is also no doubt that the warming is natural; the planet’s recovery from the LIA. The doubt was always on the part of alarmists, who believe that Mann’s Hokey Stick shaft showed no significant temperature change for hundreds of years. Ridiculous. But that is what Mann and his acolytes believe [or expect the public to believe].
The planet has been naturally warming since the Little Ice Age. Why try to deny it? Skeptics know better. Come join us.
Also, Hansen was wrong. You cannot accept that fact, but there is irrefutable evidence that Hansen was wrong. Why you would cite Hansen as an authority on anything climate related is a complete mystery. If Hansen is the best you can do, it is no wonder you’ve lost the debate.
barry:
Your post at September 30, 2013 at 9:29 pm is ridiculous spin.
Are you really trying to pretend you have been duped into thinking IPCC Reports are scientific documents?
All IPCC Reports are purely political documents that use scientific information as ‘window dressing’. This “Role” of the IPCC is openly stated by the IPCC in its “Principles”
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles.pdf
Its “Role” demands that the IPCC accepts as a given that there is a “risk of human-induced climate change” which requires “options for adaptation and mitigation” which pertain to “the application of particular policies”.
The IPCC is pure pseudoscience intended to provide information to justify political actions; i.e.Lysenkoism.
Richard
From barry on October 1, 2013 at 12:30 am:
Please try to keep up on the recent research:
The historical sea temperature record is so sparse and poor it cannot be conclusively said to show global warming. Provide evidence if you believe otherwise.
The land temperature datasets have poor spatial coverage and globally the quality of data is very poor. There is more than a little “inspired guesswork” in the pretensions of creating a usable global dataset, especially in creating a “global average temperature”.
So for about 70% of the globe you really can’t show there was global warming.
Of the remaining 30%, only a little has usable acceptably-accurate historical records, namely the contiguous US, and records like the CET. That’s about 2% of the surface area.
And after basing claims of many decades of “global warming” on such a small real percentage of surface area, with those surface datasets notably “tweaked” to show more warming, the trees are saying the “global” warming wasn’t in major chunks of Europe.
Warming since the Little Ice Age, yes. But as the less-manipulated data shows the “recent” highs were really just matching the highs seen around the 1930’s, I’m wondering if there has effectively been ANY net warming over the last 80 years, let alone how much of any warming since the start of the 20th century is truly “Global”, at even a lowly majority (50% or greater) of the surface area.
As Willis Eschenbach has shown how the tropics are self-regulating and thus highly resistant to warming, you don’t have much of the globe left to substantiate the 50%.
– – – – – – – –
Jquip,
Appreciate your contribution. Thanks.
Your assessment has reasonable approaches. The premise strategies of dissembler arguments did give me smile.
Such lists of statements given as an implied AGW theory vary significantly in sequence and in number of statements listed plus also vary in vocabulary.
New thought => A comment of yours to bit chillis is leading me to interesting possibilities:
A premise is often put forth by skeptics that the IPCC is a manifestation of ideology intentionally manipulating (premeditated duping of) the scientific field and the public on climate. Independent of what specific ideology is posited, any such skeptic premise begs the question why would the IPCC go through the mimicking of rational motions in its assessment processes if it (IPCC) did not have confidence in some conception of what science is?
One answer might be, from my perspective, that the IPCC has a honestly held conception of science that is based solely on usefulness for some kind of exterior / ulterior goal or purpose; that is, not on science defined as achieving demonstrated understanding of an independent (of man’s mind) reality. That kind of view of science can arguably be taken as the philosophy of pragmatism (Pierce,Dewey, James, Rorty, etc). If the IPCC can be shown to have that view, honestly without intent to dupe, then it suggests a new line of argument with the IPCC . . . showing philosophical pragmatism is invalid.
John
Barry says
Come join us
Henry says
Unbelievable. You have to be kidding. Where I have moved on from finding no evidence of AGW in the temp. records to now warning about the coming cold,
you just carry on feasting with the kings and queens on fake scientific evidence (follow the money)…..
Just remember: even though the temp. change maybe small, global cooling will be no pick-nick.
Ask around about the winter of 1940-1941 in western Europe when snow heaped up meters high?
barry says:
“…there are many more indicators other than surface temperatures corroborating.”
Actually, barry, global temperatures are hardly rising at all. ALL of the climate models were WRONG.
You and everyone else in the alarmist crowd all hang your hats on those falsified model predictions. If you were honest, you would now admit that since the models were ALL wrong, your catastrophic AGW conjecture has been falsified by the real world.
Will you be honest and admit that, barry? Or will you continue to try and sell us your CAGW propaganda?
The choice is yours, barry, and we are all watching you.
jquip , you say :
And I think that’s an accurate statement about laypeople. But that says nothing about what the scientific hypothesis, or hypotheses are; presuming any exist. Nor does it say anything about what is necessary in stating that an experiment has falsified a scientific hypothesis.
i say ,if the layperson definition of cAGW hypothesis is either not “a” nor “the” scientific hypothesis ,then could you please inform the billions of ordinary people like myself of the reason the worlds governments and industry have spent trillions of dollars in attempting to mitigate “no hypothesis”
again to my poorly educated mind ( i did manage to contribute something to improving life, in the actual technical development and manufacture post conception of industrial ceramic medical products,and all the monolithic ceramic pressure sensors used in many applications today, so whilst i can live with the poor education,i do realise i am ill prepared for the converstaion we are currently having and i may well not even be on the same page as yourself,if that is the case i apologise,though i believe we are indeed discussing semantics !) the “not a hypothesis” has been falsified by the observational records i have already mentioned,if i am incorrectly stating a/the hypothesis is falsified by observational fact ,when in fact it can only be falsified by experiment, my understanding of the cAGW hypothesis must be incorrect.
you also say :
It is my personal belief that the populace has been misinformed. And I assert that this has been done by dressing up rhetoric that is none of logical, empirically based, or scientific as science.
on this point we most certainly agree.
you then say :
If this is not your argument, but you wish to carry your water on the idea that the people have been ‘duped’ by the use of rhetoric that is contrary to science then I would ask you to explain why the preference should be to ‘dupe’ them in the same manner to a different conclusion. Or, as a separate question, duping them into an awareness of science so that scientific conclusion can follow thereafter.
[1] eg. The hypothesis must necessitate an outcome, and the experiment must succeed or fail on the necessitation only. Which says nothing about the illogical notion that a lack of failure demonstrates that the underlying metaphysical model is both complete and inarguably true.
indeed jquip,it is not. but now i think i have a feint grasp of what you getting at (though possibly not,i have read your reply at least 6 times in attempting to understand it,be assured that is solely down to my lack of understanding in general,as opposed to anything you have written !)
and i would suggest that i and possibly many others have had enough of being duped, and no matter what the reason,two wrongs never make a right,so to dupe anyone to concede either warmist or sceptical beliefs is wrong. genuine mistakes i can accept.the man that has never made a mistake has never made anything,but deliberate attempts (see IPCC ) at obfuscation by many of the warmist disposition lead me to believe the genuine mistakes by climate scientists , politicians and bureaucrats are few and far between in the journey of discovery that is attempting to understand how earth systems actually work.
my personal belief is that people like myself are drawn to the statements made by climate scientists,politicians and bureaucrats when they are of alarming tone.when the prophecies within those statements appear to be failing,indeed the main point of temperature increase following the increase in atmospheric co2, we then want to know why ? this then leads us ,not to outlets championing what is,or was ,the mainstream outlook,but alternative sources that try and make sense of why and more importantly (to me) how.
am i being “duped” to follow science to a desired personal science based outcome in relation to belief of either “side” of the debate ? i do not think so.the main tenets of my scepticism are based on the observations not supporting the “not a hypothesis” of cAGW.
again,as a layperson, for a hypothesis to be a hypothesis,it must be falsifiable. the hypothesis that increased levels of co2 result in a rise of temperature ,even of unquantified amount,has indeed been falsified. i do understand the point you make
jquip : that a lack of failure demonstrates that the underlying metaphysical model is both complete and inarguably true.
but to me,it makes it possible it is true,whereas absolute failure,in the case of no warming for a decade and a half makes it impossible.
thank you for making me think,thinking is always an enjoyable experience,apologies if i have completely missed the points you have attempted to help me understand, but i can promise you i have given as best a reply as i can mentally muster, the lack of education beyond “o” level unfortunately means i am ill prepared for certain discussion topics. i would like to listen to a conversation on this subject between you,richard s courtney and john whitman.i believe it would highly entertaining and enlightening.
having said all that,i still believe we are discussing semantics,and god only knows,if there is one subject that could do with less semantics being discussed,it surely must be climate science !
ps,richard s courtney,it would seem it did not 🙂
bit chilly:
Your PS at October 1, 2013 at 11:31 am acknowledges that I foresaw that semantic bollocks threatened to destroy this thread. There is a triumvrate (whom I suggested isolate them selves on an open thread) who enjoy this kind of pointless nonsense (possibly as a method for destroying rational discussion).
In probably forlorn hope of stopping the nonsense, I will iterate that the AGW-hypothesis is well-known and it is as I stated it above at September 30, 2013 at 12:41 pm; i.e.
The AGW hypothesis is the idea that anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) notably CO2 will enhance the radiative greenhouse effect (GE) of the Earth to raise global temperature in a manner which will provide risk of harmful global warming (GW).
This definition of the AGW-hypothesis is not disputed by anybody as far as I am aware, and I note that nobody has disputed it in this thread. But some claim it has to be written in words, well I WROTE IT IN WORDS so that is fulfilled. Furthermore, as I said, it is also written as computer code in the climate models.
The definition has a long provenance and originates from 1896 in this
http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf
All claims to the contrary are pure bollocks. They have as much meaning and as much purpose as claims that the IPCC doesn’t make predictions, and – being equally false – similarly waste space by their ‘discussion’.
There is nothing to discuss about the matter. But there are semantic quibblers who post reams of sophistry in attempt to pretend that they alone understand something nobody else does. They clearly do this as a method to proclaim they have some importance. And they get upset when I tell them to go elsewhere to spout their nonsense.
Richard
Kev-in-Uk says:
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 current data may well be inadequate this (even if you were to eliminate “adjustments” , “homogenization”, even some which is actually “fiction”). With the likely “noise” being much greater than any possible “signal”.
richard s courtney ,i have to admit jquip,s posts really puzzled me.being a relative newcomer to the cAGW scepticism (my previous acceptance that global warming was occurring was based purely on what i had been told by the MSM) i appreciate i am unaware of the various recurring debates/discussions/arguments etc,so all are new and worth thinking about from my own personal perspective.
the most refreshing aspect of WUWT to my mind,is the wide and varied backgrounds of the contributors,and the most striking aspect is that rather than attempt to baffle joe public (ie ,me ) with bullshit,the vast majority of the knowledgeable and well educated contributors take the time to structure their writings so as to be relatively easy to understand. this is greatly appreciated by myself,and no doubt many others.
looking at posts from jquip on other topics it would appear that possibly theorising about the “not a hypothesis ” may be of particular interest ,as all the other posts from jquip i have seen were relatively easy to understand.
you are one of the many contributors along with the host that contributes meaningful dialogue,in a way that cuts through the obfuscation and gets right to the point in question. i like people that call a spade, a spade instead of a terra firma resituating implement.
for that,to you and many others like you i will be eternally grateful ,i suspect in the long term a great many people will be grateful .
in future ,when i someone advises i am taking part in an off topic discussion on semantics,i will pay more heed to that advice.
barry says:
“There is no longer any doubt the world has warmed over the last 30, 50 or a hundred years…”
Did you think I was replying to no one? Let me quote them.
And after your post others chimed in similarly.
kadaka –
HenryP –
(HenryP finds no evidence of global warming, never mind AGW – I’m familiar with his ‘work’)
You even contradict your own post to me.
dbstealy –
You produce a strange graph purporting a flat trend since 1880.
So, contrary to your reassurance, there are still contrarians who refuse to take on the results of even other skeptics who have taken all the data and crunched the numbers. You can see the classic cherry-pick with kadaka’s reference to highly local data, for example. That sort of selective analysis has being going on for years.
Oh, more than that. There has been and still is absolute conviction from some skeptics that the average temperature of the Earth’s surface has not risen for the last 30, 50 or a hundred years. For some, they will change their opinion depending on who they’re talking to, or how badly they need to ‘win’ an argument, or whatever bugbear drives them to hold mutually contradictory views at different times.
These types will never, ever, ever crunch the full data sets, raw or otherwise, nor will they reference the work of people who have – even the skeptical number crunchers. They’ll just link a graph, or cherry-pick some locale, or do poor work on a handful of data and stake their claim.
First, the work done presented at ‘skeptic’ blogs.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/thermal-hammer-part-deux/
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/global-gridded-ghcn-trend-by-seasonal-offset-anomaly-matching/
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/comparing-global-land-temperature-reconstructions/
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/comparing-global-landocean-reconstructions/
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/romans-temperature-reconstruction-higher-trends-than-hadcrut/
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/02/new-work-on-the-recent-warming-of-northern-hemispheric-land-areas/
not to mention a post on this very site
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/13/calculating-global-temperature/
and others
http://residualanalysis.blogspot.com.au/2010/03/ghcn-processor-10.html
http://treesfortheforest.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/better-late-than-never/
http://moyhu.blogspot.com.au/2010/03/comparison-of-ghcn-results.html
http://moyhu.blogspot.com.au/2010/07/global-landocean-gsod-and-ghcn-data.html
There is much more like this comparing raw and adjusted data, comparing global land to global ocean, to global urban, to global rural, to global airports, station dropout analyses, from the last 30 years or so to the full instrumental record, and even with non-GHCN data (GSOD).
They all come up with pretty much the same results.
It’s something I’ve followed closely for years, and can provide links to all of the above comparisons.
These people actually did “get up off their hinds and exert the effort to find out for themselves”, as wayne exorted. Please point out another analysis as comprehensive that comes up with a different result – ie, no cherry-picked locales, lame graphs, small data set, or naive methodology. Let’s see some actual work done. Otherwise I’m not interested.
barry,
Your simpleton arguments are so easy to deconstruct that if I were you, I would hide out for a few weeks, and hope everyone forgets my nonsense… if I were you.
You refer to this chart as a “strange graph”. But the only thing strange about it is its provenance: GISS. Otherwise, you are quite strange for questioning it, because it is fact-based.
And when I write “hardly rising”, only a dope would mis-read that as “not rising”. If that’s the best you can do, it’s no wonder your crazy alarmist position is so easy to debunk. It is a fact that not one model was correct in its global warming prediction. Why should anyone pay attention to models that are always wrong?
Your whole argument is a strawman fallacy: you cut and paste up what other wrote, then you reply to me as if they are my arguments. Everyone on this board has their opinions, and we are not responsible for anything, other than what we write ourselves.
Let me remind folks here that “barry” is an uneducated lay person with an opinion — but with no CV, or degree in the hard sciences. We have been over all this before: if I am wrong, post your CV. Prove me wrong. In reality, your comments show that you do nothing but cut ‘n’ paste talking points, and look for minor and insignificant “gotchas”, which mean nothing.
The reality is that the IPCC is flat wrong. They have never produced any measurable, testable scientific evidence proving that human CO2 emissions are the cause of global warming. Just because you want to believe their nonsense does not constitute scientific evidence.
Finally, wake me when you can falsify my oft-repeated, testable hypothesis:
At current and projected concentrations, CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere
Until then, you got nothin’…
As predicted, db, you reference no substantive work, just relink to your graph, for which the provenance is…. suyts.files.wordpress, not GISS. Please link to the work behind the graph. Aren’t skeptics interested in replicability anymore?
Nope, you said that no skeptic doubts the world has warmed and I provided examples that disprove your ‘rule’. I’m glad you’ve made your view clearer on whether the globe has warmed or not. wayne, kadaka and HenryP, who doubt that the world has warmed, can now take it up with you if they wish.
barry says
You (Henry) even contradict your own post to me.
Henry says
nothing contradictory here…..
Namely, it has been warming globally, naturally,
and now it has started cooling globally, naturally
apart from my ‘work” which you allege is trash,
you can see that also nicely here:
(4 major data sets, that I did not compile myself)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2014/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2002/trend
Only an ostrich puts his head in the ground if he does not want to see reality.
That is the animal I compare you with, if, like the IPCC, you still claim that it will continue to get warmer.
Henry,
What kind of animal attributes invented claims to other people? You would more easily find quotes from people like Roy Spencer, Roger Pielke Snr and Anthony Watts stating that increased levels of CO2 should warm the world in the long-term. You can refer to these skeptics and completely ignore the IPCC, if you like. But I haven’t gone that far here.
It seems you have let go of the idea that there is no warming, based on your early work of a handful of weather stations. Kudos. I will no longer attribute that position to you. wayne and kadaka may now take up the issue with dbstealy and yourself if they care to. Seems doubtful, though.
Correction, should be ‘has been’ no warming for the last 30, 50 or a hundred years. I note your position on ‘cooling’, Henry, though the data sets indicate a slow-down or haiatus for periods that approach statistical significance. 10 years of data is mainly a reflection of weather, not climate trends. I doubt there’s any point arguing about it with you, though. But if you think any old time period is good enough, it has been warming again since 2008.
RSS shows a trend of 0.2C/decade, and UAH, the skeptics’ choice, shows a trend of 0.3C/decade!
It’s only 5 years, but what difference does it make if it’s 15, 20, 10, 5 or 3 years, eh?
Which brings us back, somehwat obliquely, to the topic of this thread.
Henry,
I noticed that you ommitted the UAH data from your analysis, even while including the other satellite-based data set, RSS. Curious, I plotted the your time period values for UAH. Lo and behold, it’s the only data set to show a slight warming for the period you state it’s been cooling.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/uah/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/uah/from:1987/to:2014
I’m sure you have excellent reasons for sidelining the data set that is preferred by most skeptics. Could you explain, please?
@barry
I did explain this in point 4) of my previous post. I can read your mind?
Can somebody clarify the position of UAH ie that it is as I explained ie not globally representative?
barry says
1) based on your early work of a handful of weather stations.
2) You would more easily find quotes from people like Roy Spencer, Roger Pielke Snr and Anthony Watts stating that increased levels of CO2 should warm the world in the long-term.
3) But if you think any old time period is good enough, it has been warming again since 2008.
4) UAH, the skeptics’ choice, shows a trend of 0.3C/decade!
henry says
1) A handful? 47 weather stations is just a handful?
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/
2) As far as I know I have never personally argued with them about more CO2 causing more warming but if I had, then they must show me the balance sheet same as I asked you, here:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2011/08/11/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-aug-2011/
that would prove to me that the net effect of more CO2 in the atmosphere is that of warming rather than cooling.
3) The first thing you should know if you really want to study climate science is that the irradiance varies over one solar cycle; therefore, to chose half a cycle would give you a complete wrong impression…..
This is why I chose not 10 years but 11 years. (2013-2002=11). That is equivalent time of one solar cycle. In addition, you should know that real climate scientists must consider the fact that there are more solar cycles. I stumbled upon one myself, here:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
[note: It seems to me this 88 year solar/weather cycle was already calculated from COSMOGENIC ISOTOPES as related in this study: Persistence of the Gleissberg 88-year solar cycle over the last ˜12,000 years: Evidence from cosmogenic isotopes Peristykh, Alexei N.; Damon, Paul E. Journal of Geophysical Research (Space Physics), Volume 108, Issue A1, pp. SSH 1-1, CiteID 1003, DOI 10.1029/2002JA009390]
Now look back at the global record and you will find that it generally started warming from around 1950, ignoring short spells of cooling in between. Hence, we know that from 2000 to 2040 it will be generally cooling.
Before 1940 the global temp record is murky, to say the least, because of various reasons.
(no calibrated thermometers, poor global representation, missing data when workers went on leave, etc.)
4) I believe UAH has issues with calibration; it does not agree with my own data set from 2000 but neither does it agree with any other data set. I also think that UAH only measures between plus 30 and minus 30 latitude, which could give a wrong impression about the global cooling taking place, especially if you are looking at average temps.
Predictably, global cooling would cause a small (?) shift of cloud formation and precipitation, more towards the equator, on average.When water condenses, large amounts of warmth are released……
If a data set is not globally representative you have to be careful….
ask me.
Keep your eyes on maximum temperatures and soon they will open up. And you feel liberated.
I can drive a big truck now and take my dogs with me without having to feel guilty.
Isn’t that great? I think that is worth something. I was worth all my work and all the trouble finding out things for myself.
If I were you, I would check out my final report on this:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
barry says
1) based on your early work of a handful of weather stations.
2) You would more easily find quotes from people like Roy Spencer, Roger Pielke Snr and Anthony Watts stating that increased levels of CO2 should warm the world in the long-term.
3) But if you think any old time period is good enough, it has been warming again since 2008.
4) UAH, the skeptics’ choice, shows a trend of 0.3C/decade!
henry says
1) A handful? 47 weather stations is just a handful?
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/
2) As far as I know I have never personally argued with them about more CO2 causing more warming but if I had, then they must show me the balance sheet same as I asked you, here:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2011/08/11/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-aug-2011/
that would prove to me that the net effect of more CO2 in the atmosphere is that of warming rather than cooling.
3) The first thing you should know if you really want to study climate science is that the irradiance varies over one solar cycle; therefore, to chose half a cycle would give you a complete wrong impression…..
This is why I chose not 10 years but 11 years. (2013-2002=11). That is equivalent time of one solar cycle. In addition, you should know that real climate scientists must consider the fact that there are more solar cycles. I stumbled upon one myself, here:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
[note: It seems to me this 88 year solar/weather cycle was already calculated from COSMOGENIC ISOTOPES as related in this study: Persistence of the Gleissberg 88-year solar cycle over the last ˜12,000 years: Evidence from cosmogenic isotopes Peristykh, Alexei N.; Damon, Paul E. Journal of Geophysical Research (Space Physics), Volume 108, Issue A1, pp. SSH 1-1, CiteID 1003, DOI 10.1029/2002JA009390]
Now look back at the global record and you will find that it generally started warming from around 1950, ignoring short spells of cooling in between. Hence, we know that from 2000 to 2040 it will be generally cooling.
Before 1940 the global temp record is murky, to say the least, because of various reasons.
(no calibrated thermometers, poor global representation, missing data when workers went on leave, etc.)
4) I believe UAH has issues with calibration; it does not agree with my own data set from 2000 but neither does it agree with any other data set. I also think that UAH only measures between plus 30 and minus 30 latitude, which could give a wrong impression about the global cooling taking place, especially if you are looking at average temps.
Predictably, global cooling would cause a small (?) shift of cloud formation and precipitation, more towards the equator, on average.When water condenses, large amounts of warmth are released……
If a data set is not globally representative you have to be careful….
ask me.
Keep your eyes on maximum temperatures and soon they will open up. And you feel liberated.
I can drive a big truck now and take my dogs with me without having to feel guilty.
Isn’t that great? I think that is worth something. It was worth all my work and all the trouble finding out things for myself.
If I were you, I would check out my final report on this:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
Henry,
UAH temp record is derived from meausring radiance in the atmosphere between 85S and 85N. RSS have the same coverage – they use the same data from the same satellites, but the process algorithms are different.
Not 30S to 30N. If you think coverage is a problem for UAH, then you must discount RSS for the same reason. I think that the coverage is outstanding compared to the surface records, but, as you note, satellites have problems with drift and orbital decay, and the data set has to be woven through different satellites as they came on and offline. Also, the vertical radiance band is ~4 kilometers high, so they are measuring the temperature of thre lower troposphere rather than the surface (over land – they measure skin temperature of the oceans), and they have to estimate calcs to winnow out the full measured column, which includes radiance from higher up.
Another skeptic I converse with compiles a blog on the Australian temperature record, and says the national standard station count (112) is not enough. I disagree with him. If I remember correctly, 49 is more than you had when you were posting about it in early 2011. I think it is possible to get a fairly useful reflection of global temp trends with so few stations, but they would have to be well spaced out over the globe.
What is the spatial distribution of your data set?
Of the 11 year cycle, the total output of the sun has changed little since the 1950s, but the globe has warmed. The sun has had little influence during that period, so I would not expect it to have a strong influence for the next 30 years, unless it’s behaviour becomes different. I note from the paper you cited at your blog that the researchers don’t see a strong influece on global temperatures regarind the purported 88 year cycle.
The earlier surface temperature record is corroborated by proxy evidence (boreholes, tree-rings, sediment, glacial retreat). If you think proxy evidence is good enough to reconstruct an 88-year solar cycle for 12,000 years from one proxy type, wouldn’t you consider a range of proxy types to be an even stronger corroboration of the early temperature record?
Also, they have much more than 49 stations for the early temperature record, so by your own standard, this should be sufficient.
My point being that if there is an 88-year solar cycle, it is not running the global climate, as the globe is warmer now than it was 100 years ago.
The 11-year solar cycle can influence trends on short time scales. You need at least two full cycles to balance out the fluctuations, not just one, partly because the 11-year cycle is not perfectly regular. The shortest duration in the 20th century was 9.5 years, longest was 12.5, and short cycles usually follow long ones. The last cycle, with minimum at 2008, was 12.5 years duration.
And other non-climatic factors influence surface trends on short time-scales – el Nino/la Nina quasi-periodic fluctuations being one of the most infuential. The standard length for climate trend analysis is 30 years to suppress the effects of short-term variation, but you can get statistically trends for climate from surface records as little as 20 years in length. Slightly more for satellite records, owing to the greater variability (el Nino la Nina years tend to be larger temp changes in the satellite data).
20 years for a climate signal to emerge is a good minimum, no shorter. From a purely statistical point of view, no ten-year trend in the instrumental record is statistically significant. The time period is too short. As an example, the trend of HadCRUt4 from 2002 through 2012 is -0.046C/decade, and the confidence interval is +/- 0.19C, which means the trend may be anywhere between -0.236C/decade and 0.144C/decade. The time period is too short to get a better estimate. The sampled trend is not statistically significant. This is the case for all data sets for this time period – and any other 10-year time period in any of the records.
Ten years is too short to get useful trend estimates, for many reasons.
There must be something wrong with UAH that happened recently, because over the longest period, ie 30 years, I get the same result as UAH, ie 0.13 degrees C warming per decade (looking at my table for means)
112 weather stations in the same continent will not give a global result. At the beginning here I give the sampling procedure to follow to get a globally representative sample:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/
(e.g. longitude does not matter if we are looking at the change from the annual average in degrees/annum)
As I said, means you can look at, but it confuses, maxima you must study and you will easily find the pattern. I stopped at 47 stations because of finding very high correlation on the pattern for the drop in the speed of maximum temperatures..
Hale-Nicholson proposed the 22 year sunspot cycle and they claimed that over 220 years there have been 10 cycles. Basically they say it is wrong to chart the 11 year cycles as “direct current” cycles in which all the amplitudes march in the same direction.
Within a sine wave of 88 years there are 4 quadrants of each 22 years. Indeed, it is not the total irradiance from the sun that varies much. It is the variation within TSI that causes different chain reactions TOA that changes the amount of energy coming in, as observed from maxima.
Did you see the sine wave I plotted for Anchorage? (it is below the global curve)
Of course, remember earth also produces its own energy (core heat/volcanic/lunar/etc) .
The proposal of a 90-100 year weather cycle is therefore the most probable position and history backs it up. Gleisberg was not stupid. I wonder how he figured it out?
People were looking at the planets to explain this behavior until the IPCC arrived.
http://www.cyclesresearchinstitute.org/cycles-astronomy/arnold_theory_order.pdf
Barry says
My point being that if there is an 88-year solar cycle, it is not running the global climate, as the globe is warmer now than it was 100 years ago.
Henry says
1) how would you prove this to me if nobody can even show me a re-calibration certificate of a thermometer from before 1940? They did not re-calibrate until after 1950. How would you know the weather is not about the same now as it was 100 years ago>?
2) even if there is slight upturn during the past century, how would you know if there are not more longer term cycles, e.g. those that seem to depend on the positions of the planets?
Anyway, it seems this Gleissberg cycle is more dominant now and for the time being it will be cooling until 2040 and no you or the ipcc can change this.You can keep fooling them by adjusting the figures, but in the end, people having to shove snow in late spring will make up their own minds about global warming.
Agreed, but that was not what I said. My skeptic friend, who has done a lot of work on the Australian temp record, says that 112 stations is not sufficient for a single continent – I can imagne what he would say about using 47 stations for the entire global surface record. But, as I said, I disagree with him.
It is very difficult to find coherent scientific premises amongst skeptics. They contradict each other.
How much coverage/weighting do you give to the Arctic region, the fastest warming region on the planet? Longitude definitely does matter, because rates of climate change are different in different parts of the globe. Internal variation and multidecadal cycles have an effect on certain locations but not on others.. A truly representative sample would have a god lat/long spread. Do you have a chart of the weather stations overlayed on a global map? That would be the clearest visual way to check your coverage.
Your table did not have enough information. How do you weight closely clustered stations with others that are more sparse? Ie, how do you prevent weight given to one particular region? Too many stations clustered in one area can skew results.
I note that over the long term your results are not far from the official records, and the attempts made by skeptical bloggers and others.
UAH isn’t ‘wrong’, any more than the others are ‘wrong’. You should not omit information and then post-justify the decision by assuming the data must be wrong simply because it doesn’t agree with your conclusions. They are all even wronger over short time scales. That’s the problem with only using 10 years of data. Here’s another 10 years of data.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1987/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/plot/uah/from:1987/plot/rss/from:1987/plot/gistemp/from:1998/to:2008/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1998/to:2008/trend/plot/rss/from:1998/to:2008/trend/plot/uah/from:1998/to:2008/trend
This time it’s RSS that has a declining trend when the others are warming. By your reckoning, we should discount RSS on this basis – lack of agreement.
But this lack of agreement is not because RSS is ‘wrong’, just that on short timescales interannual variability dominates trends, and this makes a difference when different data sets reflect interannual variation differently. RSS has the greatest temperature changes in la Nina/el Nino years, and as the trend starts with the super el Nino of 1998, RSS starts with a higher anomaly than the other data sets. This doesn’t matter over longer time scales, because the effect of ENSO evens out after 25 years or so.
Are you familiar with statistical analysis and what ‘statistical significance’ means? 10 year trends of global surface temperature/lower troposphere always fail statistical significance, by a large margin. You can’t tell anything about trend with only 10 years worth of data.
For the period 1998 through 2007, the decadal trends with confidence intervals are:
GISS | 0.151 +/- 0.269
Had4 | 0.121 +/- 0.264
RSS | -0.053 +/- 0.425
UAH | 0.074 +/- 0.442
For a trend to be statistically signficant, it has to be greater than the confidence interval, whether positive or negative. Note that the confidence interval is even larger for the satellite records than the surface records, an expected result owing to the greater interannual variability in the data.
You can choose any ten-year period from any of the records and come up with the same result. 10 year global temperature trends have no meaning. We have no confidence about trends from 2002.
barry:
I agree with much that you say in your post at October 2, 2013 at 11:40 pm. However, this conclusion misleads.
Oh, but “10 year global temperature trends” do have “meaning”.
They mean that global warming or cooling is not discernible over a decade.
Now (i.e. the present) is the only valid start date when considering how long there has been no discernible change in global temperature. And one then considers back in time from now. Any other date is a cherry-pick.
Smoothing the data is processing it. We are interested in whether the data shows a discernible trend: we are not interested in whether processed data shows anything.
Any model of change could be used but climate science uses linear trends, so that is the appropriate model.
The discernment has to be a trend different from zero at 95% confidence because that is the confidence level used by ‘climate science’.
So, to assess whether there has been discernible global warming recently one needs to take one of the data sets of global temperature time series (e.g. HadCRUTn, GISS, RSS, etc.) and assess past time periods from now to determine the shortest time period with linear trend which differs from zero with 95% confidence.
1.
All the available time series of global temperature show no discernible global warming or global cooling at 95% confidence for at least the most recent 17 years. RSS shows no discernible global warming or global cooling at 95% confidence for 22 years.
2.
Importantly, all the available time series of global temperature DO show discernible global warming or global cooling at 95% confidence for the previous 17 years (i.e. between 34 and 17 years ago.
3.
Hence, discernible global warming stopped at least 17 years ago.
Any other statement (except to query the validity of global temperature data compilations) is spin.
Richard
Richard,
You can only say that the long-term temperature trend has changed if the difference between the previous and the following trend is statistically significant. IOW, there has to be no overlap in the trends accounting for confidence intervals.
The most recent full-year 17 year period is 1997 to 2012 inclusive. Let’s look at the actual numbers. Here are the decadal trend results, with confidence intervals.
GISS | 0.082 +/- 0.131
Had4 | 0.049 +/- 0.126
RSS | -0.009 +/- 0.225
UAH | 0.093 +/- 0.230
The confidence intervals give us our range of possibile trends per decade for each data set. The ranges are:
GISS | -0.049 to 0.213
Had4 | -0.077 to 0.175
RSS | -0.234 to 0.216
UAH | -0.137 to 0.323
If there is overlap with the previous 17 years (or longer), then the trend change is not statistically significant.
Plot 1979 through 1996, and then 1997 thru 2012 (here)
The trends look quite different, but is the difference statistically significant?
Here are the 1979 through 1996 decadal trends for the four temp records, including confidence intervals.
GISS | 0.108 +/- 0.121
Had4 | 0.108 +/- 0.107
RSS | 0.071 +/- 0.170
UAH | 0.034 +/- 0.178
Not only do the confidence intervals overlap for the two periods, the intervals overlap with the central estimate for each data set. The difference (deceleration) is not statistically significant, at least not with linear regression.
17 years is not quite long enough, either. Of the four data sets, only one trend achives statistical significance over such a period – Had4 from 1979 to 1996. For a better comparison, you’d want to start with a statistically significant trend as your ‘null’ hypothesis, otherwise none of it is meaningful. For that you’d want to run a base trend line at least 25 years long for the surface records to compare with.
I think it is appropriate to speak of an ‘apparent’ slowdown in global warming since 1997/98, but in purely statistical terms, there is not enough data yet to make that determination to 95% confidence limits.
Any other conclusion is ignoring the uncertainty in the trend estimates.
A more straightforward way of doing this would be to run a second degree polynomial trend from 1979 to 2012, and see if that curve is statistically significant. I don’t know how to work out the uncertainty interval for that, unfortunately. Anyone else capable of doing it? I would guess that the result is likewise not statistically significant, but it would be good to know for sure. And anyone with the patience could test that until they find a long enough period with statistical significance and see the direction of acceleration by the end of the time series.
I took my own advice and plotted a base trend of 25 years for GISS and Had4, 1972 through 1996. This has the effect of better reflecting the long-term trend, and also reducing the uncertainty, giving a better chance for the last 17 years with confidence intervals to show statistically significant trend change.
Here’s the chart.
Here are the decadal trends with confidence intervals from 1972 through 1996:
GISS | 0.147 +/- 0.076
Had4 | 0.150 +/- 0.071
For the last 17 years:
GISS | 0.082 +/- 0.131
Had4 | 0.049 +/- 0.126
The confidence intervals for the last 17 years overlap with the central estimates for the statistically significant previous period of 25 years.
Thus, we cannot say with linear regression that the long-term trend has changed. Not to 95% confidence limits. 17 years of global surface data leaves too much uncertainty to make a definitive determination.
Barry says
UAH isn’t ‘wrong’, any more than the others are ‘wrong’.
Henry says
they admitted to me that they do have calibration problems, especially related to the actual zero point of temperature in Kelvin
I am also waiting for someone (other than yourself) to confirm or deny to me that the UAH is mainly representative of the tropics
barry says
How much coverage/weighting do you give to the Arctic region, the fastest warming region on the planet?
henry says
I do appreciate this question as I see now that you and all have not grasped the very basic of my sampling technique to see if there is a change of energy coming in. Obviously,when I looked at earth, standing on my table, I decided from the beginning that the amount of samples taken from the NH must equal the amount of samples taken from the SH. However, I never clarified this to anyone because I thought it was so obvious….
That was the other reason why I stopped sampling: I could not balance here….
I have 24 samples from the SH and 22 from the NH but I am +100 on latitude balance.There is simply a shortage of samples from the SH at high latitude….
I have subsequently rewritten this part of my post:
1)
I took a random sample of weather stations that had daily data
In this respect random means any place on earth, with a weather station with complete or almost complete daily data, subject to the given sampling procedure decided upon and given in 2) below.
2)
I made sure the sample was globally representative (most data sets aren’t!!!) ……
that means
a) The amount of weather stations taken from the NH must be equal to the amount weather stations taken from the SH
b) The sample must balance by latitude (longitude does not matter, as in the end we are looking at average yearly temps. which includes the effect of seasonal shifts and irradiation + earth rotates once every 24 hours). The sample must also balance 70/30 in or at sea/ inland
c) all continents included (unfortunately I could not get reliable daily data going back 38 years from Antarctica,so there always is this question mark about that, knowing that you never can get a “perfect” sample)
d) I made a special provision for months with missing data (not to put in a long term average, as usual in stats but to rather take the average of that particular month’s preceding year and year after). As an example here you can see the annual average temperatures for New York JFK:
http://www.tutiempo.net/clima/New_York_Kennedy_International_Airport/744860.htm
You can copy and paste the results of the first 4 columns in excel.
Note that in this particular case you will have to go into the months of the years 2002 and 2005 to see in which months data are missing and from there apply the correction as indicated by me + determine the average temperature for 2002 and 2005 from all twelve months of the year.
e) I did not look only at means (average daily temp.) like all the other data sets, but also at maxima and minima… …
3)
I determined at all stations the average change in temp. per annum from the average temperature recorded, over the period indicated (least square fits)
4)
the end results on the bottom of the first table (on maximum temperatures),
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/02/21/henrys-pool-tables-on-global-warmingcooling/
clearly showed a drop in the speed of warming that started around 38 years ago, and continued to drop every other period I looked//…
5)
I did a linear fit, on those 4 results for the drop in the speed of global maximum temps,
ended up with y=0.0018x -0.0314, with r2=0.96
At that stage I was sure to know that I had hooked a fish:
I was at least 95% sure (max) temperatures were falling. I had wanted to take at least 50 samples but decided this would not be necessary which such high correlation.
6)
On same maxima data, a polynomial fit, of 2nd order, i.e. parabolic, gave me
y= -0.000049×2 + 0.004267x – 0.056745
r2=0.995
That is very high, showing a natural relationship, like the trajectory of somebody throwing a ball…
7)
projection on the above parabolic fit backward, ( 5 years) showed a curve:
happening around 40 years ago. You always have to be careful with forward and backward projection, but you can do so with such high correlation (0.995)
8)
ergo: the final curve must be a sine wave fit, with another curve happening, somewhere on the bottom…
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
Now, I simply cannot be clearer about this. The only bias might have been that I selected stations with complete or near complete daily data. But even that in itself would not affect randomness in my understanding of probability theory.
Either way, you could also compare my results (in the means table) with that of Dr. Spencers, or even that reported by others and you will find same 0.14 /decade since 1990 or 0.13/decade since 1980.
In addition, you can put the speed of temperature change in means and minima in binomials with more than 0.95 correlation. So, I do not have just 4 data for a curve fit, I have 3 data sets with 4 data each.They each confirm that it is cooling. And my final proposed fit for the drop in maximum temps. shows it will not stop cooling until at least 2039.
barry:
In this one post I am answering your three posts at October 3, 2013 at 3:22 am, October 3, 2013 at 3:41 am and October 3, 2013 at 4:00 am.
Your post addressed to me at October 3, 2013 at 3:22 am begins saying
NO! That is plain wrong.
1.
If there is a trend discernibly different from zero at 95% confidence over a period then there was a discernible trend.
2.
If there is not a trend discernibly different from zero at 95% confidence over a period then there was not a discernible trend.
3.
If a 17 year period had a discernible trend but the subsequent 17 year period does not have a trend then the discernible trend ended.
This is not to say it is known that there is no trend in the latter period. It means that there is no longer a trend that is discernible although there was in the former period.
The remainder of your post at October 3, 2013 at 3:22 am is based on your error so does not warrant comment.
Your post at October 3, 2013 at 3:41 am begins saying
No. You are trying to move the goal posts. As I said in my post at October 3, 2013 at 1:56 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/30/to-the-ipcc-forget-about-30-years/#comment-1434425
My having written that up front may imply to some that I presciently understood you might try to move the goal posts 🙂
Your post at October 3, 2013 at 4:00 am repeats your mistake of trying to pretend the ending of a discernible trend is not important. I have already refuted that in this post.
As I explained to you in my post at at October 3, 2013 at 1:56 am which induced your series of posts making desperate excuses:
discernible global warming stopped at least 17 years ago.
Live with it.
Richard
Barry says
to the Arctic region, the fastest warming region on the planet?
henry says
I hope you realize (now) that that is also a (directed) false opinion
Temperatures in Anchorage have dropped by as much as 2 degrees C since 2000
and NOBODY noticed?
Henry,
Thanks for going into detail.
RSS and UAH have the same calibration problems, as I said. They are analogous to difficulties with the surface data (but not the same kind, obviously). All data have problems, as you are aware from your own work (missing data). I do not know how TiuTempo deal with quality control of their data. If you discount UAH, you must also discount RSS – they use the same data from the same sources. They have differences in how they process them.
If you think that the Arctic has been cooling since 2000 based on one data set, then there is a problem with your coverage. Every data set, including the satellite data sets, shows greater warming in the Arctic. UAH shows 0.66C/decade for the Arctic ocean. Satellite measure radiance from the ocean skin, which is a much more accurate measurement than the troposphere over land. Even with the uncertainty from callibration problems, this result is still greater than the global record. Every data set shows greater warming in the Arctic. HADCrut3 had fewer Arctic weather stations than HADCrut4, and the increased data revealed an even greater amount of warming than was already apparent.
I said it’s possible to construct a fairly good temp record from so few stations, but you are running with a bare minimum, and unless you check against other stations/records, you could easily end up with a skewed result. Long data streams from weather stations is not by itself a guarantee. Anchorage is an example.
I did a short bit of research on TiuTempo. The findings are not salutory. What gives you confidence in their data quality?
We are agreed that there has been an ‘apparent’ slowdon in global temperatures for the last 15 years or so. We are probably disagreed on the climactic significance of this. However…
You ran a second order polynomial for the last 40 years and found deceleration with statistical significance? From 47 weather stations? Do I have that right?
Richard,
What you have said amounts to:
The temperature trend from the last 17 years is not discernible.
I agree.
The goal is discerning temperature trends/changes in trend. I didn’t shift the goal posts, just trying to score a from a different (better) angle. If you think a second degree polynomial is inappropriate and prefer to stick to linear trends, that’s ok with me.
If we stick with linear regression and restrict ourselves to surface temps and satellite lower tropospheric data, we can’t say much about the last 17 years. The trends are not discernible. We cannot discern that the trend has increased, decreased or flattened. Not with statistical confidence. We cannot say that global warming has ‘stopped’. Nor can we say that it has continued. We do not yet have enough data to say so to 95% confidence.
Basically, “we do not know with much confidence”.
Regarding surface and tropospheric temp trends for the last 17 years, that is all we can say.
Henry,
forgot to add – UAH coverage is 85S to 85N. You can see that in their notes at the bottom of the data page here,
http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/uahncdc_lt_5.6.txt
Arctic and Antarctic (which they call ‘NoPol’ and ‘SoPol’) is latitudes 60 to 85, North and South.
The data page also has columns for Northern Hemisphere/Southern Hemisphere land, ocean and combined, tropics, and USA and Australian temperatures. It’s a good data reference for UAH regional anomalies.
barry,if we cannot discern if the trend has increased,decreased or flattened,could we say with 100% confidence it has not gotten any warmer in the last 17 years 🙂
barry says
Every data set shows greater warming in the Arctic.
henry says
well I am sorry. If that be true then every data set is wrong. I have two stations in Anchorage at 61 latitude that show that average temperatures dropped by ca -0.15 degree per annum on average over the past 12 years. That is 1.8 degrees C in total….Almost 2 degrees C cooler.
And nobody noticed????
As the people in Alaska have noted,
http://www.adn.com/2012/07/13/2541345/its-the-coldest-july-on-record.html
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130520/97-year-old-nenana-ice-classic-sets-record-latest-breakup-river-1
the cold weather in 2012 was so bad there that they did not get much of any harvests. And it seems NOBODY is telling the farmers there that it is not going to get any better.
Obviously, you can see from the data in military base in Anchorage that the average temperatures dropped because the maxima dropped sharply, following the pattern of the Gleisberg solar/weather cycle. See my second graph here:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
(I had good maxima data going back to 1940 – by that time the thermometers got stuck on the maximum, there is not much anyone can mess up)
I am also warning those people that are currently exploring the arctic that they do not know what will come against them.They will lose their investments…..
Counting back 88 years i.e. 2013-88= we are in 1925.
Now look at some eye witness reports of the arctic ice back then? Read the particulars in the actual news report.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/16/you-ask-i-provide-november-2nd-1922-arctic-ocean-getting-warm-seals-vanish-and-icebergs-melt/
Sounds familiar? Back then, in 1922, they had seen that the arctic ice melt was due to the warmer Gulf Stream waters. However, by 1950 all that same ‘lost” ice had frozen back.
I therefore predict that all lost arctic ice will also come back, from 2020-2035 as also happened from 1935-1950. Antarctic ice is already increasing.
@bit chilly
it will get a bit chilly
As I was just saying
Climate change=global cooling
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/05/norways-wheat-production-impacted-by-climate-change/
Danger from global cooling is documented and provable. It looks we have only ca. 7 “fat” years left……
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
the silence from barry after my comments on “arctic warming” is rather deafening, don’t you think?
no doubt he has moved on to “greener” pastures