By David Stockwell writing in Quadrant Online
As CO2 climate models falter and even the IPCC backs off its estimates, it just may be that a radical shift in thinking is looming. Wouldn’t it be funny if it was the sun all along?
Remember Thomas Kuhn and his paradigm shift? According to his Structure of Scientific Revolutions, theories change only when anomalous observations stress the ”dominant paradigm” to the point that it becomes untenable. Until then, failure of a result to conform to the prevailing paradigm is not seen as refuting the dominant theory, but explained away as a mistake of the researchers, errors in the data, within the range of uncertainty, and so on. Only at the point of crisis does science become open to a new paradigm. So, does Kuhn inform the current climate debate, help identify important information or an alternative paradigm?
Climate models can be seen as encapsulating the dominant theory, even though they are composed of many different theories regarding land, the ocean and atmosphere. Despite their differences they are also similar in many ways, sharing terminology such as the ‘radiative kernel’. Lets agree, for the purpose of argument, that the dominant AGW paradigm is of global temperature’s high sensitivity to CO2 doubling, resulting in an increase of around 3°C, which appears to be about the central estimate of the climate models.
Does the 15-year ‘pause’ in global temperatures stress this theory? Certainly to some, the stress has already reached a ‘crisis’; while to others the divergence can be explained away by natural variation, uncertainty, and errors in the data.
Do failed models and their predictions of increasing extreme events, like hurricanes, droughts and floods, stress the climate models? Possibly not. From a physical perspective, these phenomena lie at the boundaries of the theory. Hurricanes, droughts and floods are ‘higher order’ statistics — extremes not climate averages. Surface temperature is only a part of the greater global climate system. Because anomalous behavior at the margins can be discarded without sacrificing the main theory, their power to confirm or reject the dominant paradigm is somewhat limited.
Ocean heat content, however, is in a unique position. The world’s oceans store over 90% of the heat in the climate system. Arguably, therefore, increases in ocean heat determine overall global warming. Ocean heat represents the physical bulk of the global heat store, and so should carry the most weight in our assessment of the status of AGW. Observations of ocean heat uptake represent the crucial experiment — observations capable of decisively dismantling a theory despite its widespread acceptance in the scientific community. The ARGO project to monitor ocean heat with thousands of drifting buoys is the crucial experiment of the AGW stable.
A number of climate bloggers have remarked on the very low rate of ocean heat uptake (here, and here, and here), much lower than predicted by the models (here, here, and here). The last link is about Nic Lewis, a coauthor on Otto et al. 2013, who feels that recent findings of low climate sensitivity, many based on ocean heat content, have led a number of prominent IPCC authors to abandon the higher estimates of climate sensitivity. That may not be a ‘catastrophe’ for the dominant AGW paradigm, but it is certainly a lurch by insiders towards the lower ends of risk and urgency.
The IPCC panel preparing the AR5 report may not have been devastated when they changed the likely range of climate sensitivity, which had stood at 4.5–2°C since 1990. The lower extimate has now been dropped from 2°C to 1.5°C. What has not been appreciated is that increasing the range of uncertainty is impossible in a period of Kuhnian ‘normal science’, where new information always decreases uncertainty.
The ‘blow-out’ in the range of likely climate sensitivity can only mean one thing: We are no longer in a period of ‘normal’ science, but entering a period of ‘paradigm shift’.
Until the scientific revolution, explaining away anomalous results will be the normal behavior of the status quo. For example, Nic details a series of erroneous statements and misrepresentation by the UK Met Office of peer-reviewed studies observing relatively modest aerosol forcing and climate sensitivity (here and here).
What new theory could possibly replace the dominant paradigm? Clearly there is a great deal yet to know about natural climate variation and the influence of the Sun on global temperature and climate. While many studies have found a strong correlation between the sun and climate, other studies have discounted a strong solar influence. I personally think that miss-specified models have contributed dismissal of solar influence, and have developed an alternative ‘accumulative’ theory of solar influence (here, here and here).
UC Berkely professor Richard Muller has said, “Anyone claiming another cause would have to show that it correlates with the temperature record at least as well as CO2.” As shown in the figure above, a simple regression model of accumulated total solar insolation (CumTSI) with global temperature gives a higher correlation than greenhouse gas and total solar insolation. In large part this is because accumulation shifts the phase of solar effects by 90 degrees bringing it into phase with global temperature, even though the pattern is obscured by the timing of major volcanic eruptions last century. In the accumulation theory, global temperature rises while solar activity is above the long-term solar constant. It is an immature theory, admittedly, but it works over annual- to million-year time scales and explains some very specific features such as ‘chaotic’ dynamics, 20th century warming and the current ‘pause’.
Climate skeptics don’t want to say we told you so but, well, we told you so. Even though we do not yet have an accepted theory of solar influence, there are 25 unique models in the AR5-sponsored CIMP5 archive, most with a climate sensitivity untenable on observations from the last decade.
Take out Occam’s razor and cull them – deep and hard.
Dr David Stockwell, Adjunct Researcher, Central Queensland University
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It is rare, and very good, to hear sense on CAGW from our Aussie Academia.
Similar to your model, sunspot time integral and ocean oscillations explain 90-96% of global temperature observations
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/08/natural-climate-change-has-been-hiding.html
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/01/climate-modeling-ocean-oscillations.html
Thank you for an interesting article.
When I began my personal investigation into to viability of GHG related AGW the CO2 theory quickly dissolved but early on the sun rose as a likely suspect. (No puns intended, of course.)
I never could understand why the proponents of the AGW could give serious consideration to a theory that predicted an increase of 3 deg C in a century when on a daily basis the temperature in the vast majority of locations on the earths surface vary that much in a few hours and do so every day. This intra day change being induced by the sun or lack therof.
I LOVE the title!
I’d like to see how the IPCC would use that considering their “95% certainty” 😉
David S,
Does your article, with emphasis on ocean temperatures, then suggest that if ARGO buoys were to show significant warming below (say) 700m then you would be happy to avow AGW as real and dangerous? Personally, I’m not buying that.
Rich.
The temperature history in the chart in this post, from the CRU of Climategate, has been rewritten by those activists to be more towards a hockey stick rather than the actual double peak appearance of 20th century temperature history in original readings. Without that, there is not so much need for heavy accumulation adjustments, as implied in the solar-climate matches in http://img176.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=81829_expanded_overview_122_424lo.jpg
While the deeper oceans have thermal inertia and would have lag, the surface temperature record is easier to reconstruct from relatively reliable sources. Too predominately deep ocean temperature change is reported in joules to be deliberately misleading, amounting to mere hundredths of a degree or less, not sufficiently independently verifiable from sources other than the same kind of activist-dominated institutions which have repeatedly and not honestly rewritten surface temperature history by whole tenths of a degree (as illustrated in the prior link).
To clarify in my prior comment, I’m referring to CRU-depicted temperature history over the whole 20th century, not just the 1950-onward shown in that one chart.
oh my god whts going on ……………
It is my impression that those scientists who are interested in the philosophy of science tend to prefer the ideas of Karl Popper to those of Thomas Kuhn. Popper was the high priest of falsification. However, as has often been pointed out, climatologists have been reluctant to say what could disprove their theory that man-made CO2 is the main driver of climate change. Consequently Kuhn’s idea of a paradigm shift seem more relevant to climatology.
As Max Planck, the father of quantum theory, put it:
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Perhaps the paradigm shift will get underway as soon as some of the leading lights of the CAGW theory reach retiring age.
it is the sun that controls earths weather not CO2 the sun magnetic poles are about to reverse . http://www.space.com/22271-sun-magnetic-field-flip.html
David Stockwell:
Whatever Kuhn thought, it is not necessary to have an alternative theory to falsify an existing theory. The AGW-hypothesis has been falsified by several observations: it is wrong.
But the falsification of AGW as the dominant effect in climate variation does not imply that any other effect (e.g. solar variation) dominates climate variability.
Climate does vary and its variations probably result from several influences such as response to solar variation, and/or as an outcome of internal variation of the oceanic thermohaline circulation, and/or as a harmonic effect of climate oscillation, and/or as … etc..
The most important scientific statement is always WE DON’T KNOW.
Richard
Good Morning, David. Permission to repost your article? With links back to Quadrant ans WUWT, of course.
‘UC Berkely professor Richard Muller has said, “Anyone claiming another cause would have to show that it correlates with the temperature record at least as well as CO2.” ‘
The hindcasting works- the projections don’t. The hindcasting – the right result for the wrong reasons.
I don’t know about ‘stress’ or ‘crisis’ but I know someone who is certainly worried. Journalists should ask why he is worried.
Karl Popper wrote as a philosopher, while Kuhn wrote as a historian of science. Kuhn wanted to be considered a philosopher but the philosophers would not have it.
The philosophical question that Popper addressed was, if we cannot know the “truth”, can we at least discover what is “false”?
Kuhn did not deal with the question of truth. He showed that scientists function like other social groups in following the crowd. Only at unusual times does someone speak in a way that the crowd listens. [In similar fashion only a few investors recognize a market bubble and move to cash before the market crashes.]
Kuhn was describing how scientists behave. Others including Kuhn himself have elevated this descriptive approach.
So the new norm for scientific endeavour [and for awarding grant money] is discern the direction of the crowd and to follow. Of course you end up with a scientific “bubble” which may or may not be about to burst. Depends a lot on whether or not the cold winters persist for very long and whether the arctic ice recovers.
Seems bizarre to me that changes in climate of less than 60 years is even considered evidence of secular change. Sixty year ocean cycles have been well known for a very long time, so the idea that climate is the average weather over 30 years should have been abandoned long ago.
Focusing on any period shorter than 60 years seem to me no better than augury, in other words no better than looking at the entrails of chickens.
So, it’s the sun (again)
Shouldn’t we be moving on from the graph matching stage, to rewriting coupled climate models that show just how the sun does it, to demonstrate this ‘alternative paradigm’?
Or is this ‘accumulation theory’ too ‘immature’ as yet to move into the major league?
Surely, history shows that when the ‘the point of crisis’ is reached there’s a credible ‘alternative paradigm’ waiting in the wings take it’s place, not a vacuum. In this case the vacuum consists of vague ideas revolving around “it’s the sun”. If it’s so obvious it’s the sun wot did it, why are the proofs and mechanisms so elusive? And if they are so elusive, why are we so sure they’re there waiting to be discovered?
Richard Courtney, I agree. Just because we do not have the fully worked out alternative to a wrong theory, that does not mean that the theory we know to be wrong, remains right, until an alternative understanding is “settled science”…That would repeat the mistake of ever believing that the C02 basis for CAGW hypothesis was correct, in the first place.
The scientific thing to do is accept the data, correctly announce the falsification of the CO2 driven CAGW hypothesis and announce that we do not know exactly what are the many and varied contributary driving factors in climate change. Or rather, we do not of many different drivers, but we do not yet know exactly how they all interlink and inter-react at any given moment to be able to predict future climate change with any degree of confidence.
Actually there is an accepted theory of solar influence centred round the work of solar physicist H Abdussamatov working at Polkovo Astronomical Observatory in St Petersburg. his analysis points to a declining bicentennial component of the total solar irradiance which will gather pace over the next few decades. This in turn points to an approaching ice age..www.ccsenet.org Applied Physics research Vol 4 No February 2012
Brilliant! I was just thinking the same thing about CO2!
The trouble is that the sun has become the cAGW crowd’s get-out-of-jail free card. They now have an alibi for the ‘pause’ which will last for a good 20-30 more years while they finish their work of taking most of the West (but not, of course, China, India, Brazil etc) back to the stone age. It’s role has become one more fudge factor to add to their models – and they will shortly be telling us that this is all predicted once said fudge factor has been incorporated.
Truly, there is no stopping the evil that is Ed Davey/Lord Deben/Tim Yeo/etc/etc.
In reply to:
“The IPCC panel preparing the AR5 report may not have been devastated when they changed the likely range of climate sensitivity, which had stood at 4.5–2°C since 1990. The lower estimate has now been dropped from 2°C to 1.5°C. What has not been appreciated is that increasing the range of uncertainty is impossible in a period of Kuhnian ‘normal science’, where new information always decreases uncertainty.”
The climate wars have blocked the process of normal science. To publish research that questions EAGW is to risk ones career, advancement, access to journals, and so on. Editors have been fired for daring to publish material that challenges EAGW. It is astonishing and disheartening that the scientific community allowed climategate type of practices to occur. There are multiple fundamental observations and analysis any one of which could have created a crisis to dispute EAGW. The standard theory should have based on these observations and analysis changed from EAGW to lukewarm AGW. The rapid decline in the solar magnetic cycle may be the game changer. Based on what has happened in the past the earth will cool due to the decline in the solar magnetic cycle.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/28/bbc-real-risk-of-a-maunder-minimum-little-ice-age/
“According to Professor Lockwood the late 20th century was a period when the sun was unusually active and a so called ‘grand maximum’ occurred around 1985. Since then the sun has been getting quieter. By looking back at certain isotopes in ice cores, he has been able to determine how active the sun has been over thousands of years. Following analysis of the data, Professor Lockwood believes solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years. He found 24 different occasions in the last 10,000 years when the sun was in exactly the same state as it is now – and the present decline is faster than any of those 24.”
Dr Stockwell
In my humble opinion this is the best, non-technical article I have read on the subject.
VI: Its a good question, which is why I have been archiving results on how to simulate the model, fingerprints of ghg vs solar forcing, and most importantly the physical basis for the correlation. But you have to read the papers first, and there is no point in asking the questions unless you have read the papers. The starting point of simulating a climate system is a semi-diagonal difference matrix – nothing less.The “proofs and mechanisms” are elusive because the assumptions are wrong.
WA: I have something of a bone to pick with Professor Lockwood. His papers have been very influential in discounting solar influence. IMHO this is because he used too short a decay period. In the model, a certain part of the climate system has a very long time decay – around 100,000 years (assume deep ocean). Other parts are less, depending on altitude. The time decay, and hence the apparent climate sensitivity depends on the part of the climate system where the perturbation takes place, not so much on what is perturbed.