Reuters: World Meteorological Organization says "This year so far coolest for at least 5 years"

“Chillier weather this year is partly because of a global weather pattern called La Nina that follows a periodic warming effect called El Nino.”
Uh … gee, don’t they just shoot themselves in the foot with this statement? They just linked any past warming to a natural event.

The “continued” link to read the rest of the article isn’t working. I found the complete article here:
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/2032/218/
REPLY: Fixed, thanks

Finally some of the die-hards are begining to warm to the possibility of other reasons for cooling, even if it is a short term (5 years in their book) trend.
Time will tell the (absolutely) best what happens in the future.
We won’t.

“The first half of 2008 was the coolest for at least five years”: OK, an apparently factual statement, inviting a reasoned debate on how measurements are made, averages are taken, and so on.
“The whole year will almost certainly be cooler than recent years”: ruddy madness, in my view. Why not just wait a few months and then we’ll know? It’s reminiscent of the attention paid to all those barmy forecasts of how hurricaney a summer will be. Bin it! Wait for the facts.

There is a disagreement between the two sources in the article on a very simple point. The WMO says, “The first half of 2008 was the coolest for at least 5 years,” while the Hadley Centre says, “That would make the first half of 2008 the coolest since 2000.” Maybe the WMO qualified their statement with the use of “at least.”
I also enjoyed the next to last paragraph: “The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of hundreds of scientists, last year said global warming was “unequivocal” and that manmade greenhouse gas emissions were very likely part of the problem.” …part of the problem.

“Chillier weather this year is partly because of a global weather pattern called La Nina that follows a periodic warming effect called El Nino.”
And what drives these and other global weather patterns that are cooling the globe?

Shouldn’t the models have predicted the changes due to La Nina/El Nino? All I see in the hockey stick is an increase.
Also, scientists have said that the warming due to CO2 has overwhelmed any natural variation. If this is the case, how can La Nina show any effect?
I’m confused.

The Reuters article failed to mention the PDO flip to a cool phase.
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/nasa-pdo-flip-to-cool-phase-confirmed-cooler-times-ahead/

There are going to be more reports like this.
It’s a little difficult to hide the truth, no matter how the data are “adjusted.”
They’re still going to try to keep their dead god, “AGW” on life support, as this Reuters story shows.
The cold, you see, is just “masking” the warming.
So, um, it’s still getting warmer, but it’s just that it’s getting colder at the same time that it’s getting warmer, but the warming is really stronger than the cooling, so even though it’s colder, it’s actually warmer.
And all the scientists agree with that, except the kooks, and those being paid by Big Oil.
I think the work of Dr. Karin Labitzke, over more than 20 years
http://strat-www.met.fu-berlin.de/labitzke/
clearly shows a well-established correlation between low solar activity… (which we have at present, though Cycle 24 just may, MAY have formed a tiny spot today –
http://sidc.oma.be/LatestSWData/LatestSWData.php
…a west-phase QBO (which we are now in), and cold climate in the northern hemisphere.
The fact that Cycle 23 is already more than 12 years old, in my opinion, (not necessary to say, “IMHO,” as my opinion is ALWAYS very humble) will mean we have a “price to pay” this winter.
I expect conditions this winter to be reminiscent of the harsh winters of the 1970s.
It will require increasing creativity to keep ‘weekend-at-bernies’ AGW propped up through a long, bitterly cold (quote me – RECORD cold) winter, but I have no doubt it will be seriously attempted.
Expect more news stories like this one, as well as not merely straight-faced, but SMUG pundits and talking heads ridiculing us rubes who are too stupid to understand that colder is still warmer, that nature has nothing to do with climate, or that (Ha!) AGW is “over.”

Do I have this correct?
El Nino and La Nina events are heat tranfer mechanisms, they are not sources of thermal energy. The source would be the sun.
In El Nino cycles, more thermal energy is transfered from the ocean surface to the atmosphere than occurs during La Nina cycles.
If we are being heated by GHGs, yet the atmosphere is cooling due to a La Nina, then somewhere the thermal energy of the ocean must be increasing, so that that thermal energy can build up and then be released to the atmosphere during the next El Nino.
However, the ARGOS bouys have not shown enough increase in the ocean thermal energy to account for or support the GHG theory.
Do I have that right?

Of course, it could be that during El Nino, less thermal energy is being transferred from the atmosphere to the oceans and during La Nina, more thermal energy is being transferred from the atmosphere to the oceans. Stll, shouldn,’t the ocean thermal energy content increase during La Nina events, like the current 6+ year long decline in atmospheric temperature?

And yes, it CAN get worse than a Dalton Minimum and “Dickensian Winters;” worse than a Maunder Minimum and “Little Ice Age”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period_Pessimum
This period is known as “Bond Event 1.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_event
“Bond Events” occur about every 1500 years.

Bern Bray says: “Shouldn’t the models have predicted the changes due to La Nina/El Nino? All I see in the hockey stick is an increase.”
The models don’t predict the EXACT OCCURRENCE of these sort of short-term fluctuations, which are very sensitive to the initial conditions. However, the same sort of fluctuations that are seen in the real climate system are also seen in the models and so the statement you make implying a monotonic increase in the models is false. (See here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/what-the-ipcc-models-really-say/langswitch_lang/en for further discussion.)
Bern Bray says: “Also, scientists have said that the warming due to CO2 has overwhelmed any natural variation. If this is the case, how can La Nina show any effect?”
What scientists have said is that the long-term global temperature trend (on the timescale of decades) is now dominated by CO2. They haven’t said that this trend overwhelms all the natural variability that occurs on the timescale of a few years. In fact, it would be a very strange claim for them to make given (as I noted above) that the models clearly don’t predict this.

Joel Shore (13:00:01) :
Thank you for endorsing the idea that the climate models are not up to the task of simulating the real climate, including the “short term fluctuations” of the past 10 years, and indeed are not intended to be.
However, I must take exception to your assertion that scientists do not overstate the importance of CO2 and understate the importance of natural variability. That statement is demonstrably false. Please see Anthony’s posts on the whole CCSP USP “synthesis” issue for an object example.
Your “backpedaling” (if I may so characterize it – yes, I may) on behalf of, apparently, the entire “consensus” community, I do find encouraging, so thank you for that as well.

Do they want a real positive feed back? Although we could call it negative… If we are going into a cooling period, there will be less water in the air… less clouds! Water liquid and vapor in the atmosphere is the greatest greenhouse gas that account for our comfortable temperature of average 15C. Take away the atmospheric water and you will see that it will get closer than -15 C. The less water in the air, the less heat gets trapped.
Have you ever noticed that in the middle of winter those days when the sky is blue are really cold?

” Steven Talbot (13:29:34) :
Most of the noise about recent temperatures is based on an analysis of the last few throws, rather than a consideration of the entire sequence. ”
Let me see if I follow the analogy…
temperature data are used _selectively_ as though to “prove” an outcome which in reality has been predetermined, and motivated by something other than a desire to get the truth, whether that truth is “inconvenient” or not…
that there’s really much more to the temperature story than the predetermined, ulterior-motive result, and we must consider the “entire sequence,” including inconvenient truths such, oh, I dunno, the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, solar variability, the real warming power of CO2, which drops off exponentially after the first 20 or so ppmv…
Or are you simply using “dice” to argue that trillions of dollar are being spent on what is essentially a crap shoot?
I tell you, the irony is so appetizing, that I really must be careful not to gorge myself.
I know the feast is just beginning.

MWhite: As I understand it, if the new sunspot has a reverse polarity then it’s the start of sunspot cycle #24 otherwise it’s still part of SC #23.

Followed Steven Talbot’s advice and “looked up the evidence” concerning newsworthiness of the 1997/1998 ENSO event then and now.
Now that there has been no warming for the past 8 (or 10 years), it has become fashionable to emphasize that 1998 was an unusual ENSO (and therefore an all-time warm) year. I can Google at least 10 recent articles, in particular on AGW-friendly sites that tell me this.
This was not the case back in 2001, when IPCC published its TAR (SPM).
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/climate-changes-2001/synthesis-spm/synthesis-spm-en.pdf
“The atmospheric concentrations of key anthropogenic greenhouse gases (i.e. carbon dioxide …) reached their highest recorded levels in the 1990s, primarily due to the combustion of fossil fuels …”
“Globally it is very likely that the 1990s was the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in the instrumental record …”
No mention is made of ENSO.
Going into more detail in the WG1 technical report:
http://www.grida.no/CLIMATE/IPCC_TAR/wg1/pdf/WG1_TAR-FRONT.PDF
1998 is mentioned six times (pp. 2,3,26,28,35,56) as the “warmest year” (of the instrumental record or of the millenium). The 1990s are mentioned as “the warmest decade” five times and the years 1995, 1997 and 1998 are mentioned as the “warmest globally”.
On p.26 there is a single mention of “high global temperature associated with the 1997 to 1998 El Niño event”.
A 1998 report by Tom Karl, Director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). cited the warm year 1997, with mention of anthropogenic warming, but no mention of ENSO.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/01/980113062713.htm
In another (2000) report emphasizing human impact on climate Karl wrote:
“there is only a one-in-20 chance that the string of record high temperatures in 1997-1998 was simply an unusual event, rather than a change point, the start of a new and faster ongoing trend.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/02/000222103553.htm
In testimony (2001) before the US Senate, Karl stated, “The 1990s are likely to have been the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year of the past 1000 years.” No mention was made of ENSO.
http://www.senate.gov/~gov_affairs/071801_karl.htm
The 1997/1998 ENSO event was not “big news” back when it occurred and shortly thereafter.
It has only become a “hot news item” since there has been no subsequent warming since then.
Max

manacker,
Message to Steve Talbot
You wrote that CGMs were not intended to predict future climate change.
No I didn’t. Care to try quoting me?

manacker,
Btw, I wrote a detailed response to your googling post with evidence of scientists statements from the time, but it seems to have been eaten by the spam filter 🙁 Can’t be bothered again -you’ll select what you want to, I’m sure.

KW says: “Happiness found in other useful pursuits, is infinitely more important to me than being right about evil humans and all that they do on a planet for an infinitely insignificant speck of time.”
I find this sort of attitude strange. Of course it is true that on timescales of millions of years, what we do on the earth over the next century isn’t going to be all that important. (It may have a dramatic effect if we cause mass extinctions, but new species will eventually evolve as they have before.)
However, on the other hand, you can apply this same logic to anything. Do you think it matters particularly to the long term fate of the earth if terrorists fly airplanes into buildings or Saddam Hussein has WMDs or whether social security or medicare can pay their obligations? The point is that we don’t live on the timescale of millions of years and I find it rather strange that some of the same people who get so worked up about the things that I mentioned can somehow be so sanguine about some of these environmental problems like climate change.

It’s easy to be unconcerned about climate change. If the climate never changed, that would be something to be concerned about. Climate change is NOT an environmental problem. The climate has always changed, get used to it. If you do not realize that the climate changes, you must be very young and not very well-read.

This may be a little off topic but I noted the Russian invasion of Georgia is finally rippling through the oil futures market. Yep, prices are climbing again. But if the climate trend continues to cool and if we are heading for a Maunder or Dalton Minimum the oil fields in Siberia won’t be worth squat as it will be too cold to drill. We ain’t seen nothing yet on rising oil prices when Russia’s oil fields become non productive in the near future.

Steven Talbot…
I noticed this blurb in that article you linked:
“During the past few decades, global temperatures have persistently broken previous record highs every few years, but never to the extent observed in 1998. Each month this year has set a new all-time record high global temperature (FIGURE 2). This is unprecedented and is not likely to occur in a stationary climate.”
Hmmm…so since they basically attributed the extreme warmth of 1998 to global warming in this statement (admitting the context of El Nino, but claiming that the magnitude of what was occurring basically proved AGW), doesn’t the fact that 1998’s records have not been broken since indicate that the climate has become more “stationary” since then? Using the same logic, yes.
The article also notes that “El Ninos continue to get stronger”, indicating that this is likely because of AGW as well. However, since 1998, El Ninos have been noticably weaker. What happened to being fueled by rampant global warming?

We don’t need this blog’s ill tidings:
http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2008/06/global-warming-new-sunspot-cycle-may-mean-the-iceman-cometh/#discussion
REPLY: Agreed, then why promote it by posting a link here?

Oops! The link works only if the “#discussion” is not included.

I don’t think the dice analogy is the best. I’m not aware of any evidence that climate, on the time scale of 50 to 100 years, is predictable in the way that dice rolls are predictable when averaged over a long number of trials. During the Little Ice Age, global temps wandered downwards for more than 100 years for reasons which are still not understood.
That said, if we are going to use a dice analogy, the situation over the last 40 years is analogous to rolling 4 high numbers followed by 2 low numbers. Temps over the last 10 years may be very well be short-term variation. However the same thing can be said about temps over the previous 20.

A number of points addressed to me to respond to:
Tom Klein,
Based on your optimism and confidence in the models, do you honestly believe that we will have a 3 degree Celsius temperature rise by 2100 ( mid value of the IPCC projection ) ? ( Not that either one of us will be around to confirm it ). Carbon dioxide is rising monotonically…
I wouldn’t say that I had optimism! Projections depend upon the inputs that will prevail, and it’s not just a matter of CO2, of course. CO2, for example, may not continue to ‘rise monotonically’ (in fact, that’s not been the case over the past three decades anyway). I don’t know what the future holds, I don’t know whether or not there will be mitigation, I don’t know whether or not the sun will fall out of the sky. But yes, I have some confidence in the projections based upon presumed inputs. But getting to what I think is your real point –
the existence of positive feedback is incompatible with a stable system like the climate
I think the system has been relatively stable so long as nothing has changed substantially. I don’t understand why you think it should ‘hold onto’ its state of relative equilibrium if forcings do change? I think it is a system which will find equilibrium (eventually), but that will be in respect of inputs, and of feedbacks from such inputs. I’m a bit puzzled, really, since the notion of feedback seems so obvious in the case of, for example, a change in albedo….?
Jared,
It’s certainly the case that the 1997/98 high was seen as a combination of AGW warming effect with internal natural variation, but I maintain my view that it is simply not true to suggest that scientists neglected to mention the latter. One might make the same case today, by the way, that the recent La Nina low has exceeded the temperatures of previous La Ninas (so it’s a matter of considering higher highs and higher lows).
You then say –
However, since 1998, El Ninos have been noticably weaker.
Which El Ninos do you have in mind? There was a mild one in 2002/3….. If the article was suggesting that every phase of the ENSO cycle would be stronger then I agree with you, it was in error. I think the question of whether or not the ENSO is being affected by warming remains very speculative at the moment.
Dave Andrews,
You can move the goalposts as much as you like but you know that the GCMs have been used to support the IPCC and Kyoto process, despite your, perhaps inadvertent, agreement with many posters here that the models are not based on any current real world conditions.
There’s nothing inadvertent in what I’m saying. I don’t really understand your point – I’m not aware of anyone suggesting that GCMs were set up to predict short-term variations.
It seems to me you are, like many desperate AGWers at the moment, trying to rewrite climate science history .
I’m not feeling in the least bit desperate, so don’t worry! Possibly a little depressed, though 😉
Or perhaps not, maybe you are a ’second generation’ climate scientist who realises that a lot of overblown claims were made in the early bloom of the science and yet you can’t quite yet stand up and repudiate what has gone before.
Hmm. Well, consider the 1979 Charney Report, based on very basic models, which projected a temperature rise of mean 3C above pre-industrial for equilibrium following a doubling of CO2. And what is the IPCC 4th AR projection of this mean figure? Yup, 3C, exactly the same almost thirty years later. So, I really don’t understand what you mean!

manacker,
you’ll certainly have to admit that it is totally absurd to think that climate models can make meaningful projections (or predictions) up to the year 2300.
I think they can make projections which are useful (‘useful’ is not the same as spot-on accurate, of course!), but I don’t think they can make predictions, no way. Scientists can’t predict what will happen in the future if it’s subject to unpredictable events. We don’t know what governments will decide to do, we don’t know if there may be nuclear war, we don’t know if there may be another Maunder minimum type reduction in the solar cycle. But it is reasonable to say “If x then y”.
I think it is also reasonable to predict that, for example, if the ice sheets were to become unstable then it would take one heck of a long time (and a much lower temperature) to reestablish them. And so on.

Gary asked
‘Stll, shouldn,’t the ocean thermal energy content increase during La Nina events, like the current 6+ year long decline in atmospheric temperature?
‘
I would expect that you are correct and that ocean energy content would increase during a la nina. I would also expect heat content to decrease during an el nino.
The only Argo measurements showing decreasing ocean heat contents that I have seen were between 2003 and 2005, which was after an El Nino (2003).

Max,
I think we may have posted at the same time. You’ll see that I have said that I think models can be useful, but have stressed myself the fact that we cannot predict the unknown, a point that you have rightly made yourself.
I think there’s a muddle over the words prediction/forecast and projection, tbh. Projections work on the basis of a set of determined premises. Of course, those premises may turn out not to pertain. Projections are not meant to be predictions (at which point some may sneer that the IPCC are avoiding predictions, but I think that’s a low-level objection which I really can’t be bothered with). [Edit – have just seen your dictionary definition. Get a better dictionary, I’d say! ;-)]
Now IPCC missed the first 7 ½ years of the 21st century pretty badly in projecting a +0.2°C per decade linear rate of increase when all four temperature records show a net decrease averaging -0.08°C per decade.
The IPCC did not predict what would happen over that period. They’ve projected about 0.2C for all scenarios over the next two decades. We’ll see whether or not that projection was useful when enough time has passed to judge the signal from the noise. I’d suggest that may not be too long – for example, if we experience a strong El Nino which does not correlate with a rising temperature trend (five year mean, say), then I think there will be firm cause to challenge the projection (presuming there are not other obvious factors to be taken into account).
So we have seen that the models have a hard time predicting the next 10 years, yet we are supposed to believe that they can project THREE HUNDRED YEARS into the future?
I’m sorry to go on being pedantic, but they don’t set out to predict the timing of internal variation! As for the usefulness of 300 year projections, I’m inclined to agree with you that it is unlikely to be accurate, but that applies both ways.
I agree that long-range forecasting is of limited usefulness, in terms of the absolute figures it throws up. I’m not quite sure what we’re disagreeing on, really!
I enjoyed your bullfrog and Yogi Berra references 😉
Tired now 🙂

John-X says:

There’s this – now quite old – story
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2006/08/25/Russian_scientist_predicts_global_cooling/UPI-75561156555554/
that the “consensus” within the Russian Academy of Sciences is global cooling – for more than 50 years.

No, that was not a consensus within the Russian Academy of Sciences. In fact, the view of the Russian Academy of Sciences is expressed by their signing on to the recent letter issued by the academies of all of the G8+5 nations: http://www.lincei.it/files/dichiarazioni/G8+5_Academies_Statement-Climate.pdf
Neil Fisher says:

What concerns me are the assumptions that go into them – not so much that they exist, but that it seems no-one has bothered to see if real world data supports those assumption. For instance, one assumption is that relative humidity will remain constant as temps rise. While I don’t have a cite for you, it is my understanding that real-world measurements falsify this assumption. …I feel it’s well time that as many as possible of the assumptions that go into such models are documented and, where possible, tested against real-world data to ensure that they are at least consistent with that real world data.

Scientists are in fact testing the climate models constantly against real world data. As for your specific example, concerning relative humidity. First of all, constant relative humidity is not an assumption of the climate models. It is, however, what they seem to approximately predict given the physics and assumptions that do go into them. And, contrary to what you may have heard, real-world data is in good agreement with this assumption. See, for example, this paper: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;310/5749/841 or the more indirect test in this paper: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci For more discussion, see this blog post by a climate scientist at University of Maryland: http://sciencepoliticsclimatechange.blogspot.com/2006/08/more-on-water-vapor-feedback.html

John-X says:

There’s this – now quite old – story
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2006/08/25/Russian_scientist_predicts_global_cooling/UPI-75561156555554/
that the “consensus” within the Russian Academy of Sciences is global cooling – for more than 50 years.

No, that was not a consensus within the Russian Academy of Sciences. In fact, the view of the Russian Academy of Sciences is expressed by their signing on to the recent letter issued by the academies of all of the G8+5 nations: http://www.lincei.it/files/dichiarazioni/G8+5_Academies_Statement-Climate.pdf
Neil Fisher says:

What concerns me are the assumptions that go into them – not so much that they exist, but that it seems no-one has bothered to see if real world data supports those assumption. For instance, one assumption is that relative humidity will remain constant as temps rise. While I don’t have a cite for you, it is my understanding that real-world measurements falsify this assumption. …I feel it’s well time that as many as possible of the assumptions that go into such models are documented and, where possible, tested against real-world data to ensure that they are at least consistent with that real world data.

Scientists are in fact testing the climate models constantly against real world data. As for your specific example, concerning relative humidity. First of all, constant relative humidity is not an assumption of the climate models. It is, however, what they seem to approximately predict given the physics and assumptions that do go into them. And, contrary to what you may have heard, real-world data is in good agreement with this prediction. See, for example, this paper: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;310/5749/841 or the more indirect test in this paper: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci For more discussion, see this blog post by a climate scientist at University of Maryland: http://sciencepoliticsclimatechange.blogspot.com/2006/08/more-on-water-vapor-feedback.html

Tom Klein,
Unfortunately, you learnt your concept of feedback from climatologist, who took feedback, which is a perfectly simple engineering concept, did not take the trouble to fully understand it and proceeded to misapply it, at least conceptually.
Thanks, but I do think I understand feedback in engineering terms :-). FWIW, I don’t particularly like the adoption of the term in climatology – very obviously, the concentration of GHGs has no effect whatsoever upon solar energy input. But then, I also don’t like the use of the term ‘greenhouse’ very much, so there you go.
The point is that there is no predictable endpoint to this process and the system is ” unstable ” ( tends to go in an ever increasing runaway mode ).
Do you mean in engineering terms or in terms of the postulated climate effect? In the case of the former, feedback will be restricted by the limitations of the physical system. In the case of the latter, there is an ultimate limit to IR absorption.

I think the system has been relatively stable so long as nothing has changed substantially. I don’t understand why you think it should ‘hold onto’ its state of relative equilibrium if forcings do change?
Pinatubo released more Sulfur into the Atmosphere than man has released in the history of Man. Look at the link on the large Amounts of SO2 being injected into the stratosphere. Substantial changes?
I used to think you were sincere, but you have on some dark and narrow blinders.

“BREAKING NEWS”
IPS, the Australian Space Weather Agency, has changed its forecast for Solar Cycle 24.
http://www.ips.gov.au/Solar/1/6
“CYCLE 24 PREDICTION MOVED AWAY BY 6 MONTHS
Due to the proximity of the IPS predicted rise of solar cycle 24
to observed solar cycle 23 solar minimum values, and the apparent lack
of new Cycle 24 sunspots, IPS has again moved the predicted solar cycle
away by 6 months.”
REPLY: Thanks I’ll write it up – Anthony

Nature doesn’t even follow God’s predict…projections. How in the heck do you guys think it will follow yours??????
Sorry. My bad. Just….couldn’t….help…..it!

Hi Steven,
I believe we have gotten to the root cause of our disagreement on the validity of climate model predictions (or projections), in your sentence, “We’ll see whether or not that projection was useful when enough time has passed to judge the signal from the noise.”
Steven, it is my contention that what you call “the noise” (i.e. impact on climate from as yet undefined non-AGW drivers) is several orders of magnitude more significant than what you call “the signal” (i.e. impact from assumed AGW drivers on climate).
This contention appears to have been recently validated by the various temperature records starting in around 1998 (or 2001), i.e. record CO2 emissions occurring simultaneously with global cooling.
In my opinion, this is because we (“science”) know much less about what causes climate change than we do not know. And it is precisely what “we do not know” that causes our projections (or predictions) to be totally wrong.
To get an idea why long range projections of something as complex as our planet’s climate are by definition even less valid than short term weather projections, I can recommend you read “The Black Swan”, by Nassim Taleb.
The author addresses the problem of long-term predictions (or forecasts). While his book has nothing to do with “climate change” per se it explains why “long-term expert predictions” are more often wrong than right.
It’s a good read.
Regards,
Max

I can second manacker’s Nassim Taleb recommendation. I don’t work in climate science, but I do use statistics just about every day to perform market analysis. His writings are quite insightful, although he can come off as a bit pompous at times. I caught a good radio interview with him last year. Here is the link: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/04/taleb_on_black.html

The manmade part of global cooling is that whereas we used to warm to good ideas, now good ideas are “cool”.

Pofarmer says: “The point is, that folks like Steven Talbot and others claim that without man the earth would be stable, never changing system, which is just not true. There are plenty of large scale forcings.”
I don’t think Steven Talbot says that. Clearly, the history of the earth is one of significant climate changes. However, it has to do with issues of timescales. Volcanic eruptions like Mt Pinatubo can cause some cooling but that tends to only last for a few years. On the other extreme, Milankovich orbital oscillations coupled with feedbacks (which include changes in greenhouse gas concentrations) can cause the ice age — interglacial cycles that the earth has been experiencing over the last few million years. These, however, tend to operate over longer timescales. In particular, the last glacial period ended about 12000 years ago and I think the best estimates are currently that, left to its own devices, the earth would likely not descend into another glacial period for another ~30,0000 years. At any rate, the descent into the glacial periods is pretty slow, taking thousands of years.
However, the evidence (including our understanding of forcings and response gleaned from these natural climate changes in the past) is that on the scale of the coming decades to few centuries, the dominant forcing on the climate system will not be any of the natural forcings but rather the forcing due to increasing greenhouse gases caused by our emissions. And, this is likely to quite rapidly (e.g., on the order of a century) take the earth to a state of warmth not experienced in millions of years.

Ric Werme, I pretty much agree with what you say about feedbacks. Note that noone is proposing that the feedback is large enough to lead to instability. That is what happened in the case of Venus but is apparently not in the cards for earth.
The closest scientists get to this is some of the talk about “tipping points”…i.e., the climate system reaching a point where it runs off to some different state (although not a Venus-like state of ever-increasing temperatures). However, the term “tipping points” has become overused as of late, so it seems only some uses of the term refer to such instabilities in the true sense of the word. At any rate, since the earth’s climate system is highly complex and non-linear and has apparently undergone rapid changes in the past, so there is some justifiable concern that we could push this system too far and end up with some sort of rapid nonlinear change in climate. All the more reason to be concerned about the vast global climate “experiment” we have undertaken!
I am not sure why you say that the “current models start at a state that does not reflect current climate conditions”. In fact, while they are certainly not perfect, the current models reproduce the current climate reasonably well, including having the same basic modes of internal variability as are seen in the real climate system.
If you are complaining about the fact that they do not predict the timing of particular El Nino events…and other such internal variations…I don’t think this is relevant to the long-term predictions. By perturbing the initial conditions in the models, scientists can see that these internal variations are sensitive to the initial conditions…i.e., they get a different pattern of up-and-down jiggles in the global temperature. However, the prediction for the general trend in the global temperature over the timescale of decades to a century or so remains unchanged.

Hi Steven,
To IPCC’s 300-year projections you wrote, “I don’t think they’re presented as anything more than theoretical projections based on certain assumptions that may not apply.”
Why even put them in the report if they are admittedly meaningless?
You wrote, ” In the meantime, of course, we might get hit by a black swan in the form of an impact event!”
Why limit it to an “impact event”? Lots of other possibilities out there, Steven.
We (“science”, that is) just does not yet have all the answers.
Regards,
Max

Hi Steven,
You wrote: “if we simplified the projected warming as being 0.02C per annum, say, we can see far greater natural variability than that on a monthly basis.”
This statement is correct, yet it is, in itself misleading, since it “implies” an underlying projected warming of 0.02C per annum.
Again, you start with the magic word “IF”.
The only extended period of warming that equals 0.02C per annum is the IPCC forecast (or projection) for the early decades of the 21st century.
By averaging the various temperature records over the IPCC “poster period” 1976-1998 (or 1979-2005, however you prefer to look at it) you arrive at a linear warming of somewhere around 0.16C per decade, so around 80% of your figure.
By averaging the various temperature records over the seven and a half years of the 21st century you arrive at a linear cooling of –0.08C per decade, as compared to the IPCC forecast of 0.2C warming per decade.
So let’s update your “IF” sentence to 21st century conditions (different solar activity, different ENSO pattern, but same CO2 emission conditions).
“If we simplified the projected cooling as being 0.008C per annum, say, we can see far greater natural variability than that on a monthly basis.”
The sentence still makes sense and is still just as misleading as your original sentence.
Obviously, seasonal and diurnal swings are far greater than any hypothetical warming or cooling forecast (or projection), as you have said.
But more importantly (and this was my point all along) the unforeseen and non-projected longer-term swings are also greater (viz. 21st vs.late 20th century), which points to the futility of taking one small piece of the puzzle (human CO2 emissions), exaggerating it 3 to 4-fold with assumed positive feedbacks, and using this one piece to develop long range model projections of what is going to happen to world climate over the next century (or, even more absurd, the next three centuries).
Regards,
Max

Hi Steven,
This is beginning to become repetitive. You just wrote, “indeed, all sorts of black swans could show up. I think it becomes a matter of risk assessment.”
Yes, two “black swans” have already shown up recently.
One is a reversal of a 10,000-year record period of high solar activity in the late 20th century and an extremely inactive sun since solar cycle 24 started last January.
Another is the reversal of an unusually active El Nino period over the last 30 years.
These two factors (plus others we have not yet been able to identify) have cancelled out the rapid warming we should have had from record CO2 emissions over this period.
Makes “risk assessment” sort of silly, when we don’t even really know what the real “risk” is.
Are the solar experts who project a cooling planet right? Are the AGW model outputs, which project continued warming right?
Who knows?
I do not. You do not. IPCC does not.
Regards,
Max

manacker says “By averaging the various temperature records over the seven and a half years of the 21st century you arrive at a linear cooling of –0.08C per decade, as compared to the IPCC forecast of 0.2C warming per decade.”
And, what sort of error bars are on that? I am also a little bit skeptical of those numbers. If you look at just the full years (hence ending in 2007), you get values of -0.03 and +0.11 C per decade for HADCRUT3 and NASA GISS records, respectively. However, this is strongly dependent on the exact period of time you look over…e.g., if you extend it back one more year to include year 2000, these trends jump to +0.12 C and +0.25 C per decade, respectively. Adding in year 1999 further increases the trends…although once you put in 1998 they get knocked down somewhat again. And, yes, since the last 7 months have been quite cool, including them will lower these trends somewhat. (I can’t include them easily since I just have the yearly data entered in.)
However, the point is that over short enough periods, before the trends settle down, you are pretty much just doing numerology not real science. At the very least, you have to look over long enough periods that adding or deleting one year (or less than one year!!!) doesn’t drastically alter your conclusions.

Hi Steven,
When IPCC Chairman, Dr.Pachauri, recently said he would look into what is causing the current temperature plateau, adding “are natural factors compensating?”, he said a big mouthful.
Let’s analyze this train of thought more deeply.
We have been told by IPCC that anthropogenic GHGs (primarily CO2) are a major factor in the global warming our planet has experienced since 1976.
This is being presented as “it must be AGW because our models cannot explain it any other way”.
Not much mention is made of previous periods of warming except the rather short sentence in AR4 WG1 Chapter 3 (p.240): “The picture prior to 1976 has essentially not changed and is therefore not repeated in detail here.”
Pachauri now wonders if “natural factors” may now be causing temperature to cool.
Two “natural factors” that were significantly different in the late 20th century as compared to the most recent years are:
· Solar activity. This reached a 10,000-year high level of activity in the latter 20th century. This has now come to an end and solar cycle 24 has started off with an extremely inactive sun.
· ENSO cycles. These were very strong in the past 30 years, with six major El Nino events since 1973, as compared to only five in the preceding 70 years. This appears to have come to an end, as well, with La Nina events becoming more prevalent.
Now, Pachauri’s dilemma is this.
If he concedes that these natural reversals are causing temperatures to cool today, then he has to concede that they might have had more to do with late-20th century warming than previously assumed.
It is already acknowledged today that the all-time record warm year, 1998, was so warm because of a major El Nino event.
The impact of solar activity is even more tricky for Pachauri. IPCC has limited the 2005 radiative forcing estimate for solar variability to a mere 0.12 W/m^2 (compared to anthropogenic CO2 at 1.66 W/m^2). It has done this by limiting the solar impact to that from direct solar irradiance alone, ignoring any indirect effects.
If we now conclude that an inactive sun is causing cooling today (as we know was the case during the Little Ice Age), we must concede that an active sun may have caused a larger part of the warming experienced in the late 20th century and that, therefore, our estimate of solar radiative forcing is much too low (and that of AGW too high).
A real dilemma.
This may explain why Pachauri has been silent.
He has stated that he hoped the current temperature plateau would not make people think that AGW is “hogwash”.
But he’d better pray for some warming up pretty soon, or people will start believing exactly that and he can fold up his IPCC.
Regards,
Max

Hi again Max :-),
Ok, I’ll go through your points from my perspective –
We have been told by IPCC that anthropogenic GHGs (primarily CO2) are a major factor in the global warming our planet has experienced since 1976.
Well, I’d say since 1950 at least. They suggest the impact of anthropogenic
influences well before that, but it’s only in the second half of the 20thC that the attribution is confident.
This is being presented as “it must be AGW because our models cannot explain it any other way”
That’s part of the view. The other part is the now very old scientific understanding of the influence of GHGs.
Not much mention is made of previous periods of warming except the rather short sentence in AR4 WG1 Chapter 3 (p.240): “The picture prior to 1976 has essentially not changed and is therefore not repeated in detail here.”
Oh c’mon, Max, there’s stacks on previous warming (and cooling)! I’m not quite sure where to begin… but apart from the entire Palaeo chapter, let’s say you look up solar variability in Ch 2 and you’ll find a whole section on pre-20th century (2.7.1.2)……
Two “natural factors” that were significantly different in the late 20th century as compared to the most recent years are:
· Solar activity. This reached a 10,000-year high level of activity in the latter 20th century.
Perhaps so (there is uncertainty), but the extent of such variability, in terms of forcing influence, and the fact of there being no trend whilst temperatures have increased, needs to be considered.
This has now come to an end and solar cycle 24 has started off with an extremely inactive sun.
Maybe! 😉
· ENSO cycles. These were very strong in the past 30 years, with six major El Nino events since 1973, as compared to only five in the preceding 70 years. This appears to have come to an end, as well, with La Nina events becoming more prevalent.
I think it’s very much too early to conclude that!!! Can you spot such a trend from this? I certainly can’t:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
But we shall see, Max, and I’d guess fairly soon – within a couple of years, perhaps (which is soon in climate terms).
Now, Pachauri’s dilemma is this.
If he concedes that these natural reversals are causing temperatures to cool today, then he has to concede that they might have had more to do with late-20th century warming than previously assumed.
No, that doesn’t follow at all. 2005 was, in one record, the hottest year. Your case depends upon 2008, which isn’t even over yet. Let’s guess at what it’s anomaly might be. (I’ll refer to the GISS record for ease of access, though it makes no difference which, tbh). My hunch is it might end up around +0.4C anomaly (I don’t know that, but you don’t know otherwise!). That would mean a ‘reversal’ from recent years. But look back in the record, and you can see equivalent or greater reversals at many points. There’s no more reason on the basis of one year’s evidence to reassess thinking than there was in the ’70s, 80s or 90s, when equivalent cooler years cropped up. I don’t think Pachauri or anyone else is surprised by natural variation! What is worthwhile, I think, is to compare the recent La Nina excursion with previous La Ninas. I think that shows a trend of higher lows.
It is already acknowledged today that the all-time record warm year, 1998, was so warm because of a major El Nino event.
It was acknowledged at the time too, as I established further up the thread!
The impact of solar activity is even more tricky for Pachauri. IPCC has limited the 2005 radiative forcing estimate for solar variability to a mere 0.12 W/m^2 (compared to anthropogenic CO2 at 1.66 W/m^2). It has done this by limiting the solar impact to that from direct solar irradiance alone, ignoring any indirect effects.
Excuse me, but that is simply not true! Feedbacks apply to all forcings, including solar. I have no idea where this notion you’ve presented comes from – can you offer a link? This gets to the root of the problem I have with the ‘solar explanation’. In order to discount CO2 you need to discount feedbacks, but in order to explain temperature change as a result of solar you have to look for feedbacks (or amplification of some kind) of a much greater scale!
If we now conclude that an inactive sun is causing cooling today (as we know was the case during the Little Ice Age), we must concede that an active sun may have caused a larger part of the warming experienced in the late 20th century and that, therefore, our estimate of solar radiative forcing is much too low (and that of AGW too high).
Well, I don’t conclude that! How on earth can our estimate of solar forcing be too low unless you’re about to introduce some new feedbacks? We can measure solar irradiance by satellite now – it’s not as if we’re taking a wild guess.
A real dilemma.
Your dilemma, I’d say, rather than mine or Pachauri’s. There’s no hypothesis for explaining the warming by solar forcing unless you want to pursue the cosmic rays/clouds stuff, or unless you want to posit other feedbacks, in which case you’ll need to explain why they don’t apply to other forcings. And there is no correlation anyway between solar irradiance and temperature in the latter part of the 20th century. You seem to be very doubtful of AGW on the basis of a short-term lack of correlation, yet not doubtful of the solar notion despite a long-term lack of correlation. That puzzles me!
Regards,
Steven

Hi Max,
Just picked up an earlier post of yours (12.26.24)
I wrote:
“Going back to your concern with 300 year projections, and the IPCC figure 10.4, those curves beyond 2100 are assessments of climate commitment (mostly a matter of the thermal inertia of oceans) after stabilising emissions at 2100 levels – so they’re not projections of further changes in inputs beyond that date.”
And you write:
Sorry, Steven, this is not correct.
If you actually take the time to read the report, you will see that they are various projections of what is projected to happen to global average surface temperature based on different CO2 emission scenarios beyond today.
Please note the distinction between my statement “beyond 2100” and yours “beyond today”.
The scenarios run towards stabilisation of GHGs at 2100, presuming various emmissions from today, then beyond 2100 the projection only represents climate commitment.
So, excuse me, but my statement was correct.
(I have read the report!).
🙂

John: I basically agree with everything that you have said above.
And, while I am dishing out agreement, Steve Talbot, I think your 15:42:55 post (and the followup at 16:04:25) is a most excellent one, very well explaining the difficulties faced by those who try to claim that solar forcing can account for a significant amount of the warming that we have seen.

I think this is a good read: Luboš Motl
http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/07/carbon-dioxide-and-temperatures-ice.html

On Lubos Motl’s blog, I think it is all half truths. The main difference between then (millions of years ago) and now is that we are producing CO2 at an alarming rate. It is interesting that Caillon’s et. al paper is quoted as the proof for the temperature CO2 time lag, without using their explanations. CO2’s lag on temperature was observed in the southern hemisphere. They admit that it is not CO2 that initiated the initial temperature increase (it was due to orbital forcing, etc.), but the CO2 produced from the temperature rise caused further increase in temperature. Now, we are just skipping the first part of waiting for some natural causes to increase CO2, by producing it ourselves.

Hi Steven,
Coming back to your long rebuttal:
“We have been told by IPCC that anthropogenic GHGs (primarily CO2) are a major factor in the global warming our planet has experienced since 1976.
Well, I’d say since 1950 at least. They suggest the impact of anthropogenic
influences well before that, but it’s only in the second half of the 20thC that the attribution is confident.”
No, Peter. If you read AR4 WG1 closely, you will see that the emphasis is on the “poster period” following 1976.
“This is being presented as “it must be AGW because our models cannot explain it any other way”
That’s part of the view. The other part is the now very old scientific understanding of the influence of GHGs.”
“Very old scientific understanding” sounds nice, Steven, but if you read AR4 you will see multiple references to the “must be AGW because our models cannot explain it any other way” reasoning.
“Not much mention is made of previous periods of warming except the rather short sentence in AR4 WG1 Chapter 3 (p.240): “The picture prior to 1976 has essentially not changed and is therefore not repeated in detail here.”
Oh c’mon, Max, there’s stacks on previous warming (and cooling)! I’m not quite sure where to begin… but apart from the entire Palaeo chapter, let’s say you look up solar variability in Ch 2 and you’ll find a whole section on pre-20th century (2.7.1.2)…… “
Sorry, Steven, I am not talking about “paleo” proxy stuff. I am talking about early 20th century and late 19th century records as actually measured. IPCC does not even mention the late 19th century warming specifically and concedes that the early 20th century warming cannot be explained by the models. It offers rationalizations in the FAQ section for mid-20th century cooling, but these are not very convincing. All of this represents a major weakness in the IPCC justification for AGW as a principal driver of climate.
“Two “natural factors” that were significantly different in the late 20th century as compared to the most recent years are:
· Solar activity. This reached a 10,000-year high level of activity in the latter 20th century.
Perhaps so (there is uncertainty), but the extent of such variability, in terms of forcing influence, and the fact of there being no trend whilst temperatures have increased, needs to be considered.”
Yes, Steven, there is always “uncertainty”, as there is “uncertainty”about AGW as the principal forcing factor for 20th century warming, as there is also no “trend”.
“This has now come to an end and solar cycle 24 has started off with an extremely inactive sun.
Maybe! ;-)”
Are you disputing the fact that solar activity is very low since the advent of solar cycle 24?
“· ENSO cycles. These were very strong in the past 30 years, with six major El Nino events since 1973, as compared to only five in the preceding 70 years. This appears to have come to an end, as well, with La Nina events becoming more prevalent.
I think it’s very much too early to conclude that!!! Can you spot such a trend from this? I certainly can’t.”
It is very clear from the record that there were six major El Nino events in the past 30 years, compared to five in the previous 70 years. Is this a trend? I’d say so. Has it had an impact on temperature? It certainly did in 1997/98.
“But we shall see, Max, and I’d guess fairly soon – within a couple of years, perhaps (which is soon in climate terms).
Now, Pachauri’s dilemma is this.
If he concedes that these natural reversals are causing temperatures to cool today, then he has to concede that they might have had more to do with late-20th century warming than previously assumed.
No, that doesn’t follow at all. 2005 was, in one record, the hottest year. Your case depends upon 2008, which isn’t even over yet. Let’s guess at what it’s anomaly might be. (I’ll refer to the GISS record for ease of access, though it makes no difference which, tbh). My hunch is it might end up around +0.4C anomaly (I don’t know that, but you don’t know otherwise!). That would mean a ‘reversal’ from recent years. But look back in the record, and you can see equivalent or greater reversals at many points. There’s no more reason on the basis of one year’s evidence to reassess thinking than there was in the ’70s, 80s or 90s, when equivalent cooler years cropped up. I don’t think Pachauri or anyone else is surprised by natural variation! What is worthwhile, I think, is to compare the recent La Nina excursion with previous La Ninas. I think that shows a trend of higher lows.”
Your “hunch” is interesting but speculative. The past 8 years have shown no warming in all temperature records and 2008 is definitely colder than previous years. Is this the beginning of a new sharp cooling trend? Who knows? You refer to the GISS record. Based on recent revelations, this record is suspect. The Hadley record may be a bit less suspect, although repeated “forecasts” by Hadley “experts” of “record years” (which do not materialize) make it also a bit suspect. The tropospheric records show more recent cooling (although greenhouse theory tells us that the trposphere should warm more rapidly than the surface). Why is this?
“It is already acknowledged today that the all-time record warm year, 1998, was so warm because of a major El Nino event.
It was acknowledged at the time too, as I established further up the thread!”
And I established further up the thread that it was barely mentioned at the time, but very much ballyhooed several years later when this became politically expedient to distract from a subsequent cooling trend!
“The impact of solar activity is even more tricky for Pachauri. IPCC has limited the 2005 radiative forcing estimate for solar variability to a mere 0.12 W/m^2 (compared to anthropogenic CO2 at 1.66 W/m^2). It has done this by limiting the solar impact to that from direct solar irradiance alone, ignoring any indirect effects.
Excuse me, but that is simply not true! Feedbacks apply to all forcings, including solar. I have no idea where this notion you’ve presented comes from – can you offer a link? “
Yes, Steven, the link is IPSS 2007 SPM. Read it closely and you will see that solar forcing is 0.12 W/m^2 while CO2 forcing is 1.66 W/m^2 (both without “feedbacks”).
Feedbacks are an unsubstantiated fantasy programmed in by computer models. Recent physical observations have demonstrated that the positive feedbacks (water vapor, surface albedo) are essentially cancelled out by negative feedbacks (lapse rate, clouds), leaving the 2xCO2 climate sensitivity at around 0.7-0.8C, as postulated by IPCC without feedbacks.
“This gets to the root of the problem I have with the ’solar explanation’. In order to discount CO2 you need to discount feedbacks, but in order to explain temperature change as a result of solar you have to look for feedbacks (or amplification of some kind) of a much greater scale!”
This is a flawed supposition on your part, Steven. No feedbacks are required to account for all warming experienced to date. 20th century warming was around 0.6-0.7C. Solar impact was around 0.2-0.5C. Spurious effect from UHI effect was around 0.25-0.4C, so there is not much left for CO2. Taking the low end estimates for solar and UHI, we are left with around 0.3C for CO2, which checks out with the “no feedback” estimate of IPCC. Very simple. There is no need to assume a net positive feedback, because it just isn’t there, Steven.
“If we now conclude that an inactive sun is causing cooling today (as we know was the case during the Little Ice Age), we must concede that an active sun may have caused a larger part of the warming experienced in the late 20th century and that, therefore, our estimate of solar radiative forcing is much too low (and that of AGW too high).
Well, I don’t conclude that! How on earth can our estimate of solar forcing be too low unless you’re about to introduce some new feedbacks? We can measure solar irradiance by satellite now – it’s not as if we’re taking a wild guess.”
Sorry, Steven, we can only measure direct solar irradiance (as you say), but we cannot measure the indirect solar impact (for example from cosmic rays), as postulated by Svensmark. Let’s hope that the CLOUD experiment at CERN sheds new light on this area of “low level of scientific understanding” (as assessed by IPCC).
“A real dilemma.
Your dilemma, I’d say, rather than mine or Pachauri’s. There’s no hypothesis for explaining the warming by solar forcing unless you want to pursue the cosmic rays/clouds stuff, or unless you want to posit other feedbacks, in which case you’ll need to explain why they don’t apply to other forcings. And there is no correlation anyway between solar irradiance and temperature in the latter part of the 20th century. You seem to be very doubtful of AGW on the basis of a short-term lack of correlation, yet not doubtful of the solar notion despite a long-term lack of correlation. That puzzles me!”
Steven, the “fatal flaw” in Svensmark’s theory has been postulated by AGW supporters to be that after the 1980s the correlation does not seem to be valid (even though it is valid for many years, and even centuries, prior to 1980). Using the same standard, the AGW theory is also not valid for any period prior to 1976 or subsequent to 1998.
Hope this helps clear up the situation.
Regards,
Max

John McLondon (21:13:42)
According to the GHG models, what’s masking CO2 global warming the last several years?
Where are the GHG models dumping all the heat from the amplification of CO2? It’s not going into the oceans.
Why have the oceans shown a slight cooling trend? Where did all that “heat” in the pipe line go? Space?

Hi Max,
Thanks for your further response. I won’t go through it point by point again, since we may be in danger of typing ourselves into early graves before we get to see what some of the future holds ;-). I think we’ve laid out the gist of our views, and I’m sure all these points will be revisited again. In short, you think that temperature variation can be accounted for by solar variation, and I do not (I don’t know yet what your explanation of a cooling stratosphere during a period of warming troposphere would be).
I’ll pick up a couple of points I may not have commented on yet.
The tropospheric records show more recent cooling (although greenhouse theory tells us that the trposphere should warm more rapidly than the surface). Why is this?
The satellite computations of lower troposphere temperatures show greater and speedier response to internal climate events than the surface records. This is true both negatively and positively, for example with ENSO events and with the response to, and recovery from, the Pinatubo eruption. I’ll ‘predict’ that the next El Nino will see the troposphere responding at a greater positive rate than the surface (I wouldn’t mind a bet on that!).
Svensmark/cosmic rays – yes, the CLOUD experiment will be interesting, but recent papers have found no correlation between cosmic rays and cloud cover, e.g.:
http://folk.uio.no/jegill/papers/Kristjansson_etal_2008_ACPD.pdf
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7327393.stm
The ‘fatal flaw’ is not just a matter of the direct correlation with solar activity breaking down, but also of there being no trend in cosmic rays since the 50s. Still, it remains to be seen whether or not there is supporting evidence for the hypothesis to come.
Incidentally, I’m somewhat amused that you think “indirect solar impact (for example from cosmic rays)” should be considered when you say elsewhere that “feedbacks are an unsubstantiated fantasy programmed in by computer models”!
(A couple of footnotes:
1. I tend to mention GISS first because its long-term trend is less than HadCRUT (and RSS), and it uses satellite data for SSTs, so that seems to me to make it less open to the charge of cherry-picking. But, as I said, my point above applies regardless of which record you wish to refer to.
2. I accept neither your assertion of the level of “spurious effect from UHI” nor that the GISS records are “suspect” beyond their stated error bands. Perhaps we’d best agree to differ for now on those matters.)
Regards,
Steven

Bobby Lane says: “I think the testimony of Dr. Roy Spencer points out this aspect, and I would wait first (though others may not) for any research that may show he is incorrect.”
Well, there have already been some discussions of how much of the latest work of Spencer is misguided…see: and
However, I will point out to you if you are going to wait until there are absolutely no alternative explanations being proposed by any climate scientist anywhere before you accept AGW, you might as well be completely intellectually honest and say that you will never accept AGW because I can tell you right now that there will always be scientists who can propose that the current ideas are wrong and he has a better idea. This is particularly true in areas of science like AGW that arouse strong controversy because of their policy implications and how those go against some people’s strongly held political beliefs.
As for your quotes from the “climate skeptic” website concerning feedbacks: First of all, not to quibble too much, but the estimate of climate sensitivity from doubling CO2 in the absence of feedbacks is about 1.1 +- 0.1 C as I understand it, so the IPCC estimate of 2 to 4.5 C for the equilibrium climate sensitivity is more like 2X-4X the bare value, not 3X-5X. Second of all, I know of no general rule concerning whether positive or negative feedbacks dominate in a system. In fact, positive feedbacks to the point of actual instabilities are quite ubiquitous in nature…being responsible for “pattern formation”, i.e., the process by which snowflakes form their shapes, trees form their shapes, zebras get their stripes, ripple patterns form in windblown sand, and so forth. Also note that he seems to be equating positive feedbacks with an outright instability but, as I have explained above, a positive feedback does not necessarily lead to instability…And, in fact, the positive feedbacks postulated do not predict any Venus-like climate instability. Furthermore, such positive feedbacks are necessary to understand the paleoclimate data as we currently understand it…So, a claim that the feedback is not net positive has to then also provide an alternate explanation for the paleoclimate data.
Bobby Lane says: “If the cooling affects of this La Nina are overpowering the warming affect of AGW now, then it is safe to say that in almost all cases nature overpowers whatever influence man has on the change in climate since nature is never static.”
It is not safe to say that at all. In fact, it is demonstrably wrong to say that. The warming due to anthropogenic forcings is currently estimated to be somewhere around 0.2 C per decade or 0.02 C per year. That means that if climate varies due to natural process like El Nino and La Nina by more than this amount from year-to-year, which it easily does, then natural processes can be dominant over the short term of a year to several years. And, in fact, this is exactly what is seen by climate models run with increasing greenhouse gases. They do not exhibit a steady year-to-year rise but instead show the same internal variability superimposed on an upward trend.
There is an almost perfect analogy with the seasonal cycle. Here in Rochester today, the high temperature is expected to be in the mid to upper 80s. Earlier this week, it was only around 70. If you look at the temperature trendline over the last several days, it is steeply positive. And yet, according to the seasonal cycle, it should be getting cooler. Do you think this prove that natural variability in the weather overpowers the seasonal cycle?

Hi Steven,
Believe we have a bit of word-parsing going on here about the level of validation given to Lindzen’s “infrared iris” hypothesis by Spencer’s observations.
The case for a strong positive feedback from clouds was always weak and conjectural.
As Ramanathan stated, “the magnitude as well as the sign of the cloud feedback is uncertain”.
http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/FCMTheRadiativeForcingDuetoCloudsandWaterVapor.pdf
IPCC 2007 SPM conceded, “Cloud feedbacks remain the largest source of uncertainty.”
Thus, it seemed strange to me, despite all this uncertainty, that IPCC AR4 showed a very strong warming impact from cloud feedback (2xCO2 sensitivity of 1.9C without clouds and 3.2C with clouds).
Spencer’s physical observations have subsequently helped clear up this “largest source of uncertainty”, giving credence to Lindzen’s hypothesis that the net feedback from clouds is strongly negative, as opposed to strongly positive as had previously been assumed in all the models cited by IPCC.
This raises serious doubts about a 2xCO2 climate sensitivity of 3.2C, as assumed previously by IPCC.
Based on these new findings, it would appear that a more reasonable estimate would be somewhere around 0.7C to 0.8C, as estimated by Lindzen and Shaviv/Veizer.
Regards,
Max

Hi Steven,
You stated: “I accept neither your assertion of the level of “spurious effect from UHI” nor that the GISS records are “suspect” beyond their stated error bands. Perhaps we’d best agree to differ for now on those matters.”
Whether or not you accept the notion that the surface record suffers from the “spurious effect from UHI”, there are plenty of reports from all over the world that confirm that this is so. If you would like references to several of these studies, please let me know.
The attempt by IPCC to counter these with the “calm night / windy night” Parker study is feeble and raises the question, “if Parker is trying to disprove an urban heat island distortion to the temperature record, why doesn’t he simply provide nearby urban and rural records as proof that there is no such distortion?” (I believe you and I both know the answer to this question.)
The IPCC statement that UHI effects have a negligible influence of less than 0.006°C per decade is a “statement of faith”, which ignores the many studies out there that say otherwise.
As to errors in the GISS record, the US record had to be corrected recently, resulting in 1998 no longer being the record warm year (instead it was 1934). Under the US Freedom of Information Act GISS will have to “open their books” a bit more than Hadley, so we’ll see what else comes up.
But my observation was also partially based on the fact that the man in charge of GISS is James E. Hansen, who hides behind his mantle of a supposedly objective climate scientist (paid by the US taxpayer to provide unbiased climate/weather info), but who has in fact become a fear monger and policical activist.
But we’ll have to “agree to disagree” on that one.
Regards,
Max

Max,
it seemed strange to me, despite all this uncertainty, that IPCC AR4 showed a very strong warming impact from cloud feedback (2xCO2 sensitivity of 1.9C without clouds and 3.2C with clouds).
Reference, please?
And –
RealClimate? Tamino?
Get serious.
Roy Spencer? Get serious 😉

Hi Steven,
You asked for references to IPCC claims on cloud feedback impact on climate sensitivity.
Please refer to AR4 WG1 Chapter 8 (p.633).
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter8.pdf
“Using feedback parameters from Figure 8.14, it can be estimated that in the presence of water vapour, lapse rate and surface albedo feedbacks, but in the absence of cloud feedbacks, current GCMs would predict a climate sensitivity (±1 standard deviation) of roughly 1.9°C ± 0.15°C (ignoring spread from radiative forcing differences). The mean and standard deviation of climate sensitivity estimates derived from current GCMs are larger (3.2°C ± 0.7°C) essentially because the GCMs all predict a positive cloud feedback (Figure 8.14) but strongly disagree on its magnitude.”
Hope this clear it up.
Regards,
Max

Hi Steven,
For some strange reason you seem to have problems with the credentials of Roy Spencer or Richard Lindzen as a climate scientists, but prefer RealClimate (Gavin Schmidt) and the anonymous “Tamino”.
We know who Gavin Schmidt is (a computer modeling guru) but Ta-who?
Last I heard, Tamino was the handsome prince in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”, that pranced off into the deep woods with a magic flute to save the beautiful princess, Pamina, from some bad guy; it has a happy ending plus lots of great music.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Flute#Act_1
But this Tamino?
Is it the handsome prince or (as Steve McIntyre has written) a data analyst who still believes in the validity of the “hockey stick”?
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2920
Yeah I read Tamino’s “Spencer’s Folly” blurb. Lots of good graphs, some fancy formulae, but not very convincing. Guess I’ll follow the advice, mostly coming from AGW-supporters, to “trust the climate experts” and go with Spencer (and Lindzen) on this one.
Regards,
Max

Jack McLondon:

Ut is rather interesting to notice that when someone is going to publish a paper countering AGW, there is this long advertisement and publicity that starts six months to an year ahead of time (like in Spencer’s case). Unlike those papers supporting AGW, you hardly hear anything about them ahead of time, when they are going to come out, etc., sometimes we learn about some of them after its publication.

So, you’ve not heard of Wahl and Amman, who indicated by press release in May 2005 the contents of papers not actually published until September 2007 (those contents being substantially revised over that period, to the point where they no longer proved what the authors claimed they proved).

Oh, and by the way, I forgot to mention the most obviously egregious error on Spencer’s blog, viz. –
Fig. 2. The Mann et al. (1998) proxy (mostly tree ring) reconstruction of global temperature over the last 1,000 years is believed to have erroneously minimized the warmth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP).
The HS graph is actually from MBH99. It is not a reconstruction of global temperatures, but of NH temperatures!
Yes, Roy Spencer is a climate scientist, but not one who takes enough care in what he is saying for my tastes.

Just read the Bishop Hill blog on the miraculous Wahl and Amman paper cited by Dr Slop.
OUCH!

Read your various critiques of Spencer but failed to see what this has to do wit his physical observations showing a negative feedback from clouds, as postulated by Lindzen.
Simply that you questioned my “problems with the credentials of Roy Spencer “, so I have explained my doubts.
As for your assertions of the significance of his “observations”, well, we shall see what comes from his next publication. Frankly, your assertions as to their significance don’t amount to anything until we have seen whatever substance they have. I am a little but puzzled by the way you seem to denigrate Hansen (for example) but assert the significance of Spencer in advance of publication. Are you only sceptical of matters that do not accord with your inclination?

John McLondon (06:22:12)
Sorry, you still didn,t answer my question.
“Where are the GHG models dumping all the heat from the amplification of CO2? It’s not going into the oceans.”
Where are the GHG models dumping all the heat from the amplification of CO2?
What do the GHG model use to mask “CO2 global warming” for the last several years?
Joel Shore (08:17:55)
‘However, I will point out to you if you are going to wait until there are absolutely no alternative explanations being proposed by any climate scientist anywhere before you accept AGW,’
Alternative explanations at this point and time are still unknown and the same holds true for the CO2 drives the theory with assumptions such as CO2 leds temperature, CO2 2.5 amplification, water vapor being a positive feedback, Hot Spots not to mention the lack of V & V of data, codes and forecasting principles. And you want our policy maker to regulate CO2 in the name of sound science?
From what I understand, and I could be wrong, “Sun Spot Activity” has a higher correlation/confidence level with “temperature” than CO2.

Old Construction Worker:
“Sorry, you still didn,t answer my question.”
Yes, I have nothing to answer because I do not agree with your premise. I do not really see a cooling, the five year average is still going up.
Your question is a generalization of why there is temperature variation from year to year, what happens to all the heat if next year is cooler than this year (or if there is no changes for a number of years in a row)? One can come up with many reasons: Changes in different ocean currents, changes in atmospheric currents, Sun spots, changes in atmospheric water vapor distribution, etc etc. Also, as I pointed out earlier, the sea level rise is consistent with increasing water temperature, may be deep down. I am not a climate scientist, but it does not appear to me that there is some requirement that rise in trapped energy should always result as increasing temperature – first law of thermodynamics does not require that; it only requires that an equivalent amount of work must be done by the system. Now, if we take a system approach, systems are not always damped (with feedbacks) properly to show a proportional input output variation, most often systems are under-damped, and the response will show a damped oscillation – since earth is in a dynamic equilibrium, it is not all that surprising to see an oscillatory response in temperature, going more rapid than it should, then slowing down, again rapidly moving up etc. This is a classic example from the controls theory.

Hi Steven,
You wrote, “I am a little but puzzled by the way you seem to denigrate Hansen (for example) but assert the significance of Spencer in advance of publication.”
This is a convoluted sentence, Steven. I do not “assert the significance of Spencer in advance of publication”. I just pointed out that his physical observations demonstrate a strong negative feedback from clouds, and that this seems to validate a hypothesis postulated earlier by Lindzen. You apparently have a hard time accepting this, because it does not validate your own belief system that clouds should cause a positive feedback with higher temperatures.
As for Hansen: at one point in the past, he was still an objective scientist, but something happened. As his recent testimony before the US Congress as well as the never-ending disaster blurbs he sends out continuously show, he has become an alarmist and a political activist rather than an objective scientist.
Regards,
Max

Message to John McLondon
You wrote: “I do not really see a cooling, the five year average is still going up.”
Forget the “five year average”, just look at the data as they are published. All records show a cooling since 2001 (average is -0.08C per decade, satellite records show -0.13C per decade).
If you are unable to see this, I would recommend you go to your optometrist and get your glasses checked.
Regards,
Max

Max,
Let us address issues one by one.
“If you are unable to see this, I would recommend you go to your optometrist and get your glasses checked.”
My eyes are just fine. Thanks.
“To simply write off Beck’s findings on historic atmospheric CO2 concentrations is foolish”
It is not that simple. I have gone through that manuscript many times, then only I came to my conclusion. I believe I had the manuscript almost six months before it was published. To summarize that work, quality control (which is one of the key requirements stressed in this very website) is almost non-existent and the methodologies could use lots of improvements. It is published in a journal that does not have any reputation. What makes me unhappy about some of the AGW skeptics is not about whether CO2 cause temperature rise, this is a scientific issue which we can discuss; but it is rather their approach where they generally dismiss mountains of published work in respected journals and openly talk about their disdain to the peer review process, and then they will tell us that Beck’s and Scott Armstrong’s work (telling that unless we use his marketing forecasting techniques in scientific predictions, the results are meaningless) published in Energy and Environment are so monumental that they changed (or will change) the course of climate science. Scott Armstrong’s paper is one of those papers, I believe, available way before its publication. At least Spencer’s work is in far better journals, but his claims are much more reasonable in his papers. But the specific papers you are using are not out yet, and he went Congress to influence policies based on a work that has not been scrutinized yet, and it seems to me that you are essentially taking his views without waiting for what other scientists have to say about it when you wrote “I just pointed out that his physical observations demonstrate a strong negative feedback from clouds, and that this seems to validate a hypothesis postulated earlier by Lindzen.” I think if we simply believed what Spencer and his group said when they came up with his first satellite observations years ago, we would have been in real trouble. In fact I believe Lindzen used those early satellite data and Spencer’s interpretation to claim atmospheric cooling for a while (even before 2001). It took years for scientists to find out the errors and to propose appropriate corrections, to get accurate interpretation, and the cooling went away.
“Just as it is foolish to assume that we know everything about what causes atmospheric CO2 concentrations to rise or fall, and to assume that this is all a function of human fossil fuel consumption.”
I do not assume that we know everything about anything (in general, I take Marvin Minsky’s position here). But the overwhelming scientific opinion about the recent rise in CO2 is clear, it is from fossil fuel.
“I’m sure you know how to write ASS-U-ME.”
?!!
“Forget the “five year average”, just look at the data as they are published. All records show a cooling since 2001 (average is -0.08C per decade, satellite records show -0.13C per decade).”
In such slowly developing processes, patterns will emerge only slowly, and although each component of the process may be deterministic, the interaction between them can make such systems highly complex, and to some degree, stochastic. That is why a long term average is necessary to understand the trend. There is nothing magical about the year 2001, and AGW does not say, year by year temperature must go up. As I wrote earlier, application of a simple controls theory will tell us that, not a monotonic increase but an oscillatory increase with long term regression pointing upward movement.

Ric Werme (10:04:44) :
“I’ve never had a reason to write that, I’ve found I can debate people without resorting to sophomoric misspellings.”
Thanks Ric….
Strange!!
John

Hi Steven.
“One thing appears certain. The IPCC prediction of 0.2C warming per decade in the early 21st century appears to have been off the mark.”
“We’re not even through 2008 yet! I suggest we wait and see what the next El Nino brings. “
You’re right, Steven. That’s why I added, “But even there, who knows what will happen?”
Regards,
Max

John McLondon (09:07:09)
‘As I wrote earlier, application of a simple controls theory will tell us that, not a monotonic increase but an oscillatory increase with long term regression pointing upward movement.’
Ok. What are the controls in the controls theory and how well do they match observed data?

Joel said:

First of all, constant relative humidity is not an assumption of the climate models. It is, however, what they seem to approximately predict given the physics and assumptions that do go into them. And, contrary to what you may have heard, real-world data is in good agreement with this prediction.

Try
this
Doesn’t look very flat to me.

Smokey, let me respond to a few of your long tirade of points brought up in your “conversion” post:

That nothing happening to the climate is natural, and it’s all the fault of humans, especially those evil, ignorant Americans

Noone is saying that nothing happening to the climate is natural. Certainly, there are natural ups-and-downs on the scales of years to centuries but these tend to be fairly modest and also to not go completely in just one direction…i.e., to be fluctuations. On longer timescales, there are more dramatic natural changes in climate such as the ice age – interglacial cycle…And, indeed carefully studying these cycles is one way that scientists conclude that the known forcings that we are introducing are now the dominant contributor to climate change (on the decade to centennial timescales).
Noone is saying that humans, or Americans in particular, are evil (or that all are ignorant, although some seem to be). What we are saying is that mankind now has developed to the point where we have the awesome power to change the atmosphere in ways that profoundly effect the planet’s climate system. Furthermore, we have the intelligence, lacked by other creatures, of being able to anticipate and at least to some degree predict these changes, and to try to prevent the most detrimental effects from occurring. And, it seems to be in our best interests to do so.

That with enough money, climate change can be stopped

Well, there will continue to be natural variations in climate, but at least over the coming centuries, the evidence is that these natural variations alone should stay within certain bounds. The human-caused variations on the other hand, are likely to take us into realms of climate that have not been experienced in the entire history of homo sapiens…and this, coupled with the rapid rate of change and with other human pressures (such as habitat fragmentation, overfishing, and pollution), is likely to lead to extinctions and ecological upheavals on a large scale.
And, yes, we can choose to prevent this from occurring. And, in fact, many of the ways to do this (such as developing alternative sources of energy) are going to be necessary regardless since fossil fuels are a finite resource.

Neil Fisher says: “Try this
Doesn’t look very flat to me.”
And, try this: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;310/5749/841 . It is what peer-reviewed science looks like, as opposed to people using data of unknown quality (in fact, serious known deficiencies) on the internet to make plots. If you want more references to the peer-reviewed literature, look here: http://sciencepoliticsclimatechange.blogspot.com/2006/08/more-on-water-vapor-feedback.html
In particular, in the Soden paper they note: “Although an international network of weather balloons has carried water vapor sensors for more than half a century, changes in instrumentation and poor calibration make such sensors unsuitable for detecting trends in upper tropospheric water vapor (27). Similarly, global reanalysis products also suffer from spurious variability and trends related to changes in data quality and data coverage (24).”
By contrast, the Soden paper looks at both overall trends and fluctuations in water vapor as determined from satellite measurements. By looking at both the trends and fluctuations, they can confirm that what they see in the trends is not due to artifacts.

General info
This correlation was the best of the factors we looked at (Total Solar Irradiance, CO2, PDO/AMO) with 10 year smoothing for all parameters including temperatures (which increases the correlation but would not impact the relative importance of the factors). Notice how especially in the last decade how the correlation of US temperatures with CO2 has actually turned negative for the US.
factor years correlation pearson coefficient
carbon dioxide 1895-2007 0.66
TSI 1900-2004 0.76
oceans warming 1900-2007 0.92
(PDOandAMO)
carbon dioxide 1998-2007 -0.14
http://www.intellicast.com/Community/Content.aspx?ref=rss&a=127

Old construction worker raises a very good point with his coefficients.
They point out how we really understand very little about what is driving our planet’s climate, despite the rather arrogant (but ignorant) one-sided AGW claims of IPCC that “the understanding of anthropogenic warming … has improved”, “progress in understanding has been gained”, “analysis of climate models … provides increased confidence in the understanding of the climate system response to radiative forcing”. “advances in climate change modeling now enable best estimates … to be given for projected warming for different emission scenarios”, “there is now higher confidence in projected patterns of warming”, “sine the TAR there is an improving understanding of projected patterns of precipitation”, etc.
These are all “PR statements”. Nowhere does IPCC admit,“there is still much more that we do not yet know about the drivers of our planet’s climate than we do know”.
This would be an honest assessment.
Don’t look for an honest assessment from IPCC, a primarily political organization, that is making a sales pitch for carbon taxes or cap and trade schemes.
Max

Max, “To simply write off Beck’s findings on historic atmospheric CO2 concentrations is foolish, John
Get the difference, John? I’ll admit it’s subtle, but I’m sure you see what I mean.”
Yes, but I believe you initially assumed that I simply wrote Beck off – which is not true. Minor point, not worth arguing about.
But on your note to Joel, I hope you and other AGW skeptics do not take this line, I seriously doubt you will get anywhere with an independent group of people.
For example, AGW skeptical papers are a small fraction, it was in 2004 (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686), it hasn’t changed much since then. We can probably count the AGW skeptic papers in recent times, because they are so well publicized: Beck, Scott Armstrong, couple from Spencer, one from Ross, may be couple from Roger Pielke, Schwartz (which is not really a skeptical paper), …… and we are running out quickly. I honestly wish there are more.
Obviously Spencer and Lindzen are funded for their work. ..
I will let Joel address it fully.

Joel Shore (19:42:14)
From your first link
‘Climate models predict that the concentration of water vapor in the upper troposphere could double by the end of the century as a result of increases in greenhouse gases. Such moistening plays a key role in amplifying the rate at which the climate warms in response to anthropogenic activities, but has been difficult to detect because of deficiencies in conventional observing systems.’
According to the “CO2 drives the climate theory” isn’t that added water vapor suppose to lead to more heat trapping clouds which the GHG models use as a positive feedback?
According to Spencer’s model (based on observed data) heat trapping cloud did form and the heat stored in water vapor escapes into space as it gets “higher in the sky”.
I know you don’t buy Spencer’s theory but it was “published, peer review paper” and it is up to you to falsify.
Your 2nd link is tad old

Note to John McLondon
Hi John,
Thanks for your post referring to my post to Joel, which you concluded with “I will let Joel address it fully”.
My post to him was in response to (what I thought was) a silly and unfounded statement about the numbers of pro/anti AGW papers, their quality, the quality of the journals publishing them, the decision body and process for establishing this quality, the relative amounts of funding for pro/anti AGW papers, etc.
While you touched on funding without getting specific, you obviously did not answer any of my questions to Joel, so I’ll wait for him to “address it fully”.
Regards,
Max

old construction worker says:

According to the “CO2 drives the climate theory” isn’t that added water vapor suppose to lead to more heat trapping clouds which the GHG models use as a positive feedback?

Well, my post was focussing on the water vapor feedback, not the cloud feedback. I.e., more water vapor means more absorption of IR because of the greenhouse gas properties of water vapor.
To the extent that most of the climate models do have a positive cloud feedback, I am not sure exactly what it is due to. Note that it is not obvious that more water vapor will necessarily leads to more clouds since the relative humidity is predicted to remain roughly constant (i.e., warmer air can hold more water vapor before it condenses into clouds). Note also that clouds themselves are complex because they both trap infrared radiation and block solar radiation, so they can have both warming and cooling effects.

According to Spencer’s model (based on observed data) heat trapping cloud did form and the heat stored in water vapor escapes into space as it gets “higher in the sky”.
I know you don’t buy Spencer’s theory but it was “published, peer review paper” and it is up to you to falsify.

First of all, if you read Spencer’s paper rather than the press releases, you will see that even they admit that they haven’t shown that the effect that they found operates on the timescales of interest. Second of all, since I am not a climate scientist, it is not up to me to falsify every skeptic paper that get published in the literature, nor do I have the qualifications to do so. I am sure that, in time, the climate science community will react to that paper. (I think I have already seen one criticism of it somewhere…but I can’t remember where it was now.)

Your 2nd link is tad old

Are you saying that there have been dramatic new papers regarding the water vapor feedback in the last 2 years that change this summary? Pray tell, what were they?

Hi Steven,
You wrote, “Spencer has not, as yet, published any science to support his conviction that the planet has a ‘thermostat’ which will substantially limit the potential of warming.”
Please read his report and subsequent follow-up papers more thoroughly, Steven.
He has shown that the assumption of a strong positive (warming) feedback from clouds, as assumed in all GCMs cited by IPCC (admittedly with a large degree of uncertainty) is most likely incorrect and that the net cloud feedback is likely to be negative and strong.
That’s all.
But that is enough, Steven, to raise serious questions about 1.3°C warming attributed to clouds in the 3.2°C climate sensitivity for 2xCO2.
Take away the assumed positive cloud effect and (even without replacing it with Spencer’s observed strong negative effect) you are down to a 2xCO2 sensitivity of 1.9°C rather than 3.2°C.
And we haven’t even started talking about problems with the water vapor feedback assumptions, which will be the topic of future discussions.
Face it, Steven. IPCC has done a good job of exaggerating the feedback assumptions in the direction of making AGW more alarming that it would otherwise be. It is quite logical that if IPCC errs, it will be in that direction, as their whole existence depends on a world that is worried about human impact on climate and frightened about where that will lead.
No crisis = no need for further existence of IPCC. (These are nice jobs.)
No crisis = no need for multibillion dollar climate research grants. (Lots of “climatologists” and “computer gurus” depend on this source of funding.)
No crisis = no opportunity to enact draconian carbon taxes or cap and trade schemes making a few already wealthy people richer at everyone’s expense and giving bureaucrats and politicians hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money to shuffle around. (No need to mention how politicians react to the prospect of having more public money to handle.)
This is what many have referred to the whole scientific basis supporting an AGW-hysteria as “agenda-driven science”. Follow the money (and power) trail.
Regards,
Max

Hi Steven,
I’ll ignore your statement, “In short, Max, I think this demonstrates pretty clearly that you are engaged in blagging it. You can show me to be wrong very simply, of course, by quoting from the IPCC AR to support your assertion.”
You posed two questions, which I will answer.
“1) Can you demonstrate, by quotation from his scientific papers, where he has shown that “net cloud feedback is likely to be negative and strong”? I am not aware of this evidence, and would be very pleased to read your evidence, by quotation. Such evidence would have a very significant impact upon my own assessment, so I look forward to what you have to say.”
To your first question. Spencer states that the physical observations show that the cirroform ice cloud fraction anomaly is reduced with higher sea surface temperature, adding, “the decrease in ice cloud ceverage is conceptually consistent with the ‘infrared iris’ hypothesized by Lindzen et al. [2001], who propose that tropical cirroform cloud coverage might open and close, like the iris of an eye, in response to anaomalously warm or cool conditions, providing a negative radiative feedback on temperature change”.
He quantifies the net overall impact of clouds, “Our measured sensitivity of total (LW+SW) cloud radiative forcing to tropospheric temperature is –6.1 W/m^2 °K”, and goes on to conclude that “these observations should be considered in the testing of cloud parameterizations in climate models, which remain sources of substantial uncertainty in global warming prediction”.
http://www.weatherquestions.com/Spencer_07GRL.pdf
Spencer has published several other papers since then essentially reiterating his findings of negative feedback from clouds, but I think the above should suffice in responding to your question.
Your second question:
“2) Can you illustrate to me, by quotation, where is “the assumption of a strong positive (warming) feedback from clouds, as assumed in all GCMs cited by IPCC”? Again, I am not aware of any such assumption.”
To your second question, below is the link.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter8.pdf
Please refer to page 633. You will see:
“Using feedback parameters from figure 8.14, it can be estimated that in the presence of water vapour, lapse rate and surface albedo feedbacks, but in the absence of cloud feedbacks, current GCMs would predict a climate sensitivity (±1 standard deviation) of roughly 1.9°C ± 0.15°C (ignoring spread from radiative forcing differences). The mean and standard deviation of climate sensitivities derived from current GCMs are larger (3.2°C ± 0.7°C) essentially because the GCMs all predict a positive cloud feedback (Figure 8.14) but strongly disagree on its magnitude.”
IPCC goes on to assert, “the contributions of water vapor/lapse rate and surface albedo feedbacks to sensaitivity spread are non-negligible, particularly since their impact is reinforced by the mean model cloud feedback being positive and quite strong.”
Believe this should clear up your question on “the assumption of a strong positive (warming) feedback from clouds, as assumed in all GCMs cited by IPCC” and also your accusation that I am “blagging it”.
Regards,
Max

Hi Steven,
Just so you don’t try to misinterpret (or misunderstand) the IPCC quotes I just posted to demonstrate that the climate models cited by IPCC (in arriving at a 2xCO2 sensitivity of 3.2) ALL assume a positive feedback from clouds, and that this feedback is assumed to be strong, let’s analyze the words.
2xCO2 climate sensitivity (including water vapor, lapse rate, surface albedo feedbacks, but EXCLUDING cloud feedback) = 1.9°C
2xCO2 climate sensitivity (including water vapor, lapse rate, surface albedo feedbacks, but INLUDING cloud feedback) = 3.2°C
Sentence “because the GCMs all predict a positive cloud feedback”, means exactly that. They all predict a positive cloud feedback.
The sentence saying that other feedbacks are “reinforced by the mean model cloud feedback being positive and quite strong” also means exactly what it says.
Bumping the 2xCO2 sensitivity up from 1.9°C (without clouds) to 3.2°C (with clouds) is, indeed, evidence that the “impact is reinforced” by cloud feedback being “positive and quite strong”.
Any questions?
Regards,
Max

Two people divided by a common language
Blag:
1. (informal) persuade or deceive in order to get something for free
2. (informal) steal

Charles – point taken. It’s more interesting to discuss the issues, for sure.

Hi Steven,
Sorry you are “signing off”.
I showed you beyond the shadow of a doubt that IPCC cited GCMs that ALL assume a positive feedback from clouds, strong enough to increase the 2xCO2 sensitivity including all feedbacks from 1.9°C (excluding clouds) to 3.2°C (including clouds), stating unequivocally that this strong feedback was assumed in all of the climate models.
You did not even acknowledge this information.
Now to your statement, “As I have already discussed, the paper you quote (from Spencer) makes no assertions whatsoever as to net cloud feedback over time.”
How do you define “time”, Peter? Please be a bit more specific.
I have given you Spencer’s claims. You may not like them. You may not agree with them. But you cannot refute that these are his claims, based on the physical observations he and his colleagues made. He states that the net feedback from clouds is negative, based on observations over several years, rather than positive (as assumed in all the models cited by IPCC). He goes further in saying that these new findings should be considered in the climate models to resolve the current uncertainties relating to cloud feedbacks.
Steven, you are following the path of many AGW-proponents when their arguments have been refuted with facts. [snip]
I’m really sorry, because I honestly had a higher opinion of you earlier.
Have fun on your “new site”.
Regards,
Max