By Steven Goddard
Some readers may remember the 1961 film “The Day the Earth Caught Fire”. It could be viewed as the original “climate alarmist” film as it contains all of the plot elements of our current climate alarmism scenarios: exaggerated images of a dying planet, a mainstream media newspaper reporter, technology that is feared, the Met Office, and last but not least, junk science.
You can read about the whole wacky plot here.
Back to the present.
A new study out of MIT predicts “a 90% probability that worldwide surface temperatures will rise at least 9 degrees by 2100.”
This is more than twice what was expected in 2003. The Telegraph reports
“Global warming of 7C ‘could kill billions this century‘. Global temperatures could rise by more than 7C this century killing billions of people and leaving the world on the brink of total collapse, according to new research“A similar 2003 study had predicted a mere- but still significant- 4 degree increase in global temperatures by 2100, but those models weren’t nearly as comprehensive, and they didn’t take into consideration economic factors.
So what has changed since 2003 to cause the scientists at MIT’s “Centre for Global Climate Change” to believe the world is going to boil over this century and send billions of us directly to a toasty demise similar to our featured movie?
Since 2003, global temperatures have been dropping.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.south.jpg
January, 2008 broke the record for the most snow covered area ever measured in the Northern Hemisphere.
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/png/monthlyanom/nhland01.png
I added a red line below showing the reported projected rise in temperatures from the MIT models, compared with the actual observed temperature trends since the previous 2003 report. Their projections show a correlation of essentially zero.
Given that the observed trends are exactly opposite what the MIT models have predicted, one might have to ask what they have observed since 2003 to more than double their warming estimates, and where their 90% confidence value comes from?
The study, carried out in unprecedented detail, projected that without “rapid and massive action” temperatures worldwide will increase by as much as 7.4C (13.3F) by 2100, from levels seen in 2000.
This study has a strong scent of GIGO (garbage, in garbage out.) MIT has one of the world’s preeminent climatologists Dr. Richard Lindzen in their Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. I wonder if the scientists at the “Centre for Global Climate Change” checked with him before firing this remarkable piece off to the press?
During the Phanerozoic, CO2 levels have at times been more than 1,500% higher than present, but temperatures have never been more than 10C higher than present. So how does a projected 30% increase in CO2 produce a 7C temperature rise in their models? During the late Ordovician, there was an ice age with CO2 levels about 1000% of current levels. Hopefully the newspaper headlines don’t accurately represent the content of the article.
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/png/monthlyanom/nhland01.png
Finally, does their name (“Centre for Global Climate Change“) hint at a possible inherent bias in their raison d’être? What “rapid and massive action” do they want us to engage in?
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Man my grammar is bad at this time of the night 😛
Nice farce. All this to be a democrat socialist. Get your news from non news / ad sellers. Study ecology and socialism for an hour. It goes way way way back. It’s a mainstay of the left and once world govt agenda. Always has been, always will be. It’s a farce and only the uneducated, which unfortunately are many, are the only one’s affected by this stupidity. You got your government grower / incentive to succeed reducer in office, now go away. who is john galt?
Graeme Rodaughan (22:26:17):
Your philosophical reflections upon New Age “science” are masterful! Someone with musical talent could compose a Requiem for Reason with your sage words.
Mike Abbott,
I don’t buy your arguments.
If the press coverage is incorrect and the science team wants to get the correct story out, there are lots of different ways for them to to set the record straight. They can’t have it both ways.
Actually, just like between 700 A.D. and 1000 A.D., the earth’s termpurature has been dropping since 1998, not 2003 as stated above.
Richard Lindzen is a climatologist from MIT and he says Global Warming is not a cause for alarm…. It is dangerous to yell fire in a crowded Earth. It could cause a stampede and kill a lot of people as they freeze to death without furnace oil.
The Club of Rome created this hoax.
Prinn stresses that the computer models are built to match the known conditions, processes and past history of the relevant human and natural systems, and the researchers are therefore dependent on the accuracy of this current knowledge. Beyond this, “we do the research, and let the results fall where they may,” he says. Since there are so many uncertainties, especially with regard to what human beings will choose to do and how large the climate response will be, “we don’t pretend we can do it accurately. Instead, we do these 400 runs and look at the spread of the odds.”
I think if I were to include statements like these in my simulation class homework, then I wouldn’t have gotten an “A”. In order to run a credible simulation, you have to have credible data and a good model. So, even if their model was perfect, the data is suspect. Even worse, it looks like both the model and the data are suspect.
Never mind 2100, it’s going to rain all bloody day in the UK tomorrow. Awful.
LeeHInAlexandria (14:17:37) :
Actually, just like between 700 A.D. and 1000 A.D., the earth’s termpurature has been dropping since 1998, not 2003 as stated above.
It all depends on how you factor the 1997-1998 ENSO into the equation.
1998 clearly was the hottest year on record…But I just can’t see a cooling trend until 2003 at the earliest…When the oceans clearly started to cool (on average). By 2005, “global cooling” clearly was setting in.
I know that some people have said that if you statistically remove the 1997-1998 ENSO, the cooling trend appears to have started in ~1995. I’m not sure I buy that.
Enviros have turned ‘science’ into a new religion. Actually it’s not science but pseudo – science.
Aron: Champagne Socialists = Caviar Socialists 🙂
For the US, 1934 is the “corrected” warmest year. This has been discussed repeatedly. Considering the state of temperature data I’m not sure how one can accurately say these sorts of things but if you want to say it, then say 1934. Globally it is claimed that 2005 holds the honor. Check these things out on your own if you like.
http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2007/08/1934_warmest_year_on_record.php
I may have missed it, but I don’t recall seeing a link to the original paper. Here it is in all its GIGOesque glory: MIT SimCity Climate Study
I advise opening it in Adobe Reader instead of Firefox. I had problems with the download hanging in Firefox. IE probably works okay, but I haven’t tried it.
There’s nothing in the paper that makes it seem any more credible than what’s in the press release. Most of the paper is devoted to details of the different computer games involved in the projections.
One section that attracted my attention is:
The last statement is, of course, bunk. There’s no principle that says that by varying the three of the major sources of uncertainty until the model output resembles the observed data one can derive valid estimates. Lots of people have lost their shirts in the stock market by relying on the same “principle.”
Joel Shore (19:18:22),
Scneider says:
“ And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. ”
Which assumes that man in his infinite power is ABLE to cause “disastrous climatic change. “
The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.
WILLIAM KINGDON CLIFFORD,
The Ethics of Belief
Dave Middleton
Here are least square trend line slopes for start of global cooling
LEAST SQUARE SLOPE ANALYSIS [WOOD FOR TREES –INTERACTIVE GRAPHS]
OCEANS SST
GLOBAL OCEANS SST [HADSST2gl] started decline in 2000 at [-0.00204/year]
NORTHERN HEMISPHERE OCEANS SST [HADSST] started decline in 2002 at [-0.0233/year]
SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE OCEANS SST [HADSST] started decline in 2000 at [-0.00204/year]
GLOBAL TEMPERTAURE ANOMALIES
COMPOSITE OF RSS, UAH, HADCRUT, GISS started decline in 2001 at [-0.0105 C /year]
UAH started decline in 2001 at [-0.0137C/ year]
RSS started decline in 2001 at [-0.01588/year]
GISS started decline in 2001 at [- 0.00134/year]
HAD CRUT3gl started decline in 2001 at [-0.0102/year]
“The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out” … “we don’t pretend we can do it accurately.”
But we ARE confident enough to raise your contribution to society (through cap and raid) to approximately 3100 bucks per household per year. Of course, that is only an average and if you actually do anything productive, you might want to double that number… at least. And don’t forget that after cap and betrayed, the costs are engineered to increase rapidly. But don’t worry… you have a job!!!
MJW (15:07:45) :
“There’s no principle that says that by varying the three of the major sources of uncertainty until the model output resembles the observed data one can derive valid estimates.”
Indeed!
These people appear to be under the mistaken belief that “tuning” their models like this will somehow provide acceptable accuracy, given the high level of coupling and non-linearity exhibited by the “solutions” (if you can call these simulations “solutions” in the mathematical sense).
Besides, they forgot the biggest uncertainty of them all – the surface temperature records themselves, as extensively documented by Anthony for the US surface stations!
To me this looks like yet another “unlikely to materialize doom and gloom” prediction article and report. To raise the global temperature by 7.4 degrees C by 2100, the rate of warming would have to increase by a factor of about 10 over the actual past historical rate of warming since 1900 [0.7284 C/century]. Since 2001 and to 2009, the planet has been cooling at the least square trend line of -0.0102 C per year as per HADCRUT3VGL data] This article is again timed to coincide with the EPA decision deadline on declaring carbon dioxide a pollutant and is meant to frighten the politicians and give support to EPA decision makers .Let’s hope EPA see their way through the pure fear creating jargon in this report and make the right decision not to declare carbon dioxide a pollutant.
It has the usual AGW jargon phrases like:
Unprecedented detail
Need for rapid and massive action
90% chance
More risk than previously expected
World should not take these risks
Results for the planet would be catastrophic
Lysenko rules.
I disagree, all of you need to study deeper into global warming. Man has not lived long enough on the Earth to begin to establish his results on such warming. First you need to study The Club of Rome or better yet Google The Green Agenda. One great book is Not by Fire but by Ice by Robert Felix. We actually are in climate change, and in fact this is very normal within the past millions of years according to Co2 levels in the ice cores. The Chem Trails may have something to do with it, so you better study what stuff really is in there. It’s been found the Chem Trails being sprayed in Canada and the US have been since 1998. Global Warming to me is bogus.
E.M.Smith (01:22:37) :
and
E.M.Smith (09:44:07) :
Graeme Rodaughan (22:39:42) :
[3] That telling the truth will produce a sub-optimal outcome.
If any of the above assumptions are false, his ethical bind disappears, and defaults back to a simple requirement to tell the truth.
I would assert that you ought to have a fourth, given his statements:
4) That telling the truth is of subordinate value to achieving goals.
I would assert that on the face of it #4 is false (with perhaps the exception of an extreme duress from evil – i.e. a lie to a murderous captor so that one can call the police…). If #4 is true, then one has no reason to ever tell the truth. One will always be driven by goals. Rent seeking with any lie is just fine. Cheating on your spouse is fine ( the goal justifies the lie). Tax fraud is just attempting to reach your low tax goal. etc. … Moral relativism rules.
Deception to achieve one’s goals is not a moral dilemma. It is dishonesty.
Truth and honesty have their own value, and that value is not subordinate to goal seeking.
E.M.Smith – well said, – your ethical insight is stronger than mine.
MIT is currently working with a brand new climate model that they believe will extend our understanding of the many terrible things that will soon befall us.
sky (14:11:59) :
SKY: Thanks.
Looks like my first degree with a major in History and Philosophy of Science wasn’t wasted…
G