Real Climate posted a weblog on June 21 2009 titled “A warning from Copenhagen”. They report on a Synthesis Report of the Copenhagen Congress which was handed over to the Danish Prime Minister Rasmussen in Brussels the previous week.
Real Climate writes
“So what does it say? Our regular readers will hardly be surprised by the key findings from physical climate science, most of which we have already discussed here. Some aspects of climate change are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago – such as rising sea levels, the increase of heat stored in the ocean and the shrinking Arctic sea ice. “The updated estimates of the future global mean sea level rise are about double the IPCC projections from 2007″, says the new report. And it points out that any warming caused will be virtually irreversible for at least a thousand years – because of the long residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere.”
First, what is “physical climate science”? How is this different from “climate science”. In the past, this terminology has been used when authors ignore the biological components of the climate system.
More importantly, however, the author of the weblog makes the statement that the following climate metrics “are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago” ;
1. “rising sea levels”
NOT TRUE; e.g. see the University of Colorado at Boulder Sea Level Change analysis.
Sea level has actually flattened since 2006.
2. “the increase of heat stored in the ocean”
NOT TRUE; see
Update On A Comparison Of Upper Ocean Heat Content Changes With The GISS Model Predictions.
Their has been no statistically significant warming of the upper ocean since 2003.
3. “shrinking Arctic sea ice”
NOT TRUE; see the Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice Anomaly from the University of Illinois Cyrosphere Today website. Since 2008, the anomalies have actually decreased.
These climate metrics might again start following the predictions of the models. However, until and unless they do, the authors of the Copenhagen Congress Synthesis Report and the author of the Real Climate weblog are erroneously communicating the reality of the how the climate system is actually behaving.
Media and policymakers who blindly accept these claims are either naive or are deliberately slanting the science to promote their particular advocacy position.
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Not to be repetitive but in Chicago politics it is not about right or wrong it is about who is in charge. AGW as science is a hoax, but as a political agenda a terrific success. We will all pay a huge price in a lower standard of living, jobs lost and turmoil due to this madness that is now out of control in our government and its agencies. It makes no difference that the sea levels are declining or the temperatures are falling, our government is stealing control of our country and now act, one and all, like royalty.
Correct repetition:
My mother witnessed while in college back in the 1930’s a scene that she transmitted to me so vividly that it is as if I had been present.
A young fellow student and she were at the Dean’s office for some discussion. There was a metal bust on a stand next to where the other girl was standing that somehow lost its balance and fell on the girl’s head.
The girl stood there, blood streaming down her face reciting in a strong voice:
I am not hurting, I am not hurting, I am not hurting”.
She was the first Christian Scientist my mother ever met.
I tell this story because it illustrates strongly for me that to the indoctrinated willingly, facts really do not matter.
We, as the west, are in the unfortunate position to have not only the public and some “scientists” in a cult like self indoctrination, but politicians in power too. And circling the scene are the vultures and opportunists each with his/her own agenda: some for money, some for glory, some for security, some from pusillanimity.
Κοινή γαρ η τύχη το δε μέλλον αόρατον
Our fate is common and the future opaque.
So as far as I can see, in the case of sea levels, the Real Climate website has accurately reported what the Copenhagen report is saying.
That seems a bit circular, sorry. My question is: Have the predictions matched the observations? How many people have been displaced by rising sea levels? And given the prediction/observation/whatever that the sea level is rising faster than expected – how many more will be displaced by this time next year?
Gary (19:00:25) :
“virtually irreversible” – whew, good thing the world is literal.
Virtually irreversible is what you get when you cant get your climate model to cool back down because you didnt include any negative forcings:)
[snip]
I mean, even considering such short trends as 3 years, the sea level by Boulder ARE increasing since 2006: writing a big fat FLAT won’t change the slope of the linear regression. Moreover, what the report says is that sea levels are increasing faster than predicted: please take a look at Fig. 1 in the report
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/files/synthesis-report-web.pdf
The statement on “increasing” Arctic sea ice is so incredible it doesn’t even deserve further comments… The trend speaks for itself
The claim about sea level rising faster than ever seems to relate to a paper by Rahmstorf, but it looks like he did a bit of jiggery-pokery:
Niche Modelling
http://landshape.org/enm/recent-climate-observations-disagreement-with-projections/?dsq=11906160#comment-11906160
This what Niche Modelling say in conclusion:
“1. What is to be done with the many sources that already reference Rahmstorf et al 2007, and will in the future, to justify faster actions on controlling emissions, including Australia’s Garnaut Report?
2. Why were the obvious shortcomings of the original article, by a number of lead chapter authors of the IPCC, not pointed out (and defended even) by other members of the climate science community (with a comment in Science say), and only skeptical bloggers noticed or were concerned by it?
3. As Jan Pompe remarks, if temperatures continue to stay flat, is it justified to keep increasing the smoothing period of the trend lines to ensure the appearance of an increasing trend, as Stefan appears to think?
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but when a short smoothing gave a high warming, Rahmstorf and his coauthors were quick to cry ‘the sky is falling’. But when the trend turned down due to random fluctuations, he changed the parameters to stay on message. As Marcellus said, “Something is rotten in the State of Denmark” (Hamlet).”
Real Climate refer to trends over the last 100 or so years. Weather or seal level changes during the last few years isn’t climate change. Check their mantra.
Arguing the toss with these people is a waste of space. Getting good climate science regularly in front of MSM will get you traction. Friendly MSM journo anyone?
We are being bamboozled by science which likes to have a nice graph to explain everything, unfortunately the real world is more complicated than that. Global sea levels are -like global temperatures-a nonsensical artefact dreamt up in a computer laboratory.
The sea level calculations rely on an enormous number of variable factors including pressure, location, warmth of oceans, structures, storms, wave heights, surges, stasis, location of the gauge/sensor, slope of the underlying strata etc. The accuracy of measurements is said to be 3cm (10 times the level of the alleged annual rise) but in reality is far vaguer than that because of the inherent difficulties of measuring.
Both the following two sites give a good description of the process-which is being constantly refined but doesn’t get more accurate as the inherent flaws in measuring capabilities can’t be resolved.
http://www.tos.org/oceanography/issues/issue_archive/issue_pdfs/15_1/15_1_jacobs_et_al.pdf
http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/Journal/Issues/1999/dec/abs1635.html
The following site deals with problems of the data;
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=859
This with reliability;
http://lightblueline.org/satellite-tracking-sea-levels-set-launch
The UK Environment Agency (with whom I work) -where possible like to use physical tide gauges as well, which are both visually observed or can send data electronically. Best of all is gathering information from local people such as the Harbour master or those who work the fishing boats.
Sea level rises are not being seen in context as one of those regular cycles that stretch back much further than the satellite records into the depths of recorded time.
The following link leads to a graph produced by the Dutch Govt sea level organisation- and confirm sea levels are stable and are somewhat lower than during the MWP. (This won’t stop them reacting to the IPCC by raising sea defences)
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=61
We have much observational evidence of historic sea levels (p162 on-including a map in the following link)
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0Nucx3udvnoC&pg=PA156&lpg=PA156&dq=romans+in+iceland&source=bl&ots=5k8qGn7VK4&sig=s4aeHlT8Tivz8rVwcHFRVFZjDp0&hl=en&ei=38FJSr2pKpe7jAfu2rRi&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4
Ancient Greek explorer Pytheas travelled to Iceland and not only discovered the frozen seas lying one days journey beyond, but was the first to quantify the moons action as being responsible for tides, and took physical measurements of heights. Sea level heights are generally said to be lower today than back in the Roman warm period and Mwp.
Sea castles in the UK built in the 11th century are now above the sea level entrances which ships used to re-supply them.
The worlds leading sea level expert Professor Morner has called the IPCC figures ‘a lie.’ Google ‘The greatest lie ever told’
I had intended to cover historic sea levels as a companion to my ‘arctic ice variation through the ages’ series.
We must stop looking at just a few years of data as ‘proof’ of rising levels especially as they have ‘stumbled’ since 2006, and instead view things in a historic context, whilst retaining a great deal of scepticism at the notion you can create a highly accurate global figure in the first place.
Tonyb
You left out the best one…. Residence time of CO2 in the Atmosphere… According to Prof. Ian Plimer, there is plenty of evidence that shows CO2 has a short residence time in the atmosphere…. Certainly less then the AGW proponents would like it to be.
Here’s a link to a talk Prof. Plimer did recently. It’s about 40 mins, so grab a coffee and put yer feet up.
http://www.thesydneyinstitutepodcast.com/2009/06/23/IanPlimerTheTheologyOfClimateChange.aspx
Plimer is currently Professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide and has written the book, ‘Heaven and Earth: The missing Science.’, for those who don’t know who he is.
Why does the MSM continue to gleefully force feed this AGW garbage to it’s international readership? Nothing sells newpapers better than disaster. If there was no disaster you’d have to invent it.
Oh wait…
Surely “Physical Climate Science” is needed to distinguish between observational science and the running of over-stimulated video games.
Someone asked for a climate realist journo. The UK has one in the shape of Christopher Booker of the Daily Telegraph. He’s familiar to regular WUWT readers:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/
I’ve seen WUWT articles/links to other journos who do not swallow the AGW line.
And then there are people like this who are also familiar to regular WUWT readers:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/georgemonbiot
One journo quietly states his opinion and sticks (mostly) to facts while the other resorts to childish ad hominem attacks. Guess which one Her Maj’s government pay heed to…
Looks like we are going to get ever more ludicrous disaster claims from the IPCC AGW brigade. These people are becoming a joke as one prediction after another fails to happen.
Did you hear the one about the newly-wed IPCC climate scientist who sat up all night on his honeymoon waiting for the predicted sexual relations to arrive?
Perhaps we should use viral marketing to combat what the media are doing at the moment – just need some good jokes to put up on the web and to text around the world.
Anyone got any good stuff???
I wonder if anyone has tried to estimate how much money worldwide is spent on study of the weather and climate? Just think how many people we could feed in Africa if we diverted half of it to food for the hungry.
My current favorite trending chart: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Talk about “unprecedented”!
These scoundrels are nothing more than [snip] out to rob the working taxpayer – just my opinion. Snip it if you want.
If a used car salesman says a car has got 100,000 miles knowing full well it has really got 150,000, then it makes him a swindler. Pure and simple.
High time we start defending our property rights.
Typo under item 2 comment “Their” instead of “there”
Have I spotted something others have missed? I am extremely impressed with the Copenhagen Congress Synthesis Report, you chaps & chapesses are getting hot under ther collar for nothing. “Synthesis”, has several meanings, from which the term “synthetic” is derived, one of which is,………..wait for it………..”artificial”. So perhaps they have been either dumber than I thought, or more clever than I thought.
Another thing, isn’t this climate science so clever as to produce the desired result providing the desired conclusion at the desired time for the desired conference? Why can’t all science be this accurate & clever, the LHC crowd & the Space guys, & the Solar Cycle predicting chaps ought to take a leaf out of the climate science book & save a few bucks! Also, insn’t a conference supposed to involve an “exchange of views” as opposed to stating an opinion?
Molon Labe,
I wouldn’t put too much stock in this small summer trend. We are only talking about a degree celsius summertime difference. Instead, look at the first and last 100 days of each year. Over the last 10 years the first 100 days and last 100 days have been on the warm side – especially when compared to earlier decades. From this I would surmise that there has been far less ice formation during the winter months during the current decade – when compared to earlier decades. That’s one reason why there was so much melt in 2007.
It will be interesting to see what this temp curve does in September to November – 2009.
While I could absolutely agree with Dr. Pielke, all of us have to admit that a 3 year period is just too short for an acceptable trend analysis. At the moment we can’t be sure that the global sea level trend has been flattened recently, but no one can see the acceleration projected by the IPCC.
See this graph about post-glacial see level rise, and this one from the last 60 years as measured by tide gauges. Nothing unusual, nothing unprecedented.
Global sea level had been started to increase long time ago, at the end of the last ice age. Altough the rate of increase was slower in the last 10.000 years than before, it means an almost steady increase of about 15-20 cm in every 100 years. Current sea level is a few meters higher than thousands of years before, in ancient times. Along the Mediterranean coast, for example in Turkey or even in Croatia you can find some ancient ruins which are flooded by shallow seawater. Sea level has been increasing since Sumerians founded their first city states 5500 years ago… This fact is well-known among historians, but it remained unnoticed by most of the people in the world. Then the IPCC has come to life, and with it all the things have changed. Something really unprecedented happened: an attempt has been made to rewrite history, more exactly a part of our global history. The history of climate. Altering local historical events and misinforming people were quite common in totalitarian regimes, but it has never happened before (in pre-IPCC times) on a global level.
One thing is clear: the members of the hockey team in Coppenhagen got it wrong again.
By heavens, it’s cold up north! Nice chart from our Spartan correspondant.
I did put a reply in to one of the “Unreal Climate” threads, where the “Great Gavsby” (sic) noted he was a bit busy preparing computer models for the 2010 IPCC beanfeast, I cheekily wished him well in getting a model to reconcile the last 10 years of increasing CO2 combined with the last 10 years of no warming.
A number of other replies noted the ARGO data showing no “hidden warmth” in the oceans, no response to that from the esteemed moderators.
I’ve not seen any predictions of doom & gloom come from the Catlin lot either, maybe their measurements don’t support their predetermined results?
Why don’t we offer this posting to Rasmussen.
It is short, to the point and effective.
Politicians love that, unless they don’t like the content because it does not serve their agenda!
So let’s finf the “honest” polticians.
Yet another example of up is down and down is up. Fits right in with the way the AGWers would likely view the local weather in June here in NH this year. It’s been a cold June according to anyone you ask on the street. Lots of rain, no hot days. The recorded daily highs for Manchester NH averaged more than 5 degree F below average.
But in AGW speak, we probably have had a warmer than normal June. Easy if you use the data to your advantage. With all the clouds the day/night temperature difference was only about 10 degrees F, with average low at night being about 7 degrees above average. So voila, this June that was more like late april was warmer than average, even though long sleeves and coats have many days continued to be the rule in a month that usually calls for short sleeves and frequent air conditioning.
I first saw one of these “it’s warming faster than expected” claims a year or two ago. Upon closer scrutiny, it turned out that the prediction was being made retrospectively. What I mean is this:
The prediction was made in, say 2001. It predicted a rate of warming of X between 1979 and 2020. The actual rate of warming between 1979 and 2001 was higher than X. So even if temperatures are flat or declining between 2001 and 2008, the predictor can claim that temperatures having been rising faster than his prediction.
Of course, you don’t have to be a scientist to see that this is a dishonest way of doing things.
In any other discipline, such a prediction would be laughed at. For example, what if a stock market analyst predicted today that Microsoft stock will increase dramatically in price between 1981 and 2011?
Anyway, my guess is that these Copenhagen predictions, as reported by RC, fall into the category of non-prediction predictions.
erroneously communicating the reality
A phrase worthy of a politician 🙂