Real Climate gives reason to cheer…

Though, a couple of the cheerleaders don’t look all that happy.

Left to Right: Dr. Gavin Schmidt (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), Dr. Paul Knappenberger (President of the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum), Dr. Wally Broecker (Columbia University), and Dr. Ray Pierrehumbert (University of Chicago) pose for a photo after the first of the Global Climate Change forum. Forum I was held at the Adler Planetarium.

From Roger Pielke Jr.’s blog.

Two Decades of No Warming, Consistent With . . .

Over at Real Climate they are busy giving climate skeptics reason to cheer:

We hypothesize that the established pre-1998 trend is the true forced warming signal, and that the climate system effectively overshot this signal in response to the 1997/98 El Niño. This overshoot is in the process of radiatively dissipating, and the climate will return to its earlier defined, greenhouse gas-forced warming signal. If this hypothesis is correct, the era of consistent record-breaking global mean temperatures will not resume until roughly 2020.

Imagine, twenty-two or more years (1998 to ~2020) of no new global temperature record. What would that do to the debate?

Real Climate does say something very smart in the piece (emphasis added):

Nature (with hopefully some constructive input from humans) will decide the global warming question based upon climate sensitivity, net radiative forcing, and oceanic storage of heat, not on the type of multi-decadal time scale variability we are discussing here. However, this apparent impulsive behavior explicitly highlights the fact that humanity is poking a complex, nonlinear system with GHG forcing – and that there are no guarantees to how the climate may respond.

As I’ve argued many times, uncertainty is a far batter reason for justifying action than overhyped claims to certainty, or worse, claims that any possible behavior of the climate system is somehow “consistent with” expectations. Policy makers and the public can handle uncertainty, its the nonsense they have trouble with.

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Curiousgeorge
July 14, 2009 9:50 am

You know this just had to hurt. I wonder what they will pick as the next catastrophe? Probably over-population. That’s a perennial favorite.
I wonder if they cleared this with Mr. Holdren? And has anyone checked on Gore’s investments lately to see if he’s getting out of the carbon trading business?

July 14, 2009 9:52 am

Global warming’s all a myth, says the Spectator. Read about it on BBC Bloom.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/climatechange/2009/07/anyone_seen_the_front_page.html

hmmmm
July 14, 2009 9:53 am

If they had come out with this theory in 1999 (or even better in 1997) it might have been impressive.

Ray
July 14, 2009 10:00 am

Talking of rewriting history: Gore tells Australia that the UK court ruling was in his favor?
http://noteviljustwrong.com/blog/9-general/123-al-gore-rewrites-history.html

Boudu
July 14, 2009 10:01 am

Left to Right: Dr. Gavin Schmidt (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), Dr. Paul Knappenberger (President of the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum), Dr. Wally Broecker (Columbia University), and Dr. Ray Pierrehumbert (University of Chicago).
AKA The Four Weathermen of the Apocalypse.

Louis Nettles
July 14, 2009 10:04 am

So we are back to “still recovering from the LIA”

klausb
July 14, 2009 10:05 am

tallbloke (09:22:48) :
re: ..Not that much heat escaped that year anyway…
tallbloke, when I look at the numbers at:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/wwv/data/wwv.dat
I do see a decrease of approx. 25% that year.
Doesn’t look like small money to me.
KlausB

Jim
July 14, 2009 10:10 am

I’m not trying to besmirch the good name of cold fusion, but much of climate science belongs in the Pathological science category.
1. The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause. (This is certainly true for CO2.)
2. The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectablilty, or many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results. (It is certainly difficult to detect the warming trend.)
3. There are claims of great accuracy. (Claims of great certainty, at least.)
4. Fantastic theories contrary to experience are suggested. (It fits the bill here to a T.)
5. Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses. (Ad hoc excuses plus outright hostility.)
6. The ratio of supporters to critics rises and then falls gradually to oblivion. (This seems to be happening now, I HOPE!)

Nogw
July 14, 2009 10:20 am

When water is warmer than the air heat goes out and when water is cooler then air heats water. This is a gradient of energy working both ways.
So warming sea water began many years before the 97-98 “overshot” (or rogue wave, or a jump in TSI as reported by Scafetta´s paper)

July 14, 2009 10:23 am

I’ll get a cold one and watch.
You are going to need a brewery. Provided you an afford the CO2 permits.

hmmmm
July 14, 2009 10:24 am

Doesn’t this fly in the face of claims that climate change has recently been observed to be proceeding faster than predicted?

July 14, 2009 10:28 am

Jim (10:10:23) :
Cold fusion has actually been verified. It is not well enough understood to be reliably reproduced. The number of experiments that actually produce results is now in the 50% range.
Oh. Wait. Maybe I agree with you – mostly.

F. Ross
July 14, 2009 10:28 am

We hypothesize that the established pre-1998 trend is the true forced warming signal, and that the climate system effectively overshot this signal in response to the 1997/98 El Niño. This overshoot is in the process of radiatively dissipating, and the climate will return to its earlier defined, greenhouse gas-forced warming signal. If this hypothesis is correct, the era of consistent record-breaking global mean temperatures will not resume until roughly 2020.

Just a bit of hyperbole there. Or taking the liberty to paraphrase: “We don’t know what will happen, but we hope and pray the warming will return.”

Nature (with hopefully some constructive input from humans) will decide the global warming question based upon climate sensitivity, net radiative forcing, and oceanic storage of heat, not on the type of multi-decadal time scale variability we are discussing here. However, this apparent impulsive behavior explicitly highlights the fact that humanity is poking a complex, nonlinear system with GHG forcing – and that there are no guarantees to how the climate may respond.

So …the science is NOT settled then!?

Jordan
July 14, 2009 10:33 am

Good news is that the 2dC limit will be met for the forseeable without any help from us.
If only CO2 explains Recent Warming, what could have caused this overshoot? It obviously wasn’t CO2. And we’re told it’s not the sun.
That’s the amazing thing about model-based attribution. It allows unbridled experimentation with novel concepts like thermal inertia, thermal overshoot, temperature amplification by positive feedback.
I hope the climatologists are interacting with mainstream physicists down the corridor, as well as the statisticians just up the corridor.

tallbloke
July 14, 2009 10:39 am

klausb (10:05:13) :
tallbloke (09:22:48) :
re: ..Not that much heat escaped that year anyway…
tallbloke, when I look at the numbers at:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/wwv/data/wwv.dat
I do see a decrease of approx. 25% that year.
Doesn’t look like small money to me.
KlausB

Yes, subsurface heat not counted in the temperature records gets into the atmosphere and causes a big spike which then has the monkeys climbing the pole with their measuring string. The big downspike in the OLR shows water vapour is the really dynamic controller of the climate.

Squidly
July 14, 2009 10:41 am

Boudu (08:16:21) :
I assume that the 1997/8 overshoot is entirely consistent with the GCMs.

My point on this exactly!
If this does not emphatically invalidate GCM’s, ALL GCM’s, then I don’t know what does. There is not a single GCM that has ever exhibited results anywhere near what they are saying here. GCM’s are complete and utter BS (bad science)…

James H
July 14, 2009 10:46 am

This reminds me of the Realtor’s declarations as the housing bubble was bursting. Something like ‘right now prices are taking a breather heading for a soft landing. You must buy now before they start shooting up again!’

Squidly
July 14, 2009 10:47 am

crosspatch (08:22:28) :

What I fear they are doing is getting the people spring-loaded to cry “global warming” when the next natural warming cycle comes along.

Your fears are well founded Crosspatch. As long as humans are alive, this will never go away. Global Warming, Global Cooling, Climate Change, Climate Chaos, what ever they want to call it that week, that month, that year, it will never, ever, cease to exist in some fashion or another. My friends, this is not a new topic. This same topic has been going on for as long as there have been humans on this planet, and it will continue to go on until we are extinct. Get used to it, and learn how to fight against the uses of this topic in manipulating our lives!

CodeTech
July 14, 2009 10:50 am

Willis Eschenbach:
The block of steel analogy can be replaced with a real-world example: the heat sink on your CPU. Your CPU generates heat even when idle, however a burst of 100% processor will heat it more rapidly. Of course, since it’s heated more, it radiates heat more quickly, but will never drop below the underlying idle heat balance. The concept of “overshooting” dissipation is really quite amusing, and quite against the entire “thermodynamics” thing.

July 14, 2009 10:51 am

That’s the amazing thing about model-based attribution. It allows unbridled experimentation with novel concepts like thermal inertia
Thermal inertia is real. It is called specific heat. The rest of the concepts are as you point out dodgy.

FerdinandAkin
July 14, 2009 10:53 am

The IPCC employs 40 different climate models. Out of these models, not a single one of them predicted the global cooling brought on by a El Nino event. Even with 10 years to back fit the data from 1997 / 1998 into the models, no indication of Global Cooling was shown to be happening, nor that Global Warming would not resume at its pre – 1997 rate until the year 2020.
For a world recognized group of scientists such as the IPCC to require 10 years to realize an event has taken place that directly affects their policy is astounding. For a world recognized group of scientists to believe the incorrect results of 40 different climate models is beyond the limits of human comprehension.
(Who ever paid for those computer models would be well advised to put in a warranty claim.)

George E. Smith
July 14, 2009 10:54 am

Well Peterhumbug looks way shorter than Gavin does; even with Gavin slouching.
Well how do you eat with all that food strainer blocking the plumbing. I used to have a beard; I thought I looked really cool. Then I shaved it off, and discovered that all it did was make be look 20 years older than I was. Now people think I am 60; so I guess they’ll keep me on the staff until they really figure out how old I am.
So he’s French eh? Well Hector Berlioz was French; and then there was Aristide Cavalle-Coll. There has to be some other notable Frenchmen; but off hand I can’t remember their names.
And I would recommend to the whole gang that they abandon that nonsense about climate sensitivity; and net radiative forcing; and come back down to earth. Peter should try modelling planet earth; rather than whatever he has been dishing up instead. then he might get the right answer.
Now what is their explanation for why the CO2 will continue to climb and at anaccelerated pace, but the temperature won’t.
One final question; just what was the source of the mammoth thermal impulse, that caused that 1998 “overshoot” ? Remember that was an overshoot of the entire planet (Hansen claims); and we are supposed to take seriously their new claim that it will take 20 years to dissipate that “overshoot”. I thought that overshoot had already dissipated before 2000; so what is left to dissipate ? These guys are first class chumps; or they take us to be.
George

Jim
July 14, 2009 10:54 am

I’ve been intending to do this simple computation, but have not gotten around to it, but we know the heat capacity of water is much greater than that of air at STP. Now multipy the heat capacity of water times the grams of water in the ocean and compare that to the same number for air. Air won’t be a significant force WRT to heat or heating effect if I’m thinking correctly.

SpringwaterKate
July 14, 2009 11:03 am

Boudu (10:01:16) :
AKA The Four Weathermen of the Apocalypse
HaHaHa – big belly laugh!!!! Too funny – and so apropos – I’m still laughing…. 🙂

George E. Smith
July 14, 2009 11:04 am

“”” M. Simon (10:51:19) :
That’s the amazing thing about model-based attribution. It allows unbridled experimentation with novel concepts like thermal inertia
Thermal inertia is real. It is called specific heat. The rest of the concepts are as you point out dodgy. “””
Well thermal inertia doesn’t have anything at all to do with specific heat.
Specific heat tells you what the temperature increment (or decrement) will be for a change in energy input (or outtake). Thermal inertia has more to do with the mass of material that the energy is delivered to.
And as I said just above; the rapid rise of 1998, was immediately followed by an equally rapid fall of about the same extent; so there wasn’t any significant inertia at all; the whole episode was over in about two years. Looking at UAH and RSS, it does seem that the rise is a tad faster, than the fall, but that is typical of driven systems, where the initial state is driven to a new state, but the return is quite passive.