Yesterday on WUWT, a post from Luboš Motl told us how climate science has been proposed as a vehicle for wealth redistribution by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber who is the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the main German government’s climate protection adviser. Interestingly it has been discovered that he co-authored a paper critical of Global Climate Models (GCM’s) in 2001. The paper and list of co-authors is below.
Global Climate Models Violate Scaling of the Observed Atmospheric Variability (link to PDF here)
R. B. Govindan,1,2 Dmitry Vyushin,1,2 Armin Bunde,2,* Stephen Brenner,3
Shlomo Havlin,1 and Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber4
1Minerva Center and Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel
2Institut für Theoretische Physik III, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Heinrich-Buff-Ring 16, 35392 Giessen, Germany
3Department of Geography, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel
4Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, D-14412 Potsdam, Germany
(Received 1 November 2001; revised manuscript received 22 April 2002; published 21 June 2002)
Abstract:
We test the scaling performance of seven leading global climate models by using detrended fluctuation
analysis. We analyze temperature records of six representative sites around the globe simulated by the
models, for two different scenarios: (i) with greenhouse gas forcing only and (ii) with greenhouse gas
plus aerosol forcing. We find that the simulated records for both scenarios fail to reproduce the universal
scaling behavior of the observed records and display wide performance differences. The deviations
from the scaling behavior are more pronounced in the first scenario, where also the trends are clearly
overestimated.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.89.028501 PACS numbers: 92.60.Wc, 02.70.Hm, 64.60.Ak, 92.70.Gt
In the conclusion the authors write:
To summarize, we have presented evidence that
AOGCMs fail to reproduce the universal scaling behavior
observed in the real temperature records. Moreover, the
models display wide differences in scaling for different
sites. When comparing the two scenarios, our results
suggest that the second scenario (CO2 plus aerosols)
exhibits better performance regarding the values of the
scaling exponents as well as the trends. The effect of
aerosols not only decreases the trends but also modifies
the fluctuations, to more closely resemble the real data.
This confirms in a way independent of the evaluations
made so far [5] that the incorporation of aerosols is
necessary to approach reality.
It is possible that the lack of long-term persistence is due
to the fact that certain forcings such as volcanic eruptions
or solar fluctuations have not been incorporated in the models.
However, we cannot rule out that systematic model
deficiencies (such as the use of equivalent CO2 forcing to
account for all other greenhouse gases or inaccurate spatial
and temporal distributions of sulphate emissions) prevent
the AOGCMs from correctly simulating the natural variability
of the atmosphere. Since the models underestimate
the long-range persistence of the atmosphere and overestimate
the trends, our analysis suggests that the anticipated
global warming is also overestimated by the models.
Oddly, though by his own peer reviewed admission, GCM’s don’t fully represent reality, and “global warming is also overestimated by the models”, that doesn’t stop Schellnhuber from using the conclusions of GCM’s to create his own alternate world reality where the industrialized nations have to pay carbon reparations to poorer ones.
h/t to Steve Mosher
What’s so unusual with that. He switched over (sold out his soul) because he has a new paymaster.
Recent studies have shown that Global Warming could increase the frequency of shcizophrenia cases. I think it’s worse than we thought.
Apparently, money as well as idiology plays an important role in reaching conclusions in the new science.
Our carbon credits are used up based on what broken model that doesn’t represent reality? Buy your carbon credits today before the price goes down!
Oops…
Apparently money, as well as ideology, plays an important role in reaching conclusions in the new science. (I don’t really want to create the new grammer.)
Obviously, he’s grown and refined his understanding of the underlying fundamental phenomena.
If he’d gone the other way, Exxon would have been blamed.
This confirms that he is a crackpot and… that he can’t be trusted.
OT
For those voting for Obama`s health care, this is what you now get in the UK.
Liverpool Care Pathway: The decision to withdraw treatment from a patient is an incredibly complex one.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthadvice/maxpemberton/6139668/Liverpool-Care-Pathway-The-decision-to-withdraw-treatment-from-a-patient-is-an-incredibly-complex-one.html
OK, thanks for posting that. That was the tie breaker.
Fool.
I’ve been living here in Germany for 19 years, and I know how these people tick. Don’t get me wrong, I admire them in many respects. But many of these people, except for my wife, are posessed with organising everything. I mean every damn thing under the sun.
Ordnung muss sein!
And when you get whacked-out people like Ramstorf and Prof Dr. Schrillhooter directly advising Frau Chancellor Merkel, then be worried. Be very worried!
(If I keep this up, I just might get some greenshirts busting into my house and I may be sentenced to 15 years of hard labour on a bio-food farm or windpark.
I aint kidding.
Modellers in both cases have substituted empirical work by dice throwing, scientific study by kids’ gambling. This is a study case for psychiatry.
Psychiatrists and psychologists are invited to opine!
It seems to me that you would damning Schellnhuber either way. If he had only published papers in which he confirmed all of the conclusions of climate models and talked of the dangers of warming, then you would be pointing to this as evidence that he is biased and thus his views should be dismissed and ridiculed. Now that you have unearthed a paper in which he actually questioned some aspect of the climate models and speculated that their predictions of warming could be overestimated, you are pointing to this as evidence that he is inconsistent and thus his views should be dismissed and ridiculed. Why not instead see it as evidence that he is an honest scientist who follows the evidence wherever it leads?
As to why the apparent inconsistency? It would be best to ask him. But, his 2002 paper was an early attempt to look into this scaling issue and there has since been considerably more work that could easily have led him to revise his initial understanding. (There was in fact a 2004 comment http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v92/i15/e159803 and reply http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v92/i15/e159804 on this paper, although I haven’t been able to access them and see what they say. But here is a recent paper in the field that references the 2002 Schellnhuber paper http://www.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca/people/vyushin/Papers/On_the_origins_of_temporal_power-law_behavior_in_the_global_atmospheric_circulation_GRL_2009.pdf and concludes, among other things, “that current generation climate models generally simulate the spatial distribution of the Hurst exponents well”.)
It is also undoubtedly true that he has a more refined, less black-and-white view of the climate models than is often expressed here (e.g., where it seems to be assumed that any way in which the models can be shown to be deficient or unrealistic means that we can ignore them completely). And, hence, he might not find the statement “GCM’s don’t fully represent reality” to be sufficient reason to completely ignore them (along with all of the other evidence for a significant sensitivity of the climate system to CO2).
Joel, he’s no longer a climate scientist. When he starts making policy recommendations on how his and other countries should form policy and who should pay, he is no longer an “honest scientist” but part of the political apparatus.
That, and as Luboš Motl points out, he’s a “hardcore nutcase”. Pretty strong words from Luboš.
From your perspective, I assume then that following his Robin Hood rich to poor plan is A-OK with you?
AaaaaaaahhhhhhCHOO! Sorry. I’m allergic to BS.
Way last year I was also predicting that India and China would be using guilt about a ‘precious conceit of the Western elite’ to insist that the developed countries make a greater sacrifice of carbon than they would. Now, their positions have hardened into refusing to make any carbon concessions while expecting Europe and the US to do so. Frankly, I don’t think the big boys and girls in China and India believe in the paradigm of CO2=AGW anymore. Copenhagen may well be a lot of fun.
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Joel, Herr Shnellhubris is not following the evidence, he is following the money.
Wake up.
Following up on my previous post, here is a paper by many of the same authors as the original Schellnhuber 2002 paper (although not including Schellnhuber himself) in which they demonstrate how the inclusion of volcanic forcing makes the scaling performance of the climate models considerably better (in agreeing with observations): http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0401/0401143v1.pdf
Anthony Watts says:
So, what about people like Luboš Motl, Roy Spencer, and yourself. I hardly think you and they have shied away from telling us what you think about various policies to constrain CO2 emissions. Does that disqualify you and they as honest scientists too?
Well, Luboš is hardly known as a bastion of calm and reasoned analysis. Strong words are Luboš’s bread-and-butter.
Personally, I think that the issue of fairness in how the world deals with the issue of controlling CO2 emissions is a difficult one. Schellnhuber’s criterion (of allowing everyone the same allotment of emissions) seems too simplistic and rigid to me. However, at a broader level, I do think it will be necessary for those nations who have contributed the most to the current problem (through our cumulative emissions) and also have the most resources to solve it to demonstrate leadership and a willingness to help those nations who have contributed less and have fewer resources. How that will work in detail is the legitimate subject of future international negotiations.
This is a complicated issue and there are going to be differences of opinion in how to deal with it. Schellnhuber’s view is one extreme of how to handle the equity issue. I think it is fair to critique it although I think intelligent and thoughtful critiques would be best.
Joel Shore 14:00:17
CO2 is a trace gas with trace effect. Those industrial nations that have burned a lot of fossil fuel in the past have not ‘contributed the most to the current problem(through their cumulative emissions’. Please, get with the latest science and stop chasing the CO2 chimera. We’ve got much more important things to address.
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By the way, I can’t wait for the sort of folks who want to rob and control us to decide that CO2 is a cooling agent and that that old fart Arrhenius had it backward. After all, we don’t know for sure the sign of the water vapor feedback. If it’s constantly negative, then rising CO2 may cool us. Also, all those ice cores showing CO2 rising 800 years after temperature rising also show temperature dropping sometime later. Give me the help of the statistics experts at UDub and Penn State, and I’ll prove that CO2 cools the earth.
Yes, Eric, you are turning into a joke, too.
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Joel Shore 14:00:17:
With due respect: Would you really believe it is possible for someone to warm his/her feet in a cold night at bed, with a bottle filled with air or rather CO2, instead of water?
The fact that air’s heat volumetric capacity is 3227 lower than water invalidates any possibility of any “greenhouse effect”. And, btw, greenhouses are closed rooms, do you believe the earth is covered with glass?
Joel Shore,
“However, at a broader level, I do think it will be necessary for those nations who have contributed the most to the current problem (through our cumulative emissions) and also have the most resources to solve it to demonstrate leadership and a willingness to help those nations who have contributed less and have fewer resources.”
Well, how do you factor in the reality that the industrialisation of the West has undoubtedly improved life for many billions of people across the world? How do you factor in that the ‘green revolution’ etc developed in the West means the planet can now support over double the population than it did in the 1950s?
These improvements were largely based upon technologies that lead to CO2 emissions. But they haven’t just had downsides. Yours is a very one dimensional view of the world.
Let’s see, now, what is the thermodynamic effect of virtually permanently sequestering all that CO2 in gigantic underground stores of carbonates and hydrocarbons. That’s energy that isn’t being radiated to space nor is it contributing to warming. Hmmmm. I can take this either way.
OK, I’m about to turn into a climate scientist; who wants to start the bidding?
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kim says:
I know the latest science and it doesn’t say what you seem to think it says.
Actually, we know its sign and even have quite a good handle on its magnitude. See, here for a brief review: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/sci;323/5917/1020
Even if the sign of the water vapor feedback were negative (which it’s not), it would simply mean that it would reduce the amount of warming due to rising CO2. It would probably not imply that rising CO2 would cause cooling (at least if the feedback operated through the temperature). [Perhaps if it were sufficiently strong and operated through some other mechanism other than the change in temperature changing the water vapor content then it could conceivably cause cooling…but this is all very hypothetical because it is not how the water vapor feedback actually operates.]
Dave Andrews: I don’t think I would really disagree with you, which is why notions of equity and fairness in dealing with CO2 emissions are complex and why I think that Schellnhuber is, as I said in that post, “too simplistic and rigid”.
Nogw: Your analogy isn’t really relevant. The way that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations increase the temperature is by reducing the radiation of infrared radiation from the earth back out into space (until the temperature increases enough to put things back into equilibrium again). As for the fact that greenhouses are closed rooms: As is well recognized (see, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect ), the greenhouse analogy, like most analogies, is imperfect. A greenhouse mainly reduces the escape of heat via conduction (although it can also reduce the escape of heat via radiation), whereas the atmospheric greenhouse effect reduces the escape of heat via radiation. The atmospheric greenhouse effect and the amount of radiative forcing that a change in greenhouse gases causes is not controversial. Even skeptical scientists like Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen agree on this. (Their point of disagreement is with what effect feedbacks have on the climate sensitivity.)