Quote of the week #34: NASA doubts climate model certainty

Wren;
Hansen had three projected global temperature scenarios for 1988-2020, labeled scenarios A, B, and C. He considered B the most plausible. The March 2010 actual temperature has almost reached his B projection for 2010.>>
Omigosh, he might get a data point right! We’ll just put aside for a moment that he projected scenario A farther into the future than any other scenario. Obviously he spent the most time and effort on that one because it made no sense what so ever to put the majority of his time into the most plausible one. Yesiree, I have figured out the winning lottery ticket number in Australia, off to Bali I go to buy a ticket. Now, back to that data point….
He made his prediction in 1988. Look! Look! the station data for 1997 almost matches scenario A! I got the lotto number for Australia right! Aw no, 3 years later its below A, B and C, it was Canada I was predicting that lotto number for… ooh, wait wait, LOOK! LOOK! 2010 is gonna be B! Bali! I said Bali all along! What? Land & Ocean is a match for C? Yes! That was my prediction! I predicted C!
Fact is he predicted accelerating temps in A and B which hasn’t happened, the opposite has, and C was for no CO2 increase. He did not predict the variability which cuts across his scenarios from time to time, but shows a completely different over all trend. When I throw my kid up in the air and catch here again she shouts “look, I’m flying” and for a moment she is right, but gravity wins in the end and I had better catch her. Further, the various scenarios had different reference points. When you adjust them to the same reference point, measured temps, trends, acceleration, variability, none of them match:
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/hansen20.gif
You can see all the detail as to how that was arrived at here:
http://climateaudit.org/2008/01/16/thoughts-on-hansen-et-al-1988/

Anu;
But they know what’s not causing it – more CO2 in the atmosphere.
How do they know that ? Gut feeling.>>
Yeah, gut feelings can be really wrong sometimes, so let’s go with science. When you heat something up, it radiates heat back, and the amount it radiates increases exponentially with temperature. When CO2 increases, the amount of radiance it can absorb diminishes logarithmically. So at some point the decreasing effects of CO2 become insignificant compared to the increasing radiance of the planet. My gut actually is more impressed with fresh asparagus tips. Thank you Sunshine. Thank you CO2. Thank you fertilizer. Thank you weed control. Thank you refridgerated shipping containers. Thank you mechanised harvesting techniques that keep the price reasonable, the food abundant and available in all seasons. If I must choose between warm and starve, I shall take warm. Living in a city where annually temps range from -40 to +40, the prospect of -38 to +42 doesn’t frighten me that much. Oops, gottas do science again, use normal distribution biased to the low end where increased radiance has the lowest counter balance and reduce it at the high end to retain the average 2 degrees across the board… OK -35 to +40.3 sounds not too bad. sounds excellent even. I’m switching sides! I’m not a skeptic, I’m an optimist!

Tom_R says:
>> Wren says:
It hasn’t been wrong. One of Hansen’s 1988-2010 global temperature projections is on target for March 2010. <<
The one that supposes no additional CO2 since 2000? That's hardly a correct projection, and one might say that the fact that the real-world temperature fits a no CO2 increase proves that the model's temperature dependence on CO2 is completely wrong.
Wren knows all this. He’s been in this discussion before.
Sometimes we see honest warmists here, who put forward a point or two which might be wrong, might be right. I have no issue with those people. We disagree, but they are honest.
Wren is a troll. He cares not for whether his stupid statements match reality. He just wants a bite. He knows the assumptions of Hansen’s projections don’t match. Would we ever hear the end of the trumpeting if they had matched? (Whereas what we do see is comments about “missing heat” and unfortunate flat periods.)
After alerting other readers to Wren’s errors, don’t continue to feed him please.

Wren says: April 27, 2010 at 10:58 pm
LOL

stevengoddard says:
April 27, 2010 at 11:24 pm
Wren says: April 27, 2010 at 10:58 pm
LOL
======
Not funny, Steve, but if you want funny, I’ll try.
Know how to catch a unique rabbit?

Anu says:
April 27, 2010 at 9:28 pm
“There is always some short period for which the warming is not statistically significant. But 35 years of statistically significant warming ?”
I would argue 35 years is a “short period”.
“What is causing it ? Don’t know…”
Do you know? No, you do not. You have an hypothesis, which so far has failed to match reality. But, based on your fears, you want drastically to diminish my life and prosperity, and that of my children and their children’s children.
The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate your fears are well founded, not on me to accept your nostrums so that I may calm your fears. Perhaps surprisingly to you, I feel little responsibility to help you deal with your neurosis.

davidmhoffer says:
Icarus;
Of course the ‘no statistically significant global warming in the last 15 years’ thing is a bit deceptive since the planet is still warming at around 0.2°C per decade.
Why yes it is. Except for the last 15 years.
If global temperature levels off or falls in coming decades, then you could legitimately claim that 1995 was the inflection point, where the previous warming of ~0.2°C per decade began to change… but you can’t make that argument now, without knowing the future. Right now, there is no evidence to suggest that there has been any change at all in the warming trend, as my page explains.
You are right of course, it is very deceptive to note that there has been no real warming for the last 15 years without also noting that CO2 has never been higher.
Sorry but that’s not a valid conclusion from the data. The margins of error mean that global temperature could just as well have been rising *faster* than 0.2°C per decade in the last 15 years. You do understand what ‘statistical significance’ means, don’t you? It works both ways.
Without noting that CO2 increases were significant by the mid century (per your graph) but temperatures were dropping (per your graph)
As I understand it, the cooling influence of anthropogenic aerosols outweighed the warming influence from anthropogenic greenhouse gases during this period.
Deceptive also to not mention that in the 90 years before CO2 started to rise significantly the earth warmed about the same amount as it did the 90 years since.
What is the relevance of that point?
Since we’re on the topic of deception, do you suppose it is deceptive to forget that the theoretical effects of CO2 diminish in a logarithmic fashion while the increased radiance of the earth to space increases exponentially with temperature?
I’m sure that is accounted for in the radiative transfer codes.
Do you suppose it is deceptive to floor the gas in your car and say look! look! I went from 0 to 60 in 10 seconds, in 20 seconds I will be going 120 and in 30 seconds I will be going 180? Do you know why that doesn’t happen? Well I shall explain. Your engine’s horsepower per RPM diminishes logarithmicaly while the resistance from friction with the air increases exponentially. Does that relationship strike you as familiar to any recent discussions?
I think it’s unlikely that climate scientists would have overlooked the basics, as you seem to be suggesting.

Wren;
I have already read the articles in climateaudit.org . They are out of date.>>
Say what? Hansen made some projections, then over time changed what he said the projections were. Any freakin idiot can predict the future if he’s allowed change what he predicted every few years along the way. His most plausible was A, and the more it looked ridiculous the more he said it was B that he meant as most plausible. So why all the work to extend A 30 years further out than B? The climateaudit article may be out of date only in that Hansen probably changed what he now claims his predictions were in 1988 yet again.
Wren;
Hansen’s 1998-2020 Scenario B projection of global temperature , which he said was most plausible, is on the mark for 2010>>
His predictions totally missed. He completely failed to predict the El Nino temperature spikes, one of the most obvious climate drivers there is, and so every once in a while the climate variability (that he also failed to predict) cuts across his graphs and you jump up and scream look! he got it right. In 30 years of data he’s only got about 5% of reality even inside his range of predictions. You are standing there looking at your watch, which hasn’t moved in in ten years and trying to convince me it is accurate twice per day so it must still be working.
Hansen chose a huge range of predictions because he didn’t really have a clue and that was a defense tactic against not really knowing. Pick a wide enough range and you should get some data points to fall in it. Well he got a couple, but even with his wide range and changing his mind from time to time as to what he predicted, he still got almost nothing right.

lyndonite;
Climate change does not always have to mean huge global warming. It can mean more hurricanes, landslides, monsoons, desertification etc, and THESE are the biggest threats that face us.
CLIMATE CHANGE = GLOBAL WARMING.
But it is still climate change, so instead of dithering we should face it with all urgency.>>
Well OK. So itz not so much the climate warming as the climate changing… but extreme weather events like hurricanes and tornadoes are down, not up, the amount of land in productive agricultural use is up not down, the production rate per acre is up not down, the average life span of human beings is up not down… well, which of these things should we stop dithering about and fix? Which trend leading to the planet supporting more people with longer healthier lives would you like to put a stop to?

davidmhoffer says: April 27, 2010 at 10:05 pm
When you heat something up, it radiates heat back, and the amount it radiates increases exponentially with temperature. When CO2 increases, the amount of radiance it can absorb diminishes logarithmically. So at some point the decreasing effects of CO2 become insignificant compared to the increasing radiance of the planet.
Have you heard about the planet Venus ?

Venus has a dense atmosphere, composed chiefly of carbon dioxide, which generates a surface pressure 90 times greater than that on Earth. This massive blanket of carbon dioxide is also responsible for a runaway greenhouse effect that heats the planet’s surface to an average temperature of 467°C (872°F) – hot enough to melt lead.

It looks like the point at which the decreasing effects of CO2 become insignificant compared to the increasing radiance of the planet might still be “significant” for humans, if we take 872°F as an upper limit for now. With the different orbits of Earth and Venus, even 600°F would be a “significant” upper limit.
Living in a city where annually temps range from -40 to +40, the prospect of -38 to +42 doesn’t frighten me that much.
Nobody is worried about a changing climate freezing us or boiling us – the worry is always about agriculture. This Holocene climate is feeding 6.7 billion humans right now – even a 6°C increase in global temperature could disrupt the entire agriculture system. History has shown that people get very agitated when they are starving to death, even for one year. And in case you haven’t noticed, the world is heavily armed.
Thank you mechanised harvesting techniques that keep the price reasonable, the food abundant and available in all seasons.
Yes, now you are touching upon the problem.
People like their food. No matter what the weather is.

Anu
“History has shown that people get very agitated when they are starving to death, even for one year. And in case you haven’t noticed, the world is heavily armed.”
A similar problem is that if you make energy expensive then food gets expensive and then the real victims of our energy and carbon policies start to starve. Emission targets are a luxury that the poor of the world can’t afford. Even our privileged, developed world can’t afford them in the financial mess we are experiencing currently.

above shou;d read three would require 2240 ppm, not four, apologies.

“Yet the dips of the 1940′s and the 1970′s still have not been explained by models”
Of course they have it all figured out. Don’t worry about the dips. That’s just some natural variability 🙂
http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0610/0610115.pdf