Sensitive side (from the NASA Global Climate Change Website)
By Rosemary Sullivant,
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
A little extra carbon dioxide in the air may, unfortunately, go further towards warming Earth than previously thought. A team of British and U.S. researchers have uncovered evidence [1] that Earth’s climate may be up to 50 percent more sensitive to long-term increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide than current climate models predict. The reason for the underestimation, they say, may be due to long-term changes in ice sheets and vegetation that are not well represented in today’s global climate models.Just how much will global temperature rise in response to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide? This is one of the key questions that climate scientists need to answer. According to the climate models used in the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from pre-industrial levels is expected to warm Earth by about 3 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit), once the atmosphere and oceans spend a few years or decades adjusting and reaching a balance.
But according to a recent study by a team of researchers that includes Gavin Schmidt of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Earth’s climate is also influenced by other, much slower processes. These include changes in ice sheets, vegetation and aerosols, for example, that take place over hundreds and thousands of years.
Because of their complexity and long timescales, these processes are almost impossible to integrate into today’s climate computer models. As a result, it has been difficult to know just what their effect on Earth’s climate sensitivity would be.
To learn more about this sensitivity, Schmidt and his co-authors looked back 3 million years into Earth’s past. They used a computer model that describes the oceans and atmosphere to predict, retroactively, the climate of the mid-Pliocene — a period when both global temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were higher than today. The model substantially underestimated just how high temperatures would go. When the researchers adapted the model to include the effects of long-term climate changes in vegetation and ice sheets, they were able to get a much closer representation of the warming in the Pliocene era.
The team found that it took much lower concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide to recreate the Pliocene’s warm climate than current models — which consider only the relatively fast-adjusting components of the climate — predict. Pliocene carbon dioxide levels are estimated to have been around 400 parts per million by volume (ppmv), while according to current simulations it would take 500 to 600 ppmv of carbon dioxide to bring about the warm temperatures of the Pliocene. As a result, the researchers estimate that Earth’s response to elevated concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide is 30 to 50 percent greater than previously calculated. In other words, the climate is more sensitive to carbon dioxide than we thought.
This higher sensitivity of the climate should be taken into account, the team concludes, when targets are set for limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The results of the study appear in Nature Geoscience.
Research paper: [1] Daniel J. Lunt et al., “Earth System Sensitivity Inferred from Pliocene Modelling and Data,” Nature Geoscience, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2010).
PDF Here
Considering the Arctic is declining much faster than expected seems reasonable to suggest greater climate sensitivity.
Who cares about feedback processes that take thousands of years? Will we even be emitting CO2 in a thousand years?
But also, the problem here is that they are just assuming that the warm period of the Pliocene was caused by heightened CO2, and then creating a model fit to the data which supports their preconceived notions. And darn wouldn’t ya know it, they came up with a way to make it “worse than we thought” to.
In the world of real world measurements, I hear Lindzen and Choi have submitted an update of their earlier feedback paper to JGR. They take into account several criticisms but the conclusion isn’t drastically different.
There are millions of things missing from the models. So they locate those missing ones which would increase the AWG case and ignore the missing ones which would decrease the case.
The models are rubbish, that is the problem. We cannot model the Earth because it has too many interdependent systems that act together in a highly non linear fashion over multiple timescales. None of them can be neglected yet most are. You cannot get the correct answer, but you can get the answer you want.
Just keep twiddling those dials Gavin. Eventually you’ll find the perfect iterative world. Shame it works so poorly here.
Interesting…will need to really look into this. Can’t wait to see what the skeptics have to say.
Meanwhile, the NSIDC, on their May update, spoke about the uptick in sea ice going through the Fram Strait since winter has ended. As everyone here knows, this is the main passageway for ice (that isn’t melting outrighit) to leave the Arctic ocean into the N. Atlantic where it melts fast (but not fast enough for the Titanic back in 1912!). Anyway, here’s a great site to get a first hand detailed look at this ice flowing through the Fram Strait. Just go here:
http://ice-map.appspot.com/
Center the page at about 79.5 degrees North, and 2.25 degrees E and zoom in. Very nice shot of the big chunks of ice moving out of the Arctic through the Fram Strait. On the same page, move up to about 83 degrees N and -15 degrees W and zoom into the big melt going on N. of Greenland where winter temps were very warm from the negative AO index. On many days that I checked it this winter, it was in the upper 20’s F in Greenland while it was in the teens in places like Georgia and Alabama. That’s what a negative AO will do!
GIGO. Garbage In Garbage Out. It’s well established that changes in carbon dioxide concentrations lag temperature changes by about 800 years. So the garbage computer models didn’t match data from the real world. Big freakin’ surprise.
It can’t be the models that are wrong because these scientists know more about how nature works than nature itself. /sarc
Is this what happened to cause the MWP? And if so what reversed it?
“…Just how much will global temperature rise in response to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide? This is one of the key questions that climate scientists need to answer….”
In other words, we have no idea what the correct figure is right now but let’s just bet trillions of dollars on an answer we kind of like anyway.
Just goes to show that even though you can’t model climate 1 year into the future, you can still model climate 3 million years into the past.
Quantum mechanics is probably responsible for this disparity. Even though Schroedinger’s equation is time-symmetric, the quantum phase-space of the past has self-scattered and has collapsed into a single state. The future psi is still unscattered, however, and all future states remain probabilistic. Climate is clearly anti-Hermetian with respect to the time operator. This is why it takes someone brilliant, like an applied mathematician, to understand the true and time-wise asymmetric bound of climate, and to make the kind of robust prediction privileging us here.
This is the sort of convoluted logic one has to resort to when one starts with the mere assumption that CO2 causes warming in the first place.
However I seem to recall that AGW proponents accept that, historically, CO2 levels always followed warming and that only in the past half century or so was that general rule broken by the human contribution.
It’s just an extension ‘ad absurdum’ of the exercise previously carried out whereby the models were ‘adjusted’ to ‘explain’ observed warming ex post facto by simply assuming that CO2 was the primary driver and attaching the required weighting to the CO2 effect to ‘explain’ that warming.
There’s only so far one can go with such assumptions and on the basis of this article things are just getting silly. We cannot safely assume that there are no other significant factors inducing global warming or cooling during such distant times.
Somebody has to say it is worse than we thought:)
These tax leeches have neither sense nor shame.
Real people in the real world are losing their jobs, in part because of escalating energy costs.
Millions of the world’s poorest & most vulnerable are being denied hope not just by kloptomaniac and incompetent dictators (as usual) but by the developed world diverting aid money into crackpot schemes to “save the planet” prompted by little Gavin’s ludicrous bleatings.
So, what does Roy Spencer think of this? Perhaps Schmidt timed it to put this little study out in anticipation of Roy’s book hitting the book stores.
“They used a computer model that describes the oceans and atmosphere to PREDICT”
Yawn! (a little early where I am to even get into sarc mode)
If they can’t explain the “divergence” problem 30 years ago, how can they explain the relationship 3 million years ago? Perhaps I am just being insensitive.
Now what feedbacks does Gavin assume in his computer model? Validation anyone?
Maybe this! Maybe that! Maybe they should stop wasting their time and our money on junk, model based science and give us a freaking break!
Ok, so just to clarify, using the current models of CO2 and Temperature projections retroactively didn’t work for past temperatures and so, instead of perhaps suggesting there was a problem with the theory (in terms of perhaps finding out there is more to the issue) the concentration was on the CO2 issue is “Certainly” correct therefore what can we adjust into the models that fit the theory?
I do not have a lot of experience in climate science currently but reading this article made one eyebrow disappear up into my hairline in incredulity. Is it just me or does anyone else have a problem with the fact that the result of CO2 modeling failing to predict the temperatures of the Pliocene era, the solution was – Co2 causes even more warming o_O ?
As soon as I see the words “computer model”, I shut off. I advise anyone else to do the same. Computer models are useless for predicting warming, cooling, or anything else within the chaos of the climate system.
Were the models any better at handling the real greenhouse gas, H2O, for the Pliocene than they are for the present climate?
The arrogance of these people is astonishing. “They used a computer model that describes the oceans and atmosphere to predict, retroactively, the climate of the mid-Pliocene”
They can’t even tell what the weather will be like next week. Muppets.
Ah yes, the “Computer Model”. I wonder if its the same one Mann uses for his “tree rings”? 😉
I love the smell of desperation in the morning.
So essentially they are trying to mimic the answer they assume are the correct answer.
They don’t really know is the answer is the correct one.
They know the computer model they use should be filled with more variables then they currently fill it with.
Yet they go about fiddling with this and that until they get co2 close enough to the assumed correct answer and then call it the day.
They have a reference picture and they have a machine with which to project a clear and proper image, preferably as close as to the reference picture as possible. However they’ve gotten it into their heads that it’s all about the digital focus that need adjustment, when in fact it’s everything from the magnetic coils to the physical alignment and convergence that is off and is why it is so hard to properly do the focusing. One can do it their way and still end up with an image that looks correct, but that doesn’t mean they adjusted the right variables.
Can they prove they included and adjusted the right variables?
And what is close? I should’ve gotten half of that first price since I almost won. :p
blah, blah, blah, what else is new
As usual, I highly doubt it’s “worse than we thought”, since it appears they “thought” a single molecule of CO2 is capable of heating the planet to 2 million K within nanoseconds. I would accept them discovering that their computer models are “worse than they thought”, though.
Of course, even assuming they’ve got everything else right, what kind of idiots think a single variable is the only driver? Yeah, that’s a moot question…
Quick, quick, more funding needed, millions of year’s research coming up!!!
Why can’t they provide a simple tutorial that shows how much heat is being generated by CO2 right now?
Once again, it’s worse than we thought.
Yet another eyeroller moment; it’s seems to be becoming a daily event.
Since the theory’s sound (everybody says so, even the reverend Al Gore!), there must be something wrong with the data or the model.
How about this thought — “It’s much warmer than our models predict – something beside CO2 must be driving up these temperatures.”
Frankly, it sounds like climate ‘science’ is maintaining itself at a level of understanding equal to a level achieved by our ancestors who were alive during the period this study covered.
I assume that as this was a joint British/US enterprise between “researchers”, then my taxes have partially funded this garbage. I demand my money back.
“more….than we thought”. It’s Always more/warmer/catastrophic. Would anyone expect those people – and Gavin Schmidt in particular – to conclude it was less ? Nothing to it, really. Just twiddle the right knobs on those computer games until it’s more .
I nominate “Worse than expected.” as the climate catchphrase of the new decade.
AGW-Skeptic99 says:
May 5, 2010 at 10:47 pm
Somebody has to say it is worse than we thought:)
———————————————————————————————–
And robustly so
So CO2 doesn’t quite explain the climate of the Pliocene. I’m sorry, but it begs the question: doesn’t that imply that the other factors than CO2 seem more important than previously thought? No, they claim the opposite: CO2 is even more important!
This is beginning to look more like religious belief than science. They’re chanting “I believe in CO2, the Forcing almighty, Creator of Heat and Estimates. Amen”.
Well if NASA JPL thinks its effect is underestimated by 50% and Professor Jyrki Kauppinen of the University of Turku thinks its overestimated by 90-95% then we have something of a controversy.
As they say the science is clearly in, which is why I love science.
Prof. Kauppinen’s interview here:
http://www.ts.fi/online/kotimaa/124484.html
(I don’t read Finnish but this auto translation looks pretty clear:
Department of Physics, University of Turku study showed that carbon dioxide is a significantly smaller impact on global warming than previously thought. Results are based on, inter alia, spectrum analysis. Research led by Professor Jyrki Kauppinen according to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide to explain only 5-10 percent of observed global warming .- The climate is warming yes, but not because of greenhouse gases, “says Kauppinen.)
Sorry, the computer models are not nearly accurate enough to distinguish between 400 and 500ppm CO2. If you tune a model to high CO2 sensitivity that’s all you will ever get. Gavin and Co. have got cause and effect the wrong way round here. Notice that they didn’t even mention water vapor (the main GHG). Generally it’s considered a function of air temperature but ice effects it too.
The paleo temperature history shows that the Earth has two states – warm when there is no ice at the poles and cool like now when there is. Temperature here really means the temperature of the deep ocean water. The reason is that ice is the great big albedo switch. Ice increases outgoing short wave radiation (reflected sunlight). It also lowers evaporation which reduces water vapor (the main GHG). Vegetation changes are secondary as they follow temperature and moisture. The presence or absence of ice is determined by the position of the continents. If there is ice at or near the poles as now then the Earth is cool. If warm ocean currents can get to the poles then any winter ice will melt in the summer, the dark polar oceans will absorb solar radiation and outgoing short wave radiation will be reduced. The oceans will then be warm. The transition between the two states (over a 3 million year period) takes a long time because of the thermal inertia of the ocean water.
CO2 has nothing to do with it. Henry’s law ensures that CO2 levels will be high when the oceans are warm and low when cold because of outgassing. So warm epocs have hight CO2 levels and cool epocs have low CO2 levels. The correlation between paleo CO2 and temperature is no good to say the least. We honestly don’t know whether temperatures are rising now because of human CO2 emissions or because the ocean water buried during the mediaeval warm period is coming to the surface and outgassing now.
If climatology was anything like a normal science it would be possible to discuss it amicably but we can’t. The government’s coin created then corrupted the science bureaucracies completely.
Ah yes…. still another computer model where GHGs are the only possible explanation and the climate is even more sensitive than we thought. I was programming when Gavin was still soiling his diapers and I’m not impressed. Lord above, just how much longer do we have to put up with this?
Inductive hindcasting is not, and never will be science.
This only makes sense if the assumption that CO2 is the forcing agent is correct. The historical evidence is not conclusive. And to go back so far in time …………..only to find a period that is crawling with planetary health. And identify it as a catastrophic occurrence seems a bit strange. Am I missing something?
‘Our Gav, what have you done I says’
‘What do you mean Stace’
‘Since the truth came out a few months ago I couldn’t go to the shops without people pointing their fingers and whispering,now you’ve really blown it. You and your mates have been telling us for ‘ears that we have a problem but now you tell us that there was more CO2 in the past and it was much warmer’
‘What’s wrong with that Stace’
‘Oh Gav, WHERE DID ALL THE CO2 COME FROM’?
The isthmus of panama formed about 3 to 3.5 million years ago. Don’t you think the resulting change in ocean circulation patterns (like the formation of the Gulf Stream!) might have produced a different climate pattern? What sort of sense does it make to use today’s climate models, which are tuned to the climate patterns produced by today’s ocean currents, to model climate 3 million years ago when the isthmus of panama was forming or had just formed?
I see the pic of the CO2 molecule at the start of this thread – I wonder what the little rods holding the carbon atom to the two oxygen atoms are made of? Must be made of something with very small atoms! Or is this just a way of depicting the molecular bonds?
R. Gates: “will need to really look into this”
No, every engineer will not even do that. Back of the envelope estimation shows they are 3 to 4 orders of magnitude off. Oh wait, that’s an exaggeration. As the admirable E.W.Dijkstra made clear in his famous
http://userweb.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html
we cannot think and compare well in OoM: “…worse than comparing, as a means of transportation, the supersonic jet plane with a crawling baby, for that speed ratio is only a thousand.” And now we have scientists who tell us that adding the speed of a crawling baby to that of a supersonic jet plane leads to consequences worse than we thought.
I still think masturbating for real is a lot more productive then doing it with incomplete, inadequate, assumption riddled, numeric models.
Why are these people who use computer modelling called ‘scientists’? Writing computer programs and running them is in the realm IT surely. We do science a diservice to say otherwise.
I am still waiting to see any climate model running backwards, which will be able to recreate the simple CET record. Then I will start considering it as somehow validated against the real world.
http://www.climate4you.com/CentralEnglandTemperatureSince1659.htm
Alas, all climate models produce just variations of hockey stick:
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/images/ipcc_scenario_prediction.gif
Compare the models for Arctic with the 20th century reality, for example:
http://i43.tinypic.com/14ihncp.jpg
The isthmus of Panama formed in the Pliocene about 3.5 million years ago and there seems to be general agreement that this cooled down the earth significantly because this slowed down ocean circulation. This article seems to describe the period about 500000 years later, but that might have been just before the Greenland ice cap formed, so there may have been less cooling feedback from arctic ice at that point of time. There are so many factors here that I really doubt they can model them.
On the other hand, if they’re right, wouldn’t that be nice? A slow warming over thousands of years? Yes, thanks! Maybe we can avoid the next ice age!
No doubt the Gavin-proxy must have been one parameter in the model (the occurance of the name Gavin at different time periods as suggested by McIntyre)
Nature Magazine’s parent company Macmillan publishing has admitted guilt to bribery. They admitted paying to obtain educational book sales contracts in Sudan, according to the World Bank. BBC report. The World Bank was administering a trust fund for the text books, has put Macmillan on suspension temporarily from projects it funds. The point is, this reflects badly on the editorial practices of Nature, in my opinion. Nature was not mentioned in the BBC report. It’s interesting how the elite do business.
Looks like an exercise in force fitting to me to explain why their models can not replicate previous periods of time. Give me 4 parameters and I could do the same!
when you know the answer get back to us, meanwhile – GO AWAY!
Same ole propaganda. That pliocene model has been harped about since december or so by the AGW crowd. What a waste of human ingenuity and computer power.
“R. Gates says:
May 5, 2010 at 10:37 pm
Interesting…will need to really look into this. Can’t wait to see what the skeptics have to say.”
You’ll be wasting your time.
OMG! maybe they should model the effect on computer modellers that 100% CO2 would have!
I’m still waiting for the conclusion the last round of eco sorts were wrong about Nuclear Power. I keep waiting. One of these has to be worse.
Now poetic justice would be Jane Fonda caused the AGW because she scared the population into being anti-nuclear.
And what do we see by observations today? I also note the use of computer models; so please see from Gavin, as well a Michael Mann:
See also
CO2 amplification is less than we thought – Nature: December 2009
“Ensemble reconstruction constraints on the global carbon cycle sensitivity to climate”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/nature08769.html
“Amplification of Global Warming by Carbon-Cycle Feedback Significantly Less Than Thought, Study Suggests”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127134721.htm
“Temperature and CO2 feedback ‘weaker than thought'”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8483722.stm
and finally
http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/why-climate-models-lie
Well this study seems to fly in the face of ice core data that covers the period supposedly retrospectively modeled. The ice cores show that temperature increases about 800 years before CO2 levels rise then both decline again. In light of the empirical evidence the claim of greater sensitivity to CO2 seems very unlikely.
The interesting thing I noted in this study was the claim that they were studying effects over longer term timescales of hundreds or thousands of years. I am wondering if this is because the public are no longer buying into the “doom tomorrow” stories. Is this a “doom is still possible” study to keep the hoax alive? I wonder when climate scientists are going to realize that it’s not just “doom tomorrow” that people are not buying into, but the whole “GIGO computer models show it’s worse than we thought” thing.
The Russians came up with their answer to all this “climate modeling” a long time ago. They said that the Earth is their model, and that using the Earth as their model the THEORY that carbon dioxide caused “global warming” had failed spectacularly. Let the West waste billions chasing their fairy story they said while laughing themselves silly, they’re not interested.
This study has nothing whatsoever to do with real climate science and everything to do with convenient politics and the desperate need for more “research” grants.
Can we please divide these climate scientist’s into two groups, those with models and guess work and those with true facts and figures. Then maybe i’ll start believeing what they say. There models for modern times don’t work so instead they start modelling 3 million years ago (of course this has the added bonus of no-one being able to physically check there findings like the melting glaciers or the hockey stick) , this is a joke right? oh wait i see who made the report silly me probably need more grants to fly round the worked warning of the falling sky.
What’s the news? When temp increased 5 C since the last ice age CO2 increased 50%.
What’s so strange then about a 10 C increase doubling the CO2?
How is it even possible to estimate what they claim to be estimating?
As I understand it there are a myriad of factors like the one they are studying that are unknown quantities (factors which can be either positive or negative mind you). So how is it you can compare the difference of empirical data to your best predictions (i.e. models) and somehow ascertain the magnitude of a specific factor? Ascertain the overall magnitude of all missing factors..sure, no problem. But a specific factor? How does that work exactly?
You simply have no way to know which of those other unknown factors are capable of dominating your factor (i.e. overshadowing it’s effects). More specifically you don’t know what conditions would cause other factors to dominate your factor of interest (otherwise they wouldn’t be unknown factors), you don’t know by how much they will dominate your factor of interest, and you don’t know what time periods during the time series your factor of interest will be dominated.
In short, even if you have a set of simple and logical rules for how your factor behaves. Even if with those rules the model now produces a function with an r-value as good as say 0.997. Even then, you still need to demonstrate that your model is more accurate as a result of the change (not to mention a need to demonstrate the base model itself is of any value), and you need to demonstrate it with something more than the r-value.
The notion that prodding a function with subtle adjustments until it says what you want it to and then pointing to the fact that it says what you wanted it to, is not a demonstration of anything worthy of scientific note.
I’m sorry but this doesn’t sound like science to me. So unless they have some rather ingenuous methodology that I’m as of yet unaware, I call a rather hearty BS on this.
Oh no. Not another “puter” model! Where will it all end, perhaps dissappearing up their own………………………………….? It was sheer arrogance & ignorance in using a computer model to predict the effects of F & M disease in the UK, & look what happened there, absolute chaos & disaster! Remeber the first rule of AGW, it is ALWAYS worse than we thought. Which as I have said before, lends little confidence in these studies as they seem to be continually underestimating the outcome, surely they should have learned by now, I dare say the next study will conclude that they had underestimated the CO2 effects & it’s much worse than we thought, again.
When can we stop paying for these climate entrail readers?
“All Models Are Crap, But Some Are Useful”
(Free to George E P Box).
The last model, as far as I know, which really worked
was Henry Ford’s Model T.
Laff riot!
Here’s another article from some of the same authors: http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/367/1886/189.abstract
I like this part of the abstract: “In accordance with palaeobotanical data, all model simulations indicate a generally warmer and wetter climate, resulting in a northward shift of the taiga–tundra boundary and a spread of tropical savannahs and woodland in Africa and Australia at the expense of deserts. Our data–model comparison reveals differences in the distribution of polar vegetation, which indicate that the high latitudes during the Middle Pliocene were still warmer than its predicted modern analogue by several degrees. ”
This is in stark contrast to the claims of drought because of global warming. The fact is that data from the Pliocene indicate the following: In a warmer world, today’s deserts, both the hot and the cold ones (in the Arctic) would shrink and be replaced by usable, greener land. The already warm areas near equator won’t warm much, only the areas close to the poles will be a lot warmer. So we really have nothing to fear from CO2: If we for the sake of argument assume that AGW theory is basically right about temperature rise because of CO2, we can look forward to a future world that is much more pleasant and can feed a lot of more people than today’s world. The only possible problem I can think of is a really fast sea level rise, so fast that there will be some problems adapting (e.g. relocating lots of people living at sea level today). But even that single negative issue will be overwhelmed by all the advantages of a warmer world with lots of CO2 for plants to feed from in the air.
Pat Frank!
Is it possible to have that again in English?
Worse thought than previously to CO2:
source
Gavin Smith!
Well thats a guy to trust! Ha hahahahahahah! Has his options in chicago cap and trade lost its value? A new alarm is produced anything is “worse than we thought” will give them a boost?. Or was Al Gore the client who ordered a new scare by NASA?
Maby NASA now is AL Gores private climate scare mongering company?
I wonder if anyone take this guys seriously these days?
If the models fits, yell it form the roof tops … if the model doesn’t fit, stay silent. Strange science indeed.
Who wants to be the first to say computer models are not science.
If the EARTH could ask Gavin a hundred thousand questions, and each question pertained to all the infinite and important and interdependent variables that make up the atmosphere, the lithosphere, the ionosphere, etc., what would Gavin’s answers be?
The same, “I dunno…” a HUNDRED THOUSAND TIMES OVER….
Sheesh.
Eh? Does this mean that the known temperatures of today are actually hotter than we think because the climate is more sensitive to known levels of CO2 than we thought?
Or doesn’t it really matter at all, because the temperature today is reality, not a prediction.
It seems to me they have now managed to make climate science so abstract that only the models matter and the actual perceived reality no longer counts. We are now about to embark on a massive campaign to reduce CO2 in the real world to ensure a correction of temperature in a virtual world. Fascinating.
“Earth System Sensitivity Inferred from Pliocene Modelling and Data,”
Here is the newly released program from the study.
10 Print “It’s worse than we thought”
20 Goto 10
You can’t argue with that, can you?
Considering the obscene amount of money to be made by declaring Carbon dioxide the most lethal atomic structure in the known (and unknown) universe, also capable of scaring the crap out of black holes forcing them to spew matter back into space, it’s not surprising that “it’s worse than we thought.” Also, a few hundred million $ in “research” or grant money is chicken feed, simply basement bargain start-up costs. Sorry Gavin and the rest, without rock solid evidence, the only models worth looking at are gracing the catwalks.
“In other words, the climate is more sensitive to carbon dioxide than we thought.”
(quote from the paper)…….Yes, the CO2 theoretical madness is worse than we thought!!!
What the heck is going on with WUWT? The recent posts index on the right is packed full of AGW articles, The Surface stations project hasn’t existed here for years, there’s no buttons that allow viewers to go back years to see how WUWT used to be ( it’s still easy to type in the http )
Compare now with…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/02/
Is it just me? Or was there more rebel, critcal sentiment in the 2008 WUWT?
I think after climategate the establishment visited anthony and influenced him into toning down WUWT.
I wonder if the data and codes will be available in order that this conclusion might be validated. If not , then it it can be consigned to the trash can where it will be in good company. No….. Sorry, the trash can is full to overflowing, Now what???
It’s so obvious that chaotic science is beyond Nasa. They can’t even predict the weather next week let alone create a computer model that turns out right! Besides, won’t we all be driving lithium hybrid cars that get 150+ mpg by the time it hits the fan? I know i’m getting close to having my sweet little 69 912 switched over. If you follow the technology curve of the last 100 years, it seems pretty obvious what capitalism will produce. Not so sure about socialism though. Maybe cars that run on dead bodies? That seems to be about the only thing socialism is good for. Dead bodies and human suffering. Though that might limit carbon emissions too? Oh! I get it now.
Which of the multitude of recent [last decade?] computer climate models [using expensive new super computers] has matched the actual data? How much longer does this charade have to continue?
“Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” -J. Robert Oppenheimer – In reference to the Trinity test in New Mexico, where his Los Alamos team first tested the bomb. “Baa -puny” – Carbon Dioxide – May 2010.
Just to illustrate the uncertainties in science and the use of computer models take a look at this recent event:
March 2nd 2010
“Chilean Quake May Have Shortened Earth Days”
“Using a complex model…”
Source: Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100302084522.htm
April 17th 2010
“Earthquake in Chile Causesd Days to Be Longer…”
“…simulation model.”
Source: Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100414083533.htm
As soon as I saw the word Model I switched off.
This is beyond physics. It is even beyond meta-physics. This is superstition writ large where man-made CO2 is EVIL.
We live in a world of post normal science: Garbage in – Gospel Out.
So… is this Gavin’s back handed way of announcing increased uncertainty in their models? — John M Reynolds
Feedback is feedback is feedback, no matter what the source is. Under their theory, it is an increase in temperature which is causing the positive feedback, not specifically carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is merely their villain which starts off the process of an increase in temperature and which they say causes the positive feedback from water vapour and clouds to give an even greater increase in temperature, which then causes even more positive feedback ad infinitum. Because of this multiplication effect of feedback on feedback, there has to be a maximum positive feedback factor which if exceeded becomes hyperbolic and with it runaway temperature inflation. If you maintain the factor just below this threshold, then each subsequent increase is less than its previous order increase and a stable situation will be maintained. The alarmists have already arbitrarily applied the maximum stable feedback factor in order to achieve the scariest warming scenario without hyper warming inflation. They cannot then apply additional new positive feedback attributes as this would tip the balance to runaway warming. Because all such factors have been present in the past, the climate would have been destabilised in the past and the environment of mother earth would have long since been in a constant state of refluxing boiling water under this scenario.
It’s just poppycock.
At a high school science fair in New Zealand about twenty-five years ago, I saw something that local ‘science’ teachers had accepted as ‘science’ – a group of 16 yr-old boys had built a cardboard model of a computer, utterly static, as their ‘science’ project and had painfully copied out a description of how a computer functioned to accompany the model. When I pointed out to their ‘science’ teacher that the boys effort, however impressive the cardboard model was, had nothing whatsoever to do with science but seemed to be a devotional exercise for cargo cultists. His response was “How would you know? You’re only a Fine Arts teacher!” He didn’t know, of course, that I had built a computer from parts salvaged from a very large commercial PABX to control experiments for a university department before I trained as a Fine Arts teacher.
Seems that some ‘scientists’ have always confused their models with actual science.
These climate scientist should get out more and stop bamboozling the public with hockey charts and failed predictions. Now they turn to the past, so talking of thousands of years in timescale, how the heck did they model this study based on going to Greenland and collecting samples and from what I read not from twiddling computer models from a warm, cosy office. do the models explain this:
20 October 2008
Good observation meemoe
If you really want to know what happened in the Pliocene, you only have to read Julian May’s ‘Saga of the exiles’ to know the “TRUE” history (and climate) of that era. – My fave’ SF novels of all time!
http://www.bcde.demon.co.uk/saga.htm
http://homepage.eircom.net/~davidspdsl/may2.html
Worldwide there are major cuts and tax increases coming.
Everyone knows this.
So, to have garbage science published could protect the research funding that is about to be cut.
Just to assume any part of any research has an AGW component ensures funding.
Any research in a lab with controlled perameters is subject to having a possive result for the researcher. Studying gases in a box with no circulation factors or interactions with other variables can create whatever the researcher wants to conclude.
Models will never be correct as planetary surprises do occur on many occassions that can not be anticipated.
When you learn how to corrupt science (as in the past) then it effects the base knowledge of society and the corrupted knowledge grows.
Anyone who attempts to review the past science will be scorned as now it is part of our science base and has already been ingrained into our basic knowledge as being absolutely correct, even if proven to be absolutely wrong.
IF the climate was more sensitive to CO2 than previously believed I see a couple of problems.
1) Previous models and estimates on the climate are wrong… yet they say they accurately model the past.
2) There is a missing factor of warming at present.
Hence, what I read from their findings is not that CO2 is more sensitive than thought, but rather, their models are wrong and the climate behaves differently than the models think it does. Perhaps this is due to that fact that more is not known about the climate system than what is known.
It does not surprise me however that when they assume the sensitivity to CO2 is greater because when they fudge the numbers enough they seemingly correct their problem. That is far easier than identifying the ‘real’ cause… but it is not good science.
As per Volcanologist John Seach
Williams and Holland’s Law:
If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by statistical methods.
Hiram’s Law:
If you consult enough experts you can confirm any opinion.
Murphy’s Law of Research
Enough research will tend to support your theory.
Full list of Murphy’s laws of Volcanology at here
Typical alarmist crap – let’s blind the suckers with unprovable theories and call them facts.
The real point here is: What geological event started the Pleistocene Ice ages 2.58 million years ago?
The answer is that nobody knows what started the Pleistocene Ice Age – an uncharacteristically cool period of the Earth’s climate history. The Earth is normally several degrees warmer than it is today – a fact that grant-driven alarmist ‘scientists’ refuse to acknowledge. It is no wonder almost no geologists – in the private sector – believe in AGW.
One possible reason for the start of the Pleistocene was the closure of the Panama isthmus around that time, which severely disrupted the circulation of oceanic currents, reducing the amount of water transported from equatorial to polar regions.
Safe bet: There is nothing geological in any of these ‘models’.
Oh, so it wasn’t research after all, it was sticking silly numbers into a silly model…
It must be difficult to peer review simulations of 3 million years ago. Obviously a lot more funding will be needed.
[Snip], give ME that computer model and I’ll show you SENSITIVITY! I’ll jack those paramaters around to where I’ll have the oceans boiling away and the very rocks it sat on melting and flowing like lava! (Limestone lava, anybody? Fantastically neat stuff, geologically speaking.) I’ve modeled all sorts of geolgic phenomena, from geochemical traverses to 3-d models of mineralization using variograms and kriging, followed by economic projections using stochastic modeling incorporating Monte Carlo simulation. If YOU don’t know what the parameter constraints are for this HYPOTHETICAL climate MODEL and I don’t care WHAT I use, I can produce a world so INHOSPITABLE not even BACTERIA can survive. Ho BOY, this should be FUN! Piece of CAKE! (Remeber, as a “climate scientist” I don’t have to show you my assumptions so DON’T ASK–but I just got the most GRANT-leveraging, SCARE-mongering, NEWSworthy results POSSIBLE; you’ll just have to TRUST ME!)
Oohhhkaayy… back to watching it snow and blow in cold Idaho.
It is noticeable that whenever a title or sentence of a report contains the word…Gavin or Mann or Hansen or model, etc……derision begin! Makes me warm (sic) all over.
You blew it, Gavin; one more free parameter and you could have made your research fly.
============
Looks like a Ponzi scheme when about to crash: promised profits are doubled at the last moment.
1.
jcrabb says:
May 5, 2010 at 10:26 pm
Considering the Arctic is declining much faster than expected seems reasonable to suggest greater climate sensitivity.
___________________________________________________________________
That was sarcasm wasn’t it? WUWT Arctic Sea Ice News #3
Here are some things I try to keep in mind as I read this type of scientific paper:
— The input data are sometimes proxies, not physical measurements. Even physical measurements will have error ranges but the error ranges of proxy data are always much higher.
— Data values must be generated randomly from the range of possible values, never assuming a single hard value. This must be done for each input parameter and all values injected as the simulation runs.
— Input values into a complex chaotic simulation always cause the magnification of the error ranges as time goes by in the simulation, may times into physically improbable and even impossible values on the average since every run is randomly different.
— Ignorance of prime input parameters, both at startup and as time passes in the simulation, usually is a fatal flaw. For instance, in climate simulations, ignorance of solar radiation as the primary heat input and it’s error ranges across time, chosen randomly each application, will cause the model to fail to approach anything close to reality by the end of the run on the average since every run is randomly different.
— Keep in mind key word in context such as: may, assume, implied, according, probably, however, predicted, extrapolated, ignoring, about, neglecting, typically, estimate, proxy, constrained, calculated (without specification), linear (when not), errors or error ranges (when ignored), fact (when not). If a paper relies any of such words, your confidence should decrease proportionally, possibly totally.
— If the simulation is presented as single value result instead of a distribution of possible values the entire point by the paper is scientifically meaningless.
— If a paper does not specify how it is handling the above core limits of a computer simulation then once again, the entire point by the paper is scientifically meaningless.
I would like some help expanding this list if you have any additions or corrections? People such as myself with limited scientific background need such information to help navigate these waters.
I’m amazed. How do they have the guts to publish stuff like this?
The models are wrong for the Pliocene (500-600 ppm needed vs the 400 that occurred) – admittedly deficient in a number of aspects (changes in ice sheets, vegetation and aerosols) – and the conclusion is: CO2 is even more sensitive?
OMG.
An easy question to ask is – wouldn’t we have seen this even GREATER warming revealed in the past 10 years or so – say, since 1998 ?
The answer seems to be: my model is right, the earth is wrong !
This is embarrassing !
geronimo says:
May 5, 2010 at 10:40 pm
“Is this what happened to cause the MWP? And if so what reversed it?”
Apparently we were saved from a runaway Medieval Warm Period by the black plagues. The decreased farming allowed trees to grow and suck up the CO2. If that small number of people had that great effect back then, what about now? Wow! They do throw in the Native Americans and accuse them of adding to the catastrophic farming; then, of course, Europeans introduced diseases and killed them off, also.
Gavin is trying to find sensitivity everywhere because work such as Miskolczi and Zagoni, based on real world confirmation of their work, is indicating that CO2 and water vapor interact to have a constant effect and the substitution of an inferior heat-trapping gas for water vapor may even cool the climate a tiny bit.
Gavin is really trying to give mouth-to-mouth to a dead horse.
“Because of their complexity and long timescales, these processes are almost impossible to integrate into today’s climate computer models.”
“When the researchers adapted the model to include the effects of long-term climate changes in vegetation and ice sheets,”
Is this not a contradiction?
Perhaps Gavin should always include a theme song with his work; how about “The Impossible Dream”.
This is all you need to know about this paper…
“Here we use a coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model to simulate the climate of the mid-Pliocene warm period (about three million years ago), and analyse the forcings and feedbacks that contributed to the relatively warm temperatures.”
where “coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model” is probably the notorious Model E…
There was an ice age during the Ordovician with CO2 levels an order of magnitude higher than today. Why did Gavin stop at 3 million years?
GISTEMP is in the same building with Gavin. If he had lunch with them once in a while, he would know that temperatures have only increased by 0.6C in the last 120 years.
Those of you who regularly visit this Website know that I frequently make comments built around my birdfeeder and the sometimes mythical birds that visit it. Like Fat Albert, the gluttonous dove, or Catlin’s warbler who can’t sing except a sad song for North Korea. [Don’t cry for me North Korea]. As you might imagine I am always on the lookout for a new bird for my birdfeeder. I have a new bird. It’s called the Schmidtbird.
Among the various bird attractions we have in our backyard are many hugh holly bushes. We had a bumper crop of holly berrys this year. What happened was astounding. The robins came for the berrys. I am not talking about twenty, or fifty, or even a hundred. I’m talking about a stunning array of multihundreds. Our backyard was alive with the sound of birds. Not one single Schmidtbird, however. None, nada, zip. Maybe I was offering the wrong kind of berry.
I’m sure everyone reading this knows what a dingleberry is. Three adults live in my house. Maybe if we all collect dingleberrys and I put them on the deck rail the Schmidtbird will come feed. I promise to take a picture and send it to Anthony. I’ll bet he posts it faster then a robin eats a holly berry.
> This higher sensitivity of the climate should be taken into account, the team concludes, when targets are set for limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
It would follow that the current climate models also need adjustment to reflect the higher sensitivity. That was we won’t have to wait as long to see them heading off in the wrong direction.
Ah, Gavin, what was that word we were looking for ? was it THIMK ? (as what goes on in your head ) or was it modol as in Sharon Stone. sarc off.
What amazing baloney. What a huge waste of taxpayer money. Amazing how they avoid periods of higher CO2 and lower temperatures than at present.
Combine with the first comment about the arctic declining and you have an epic amount of silly.
Yeh yeh, we get it Gavin. Here is the gist of study after study and it won’t cost tax payers a dime for the next one. In fact throw out that energy eating super computer and just do mind experiments. Write it up as follows:
Introduction
…the Earth is highly sensitive…
Literature Review
…catastrophic…
Problem
…much worse…
Methods
…the Earth is highly sensitive…
Results
…catastrophic…
Conclusion
…much worse…
Neil Crafter says: May 6, 2010 at 12:02 am
Assuming this is a genuine question and not a wind up …
Yes, it is a way of depicting the molecular bonds. The carbon dioxide molecule is linear with a carbon atom in the middle, flanked by two oxygen atoms (as shown). The molecular bonds consist of electrons shared between the oxygen atoms and the carbon atom. Notionally, each oxygen atom shares 2 electrons with the carbon while the carbon atom contributes 4 electrons. The so-called “double bond” is particularly stable. The rod, of course, is merely a way of picturing the arrangement.
“The team found that it took much lower concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide to recreate the Pliocene’s warm climate than current models — which consider only the relatively fast-adjusting components of the climate — predict.”
Interesting, the all to obvious conclusion should have been that something else (NOT CO2) is driving the climate because lower concentrations of CO2 in the past have produced much warmer climates. We all knew this.
Instead, the paper looks like a revisionist attempt to explain paleoclimates from the blinkered view that CO2 has to somehow be (even when data suggests the opposite) the main driver of climate.
Poppycock
This is part of the hideous and most silly prophet. I just didn´t know until a few minutes ago that AL BABY had taken the Nobel Peace Prize away from the hands of a woman, Irena Sendler, who saved 2,500 jewish children from being killed, during the II WW.
Could anyone have accepted the prize knowing this?. This abominable act says it all about how menacing is this guy for the world.
JER0ME at 1:48 am:
THAT was great! I have done that many times and every study/report should be edited(?) analyzed(?) that way! AND there should be a law in grant funding that says, “A $10,000 reimbursement to the Gov. funding agency must be made for every ‘more than’, ‘may be’, ‘expected to’, ‘may’, ‘models predict’, ‘not well represented’, ‘is expected’, ‘almost impossible to’, ‘difficult to know’, etc….. in your final report.”
Yeah, like that’ll ever happen..
It’s NOT SCIENCE if you’re guessing! And computer models (in most of these cases) are nothing more than higher speed guessing tools!
To our UK friends, thanks for funding this research (though I bet the US kicked in some “stimulus” money to fund Gavin and his Model E runs)…
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091206162955.htm
“This research was funded by the Research Council UK and the British Antarctic Survey.”
Meanwhile…Europe and the USA go further into debt…
A computer model to predict the past.
All computer algorithms only give the answer the programmer chose
This is just a cherrypicked short period of time where they can exaggerate the CO2 sensitivity value. There are a few cherrypick opportunities in the paleo record where you can numbers like this but for the vast majority of the rest of the record, it does not work and one can even get negative sensitivites.
3.5 million years ago, temperatures were about 2C higher and CO2 levels may have been close to 400 ppm (according to a few new estimates).
But this looks to be the highest CO2 levels in the last 24 million years. For the rest of the past 24 million years, CO2 levels were between 200 ppm and 350 ppm. It was as much as 4C warmer at these other periods when CO2 was actually lower.
Gavin and his partner Daniel Lunt, should run their climate models for the entire record rather than just cherrypick one short period when the numbers can be exaggerated.
This is from Mark Pagani in Nature last year. (CO2 and temperature over the last 50 million years – note the temperature chart is upside down really).
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v460/n7251/fig_tab/nature08133_F1.html#figure-title
Over half a century ago, a notorious propagandist once said “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
It’s interesting to go back to the pre-global-warming-hysteria science and look at what scientists thought then. The consensus seemed to be that the Pliocene was warmer than the present mainly because there was a gap between North and South America that allowed circulation between the Atlantic and the Pacific. When that gap closed, it forced ocean circulation to the poles and within a million years or so you had cyclical glaciers/interglacials. No carbon dioxide surplus required. In other words it was much different planet back then. I see no reason to think the consensus was wrong back then.
I think Gavin and company are smart enough in their own way, but they have blind spots. They’re coming into this from sciences that don’t really deep-down understand how different the world of the past was. They come in and thrash around with stuff like this, and the people in sciences like geology and paleontology for the most part bite their tongues and mutter about people who think they’re experts on everything.
They also don’t deep-down grasp how much influence the presence or absence of certain key animals can influence climate. Take elephants for example. When poachers shoot out elephants in an area, in a lot of cases the area turns from savanna to forest. What does that do to the albedo of the area? Depends on the underlying soil. Now, in the Pliocene elephants or their equivalents (Mammoths and Mastodons) were on every continent except Australia and South America. They made it to South America either shortly before or shortly after the land-bridge formed. They went extinct over much of the world at the end of the last ice age (along with most of the other large mammals outside of Africa and tropical Asia. How did that change the way the ecology of most of the world’s land mass worked? Considerably. What impact did that have on the albedo of the earth? On wind speeds? I don’t know. I don’t think Gavin and company do either.
Speaking of unexpected climate impacts of large mammals, apparently over-whaling has an interesting impact: whale feces is rich in iron and apparently plays a major role in allowing plankton to survive in iron-poor parts of the ocean, which in turn increases the ocean’s ability to absorb CO2. Over-exploiting whales = less CO2 absorbed in the ocean. I’m guessing that we’ll find a lot of other subtle climate impacts of fewer whales as we start to really understand climate. I haven’t done the math yet, and I’ve never seen it documented, but I think fewer whales probably means at least some reduction in clouds over the oceans. A major impact? Don’t know.
Speaking of iron and plankton, apparently dust from large volcanoes is also a source of iron for iron-deficient parts of the ocean. It would be interesting to look for reductions in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere after the big strato-volcanoes like Tambora or to a lesser extent Krakatoa or even Pinatubo. Any impact from Pinatubo would probably be masked by the stuff from fossil fuels, but the earlier volcanoes might have had a subtle downward impact on CO2 and thus (if we buy AGW) on temperatures just when thermometers were getting widespread enough for us to establish a base period.
These poor guys don’t seem to realise that the more they prosletyze this sort of nonsense, the more they are tightening the noose around their silly goose like necks. At risk of mixing metaphors – they’ve not only gone out on a limb, but have now begun sawing the branch from the trunk. Highly amusing.
They used a computer model that describes the oceans and atmosphere to predict, retroactively, the climate of the mid-Pliocene
To imagine things is human, to really go off the deep end faster than previously imagined is to use a computer model.
It’s ok to imagine, it’s in our nature to want to know.
But that is really all Gavin & C0. are doing here: Computer-aided imagination.
Fine. Just make sure that, before getting on the horn to stampede civilization over a cliff, you find a way to gather the geologic evidence that the rest of us can examine too.
If Gavin & C0.’s imagination is not tested with evidence, it remains in thier heads.
Pleasant dreams.
Gavin, as a subjective researcher, is unable to accept that global temperature differences are the driving forces that control the global concentrations of CO2 and that CO2 is not a driving force controlling temperature. Yes, there is a correlation and sea ice and land cover are significant factors, but a cause and effect relationship does not involve CO2 in the earth’s heat balance. http://www.kidswincom.net/CO2OLR.pdf.
A second major problem is trying to estimate response times using proxy data averages with time resolutions of thousands of years. http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf.
“Because of their complexity and long timescales, these processes are almost impossible to integrate into today’s climate computer models. As a result, it has been difficult to know just what their effect on Earth’s climate sensitivity would be.”
So they are saying it can’t be modeled but it’s there none the less? To me this does nothing but add uncertainty. In fact, what they are saying is that they tried to test their models against Pliocene conditions and because they didn’t work they just spun it to the favor of their hypothesis rather than reporting it as a failure of their models. The headline on this piece by Sullivant should read “CLIMATE MODELS FAIL TEST.”
When I saw the use of models as a source of facts instead of observation, I shut it down. Compputer models of birds evolution give males and females the same feathers. How do modelers deal with discrepancies and changes?
This may be why Mann is going to court. He sat in an armchair and paid a student to write a model instead of doing field work and travel.
The love affair with unverified climate models continues.
“…the researchers estimate that Earth’s response to elevated concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide is 30 to 50 percent greater than previously calculated. In other words, the climate is more sensitive to carbon dioxide than we thought.”
With a one-third increase in CO2 over the past century and a half, where is the several degrees of warming that should have occurred according to the AGW hypothesis?
We now have the computer modeled answer: the warming has been delayed for a few thousand years. That certainly doesn’t make the planet appear to be very sensitive to CO2.
I almost lost the ability to be sarcastic when commenting on the “wetness” thread… but I recovered. I thought the science couldn’t get any sillier than that one, but I noted how many times in the past I had drawn that conclusion only to be wrong yet again… like now. I wonder how Gavin would explain this to his bank?
Banker: We are very concerned about your financial situation. You haven’t been putting in as much money into your account as you are taking out. If this continues you will run out of money in six months and your checks will start to bounce.
Gavin: No they won’t, you’ve not modeled my bank account properly.
Banker: Uhm… well, we are accountants and we have computers that track it all….
Gavin: Yes, but actual measurements of my account balance are meaningless. Look at this computer model of my bank account over the last 50 years. See, if we run it backwards, it shows that I had a lot less money in my account 50 years ago than I actually had.
Banker (confused): Which would mean that the model isn’t accurate…?
Gavin: No! You don’t understand modeling. What that means is that the impact of my deposits on my account balance was bigger than we thought.
Banker (really confused): Well your account balance is a combination of deposits and –
Gavin: EXACTLY! DEPOSITS! So, since it is clear that my deposits had a bigger impact to balance than we thought, we can adjust the model and run the model forward again and show that current deposits will result in a much higher account balance than what you thought. I’m rich!
Banker (slightly amused): Well that would work if you just ignored the withdrawls.
Gavin (perplexed): Withdrawls? I don’t have those in my model. What is a withdrawl?
Banker: Taking money out. You know, like a deposit only negative.
Gavin: I don’t understand this negative concept…
Banker: Itz about cycles Gavin. You have a regular payment cycle into your account from your employer, those are deposits. Then you have regular bills like your mortgage, power and phone bills, those are withdrawls. Right now your positive payment cycles are smaller than your negative withdrawl cycles.
Gavin: No sir, it is YOU who doesn’t understand. You are basing your conclusions on your measurements, which have nothing to do with the model, which clearly shows that my account will reach a tipping point and explode to infinity balance due to the increasing effects of deposits. This negative cycle of withdrawls you babble about has nothing to do with actual account balance.
Banker (sigh): Well, your model is meaningless, your checks will start to bounce, don’t say I didn’t warn you. What the heck do you do for a living anyway?
Gavin: Why I model the climate of course. Same sound mathematical principles.
Banker: Wow. Same principles huh?
Gavin: Yup. Planet will ignite and burn up in a few years, we just proved it by showing that our models totaly under predicted the temperatures of the past, so we adjusted them and rolled the forward and itz worse than we thought. Spontaneous planetary combustion is imminent.
Banke: OK. Got it. Let me explain “foreclosure” to you.
“…than current climate models predict”
Here we go again, garbage in, garbage out. But this is all settled, just read the NASA Climate Kids website:
http://climate.nasa.gov/kids/
Under Big Questions [what Q’s? This is stated as FACT]
“# Earth has been getting warmer fast, causing lots of serious problems
# Humans are causing this warming ”
How appropriate that one button is labeled “Climate Tales”!
Ahh, our tax dollars at work.
“Rhoda R says:
May 5, 2010 at 11:05 pm
I love the smell of desperation in the morning.”
Love that! 🙂
Their conclusion, which is should likely be the most carefully worded sentence in the whole paper deserves closer scrutiny:
“We conclude that targets for the long-term stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations aimed at preventing a dangerous human interference with the climate system should take into account this higher sensitivity of the Earth system.”
Meaning, correct me if I’m wrong:
1) (Earlier computer models say that) “Human interference with the climate system” (CO2 forcing vs. climate sensitivity) is “dangerous”.
2) Earlier computer models are wrong (CO2 forcing in not enough). Even so, our newly perfected computer model says the “sensitivity of the Earth system” (to not enough CO2 forcing) is much higher than the original models predicted. (can’t change the CO2 forcing so we are changing the sensitivity!)
3) Therefore, (and in comparison with the earlier models) “human interference with the climate system” is now even more dangerous, and already planned and accepted “targets for the long-term stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations” are not enough (we need a louder alarm bell).
Great insights into their mindsets. Petitio Principii comes to mind…..
Best,
Jose
As if we needed more evidence that these computer models don’t work! My model, however, does work and predicts an ice age by 2100, but I need more money for further research and a much bigger, faster computer to increase my confidence levels from 90% to 95%. Please send your donations (US$ only please) to my e-mail address attached. Thanks!
An interesting piece by a well known hardcore leftist dismissing the whole scaremongering climate change industry and its computer models.
Volcanoes, Weather and Computer Models
By Alexandere Cockburn
“Contrast the demonstrated impossibility of computer modeling the simple downwind
dispersion of a plume from a single smokestack or volcano with the mind boggling
scientific hubris of trying to model the climate of the entire globe.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn04302010.html
This is just another pathetic attempt to rewrite history to match an imaginary reality.
http://i46.tinypic.com/2582sg6.jpg
Ignore Gavin’s warnings at your risk. Would you rather the S.F and NYC be drowned or make the responsible decisions to reduce CO2 emissions today? Your choice.
How did the Earth survive earlier, longer increases in CO2?
This report by Schmidt is simply the latest in the well established tradition of AGW promoters coming out with a new report every few months claiming to prove that things are even worse than predicted.
The absence of things ever actually getting worse than predicted seems to inspire the promoters be even more dire in their doom saying. The true believers seem to lap it up like cream for kittens.
This is fascinating to watch.
“When the researchers adapted the model to include the effects of long-term climate changes in vegetation and ice sheets, they were able to get a much closer representation of the warming in the Pliocene era.”
—
I love the use of the word “adapted.” What parameterization works best, more like it.
@ Bob (Sceptical Redcoat)
If I were you, I would only be accepting gold and silver at this point.
Smokey says:
May 6, 2010 at 6:28 am
(…)
With a one-third increase in CO2 over the past century and a half, where is the several degrees of warming that should have occurred according to the AGW hypothesis?
————–
Reply: Sorry, Smokey… you have to wait 800 years. (They just don’t tell you that ’cause it would really delay their funding.)
CO2. Is there anything it can’t do?
I cannot even be bothered to comment on Gavin Smith’s ludicrous modelling frenzy. Tweaking unknowns to get a fit to a pre-conceived conclusion is utter insanity.
Even the guy who found the ozone hole is speaking out about modelling:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8664000/8664313.stm
ROBJM says:
Well, we have a fairly strong indication. Hansen’s original model, on which all the current ones are based, was designed for his studies of Venus in the ’60s and ’70s. Venus has an atmosphere 98% CO2 and a surface temp around 400 C. This clearly affected Hansen’s mind, finally depriving him of all rationality.
It would appear the same is happening to Gavin as he looks at earlier eras, but perhaps more gradually…
If the ingredients consist of computers, government funding, and Gavin Schmidt, you’re just as likely to get useful data about Mass Effect 2 as CO2.
It is truly appalling that climate “science” has come to this. Even more so that man’s future, if the Warmenistas have their way will be based on such total nonsense.
Gavin and his ilk will have much to explain about their behavior in the future. History, and possibly the courts may take a dim view indeed.
http://budget.edgeboss.net/wmedia-live/budget/11374/100_budget-video_060519.asx
Markey’s U.S. Senate Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming hearing & testimony is taking place now. Just as I thought…
“the demonstrated impossibility of computer modeling the simple downwind dispersion of a plume..”
Exactly. And the key word there is ‘demonstrated’. In other words, the one thing we know for certain about such models is that they hardly work, even over very short timescales
As Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and so far we haven’t had any.
Mackey lined up Gov. “scientists” who have lined up unanimously, including Lisa Graumlich, director, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona, and member of the “Oxburgh Inquiry” panel, to belittle Monckton’s testimony. Monckton is good, but why not other more directly recognized non-CAGWers?
What a joke. Such a pile of crap. Stooges on parade!
This is getting monotonous to ridiculous proportions. Yes Gavin, thanks for the latest “it’s worse than we thought” meme. Of course, if the finding was correct, then instead of seeing no significant change in the last decade, wouldn’t we’ve found an increase in the rate of warming? Dang, you still have that troublesome reality to deal with.
What I fail to understand, is when Gavin and the people like him go back and say “wait, we wrong, its worse than we thought!!”, so often, why do people lend them any credence? After admitting they were wrong, say 3 times, wouldn’t we, shouldn’t we determine that they don’t have a clue as to what they’re doing and the veracity of their findings should be highly suspect.
Gavin, you can go back billions of years if you like, it won’t change the fact that you don’t know what drives our climate. I bet you can change your precious computer model to factor CO2 to fit perfectly in the mid-Pliocene period, and then run the models against today and they still won’t work. Of course, then you can do another study and state surprisingly, “it’s worse than we thought!!!”.
Turns out, CO2 isn’t the major player in climate forcing regardless of what our anti-industrialist believe. You alarmist pinheads have had over 30 years to create a computer model that accurately models our climate with given variables. You haven’t been able to. Quit. Your failures are an embarrassment to the human race.
Think about this for a minute, 2.5-3 million years ago people said that the panama land brige was not there or forming.But what is the real ? is was the continents in thier positions they are in now or were they in different positions, my guess would be they were not, so modeling todays world compared to millions of years ago is comparing apples to oranges, oops, watermelons ethier way its crap!!!!
So, it’s worse than we thought, but we’re going to have to trust you on it for an indefinite period – possibly centuries – right. I guess this is what Tacitus meant by “no refuge but in audacity.”
OT, the Icelandic volcano seemingly got a new supply of more viscous lava and is now churning out a fair bit of SO2: cloud is about 200 DU thick, heading out into the Atlantic then probably back toward the Pole. Yesterday ~13:00UTC yesterday until ~15:00 today: http://i41.tinypic.com/23tihec.gif
Good picture of old fashioned Stephenson screen thermometers here:-
http://apaulinstruments.in/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/meteorological_thermometers.226160027.jpg
Thermometers with major divisions of 5Celsius every 10mm I would say, so minor divisions of 0.5Celsius every 1mm, maybe not even that. Difficult to see how you could use such a thermometer for measuring temperatures accurate to 0.1Celsius for the last 100 years isn’t it? Good enough for “weather” but surely not good enough for “climate”? Still, if you have 365 measurements of temperature for a year you can add them all together and divide them by 365 to get the average. That will give you plenty of decimal points to play with. Not mathematically sound to quote an average temperature to an accuracy half an order of magnitude greater than the original observations, but clearly these flights of pure fantasy don’t need to worry too much about being mathematically sound. I expect they have a model to work out the real temperature from a hundred years of inaccurate weather stations readings.
Yup. Chapter 39 of “It’s Worse Than We Thought.”
(rough estimation.)
They keep on repeating the same stupid MANTRA again and again. Does anyone among you Gaia believers, know how CLIMATE works on earth? If you don´t then stop trying to cheat innocent people with your computer games.
To continue the quote in the link in Francisco’s post at 6:41:
“Here we start with endlessly faulty data – from instruments parked on urban ‘heat islands’ to severely massaged data bases of daily temperature readings, from sketchy numbers for the vast reaches of the planet where there are almost no readings, to purging of decades of inconvenient data. Then these are meshed with models constructed around bad thermodynamics, baseless suppositions about the hugely dominant heat effects of water vapor and clouds, and hopelessly inaccurate quantifications of carbon uptake by the earth’s forests and oceans.
“These quack science models are further skewed by the modelers’ doctrinaire anti-carbon passions, the vetting of their results by the corrupt bureaucracy of the UN’s IPCC, and the dependence of their salaries on the expectations of funding agencies.
“Small wonder, then, that the modelers’ computer ‘reconstructions’ of the planet’s past climate conveniently wiped out the well-documented three century long Medieval Warming Period as well as the subsequent five hundred years of Little Ice Age–nor is it surprising that their terrifying computer prognostications in the IPCC’s 2001 Third Assessment failed to predict the next decade’s absence of any global warming trend at all.”
I find Cockburn’s politics abhorrent, but his writing is impeccable.
Anyway, who do you know who would preface a request for more research funding with the words, “by the way, things are not as bad as we thought”?
I would like to repeat, here, once more that:
Al Gore took the Nobel Peace Prize away from the hands of a 90 years old woman, Irena Sendler, who saved 2,500 jewish children from being killed, during the II WW and who had been previously selected for this prize
http://www.auschwitz.dk/sendler.htm
Markey’s U.S. Senate Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming hearing, testimony and CAGW model cheerleading is continuing:
http://budget.edgeboss.net/wmedia-live/budget/11374/100_budget-video_060519.asx
Monckton tried to give an explanation as to why he was chosen to rep. the non-CAGWers as the Reps. didn’t want to subject a non-CAGW scientist to the anticipated haranguing that he is, in fact, experiencing during the hearing. However, the Repubs have handed the Dems (generally the agwers) a convenient opportunity to characterize non-CAGWers as a cause without credentialed authoritative representation.
The committee is being called to the floor for a vote and are summing up (1.5 minutes/panel member).
If the anthropogenic global warming theory is so certainly wrong, then it should be a relatively easy thing for skeptical scientists to build computer climate models that unequivocally show a minimal role for CO2 and a major role for their pet cause. You know, beat the AGW climate modelers at their own game.
So where are these models??? If one had been produced, surely that contrary result would have been heralded in every conceiveable media outlet on the planet.
I suspect this has already been tried, repeatedly, but the attempts failed to produce the desired result (i.e., “it’s sunspots”, “it’s the PDO”, “it’s UV radiation”, “it’s continuation of the LIA recovery”, “it’s galactic cosmic ray flux”, etc.) using realistic inputs. They could not do it (without bending some law of nature), or surely they would have by now.
Francisco says:
May 6, 2010 at 6:41 am
An interesting piece by a well known hardcore leftist dismissing the whole scaremongering climate change industry and its computer models.
Volcanoes, Weather and Computer Models
By Alexandere Cockburn
“Contrast the demonstrated impossibility of computer modeling the simple downwind
dispersion of a plume from a single smokestack or volcano with the mind boggling
scientific hubris of trying to model the climate of the entire globe.”
A load of rubbish, especially the “demonstrated impossibility of computer modeling the simple downwind dispersion of a plume from a single smokestack or volcano”, which is totally false. Needless to say he didn’t demonstrate the ‘impossibility’ just handwaved about some strawmen., the success of modelling such plumes is demonstrated regularly including the current emissions from Iceland. Continental cancelled their flight from Newark to Edinburg several days this week as a result.
And we can’t verify the models with observations because the effects take place over hundreds or thousands of years.
Beautiful.
Let me see if I have this straight?
Very roughly…..The current belief on CO2 to temperature response (i.e. Charney sensitivity) is not “robust” since it only includes “fast” short-term feedbacks.
“However, there are many other processes operating, over a variety of timescales, that have a role in determining the ultimate response of the climate system to a rise in greenhouse gases.” Including, changes in [1]dust and [2]other aerosols, [3]vegetation, [4]ice sheets and [5]ocean circulation. “We term this temperature response the `Earth system sensitivity’ the long-term equilibrium surface temperature change given an increase in CO2.”
This paper attempts to improve upon our understanding of this sensitivity since, “data sets exist that allow at least two of the important longer term feedbacks, vegetation and ice sheet extent, to be addressed” (i.e. not modeled) However, many other factors are in their model infancy, e.g. ice sheets which currently cannot be model in reasonable time frames using modern computing power (according to the paper), so they substitute using proxy information.
So, despite many current factors being unknown even for “fast” feedbacks, we improve upon this by addressing JUST TWO of the many other unknown slower acting feedbacks and ignoring the others. Despite adding all this uncertainty to the current uncertainty, they confidently claim, “carbon dioxide concentrations is 30–50% greater than the response based on those fast-adjusting components of the climate system that are used traditionally to estimate climate sensitivity.”
This is like saying that there is a broken window in my house and a missing wallet. It could be on of the thousands of people who have been in my neighborhood last night or it could be my son. Since I cannot interrogate (i.e. understand these unknowns) it must be the only thing I do know, my son. Therefore, he is at fault.
From the article: “. Pliocene carbon dioxide levels are estimated to have been around 400 parts per million”
How handy. Just what scientific methology was used in making this “estimate”, and what might be the margin of error? Oh yes, with this particular estimated value, the model “worked”. I do think that this highly resembles the “finagle factor” when I was taking a college chemistry course back in 1963. Insert the proper “finagle factor”, and the results of the physical experiment agrees with theory.
Hah! If only it was that simple…
“Hocus Pocus
Slippety Slam
Raz a ma taz
and Alakazam” – Daffy Duck
Ale Gorney says:
May 6, 2010 at 6:48 am
Ignore Gavin’s warnings at your risk. Would you rather the S.F and NYC be drowned or make the responsible decisions to reduce CO2 emissions today? Your choice.
Yes! And Washington DC. Isn’t East Anglia also close to sea level?
But I still think the danger to NY is more likely ice.
Markey’s U.S. House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming hearing, testimony and CAGW model cheerleading has concluded.
Among the outcomes has been the inflating of the egos of the CAGWers’ and their exploiting another opportunity to spew one-sided CAGW propaganda – at the expense of scientific debate and public perception (political near-reality). The CAGWers’ will be able to use this exercise as another propaganda tool for years to come. What a loss for all.
I still don’t know why Congressman James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, Ranking Member seek to subject an experienced, respected, lettered non-CAGW scientist to this public dissection? Did all of them decline invitations? My hats off to Monckton for taking the hit, he does serve non-CAGW well in appropriate situations, but I believe this was a very bad outcome for the climate science “debate”. The truth denying continues.
Re Chili Palmer and Barry R
” He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future”… George Orwell. The AGW scientists and the people who publish history textbooks are both part of a process that is as ubiquitous as gravity and draws human society toward its natural state of tyranny.
The lucid and sometimes sarcastic comments above are far better reading then the press release. Good on us all. That said to you I do have a few less sarcastic comments for Garvin et al. :
I have been a self styled “natural philosopher” and Geologist for over 40 years. I have been reminded every day of that 40 years how much I do not know. That knowledge is a source of humility and I hope humanity. I do not often offer unsolicited advice to others but I will here. Get your “ass” out of your lab and your “nose” out of you math books and experience the real world. Numeric models like man, may be at the center, they are not in the center of science. That would be a logical impossibility. Numeric models are just that, models. They are not science. They can be used as a source of information that adds to knowledge. They are not knowledge.
I remind the modelers that the Heliocentric vision of the solar system was a numerical model, all be it using less sophisticated algorithms. Is was wrong too. The mathematics were not in gross error, the model was based on an incorrect assumption. That incorrect model had become dogma and orthodoxy. Modern numeric models are not new and not a new paradigm, they are just upgraded versions of the old.
I think Hansen had a paper in 1993 on paleo climate sensitivity.
Hansen, J., A. Lacis, R. Ruedy, M. Sato, and H. Wilson (1993), How sensitive is the world’s climate?, Natl. Geogr. Res. Explor., 9, 142–158.
What do the skeptics have to say?
This skeptic, believes that a number of other factors have been obscured (or neglected) in the analysis that put a (predetermined) bias on the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere.
A number of geophysical and astronomical factors contributed to Pliocene climate, which in turn fixed the relative concentration of CO2 in the air, and the Pliocene climate had been quite thoroughly analyzed 40-50 years ago, making no mention of CO2 influencing the climate.
Climate models have the wonderful property of making what you want to see happen with greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, happen. They have the ability to rewrite history.
Note to gavin.When building models open window and place cap on glue.
Ale Gorney says:
May 6, 2010 at 6:48 am
Ignore Gavin’s warnings at your risk. Would you rather the S.F and NYC be drowned or make the responsible decisions to reduce CO2 emissions today? Your choice.
============
I’ll take the risk any day. Of course, it’s a false dichotomy anyway. NYC will not be drowned because somebody called Gavin has run a computer program which has only a tenuous relationship to reality. Anybody who thinks this is in anyway science is being duped. I feel sorry for you.
Just came across something interesting that casts doubt on the accuracy of all that paleoclimate ice-core data. The article
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080603104418.htm
suggests that these ice cores may be contaminated by the metabolic effects — changing of CO2 amounts trapped inside, and so on — of long-lived, slow-metabolizing bacteria. So much for the assumption that all those trapped gasses, isotope ratios, and so on inside the ice cores have stayed there in “cold storage”, unchanged for tens of thousands of years …
it is just unbelievable that they keep publishing this crap.
temperatures have already been running well below all of their predictions
yet now they tell us that the sytem is more sensitive to the added co2
so the added co2 should have a stronger effect than their already failed models predicted
CodeTech says:
May 6, 2010 at 8:42 am
Ale Gorney says:
Ignore Gavin’s warnings at your risk. Would you rather the S.F and NYC be drowned or make the responsible decisions to reduce CO2 emissions today? Your choice.
Hah! If only it was that simple…
My apologies to the few sensible people in both of those cities, but in my estimation, American society would benefit greatly with the disappearance of both bastions of insanity.
Since CO2 rose 1000 years after the temperature increased, we can surely say (based on the exact same core data Gavin cites), ITLS! ITLS! ITLS! (It’s the lag, stupid)
meemoe_uk says:
May 6, 2010 at 2:12 am
Shub Niggurath says:
May 6, 2010 at 3:30 am
Uh-oh! I think that WUWT has developed a melvin of the underpants over the investigation of Mann by Virginia. His reasons for defending Mann just did not hold logical water with me, and my spider-sense then detected something in the aether. But maybe I am just suspicious of everyone since the Morlocks have taken over the government and science, as Eisenhower presciently predicted. I hope in my heart that power and $$$ do not corrupt every living person. I think these bad thoughts, but I hope they are not true. Say it’s not true, please. Someone slap me!
To Jbar,
Compentent researchers have produced many models that evidence the minimal effects of CO2 on climate. They just don’t have the press and political backing. I’ve been retired, from environmental research at EPA, for 19 years. One reason I retired early was because objective research was beginning to be sidetracted for political purposes. EPA has now been derailed. Read Alan Carlin’s posts. Read my presentations. http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf and http://www.kidswincom.net/CO2OLR.pdf. Read Roy Spencer’s blog. Read objectively. These are people who are willing to take the political heat in trying to find the truth.
I keep reading in various online supposedly ‘authorative’ scientific sources about how huge amounts of CO2 were present in the atmosphere back in prehistoric times when warming was at a high period and that they caused the increases like they are doing today. Hello…warmer weather makes plants grow and thrive, forests grew faster and more abundantly because of the warmer weather and plants covered more and more areas of the planet. The extra plants produced an evironment richer in CO2. The CO2 came after the plants proliferated and they proliferated because of the hotter climate. Carboniferous. Carbon-rich fossil fuels (coals and oils) which are formed form the massive rotted fields of plants which filled everything when it got hot. We are made of carbon ourselves, aren’t we? Carbon-based life-forms. Carbon is natural and part of the life cycle which increases as it gets hotter. CO2 comes from the result of it getting hot, not as a the cause of heat increases.
1) CO2 can only double or triple from here because it won’t be economic to burn fossil fuels at some point and alternatives will be cheaper. That means only a couple degrees rise anyways even if models are correct – even the new “sensitivity” ones.
2) Models have uncertainties greater than the anomoly predicted. Temperatures could be wildly different than the “4-6” degree prediction commonly touted for 2100 including actually lower than today.
3) Models are based on “theories” of feedback that are unproven. Feedback could just as likely be negative.
4) Even if models are correct a few degrees (even 6) is NOT going to cause much damage over 100 years. Studies show the cost of fixing the damage caused is incredibly small on the scale of the world economy over a century. Spending almost any money today to fight GW would be an incredible waste of money. Technology better and costs in future less than today make doing anything today stupid.
5) The damage estimates are way overstated. Most of the damages can be mitigated with minimal cost and eliminated. Humans are really good at mitigating natural disaster deaths. In the 20th century 98% reduction in deaths from natural disasters. France had a worse heat wave 2 years after the 1998 wave that killed 15,000 people and 10 people died. These things are easy to remedy. Cities are rebuilt over a period of a century and can be easily rebuilt to withstand higher water levels and other obstructions are cheap on a century scale compared to incurring trillions in cost today.
6) They never count the lives saved and economic benefits of increased temperatures. Studies show 6 more people are saved for every person dying from increased heat. So, paradoxically temperatures rising will increase human lifespan and reduce mortality from many diseases.
jbar says:
May 6, 2010 at 8:16 am
Anti CAGW scientists do not need to model anything, mother earth has disproved all the CAGW theories and models for them.
OT but thank you very much for that bit of trivia, Enneagram.
After reading about what that wonderful woman did and how she endured the breaking of both arms and legs and who knows what other torture at the hands of the Gestapo without giving up the identity and location of the children she saved, I could only sit in silently fury and shed a few tears to think that a self-important fraudster would be chosen over her for this award. Shame on you Nobel Committee, shame on you.
For those of you in the AGW camp– please consider the character of the people who are leading the charge for you and then tell me with a straight face that you still believe in their message. That takes a mighty leap of faith and I’m afraid you may be finding yourself now in mid-air with a gaping chasm below you and no solid ground up ahead to land on.
Steve
I think this rush of papers are to be stacked into the AR5.
It will be so full of voodoo science that it will take us 800 years to go through it all.
Yes, it will get worse than we thought.
Because there is still one paper left;
The paper telling us that models show that an increase of 1 ppm will increase the length of a superstring in the 21’st dimension up to 50%.
The only solution will be to move everyone out from the cities into the fields and stick a shovel into their hands.
Everyone that protest will be taken to a “Green Court” and dealt with accordingly.
Because of high treason against the DPG. (The Democratic Party of Gaia)
Ale Gorney says:
May 6, 2010 at 6:48 am
Ignore Gavin’s warnings at your risk. Would you rather the S.F and NYC be drowned or make the responsible decisions to reduce CO2 emissions today? Your choice.
Drown San Francisco? You’re kidding, right? Have you ever been there? Go rent a copy of “Bullit” and then get back to us on that one.
Complete and utter balderdash; this whole CO2 thing boils down the the EM re-rad (re-radiation) from ‘heat’ energy impinging on this silly molecule, and THAT effect should be quantifiable, it should not be ‘guesswork’ or be in the realm of ‘previously thought’ horse-hockey …
.
.
globalwarmingisnotcausedbyco2 says:
May 6, 2010 at 11:27 am
Except that oil and gas are not formed by fossils, plants or dinosaurs, See the Russian work on abiotic oil.
Where do you suppose the massive methane and ethane and higher hydrocarbon lakes come from on Titan, moon of Saturn? Same as on earth – carbonate + water + iron/cobalt catalyst + high temperature + high pressure.
Think what this means…
Ale Gorney says:
May 6, 2010 at 6:48 am
Ignore Gavin’s warnings at your risk. Would you rather the S.F and NYC be drowned or make the responsible decisions to reduce CO2 emissions today? Your choice.
_________________________________________________________
CodeTech says:
May 6, 2010 at 8:42 am
Hah! If only it was that simple…
______________________________________________________________
Vincent says:
May 6, 2010 at 9:32 am
I’ll take the risk any day. Of course, it’s a false dichotomy anyway. NYC will not be drowned because somebody called Gavin has run a computer program which has only a tenuous relationship to reality. Anybody who thinks this is in anyway science is being duped. I feel sorry for you.
__________________________________________________________________
There are times I think the lemmings faithfully following Pied Pipers Al Gore and Maurice Strong deserve exactly what they are going to get and that is another Dark Age complete with slavery, famine and misery. For families it is shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations for civilizations it generally takes about two hundred years. The evidence is pointing to the self-destruction of Western Civilization as we watch. And the rest of the world is laughing and waiting to pick up the pieces. That is why at Copenhagen China only sent a gofer to deal with Obama, a real slap in the face to the USA. The know the USA is on her last legs.
Russia is laughing too: Pravda: The American Self Immolation, Truly a Sight to See
“…As they say: Rome did not fall to the barbarians, all they did was kick in the rotting gates.
It can be safely said, that the last time a great nation destroyed itself through its own hubris and economic folly was the early Soviet Union (though in the end the late Soviet Union still died by the economic hand). Now we get the opportunity to watch the Americans do the exact same thing to themselves. The most amazing thing of course, is that they are just repeating the failed mistakes of the past. One would expect their fellow travelers in suicide, the British, to have spoken up by now, but unfortunately for the British, their education system is now even more of a joke than that of the Americans.
While taking a small breather from mouthing the never ending propaganda of recovery, never mind that every real indicator is pointing to death and destruction, the American Marxists have noticed that the French and Germans are out of recession and that Russia and Italy are heading out at a good clip themselves. Of course these facts have been wrapped up into their mind boggling non stop chant of “recovery” and hope-change-zombification. What is ignored, of course, is that we and the other three great nations all cut our taxes, cut our spending, made life easy for small business…in other words: the exact opposite of the Anglo-Sphere.
That brings us to Cap and Trade. Never in the history of humanity has a more idiotic plan been put forward and sold with bigger lies…..”
I am very glad I never had children, I would hate to tell them I allowed the greedy corrupt politicians, bankers and industrialists take their bright futures from them.
#
jbar says:
May 6, 2010 at 8:16 am
If the anthropogenic global warming theory is so certainly wrong, then it should be a relatively easy thing for skeptical scientists to build computer climate models that unequivocally show a minimal role for CO2 and a major role for their pet cause. You know, beat the AGW climate modelers at their own game.
So where are these models??? If one had been produced, surely that contrary result would have been heralded in every conceiveable media outlet on the planet.
MONEY is in short supply for counter CO2 AGW research, it is blocked from publication, some of the best work has been done by those outside of academia, who cannot get funding of grants, with out THE GOOD OLD BOY support structure.
What part of suppression of outside ideas, don’t you understand, the MSM only prints what is good for the AGW cash flow they wade around in.
Phil. says:
May 6, 2010 at 8:26 am
“A load of rubbish, especially the “demonstrated impossibility of computer modeling the simple downwind dispersion of a plume from a single smokestack or volcano”, which is totally false.”
=======================
The three paragraphs preceding that statement suggest it is not false. Common sense tends to do that too. Of course one can “model” anything. But how usefully. How long can the dispersion model keep up with reality? A few hours? And yes, contrasting the limitations inherent to this comparatively simple task with the “mind boggling hubris of trying to model the climate of the entire globe” is very appropriate as a mental exercise.
This whole thing would be funny if it weren’t so depressing. Reducing temperature fluctuations of the distant past to the function of a couple of variables of one’s own picking, then feeding that trash to a model, and then presenting its regurgitations as a “scientific” finding ,is what passes for serious research these days. Gavin seems the prototype of a specialist, in the old well known definition: “A specialist is someone who seeks to know more and more about less and less –until he finally reaches the ideal state where he knows everything about nothing.”
Here are the paragraphs from the Cockburn article leading to the statement you call “rubbish”:
“The plume had spread in entirely unanticipated ways, ways that seem obvious after seeing photographs of the Eyjafjallajökull eruptions. Take a look at both the ground level and satellite pictures of the plume and you’ll understand the hopelessness of modeling the peculiar vagaries of the plume: swirls, layering, branching, etc. Every aspect of this well-described incident defies computer modeling and prior turbine design knowledge: the plume was somewhere that would never have been predicted by a model, the ash particles were ice-encased , the expected turbine blade erosion damage didn’t show up; the main damage mechanism was overheating.”
“I called Pierre Sprey, a defense analyst with a background in statistics and a healthy skepticism about climate modeling and he gave a dry laugh. Back in the 1970s Sprey had done some environmental consulting and speedily learned first hand the insuperable difficulties of a seemingly elementary assignment in air pollution: modeling the behavior of a plume drifting downwind from a single smoke stack. “It was a vastly simpler problem than some generalized climate model, but still hopelessly intractable” when it came to predicting the downwind dispersion of the plume and its toxic constituents.”
“Sprey found, to his surprise, that the useless air pollution models he was dealing with in the early 1970s were actually based on WWII models developed to predict the behavior of chemical warfare weapons being tested by the British at Porton Down back in the 1940s. What emerged with finality from those tests was that there was no knowing where the poison gases might head, and indeed one powerful inhibition against the use of chemical weapons has always been the ease with which, amid a sudden shift in the wind, some act of stupidity by the gassers can end up killing one’s own troops, as unforgettably described by the poet Siegfried Sassoon in his WWI memoirs.”
“Contrast the demonstrated impossibility of computer modeling the simple downwind dispersion of a plume from a single smokestack or volcano with the mind boggling scientific hubris of trying to model the climate of the entire globe.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn04302010.html
Ha ha ha ha ha.
I know you can get it on Playstation but can you get ‘Pliocene climate modeling for amateurs’ on Nintendo?
Who cares about Gavin or any of the other RC bunch. They are known to need AGW to continue their jobs. I for sure will not take them serious, they have overplayed their hand. Crying Wolf. They did not manage to have their case made with current day data, so now they do the time flash back and spell doom. It almost looks as if any serious science journal tries to outbid the competitors by staging even more frightening horror. What this has to do with science is a riddle to me. It is just run-away modelling. Stop the modelling, get your data right!
Gavin! Stop blogging, stop modelling, start working on a validated temperature record. And make sure you do not lose any (meta) data in the process.
Why can’t you “deniers” out there behave like good sheeple and show some fear when Gavin puts on his Wolf Mask and growls and shows you what can happen when REAL wolves come around?
This study is built on the unquestioned assumption that CO2 causes warming and makes some model adjustments using a cherry picked piece of climate palaeohistory to conclude – CO2 causes warming – its worse than we thought! Vacuous circular logic.
Here are some other palaeoclimate episodes they should try to model next:
1. Late Cambrian (550-500 mYrs ago): CO2 rises from 4500 to 7000 ppm then back again. Global temperature over this whole period? – flat.
2. Late Ordovician ice age, global temps drop from 22C to 12 C, while simultaneously atmospheric CO2 rises from 4100-4300 ppm. (440-455 myrs ago). At the Ordovician-Silurian boundary temperatures sharply rise while CO2 coincidently sharply falls.
3. Late Devonian to mid Carboniferous, (370-320 mYrs ago) CO2 falls sharply from 2300 to 350 ppm. Global temperatures follow CO2 down – 60 MILLION YEARS LATER! (some feedback!)
4. During the Jurassic to the Cretaceous (170-120 mYrs ago) global temps dip from 22C to 17C, then return to 22C. Over this period CO2 declines more or less steadily from 2300-1500 ppm. No correlation.
5. Tertiary, 20-30 mYrs ago: temperatures rise from 16-19 C, while simultaneously CO2 falls steadily from about 400-300 ppm.
(http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html)
Sometime, watch a bullfight.
See what the job is of the picadors.
See what is the function of the banderillas.
See how stupid the bull is attacking a rag.
The bull can’t win because he attacks rags.
CO2 is the rag and Gavin is a Matador.
bubba gyro
You conspiratorial denier! 🙂
It is just that skeptics need some opportunity to prove that they are nice guys too.
We should all thank Cuccinelli. Mann becomes a martyr. The skeptics become all goody-goody. It is a ‘win-win-win-win…’ situation
bubba gyro
You conspiratorial denier! 🙂
I think it is just that the skeptics need a chance to show they are good guys too.
Cuccinelli was great. Mann becomes a martyr. The skeptics are all goody-goody. It is a win-win-win-win… situation.
Gail Combs says “I am very glad I never had children, I would hate to tell them I allowed the greedy corrupt politicians, bankers and industrialists take their bright futures from them.”
——
I’ve got four sons. How exactly am I supposed to find the time to prevent greedy corrupt politicians, bankers, and industrialists from stealing their ‘bright’ futures? And what methods am I to use? Please let me know! (And believe me, I do worry about their futures.) I am pointing out the folly of anti-AGW policies to everyone who will listen, but it’s often uphill as it seems many have been brainwashed. (I am working on academic colleagues).
The team found no such thing. They played for a million CPU hours on an expensive supercomputer at taxpayers expense running what amounts to an elaborate computer game that bears little resemblance to climate processes, or rather pretends that the world is a giant brick that heats and cools in a linear fashion. They twiddled with four or five knobs, and tinkered with code until they reached something that, subjectively, but by no objective measure, resembled tenuous proxies for temperature and chemical concentrations, with very poor time resolution and very large error bars.
The “climate models” used today consume enormous resources to do a demonstrably bad job of predicting even short-term changes on the decade scale, with worldwide initial data supposedly carefully recorded and preserved from millions of direct measurements with highly accurate modern equipment. But they are claiming that they have a climate model that does a much better job with a single time series of extremely crude data tens of millions of years old, and running over time scales orders of magnitudes larger? It is computationally impossible for them to run the *same* models over these scales, so clearly they are using even simpler and less appropriate calculations, with even more coarse grids.
This result is less than meaningless. Is it any surprise that out pops a “result” completely consistent with Mr Schmidt’s evident prior bias on the matter?
NASA, once upon a time, was a pretty good science-based institution.
How the mighty have fallen.
I guess computer models cant even explain the past let alone the future. And this is what passes as “scientific” evidence nowadays as well!
From the desription in the article –
“To learn more about this sensitivity, Schmidt and his co-authors looked back 3 million years into Earth’s past. They used a computer model that describes the oceans and atmosphere to predict, retroactively, the climate of the mid-Pliocene — a period when both global temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were higher than today. The model substantially underestimated just how high temperatures would go. When the researchers adapted the model to include the effects of long-term climate changes in vegetation and ice sheets, they were able to get a much closer representation of the warming in the Pliocene era.”
Without being able to read the paper I am not fully justified in making this next comment. But as a matter of logic, maybe I can get away with it…..(!)
It appears that the authors ‘adapted’ the model and made assumptions which ‘fitted’ the picture. I’ve no problem with that, it’s what one does with models. But it says nothing about other ‘adaptations’ which might give an equally good fit.
This is not trivial. If one particular model ‘adaptation’ does the trick, (I know, I know – but I couldn’t resist) the authors may be justified in claiming to have identified one possibility. But that is as far as the logic can take them. It says nothing, for example, about a set of factors which is unknown to the authors. And since the whole enterprise is, presumably, to discover those things which are unknown …well, you can see the problem – it all becomes an exercise in circular logic.
Without more, such a process simply cannot eliminate possibilities which are unknown. But importantly, it can’t even eliminate an alternative known possibility!
If you can’t explain it with science, explain it with climate sensitivity. Another proof that climate sensitivity is not science these days.
I assume the model took into account the different configurations of the oceans and land masses due to tectonic plate movements some 2-5 million years ago?
Probably not. It was only in the late Jurassic the icecaps formed again due to land mass movement creating favourable conditions. Although 3 million years is a small timescale when moving continents around, that would be another “unaccounted for” variable.
Needless to say, the Carboniferous around 350Mya had some 20x the CO2 we have now, and the Jurassic around 200Mya some 10x CO2 of today, without ever a runaway greenhouse or fabled “tipping point” – ever. Life clearly thrived and delicate aragonite corals evolved in the Jurassic, in non-acid oceans since the oceans always lap upon alkaline rocks.
If the oceans had been acid at all, we wouldn’t have fossils from that era as they would all have been dissolved. The oceans all range in PH of 7.9 to 8.3, which is alkaline. PH neutral is 7.
Somehow the Mann-made alarmists forgot all these well established facts, notably a large proportion of them didn’t even bother to study the subject before greening up on their new found religion. Lemmings.
Aaarg! wrote 100 instead of 10 .. apologies. You can remove comment if you wish.
when reading a “Gavin” I find it always helps if you have these definitions handy.
Widely Accepted : A lot of people disagree with this.
Robust Statistical Approach : Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
Random: Selected
Conclusion : Speculation
Model Simulation: We made it up!
Welll I’m a bit confused here, some one set me right if I’m wrong.
Idea. CO2 absorbs ‘heat’ radiated off of the surface of the earth. This radiation is IR spectra light waves. Climate science says that this will continue indefinately (ie that the IR will keep going in etc etc). That the CO2 will heat indefinatly getting very ‘excited’ – heat is a measure of kinetic energy on the atomic/molecular level (nano meters movement not human sized meter level).
But I think what is missed is that as the temp goes up, the Hz of the emited IR radiation changes. This is important because the CO2 can only absorb specific frequencies of IR. At other frequencies, the CO2 is transparent. This would have the effect that up to a point there would be heating/insulating and then the CO2 can not absorb it. This is a basic principle of quantum physics – that only specific energys can get into and out of atoms and molecules.
Am I missing something here on the ‘quanta’ level that exsplains this