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
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.
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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.
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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.