[note, footnote links will only work if you go to original article ~ ctm]
The following is Patrick Frank’s controversial article challenging data and climate models on global warming. Patrick Frank is a Ph.D. chemist with more than 50 peer-reviewed articles. He has previously published in Skeptic on the noble savage myth, as well as in Theology and Science on the designer universe myth and in Free Inquiry, with Thomas H. Ray, on the science is philosophy myth.A Climate of Belief
The claim that anthropogenic CO2 is responsible for the current warming of Earth climate is scientifically insupportable because climate models are unreliable
by Patrick Frank
“He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.”
— John McCarthy1
“The latest scientific data confirm that the earth’s climate is rapidly changing. … The cause? A thickening layer of carbon dioxide pollution, mostly from power plants and automobiles, that traps heat in the atmosphere. … [A]verage U.S. temperatures could rise another 3 to 9 degrees by the end of the century … Sea levels will rise, [and h]eat waves will be more frequent and more intense. Droughts and wildfires will occur more often. Disease-carrying mosquitoes will expand their range. And species will be pushed to extinction.”
So says the National Resources Defense Council,2 with agreement by the Sierra Club,3 Greenpeace,4 National Geographic,5 the US National Academy of Sciences,6 and the US Congressional House leadership.7 Concurrent views are widespread,8 as a visit to the internet or any good bookstore will verify.
Since at least the 1995 Second Assessment Report, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been making increasingly assured statements that human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2) is influencing the climate, and is the chief cause of the global warming trend in evidence since about 1900. The current level of atmospheric CO2 is about 390 parts per million by volume (ppmv), or 0.039% by volume of the atmosphere, and in 1900 was about 295 ppmv. If the 20th century trend continues unabated, by about 2050 atmospheric CO2 will have doubled to about 600 ppmv. This is the basis for the usual “doubled CO2” scenario.
Doubled CO2 is a bench-mark for climate scientists in evaluating greenhouse warming. Earth receives about 342 watts per square meter (W/m2) of incoming solar energy, and all of this energy eventually finds its way back out into space. However, CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, most notably water vapor, absorb some of the outgoing energy and warm the atmosphere. This is the greenhouse effect. Without it Earth’s average surface temperature would be a frigid -19°C (-2.2 F). With it, the surface warms to about +14°C (57 F) overall, making Earth habitable.9
With more CO2, more outgoing radiant energy is absorbed, changing the thermal dynamics of the atmosphere. All the extra greenhouse gasses that have entered the atmosphere since 1900, including CO2, equate to an extra 2.7 W/m2 of energy absorption by the atmosphere.10 This is the worrisome greenhouse effect.
On February 2, 2007, the IPCC released the Working Group I (WGI) “Summary for Policymakers” (SPM) report on Earth climate,11 which is an executive summary of the science supporting the predictions quoted above. The full “Fourth Assessment Report” (4AR) came out in sections during 2007.
Figure 1 shows a black-and-white version of the “Special Report on Emission Scenarios” (SRES) Figure SPM-5 of the IPCC WGI, which projects the future of global average temperatures. These projections12 were made using General Circulation Models (GCMs). GCMs are computer programs that calculate the physical manifestations of climate, including how Earth systems such as the world oceans, the polar ice caps, and the atmosphere dynamically respond to various forcings. Forcings and feedbacks are the elements that inject or mediate energy flux in the climate system, and include sunlight, ocean currents, storms and clouds, the albedo (the reflectivity of Earth), and the greenhouse gasses water vapor, CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons.
In Figure 1, the B1 scenario assumes that atmospheric CO2 will level off at 600 ppmv, A1B assumes growth to 850 ppmv, and A2 reaches its maximum at a pessimistic 1250 ppmv. The “Year 2000” scenario optimistically reflects CO2stabilized at 390 ppmv.
The original caption to Figure SPM-5 said, in part: “Solid lines are multi-model global averages of surface warming (relative to 1980–99) for the scenarios A2, A1B and B1, shown as continuations of the 20th century simulations. Shading denotes the plus/minus one standard deviation range of individual model annual averages.”
Well and good. We look at the projections and see that the error bars don’t make much difference. No matter what, global temperatures are predicted to increase significantly during the 21st century. A little cloud of despair impinges with the realization that there is no way at all that atmospheric CO2 will be stabilized at its present level. The Year 2000 scenario is there only for contrast. The science is in order here, and we can look forward to a 21st century of human-made climate warming, with all its attendant dangers. Are you feeling guilty yet?
But maybe things aren’t so cut-and-dried. In 2001, a paper published in the journal Climate Research13 candidly discussed uncertainties in the physics that informs the GCMs. This paper was very controversial and incited a debate.14But for all that was controverted, the basic physical uncertainties were not disputed. It turns out that uncertainties in the energetic responses of Earth climate systems are more than 10 times larger than the entire energetic effect of increased CO2.15 If the uncertainty is larger than the effect, the effect itself becomes moot. If the effect itself is debatable, then what is the IPCC talking about? And from where comes the certainty of a large CO2 impact on climate?
With that in mind, look again at the IPCC Legend for Figure SPM-5. It reports that the “[s]hading denotes the plus/minus one standard deviation range of individual model annual averages.” The lines on the Figure represent averages of the annual GCM projected temperatures. The Legend is saying that 68% of the time (one standard deviation), the projections of the models will fall within the shaded regions. It’s not saying that the shaded regions display the physical reliability of the projections. The shaded regions aren’t telling us anything about the physical uncertainty of temperature predictions. They’re telling us about the numerical instability of climate models. The message of the Legend is that climate models won’t produce exactly the same trend twice. They’re just guaranteed to get within the shadings 68% of the time.16
This point is so important that it bears a simple illustration to make it very clear. Suppose I had a computer model of common arithmetic that said 2+2=5±0.1. Every time I ran the model, there was a 68% chance that the result of 2+2 would be within 0.1 unit of 5. My shaded region would be ±0.1 unit wide. If 40 research groups had 40 slightly different computer models of arithmetic that gave similar results, we could all congratulate ourselves on a consensus. Suppose that after much work, we improved our models so that they gave 2+2=5±0.01. We could then claim our models were 10 times better than before. But they’d all be exactly as wrong as before, too, because exact arithmetic proves that 2+2=4. This example illustrates the critical difference between precision and accuracy.
In Figure 1, the shaded regions are about the calculational imprecision of the computer models. They are not about the physical accuracy of the projections. They don’t tell us anything about physical accuracy. But physical accuracy — reliability — is always what we’re looking for in a prediction about future real-world events. It’s on this point — the physical accuracy of General Circulation Models — that the rest of this article will dwell.
h/t dbstealey
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“SteveSadlov says:
June 23, 2010 at 12:56 pm
RE: Dave Springer says:
June 23, 2010 at 10:43 am
And taking it in reverse, with a reduction in ppCO2, at some point a “cliff” is reached and the Earth becomes a very nasty place. We are much closer to that cliff now than we were 100MYBP.”
Good demonstration of the level of understanding of dynamic systems in AGW circles. “A cliff is reached”. “We fall over the cliff”. Yeah yeah… Take care not to stumble over a tipping point on your way to the cliff or you’ll fall over.
“No one seems to ever have directly assessed the total physical reliability of a GCM by propagating the parameter uncertainties through it. In the usual physical sciences, an analysis like this is required practice.” – Dr. Frank
To my thinking this is the smoking gun in the whole business – albeit firing blanks perhaps. My father, a chemical engineer, had a memorable story pertinent to this point. He was once tasked with designing a cooling tower. On crunching the maths he found, the tower should be 6 inches high. Anticipating the ‘political’ furore this might cause, he recalculated the equations taking into account the likely variances of the inputs. The cooling tower was indeed built – but it was 60 feet high.
Roald,
The undifferentiated slip along California’s major fault shows that since the “Big One” of 1909 a large part of California is trying to move to Alaska at a rate faster than the sea is projected to rise from climate change. Despite the fact this fault will go with devastating results- California continues to focus (or sacrifice) its energy on climate change impacts. Why?
Given the “fact” that we have or will exceed a climate tipping point why has none of the nearly trillion dollar stimulus been directed at building sea walls to prevent the inevitable inundation of our coasts, new reservoirs for the droughts, flood control and new bomb shelters for Barbara Boxer’s climate wars? Why has no group called for infrastructure hardening to protect us? (When they do I might even start to pay attention.)
Why does Al Gore by seaside property?
Even I don’t think politicians are that stupid– they don’t believe it either. They are very well aware there is no earthquake lobby to generate campaign contributions and by hardening our infrastructure we would lessen the fear and “waste the crisis.” In fact if they believe in these disasters and are not authorizing projects to protect us – should they not be held criminally liable?
Given the paleo record shows that North America has been hit by crippling droughts, hurricanes, cold and famine- why is only human caused CO2 disaster worthy of our attention and money? Perhaps the greatest danger of AGW is the message being sold to the public that if we control CO2 we no longer need to worry about climate or weather.
And when the environmental movement was in the rapture of “we are all going to die from global cooling” why wasn’t there an outcry to build more fossil fuel plants?
Here is a simpler question given that the environmental sciences (including climate) are relatively young and deals with highly chaotic systems– how is it that not a single environmental science position -from(DDT to global warming- once claimed by the Sierra Club or EPA to be true has ever been found later to be wrong? (Worse than we thought does not count) Tell me statistically how this is possible if these were truly sciences.
As Will Rogers said “sometimes the problem ain’t what we don’t know- its what we know that ain’t so.”
Roald says “And even without GCMs we know we have a problem with global warming.” To use your own expression from further up thread Roald “don’t put words in my mouth” You may know that. I don’t. To me it seems very likely that we have now entered a period of global cooling that should last at least 30 years. However we may have entered the cooling period in ca 1945, and it may last about 90 years from then, or we may have entered the cooling in ca 3000 BC, and it may last 100,000 years. All I know is that we have recently experienced a short period of warming that seems to have stopped warming about 10 years ago. I suspect that a little CO2 induced warming, if indeed such exists, will be very welcome in a very few years.
I think it is important to put the known climate data into its proper perspective instead of looking at a snapshot from 1900.
This is the annual mean CET (Central England Temperature) from 1659.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jdrake/Questioning_Climate/_sgg/m2_1.htm
This by month;
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jdrake/Questioning_Climate/_sgg/m2m1_1.htm
As you can see, throughout the record the temperatures have been warming-centuries before the input of Co2 by man. The period around 1700-1730 shows a particularly notable upturn in temperatures.
This British instrumental record is backed up by various other records, such as this one from Uppsala.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/how-long-is-a-long-temperature-history/
We are fortunate with this record- from our friend Arrhenius’s home town- to have the botanical garden records as well. These take us back to around 1695. Around 1710 they talk about planting outside some quite exotic plants-together with mulberries.
Here are some additional linear regressions for some of the oldest data sets in the world-all show the same slight warming trend over centuries.
http://i47.tinypic.com/2zgt4ly.jpg
http://i45.tinypic.com/125rs3m.jpg
So the temperature rise can be traced back to at least 1690, and if we look further back, before the English Civil War, we can know that the coldest part of this second phase of the LIA occurred in the early part of the 17th Century, so we can actually trace that rise from around 1610.
The modern GISS record merely ‘plugs’ into the end of this well documented, centuries long, slow and gentle rise. The Giss record curiously started from a known trough in temperatures around 1880 thereby exaggerating the warming trend.
Co2 and CET temperature trend is combined here.
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a7c87805970b-pi
This all suggests to me that CO2 is a very weak climate driver that is overwhelmed by natural variability.
Historic instrumental temperature records can be found here on my web site together with a variety of related articles.
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
Tonyb
“DirkH says:
[…]
Good demonstration of the level of understanding of dynamic systems in AGW circles. “A cliff is reached”. “We fall over the cliff”. Yeah yeah… Take care not to stumble over a tipping point on your way to the cliff or you’ll fall over.”
What i wanted to say is: If negative feedbacks stabilize the climate, they do it in both ways – preventing overheating as well as catastrophic cooling. It’s no use answering AGW alarmism with a new global cooling dystopia IMHO. That would only be used as an opportunity by your people like Emanuel, Schneider or Strong.
Pat Moffitt: “Why does Al Gore b(u)y seaside property?”
Pure magnanimity. He’s willing to take the financial hit, as the oceans rise, in order to prevent the suffering of the previous owner.
Andrew30 says: June 23, 2010 at 12:36 pm
“There are Julys in history that are cooler than some Januarys in history.”
That would be interesting indeed, but it wouldn’t matter if it were true. Just like Frank you seem to confuse weather and singular events with climate and long-time trends.
“Chicago is usually colder than Houston.”, this contains the word “usually”, so it is a matter of opinion what the term “usually’” means in this context since there is no time frame given, therefore this too is not a fact but an opinion.”
You talk like a lawyer. This not about semantics but about statistical means, as it the climate. Perhaps I should have said that Barrow, Alaska is colder than Miami, Florida. Or is this an opinion, too?
The problem with many ‘sceptics’ is they don’t have a theory for global warming. Once they say it’s the sun, then it’s the clouds, another time it’s definitely about cosmic rays or dust. Sometimes the sceptics claim there’s no warming at all. Perhaps you should make up your mind instead of propagating fear, uncertainty and doubt.
kwik says:June 23, 2010 at 12:56 pm
“Roald says:June 23, 2010 at 10:24 am
“I’d appreciate if you stopped putting words in my mouth. ”
I think you said;
“Perhaps it’s worth mentioning that some changes (e.g. sea level rise, Arctic melt) are running faster than predicted by the 2007 Assessment Report.”
Why is Arctic melt of importance in conjunction with “e.g. sea level rise” , with a comma in between? Unless the intention that we should couple them together to a global alarm regarding CO2?”
I’ll say it just once more. I never said that Arctic sea ice melt leads to sea level rise. No hint that one causes the other. Perhaps you can point it out to me if I’m missing something. I only said that both were consequences of global forming.
mkelly wrote:
Sir, you should have the black body radiation formula.
Wein’ Law
Beer’s is good
Kirshoff’s Law
specific heat formula
specific charts for various gases and water
These will get you started. But understand the black body radiation formula used is really for a cavity. So we use it wrong.
Thanks. But I’ve already been (mis?)using the black body formula, and specific heats of various substances, in my model so far. I just haven’t figured out how to work out how much energy atmospheric air absorbs from solar or terrestrial radiation. I’m supposing (perhaps wrongly) that the further that such radiation has to travel through the atmosphere, the more of it is absorbed. And that the denser the atmosphere, the more is absorbed too.
Jeff Green says:
June 23, 2010 at 11:46 am.
“Hindcasting does give a strong indicator of the model’s ability to reasonably recreat energy balance in the earth’s atmosphere. This has been shown over and over on many websites. Taking co2 out of the equation in modeling and all models fail to reproduce the temperatures of the past. Put co2 back in and the hindcat is resonably accurate.”
Sorry Jeff, but this is a false premise.
As our climate system has many poorly measured variables and is ultimately driven by deterministic chaos, even a perfect match to past climate (which none of the current models come close to) is no guarantee that future predictions will be correct. In fact none of the models predicted the last 15 years which have had no statistically significant global warming, despite increased levels of CO2. The current crop of models are a useful learning tool, but have no predictive power.
It’s worth reading through Patrick Frank’s post again; there are many lessons to be learned.
Peter Pearson says:
June 23, 2010 at 8:04 am
Ugh: I think he means 2+2=5 ± 1, not ±0.1.
No he doesn’t. He is making the point that precision is not accuracy. If 30 models agree that 2+2=5+/-0.1 then the fact they all agree within a narrow range doesn’t change the fact that they are all wrong.
@ur momisugly Die Zauberflotist
Go away. You are being stupid. Think of some other reason and stop trolling.
Seriously. GO AWAY.
All the models are unable to predict recent warming without taking rising CO2 levels into account.
What difference does that make if there’s more physical uncertainty in the assumptions than unpredicted warming ? This is “correlation, therefore causation” dressed up a bit.
Roald says: June 23, 2010 at 2:00 pm
“Just like Frank you seem to confuse weather and singular events with climate and long-time trends.”
A computer program that is written with the belief that January in the Northern hemisphere is always colder that July in the Northern hemisphere contains a fact that is not found in nature.
Such a program will never produce a January that is warmer than a July, no mater how long you run the program.
A computer program written with the belief that CO2 drives temperature will always show that CO2 drives temperature.
This not about semantics, it is about bias, pre-conceived notions and assumption about future events, none of which are facts.
Roald says:
My vote for quote of the week!
Perhaps unintentionally, Roald, you have added a tremendous amount of levity to WUWT lately. Thanks!
Andrew30 says: June 23, 2010 at 2:42 pm
“A computer program that is written with the belief that January in the Northern hemisphere is always colder that July in the Northern hemisphere contains a fact that is not found in nature.”
Et tu, Andrew30? You are also putting words in my mouth. I said we (I) don’t need a computer model to assert that July is warmer than January in the northern hemisphere. This assertion is based on physical and astronomical realites. I didn’t say July is always warmer than January, unlikely this may be. What the heck, I would expect some computer models to produce extreme outliers given a long enough timeframe. There’s no inherent belief. But you understand the difference between singular events and a long-time trend, don’t you? You understand that Phoenix, Arizona has a desert climate, even if it gets snow once in a blue moon?
Climate isn’t a chaotic system.
@CodeTech,
It was intentional, but I doubt many people here get the irony.
I was also going to comment on Roald’s post. Code Tech was quicker on the draw. Roald said:
There are many shades of opinion among skeptics simply because we know that we don’t have all the answers, so Roald’s statement is just a red herring along with projection; he’s trying to frame the debate according to his rules, while doing what alarmists always do: spreading FUD.
For Roald’s benefit, a large part of the current warming is due to the rebound from the Little Ice Age [LIA].
Temperatures were significantly cooler during the LIA, as we can see from contemporary paintings of Washington crossing a Delaware river while passing big chunks of ice, and from eyewitness accounts of a frozen Thames.
A small part of the warming is probably due to CO2. But what is left out of that explanation is the fact that a slightly warmer planet is good for the biosphere. Vast tracts of land in Mongolia and Siberia would become immensely more productive with even a 1°C rise, and the capacity of the atmosphere to hold more moisture would certainly reduce droughts.
The other factors mentioned by Roald may also have some effect; in fact, clouds probably have a much greater negative forcing than a doubling of CO2.
Scientific skeptics understand that there are multiple reasons for temperature fluctuations, some that we don’t understand — while climate alarmists hang their hats almost entirely on CO2, professing with unscientific certainty that it is the driver of the climate. Big mistake. The more we learn, the more insignificant we see that the effect of CO2 has.
@Roy UK
What can I say? I love the man. But, thank you for breaking your vow of silence in order to make that observation/suggestion.
‘smatter Roy? Still long BP?
Peter B in Indianapolis writes
“we wasted trillions of dollars which they now have to repay,”
This is a very common sceptical argument. For some reason, sceptics often seem to believe that it will cost “trillions of dollars” more to use an energy system which uses less natural resources than one that uses less. This is complete nonsense, of course. Using less energy will always be cheaper than using more. How that translates into money has nothing to do with reality, since money – in contrast to oil and coal – does not actually exist in the real world. Money is simply a matter of accounting, nothing else. Or do sceptics really believe that USA is poor as long as it possesses large reserves of oil and coal, and very rich only when it has consumed every last watt-hour of these energy sources?
Roald says: June 23, 2010 at 3:04 pm
“You are also putting words in my mouth.”
No just reading and quoting exactly what you wrote.
What you wrote was:
“In the northern hemisphere, July is warmer than January”
“is warmer than January”. You must have accidentally used the absolute term, is; when you meant something else.
Given that you had previously indicated:
“Perhaps I expressed myself poorly”
I should have assumed that you really did not have a complete and expressive vocabulary and cut you some slack. If this is a recurring problem, I would suggest you proofread or get someone you trust to proofread your comments prior to posting.
In future when reading your comments I will assume that they are a private coded conversation between your mind and your eyes and that the comments are not really meant to be interpreted as they have been written.
Roald says:
June 23, 2010 at 12:05 pm
@PeterB in Indianapolis
Perhaps I expressed myself poorly. What I meant was that even without the models there’s a lot we can tell about climate. In the northern hemisphere, July is warmer than January, and Chicago is usually colder than Houston. And even without GCMs we know we have a problem with global warming.
It’s 88 here in Chicago, and 86 in Houston.
Lovely article, perhaps a series of “Golden Oldies” would be good for discussion
Smokey and Tenuc:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm
There are various difficulties in predicting future climate. The behaviour of the sun is difficult to predict. Short-term disturbances like El Nino or volcanic eruptions are difficult to model. Nevertheless, the major forcings that drive climate are well understood. In 1988, James Hansen projected future temperature trends (Hansen 1988). Those initial projections show good agreement with subsequent observations (Hansen 2006).
Figure 2: Global surface temperature computed for scenarios A, B, and C, compared with two analyses of observational data (Hansen 2006).
—————————————————————————————
Back in 1988 James Hansen already did the trick. THere are uncertainties as to how much co2 will be added. Hansen got it right and even got the volcano forcing right. That was from a model that he wrote himself.
The models are better now.