By Steve Goddard
Back in January, our friends were crowing about the warmest satellite temperatures on record. But now they seem to have lost interest in satellites. I wonder why?
Data: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
It probably has to do with the fact that temperature anomalies are plummeting at a rate of 0.47 °C/year and that satellite temperatures in 2010 are showing no signs of setting a record.
The attention span of our alarmist friends seems to be getting shorter and shorter. They lock in on a week of warm temperatures on the east coast, a week of warm temperatures in Europe, a week of rapid melt in the Arctic. But they have completely lost the plot of the big picture.
The graph below shows Hansen’s A/B/C scenarios in black, and GISTEMP overlaid in red.
Note that actual GISTEMP is below all three of Hansen’s forecasts. According to RealClimate :
Scenario B was roughly a linear increase in forcings, and Scenario C was similar to B, but had close to constant forcings from 2000 onwards. Scenario B and C had an ‘El Chichon’ sized volcanic eruption in 1995. Essentially, a high, middle and low estimate were chosen to bracket the set of possibilities. Hansen specifically stated that he thought the middle scenario (B) the “most plausible”.
In other words, actual temperature rise has been less than Hansen forecast – even if there was a huge volcanic eruption in the 1990s, and no new CO2 introduced over the past decade! We have fallen more than half a degree below Hansen’s “most plausible” scenario, even though CO2 emissions have risen faster than worst case.
Conclusions:
- We are not going to set a record this year (for the whole year)
- Hansen has vastly overestimated climate sensitivity
- Temperatures have risen slower than Hansen forecast for a carbon free 21st century
So what exactly is it that these folks are still worried about?
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Geo:
I’m pretty sure Scenario A and B are essentially the same with ‘B’ having some (palusible) volcanic negative forcings. That’s it. Both scenarios assumed continued “business as usual” CO2 increases. Only ‘C’ held CO2 constant after Y2K….
geo says:
First of all, what you need to look at is not the change in slope but the change in 2nd derivative. More specifically, what you need to look at is the rate at which anthropogenic CO2 emissions grow year-over-year. Hansen spells out in his scientific paper exactly what rate he assumed for each case. (I believe that Scenario A assumed 2% growth each year whereas Scenario B assumed 1%, or something like that…You have to check the scientific paper.)
Second of all, it is more than just Co2 that matters: Methane concentrations leveled off for a while and that caused the forcing due to methane to be less than expected. Also, Scenario A assumed no major volcanic eruptions while B and C assumed one major volcanic eruption in the mid-90s. In fact, we had the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the early 90s which I believe was actually somewhat larger than the size of the eruption that Hansen had assumed in Scenarios B and C.
A carefully analysis of the forcings for each scenario shows that the total forcings fall at or even a bit below those assumed for Scenario B, so that is the most correct one to compare to.
R. Gates says:
July 21, 2010 at 5:17 pm
Have you considered that you might come across, at least in writing, as a [snip]? I am sure you are not but lecturing other people on how they think or feel puts you in grave danger of encouraging them to think you might be.
[reply] Please address the ideas and try to avoid personalising the debate. It wasn’t a rude insult, but still, try to avoid it. Thanks RT-mod
Richard M says:
No, what I am saying is that it is pretty ridiculous to blame the person yelling fire when there really is a fire, just because he predicted that the flames would shoot 10 meters into the air whereas it looks like at the moment they are only shooting 7.7 meters into the air. This is especially true when all the other people back who were telling us that there was no fire at all are getting a free pass.
Joel Shore says:
July 22, 2010 at 12:18 pm
just because he predicted that the flames would shoot 10 meters into the air whereas it looks like at the moment they are only shooting 7.7 meters into the air.
Can anyone tell me where this bonfire is because I could do with a warm up on this chilly July evening.
Thanks.
Tallbloke,
Yes, where is that “fire”? Everything observed today can be explained through natural climate variability, since it has all happened many times over in the past.
geo says:
July 22, 2010 at 8:59 am
More Hansen 1988 (this time from his published paper, not his congressional testimony): “Scenario A assumes that growth rates of trace gas emissions typical of the 1970s and 1980s will continue indefinitely”. Well, that’s consistent with the “business as usual” phrase he used in front of Congress.
So go look at the Mauna Loa record here http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png Compare the slope for 1970-1990 and 1990-2010, and explain to me how there is some significant reduction in the growth rate to justify a “Scenario B” result?
I suggest again that you read the report, note Hansen wrote: “Scenario A assumes that growth rates of trace gas emissions typical of the 1970s and 1980s will continue indefinitely”, he did not write “Scenario A assumes that growth rates of CO2 typical of the 1970s and 1980s will continue indefinitely”, that’s the whole point of the report. You have made the same mistake that McIntyre made in Jan 2008, if you want to find out without reading the paper you can read my contributions to a sequence of threads on this subject at CA then. I’m not going to write a more detailed post here because of the vagaries of the moderation here, they’ve already wasted enough of my time yesterday.
Billy Liar says:
July 22, 2010 at 12:16 pm
R. Gates says:
July 21, 2010 at 5:17 pm
[reply] Please address the ideas and try to avoid personalising the debate. It wasn’t a rude insult, but still, try to avoid it. Thanks RT-mod
How about you pass that message on to your main agent provocateur here, Steve Goddard. It’s a bit rich snipping others while you allow him free rein!
I’m still waiting for a reply to my earlier question.
REPLY: Phil, how about you dial it back a bit? I’m getting rather tired of your provocateurism also. Don’t like it, don’t visit. -Anthony
OK, I search Climate Audit (his record keeping is immaculate) and found this entry on Hansen’s scenarios: http://climateaudit.org/2008/01/24/hansen-1988-details-of-forcing-projections/
“Scenario A assumes that CO2 emissions will grow 1.5% per year and that CFC emission will grow 1.5% per year. Scenario B assumes constant future emissions. If populations increase, Scenario B requires emissions per capita to decrease. Scenario C has drastic cuts in emissions by the year 2000, with CFC emissions eliminated entirely and other trace gas emissions reduced to a level where they just balance their sinks. These scenarios are designed to cover a very broad range of cases. If I were forced to choose one as the most plausible, I would say Scenario B. My guess is that the world is now probably following a course that will take it somewhere between A and B. (p. 51)”
So, I ake this to mean the following:
A) busuness as usaul with no changes in emissions
B) holding emissions constant after a certain date.
C) drastic cut in emissions by 2000.
In reality, which scenario has the world followed since 1988? I’d say we are much, much closer to the ‘A’ scenario in terms of our emissions, right? I mean, we haven’t done a d@mn thing to curb CO2 output. But lets just say we really did shoot between A and B like Hansen said. The ACTUAL TEMPERTURE MEASUREMENTS are not even close to those predicted “most likely” scenarios. Not even in the ballpark…
Yes, I had noticed a real lack of comments about the Satellites too and had wondered why… 🙂
OT but in the same category of “when the data doesn’t support the cause it gets real quiet”. I just posted the following on RC in the entry by Tamino on the “Hockey Stick Illusion” and do NOT expect it to get past moderation.
—–
I am currently reading “The Hockey Stick Illusion” and am enjoying it.
Speaking of graphs…it must be frustrating to see that the general public is beginning to see through the empty “science” (and very *full* politics) espoused here by Tamino and friends as evidenced by the relative rankings of your web site and Tamino’s blog when compared to the Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre sites:
Alexa Rankings
Both of the skeptic sites beat both of your sites and the esteemed wattsupwiththat.com has about 5 *times* the traffic as yours! I know you won’t post this inconvenient truth as this site doesn’t like hard numbers but hopefully they will give you reason to consider if you might have been hoodwinked yourself in all this AGW mess.
Joel Shore says:
July 22, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Using your fire analogy it would be important on how the fire started not that the flames are 7.7 or 10 m high. Hansen calls it arson. I say started by lightening and since it is part of nature in the big forest it will go out by itself.
All the posts regarding the 0.1 °C vs. 0.6 °C percentage errors are totally irrelevent and confusing to the topic at hand (i.e. accuracy of Hansens 1988 model run). The actual warming that has occurred from 1987 (the last full year of instrumentation data prior to Hansens paper) and now isn’t 0.1 °C. Depending on how you analyze the data the observed warming from 1987 to now is between 0.31 °C and 0.45 °C.
The formula for percent error is:
% error = |actual value – theoretic value| / (theoretic value) * 100
|0.31 – 0.6| / 0.6 * 100 = 48.3%
|0.45 – 0.6| / 0.6 * 100 = 25.0%
The combined GISS (Hansens dataset) Land-Ocean global temperature anomaly in 1987 was 0.26 °C. The 2009 anomaly was 0.57 °C. That’s a warming of 0.31 °C. However, if you include 2010 (the first 6 months average to 0.71 °C) the warming would be 0.45 °C.
But given the noise in the data, using single years for comparisons isn’t the right approach. A better method would be to fit a trendline on the data and compare it’s value in 1987 and now. I fit a trendline to the data from 1969 through 2009 and found the warming to be 0.35 °C.
Another approach would be to use 5 year averages. The 5-yr average ending in 1987 was 0.16 °C and in 2009 it was 0.55 °C, for an actual warming of 0.39 °C.
Joel Shore says:
July 22, 2010 at 12:18 pm
No, what I am saying is that it is pretty ridiculous to blame the person yelling fire when there really is a fire, just because he predicted that the flames would shoot 10 meters into the air whereas it looks like at the moment they are only shooting 7.7 meters into the air. This is especially true when all the other people back who were telling us that there was no fire at all are getting a free pass.
*******************
The big bugaboo of the climate alarmists is sea level rise. The other supposed bad effects don’t seem to be happening at all, like increased tornadoes floods etc.
Actually despite the panic the oceans are rising at a rate of 3 MM per year or 1 cigarette length in 30 years. Since 2005 the rate has gone to almost zero.
This is according to that bastion of big oil the U of Colorado.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Where is all of the water going from the glaciers, Greenland and Iceland going and why do we care ?
Actually nothing even mildly frightening is happening
So where is this fire you speak of ?
stevengoddard,
“The GISS trend line and predictions are all Hansen’s. If you don’t like them, talk to him about it.
Trying to blame me for Hansen’s mis-predictions is pretty ridiculous.”
Show me where Hansen predicted that the global temperature measured by satellites for July 17, 2010 would be 0.6 degrees Celsius above the previous record for that date – I don’t see that in any of the figures in your post. You can’t because he didn’t make any such prediction and yet asserting that he had was the implicit basis of your claim that he had made a 600% error.
Smokey, your CO2 list here is pretty impressive;
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a5e507c9970c-pi
Now, from a CAGW’ers point of view, one would probably immediately say that the average of all these papers must be the true value. After first removing the most radical values first, of course.
Like the IPCC value, for example.
Phil. says:
July 22, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Billy Liar says:
July 22, 2010 at 12:16 pm
REPLY: Phil, how about you dial it back a bit? I’m getting rather tired of your provocateurism also. Don’t like it, don’t visit. -Anthony
That’s easily fixed, tell Goddard to ‘fess up when he makes mistakes instead of lashing out at posters who pick him up on it. Particularly like in this thread where he bald-faced lies about what he said when anyone can see that I quoted him correctly. He’s behaving like a loose cannon like he did over the ‘CO2 freezing’ issue, you need to rein him in again. This is supposed to be a science blog.
REPLY: Y’know Phil, when you spout that ‘This is supposed to be a science blog.” claptrap, I wonder what your true motivations are. You are supposed to be an academic at a major university. Yet you spend several hours a day in a field not related to your work there anonymously harping on people here. You now have 1736 comments on WUWT, going back to Feb 2nd, 2008. That volume makes me wonder if you secured a grant just for the purpose of rebuttal here because I sure can’t see your university condoning that much time spent on a personal issue.
Given that, you could do with a bit of dial back yourself.
I agree, everybody could benefit from better manners, more tact, and less sniping. Frankly I’m tired of it all on this thread from both sides. As an academic, set an example. Everybody else, Goddard included: Use more tact, dial it back, and reap the benefits that will bring. – Anthony
Joel Shore says:
July 22, 2010 at 12:18 pm
No, what I am saying is that it is pretty ridiculous to blame the person yelling fire when there really is a fire, just because he predicted that the flames would shoot 10 meters into the air whereas it looks like at the moment they are only shooting 7.7 meters into the air. This is especially true when all the other people back who were telling us that there was no fire at all are getting a free pass.
Yes sirree, it’s been a pretty devastating fire there, Joel. Destruction everywhere you look. Your remarks keep getting funnier every time you try to justify the last one. Time to accept the truth. As of 2010, the AGW alarmism (aka the fire) is a complete and total bust. Hansen was wrong as are all his supporters. Get over it.
What makes this even funnier is no one know what part of the equation natural climate changes play. Clearly, there are many factors that would tend to make a logical person think that *some* natural warming should have occurred through about 2005. So, this makes Hansen’s claims even worse. He was aided by nature and still missed by a mile.
MattN says:
July 22, 2010 at 1:04 pm
So, I ake this to mean the following:
A) busuness as usaul with no changes in emissions
B) holding emissions constant after a certain date.
C) drastic cut in emissions by 2000.
In reality, which scenario has the world followed since 1988? I’d say we are much, much closer to the ‘A’ scenario in terms of our emissions, right? I mean, we haven’t done a d@mn thing to curb CO2 output. But lets just say we really did shoot between A and B like Hansen said. The ACTUAL TEMPERTURE MEASUREMENTS are not even close to those predicted “most likely” scenarios. Not even in the ballpark…
Most of the increase by 2010 was projected to be due to the other trace gases, not CO2. Scenario C is the best match to what has happened to Freons, CH4 etc.
John M says:
July 21, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Smokey, I have another comment about your list of CO2 papers;
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a5e507c9970c-pi
Should all these authors now be added to the Black-List?
Each and every one of them has participated in a small torpedo into the CAGW religion.
So its only fair they get punished for their sins, me thinks.
netdr says:
July 22, 2010 at 1:21 pm
“Actually despite the panic the oceans are rising at a rate of 3 MM per year or 1 cigarette length in 30 years. Since 2005 the rate has gone to almost zero.”
Even Al Gore has lost his fear and bought a sea-side mansion. As Al Gore received a Nobel Prize together with the IPCC, he must be quite a trusted person in AGW circles – at least there was no anomisity between him and Rajendra K. Pachauri visible during the ceremony.
So if even Al Gore loses his fear from sea level rise, it can’t be as bad as Hansen predicted, right? Do the AGW crowd agree so far? Or was that too nasty?
animosity, not anomisity – 😉
Richard S. Courtney
Your attempt at rebuttal is of no relevance to my point which was about the point estimates of global temperature in the present day. But by way of rebutting yours, Ancient natural cycles are irrelevant for attributing recent global warming to humans.
tallbloke
All I was doing was accounting for the difference between the satellite data and the surface data. Your explanation (and assumption that there’s no significant error term in the measureents), and my simplified explanation (and the assumption that there is a significant systematic error term) both are coherent, and do not create a need to question the scientific consensus.
Over in Australia the ruling Labor party (the party of global warming alarm) just sacked the sitting Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Rudd was Australia’s version of Al Gore. It became clear that Labor could not win the next election with Rudd in charge.
(I did enjoy watching him cry on national television when he had to resign).
Now he’s sniping from the sidelines and his political enemies are firing back. The story that is all over the news today is that during his entire time in office (about 2 years) all Rudd wanted to do was get himself a job at the UN. He’s a great mate of Ban Kai Moon.
We will have a general election in a few weeks and Climate Change is a big issue.
So his replacement, Julia Gillard (from the Socialist Left) has a new policy on Climate Change. She is going to select 200 or so Australians (randomly she says) to determine the community consensus on Climate Change. This will then become the governments official scientific position. That’s how low Science has fallen in my country.
Why don’t we all use this graph to declare victory over global warming. Although no world wide laws have been passed, all our world wide conciousnesses have been raised so that our individual uncoerced actions have sloved the greenhouse warming problem. We all simulataniously realized that trace gases other than CO2 were the real problem and we have curtailed their use. A victory for the IPCC (which can now be dissolved). It shows that mankind will do the right thing if we have the right information. Now we can move on to other problems, as suggested by Lomberg and others.