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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That’s kind of a semantic thing. The way you put it is technically correct.
Hypotheses are tested by experiments. In this case, the “hypothesis” was Hansen’s model prediction and the “experiment” was the actual ΔT from 1988-2009.
Hansen is NASA’s top climate science official… But I’m not sure if it’s fair to blame NASA for Hansen’s work.
“Your claim that “Scenario B shoots up this year, then drops back and roughly flatlines for 5 years” is incorrect”
Here are the numbers:
2009 0.873
2010 1.035
2011 0.971
In 2010 the scenario shoots up by .16C then drops back 0.06C, losing over 1/3 of that rise. The 2010-2016 average is then 1.01C.
But bickering about individual years is futile; no single year can falsify the model. Indeed, I certainly agree that denying that the IPCC A1F1 projection was breathtakingly accurate is not an option.
R. Gates says:
July 22, 2010 at 7:13 am (Edit)
http://www.climate4you.com/
Click on Sun on the left hand side, and study the charts.
Try this chart on my site:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/nailing-the-solar-activity-global-temperature-divergence-lie/
Ref – John Blake says:
July 21, 2010 at 4:29 pm
“…Yet having willfully sabotaged global energy economies since the 1970s, climate hysterics such as Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth et al. continue to trumpet utterly failed hypotheses in bad faith under false pretenses, always to the extreme detriment of honest scientific projects…. From the destruction of post-Enlightenment industrial/scientific civilization, nothing will dissuade them– nothing. In sheer self-defense, we wonder: What is to be done?”
_______________________
Not to worry. Like the Dark Ages, the Plague, etc., etc., this too will end. Have a feeling that when it does, there’ll be a lot less of us than there is now. But… all this is really just background, it’s today, those we live, love, hate, and work with the most, and the little things in life that matter most. Smile! Stop for a moment! Look around! Smell the roses;-)
Phil–
Hansen in his testimony described Scenario A as “Business as usual”. In what way has “business as usual” been deviated from since 1988 in any impactful way re limiting CO2 growth in the atmosphere? Perhaps you can convince me of what a great job we’ve done as a race since 1988 after all in spite of what I read at alarmist sites.
Phil. says:
July 22, 2010 at 6:53 am
[reply] Read the blog policy. RT-mod
Enlighten me, what was wrong with the post on Hansen’s report, specifically?
Possible new satellite to be launched by UK – This MUST provide open access
to the climate info element of it’s function.
If the Met Office get hold of it we are sunk !!
http://www.thegwpf.org/the-observatory/1287-exactly-what-we-need-uk-to-open-earth-observation-hub.html
R. Gates says:
July 22, 2010 at 7:13 am
You are getting confused, the educated are not expecting big falls in world temps to happen simultaneously during a protracted solar minimum. The climate system is influenced by solar output (which includes cloud cover), ocean cycles and the ENSO cycle, there is no need to factor in CO2.
You are cherry picking a couple of months that are part of the natural ENSO cycle which will increasingly be affected by cooler waters in the Pacific for the next 20 or so years. La Ninas will be stronger with El Ninos loosing strength, coupled with the possible impending solar grand minimum and the impending cool AO the writing is on the wall. The PDO cycle moves in sync with the temperature record, a weak Sun will only add to the cooling.
Your links for solar output are a bit outdated, maybe you should study my website, I don’t need to study your suggested charts. Your area of study might include the PDO etc, which you seem to be omitting.
Steve Goddard errs in calling Hansen’s A/B/C scenarios “forecasts.” Actually a scenario differs from a forecast. This difference has significant implications for climatology.
A scenario (aka “projection”) is a mathematical function that maps the time to the global average temperature anomaly. A “forecast” is an extrapolation to the future outcome of a statistical event. Were they to be defined, the complete set of these events would form the statistical population for the IPCC models. The IPCC has not yet identified this population.
A model for which the associated population is defined has the property which, in the philosophy of science, is called “falsifiability.” Falsifiability is the mark of a model that is “scientific” in nature. The IPCC models are not falsifiable, thus lying outside science.
Interest is nice but not effective. There exists the whole psychology of human development which is often completely ignored by ecology and environmentalists.
Environmentalists want people to care, but they don’t understand how and why a person might begin to care. Most of the world does not care. Most of the world is still struggling with achieving a Western standard of living and a Western level of equal rights for men and women as citizens of a free country.
Most Westerners don’t understand that to truly care about the world is a trans-ego development. Environmentalists are not past their own egos. I’m not being mean to them. They just underestimate what it really takes to transform people. It can’t be imposed by political power nor by restructuring the economy.
So, nice that people take an interest, but world change won’t happen for 200 years.
Sorry, I know it is off topic but it is just one of those things in environmentalism that never really gets mentioned.
toby says:
July 21, 2010 at 3:01 pm
“Haggle all the you like, cherry pick years and months etc etc The planet is warming, even by UAH observations. Where is the cooling?”
I pick the Altithermal (Holocene Optimum) as my temperature starting time. We are definitely cooling. Temperatures have been headed down for thousands of years, Toby.
Next down trend will be unpleasant. No CO2 induced warming here.
@mkelly,
It’s been pretty well “all down hill” since about 8 KYA and steeply down hill since 3 KYA…
GISP2: 10 KYA to Present
Compared to prior warming legs of the Holocene Bond cycle, this one has been rather mild.
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?
Hansen’s description of Scenario B as “most plausible” was based on his belief that it *wouldn’t be* “business as usual” for 1990-2010 (in part he assumed government would take some action to help produce that result, just not the radical action demanded to meet Scenario C).
tallbloke says:
July 22, 2010 at 7:35 am
R. Gates says:
July 22, 2010 at 7:13 am (Edit)
http://www.climate4you.com/
Click on Sun on the left hand side, and study the charts.
Try this chart on my site:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/nailing-the-solar-activity-global-temperature-divergence-lie/
_________
Thanks for the link…your site shall perhaps turn out to be the best tip from WUWT I’ve gotten this week…I shall study it with interest.
Steve,
If you add just 1 data point (12/2009) to the front of your satellite plot the trend changes from your -0.47 °C/year to a positive 0.06 °C/year. If you make it an “entire” year (7/2009 – 6/2010) the trend becomes a positive 0.20 °C/year. And if you add just 1 data point (6/2009) to the front of that graph you’ll get an impressive 0.32 °C/year or a whopping 3.2 °C/decade!
Hmm? I wonder if there’s something people could learn from these tidbits of information.
To really get a nice positive trend you can plot “entire” 2 years (7/2008 – 6/2010) produces a positive trend of 0.25 °C/year or a whopping (and quite silly) 2.5 °C/decade.
They are worried about millions/billions in government grants and Cap’n Trade profits.
“”” Theo Goodwin says:
July 21, 2010 at 5:25 pm
George F. Smith,
You ask some good questions. In science, the word “prediction” is not used in the sloppy manner of the street where someone can say that he “predicts that Obama will resign this afternoon.” In science, you have a prediction only if it is derived from hypotheses that explain the phenomenon predicted. So, Kepler’s Laws (look them up, they are way cool) enabled Galileo to use his telescope to predict the phases of Venus. In so doing, he was showing that each phase-event was an instance of the regularities described by Kepler’s Laws. No laws (hypotheses), no prediction. “””
I’m not sure what you are querying in my use of the word “prediction”; I used it in exactly the way I intended to use it.
Specifically; that was an instance in which a theory/law/rule/model/whatever “predicted” the numerical outcome of an experiment ; in this case a measurement of the Fine Structure Constant; which is one of the important Fundamental Constants of Physics. And the agreement between the “theory” predicted value; and the best experimentally measured value (at that time) was within less than 50% of the Standard Deviation of the experimental errors of that experiment.
That theory simply said that:-
1/alpha = (pi^a.b^c.d^e.f^g.h^i)^0.25 Where alpha is the fine structure constant; approximately 1/137 , and (a, b, …i) are small integers; not necessarily all different. And of course pi = -sqrt(-1) .ln(-1) .
This theory was published in a reputable scientific Journal in the 1960s; and was immediately accepted by a lot of scientists; because the predicted value was so accurate. But it is purely a mathematical formulation; and all of mathematics is pure fiction; that we made up out of whole cloth, yet this formula predicted the value of a fundamental Physical Constant of Nature.
Computer programmers and some clever mathematicians demonstrated that the same formula with different integers generated a list of about 8-10 values form 1/alpha all of which were accurate within one standard deviation from the best experimental value; and one on the list was even much closer than the original published formula. So the whole thing was a farce; yet scientists embraced it on the grounds that it was so accurate it must be right.
And why would I want to look up Keplers Laws; I learned them in High School about 60 years ago; so I presume they haven’t changed since; and that they still teach the same version in high school today ?
@John Blake says:
July 21, 2010 at 4:29 pm ,
I concur !!!
It was an article by David Whitehead the solar scientist in the spring of 2008 that changed my mind from warmist to skeptic. This article was the British equivalent of a scenario where Canada’s media darling warmist David Suzuki would renounce AGW alarmism and become a skeptic.
Ken Winters says:
July 22, 2010 at 9:51 am
Served in the Navy with a gent named Ken Winters. He was from Cleveland. Last I knew lived in Maine. Kenneth H. Winters III.
stevengoddard,
“How about an honest discussion instead of spin?”
If you want an honest discussion maybe you shouldn’t claim that Hansen’s scenario B, as shown in the chart above, includes a prediction that the global temperature as measured by satellites on July 17, 2010 would be 0.6 degrees Celsius higher than the previous record for that date. 0.6 appears to be roughly the amount of increaae in the annual average temperature scenario B implies in 2010 compared to 1984, when the model run apparently begins using assumed future forcings rather than observed past ones, but that says nothing about what the weather would be like on a particular day in July and even if it did one would expect that new records for July 17 might have been set between 1984 and 2010. You were very much comparing apples and oranges there.
Joel Shore says:
July 21, 2010 at 8:15 pm
[snip]
Am I wrong or does Joel always show up to defend Hansen? Oh well, he did a really, really bad job this time.
Essentially what Joel stated is that it was perfectly OK for Hansen to yell fire in a crowded theater even though he had little understanding of the situation. Then Joel goes on ask why others didn’t yell something. It’s such a ludicrous claim I can only laugh in response.
Come on, Joel, your bosses will be expecting a lot better defense than this.
stevengoddard says:
July 22, 2010 at 6:01 am
2010 is the year that blows away Hansen 1988. Denial is not an option.
—-
Or is 2010 the year that takes the wind out of the sceptic canon?
It boils down to this: if the graph in the post would be properly drawn (cf.
Phil Clarke, above) the message is clearly that Hansen was more or less
right. That he, on basis of newer evidence, revised the climate sensitivity is
normal scientific practice, which we should appreciate, since he has been
transparent about it.
Now, the sceptics often repeat that they don’t have to prove anything (wrong)
and therefore we cannot judge their performance 1988-2009. Please recall
that sceptics in 1988 not only denied the role of anthropogenic emissions,
but the whole idea of a warming trend! It stands to reason, given their
vehement opposition to NASA/Hansen projections, that any mental model
(in 1988 and long after) attached to the framework of the graph in question
would look quite different to Hansen’s projections. Since Hansen’s lowest
scenario licks the observed temperature graph, the sceptic stance is very
pff the mark, anyway you figure it.
So, tell me again, which boat is leaking a bit and which boat is sinking fast?
Djon
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.
The quantity of excuses and weasel words being used by Dr. Hansen apologists here is rather impressive.