From his blog http://www.drroyspencer.com/ which I’m repeating here to help get wide exposure.
A Challenge to the Climate Research Community
I’ve been picking up a lot of chatter in the last few days about the ’settled science’ of global warming. What most people don’t realize is that the vast majority of published research on the topic simply assumes that warming is manmade. It in no way “proves” it.
If the science really is that settled, then this challenge should be easy:
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
Studies that have suggested that an increase in the total output of the sun cannot be blamed, do not count…the sun is an external driver. I’m talking about natural, internal variability.
The fact is that the ‘null hypothesis’ of global warming has never been rejected: That natural climate variability can explain everything we see in the climate system.
A better challenge is to give just one weather/climate scenario that disproves global warming.
I can already tell you what the response will be:
“One study doesn’t prove global warming, HUNDREDS of studies taken together prove it as shown by the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change.”
Expand it out with useless filler and insert a few “deniers” and it’ll be Real Climate ready.
I am understanding this challenge would not falsify AGW, only the assertion of “Settled Science” which is in itself an oxymoron.
Roy, Roy, don’t you get it? They simply anoint AGW as the null hypothesis. They only part they get correct is the “null” part, of course.
{scratch head smile}
This is just silly. Prove that the recent warming wasn’t caused by God hugging the Earth extra tight …
Go get ’em Dr. Roy!! This should be interesting…
Disprove the null hypothesis?
you can’t expect them to do that … that’s like real science!
“He compared the efforts of financial journalists with the way crime reporters or foreign correspondents worked. He painted a picture of the outcry that would result if a legal correspondent began uncritically reproducing the prosecutor’s case as gospel in a murder trial, without consulting the defence arguments or interviewing the victim’s family before forming an opinion of what was likely or unlikely. According to Blomkvist the same rules had to apply to financial journalists.”
From the “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larrson.
When I read this I immediately thought of environmental reporters.
To talk of settled science is to admit incompetence.
Brilliant. I look forward to the references. But I’m not holding my breath.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times . . . . and that ought to be enough . . .
22/7 = ? anyone . . .
Um, “scientific” paper, not “peer-reviewed” paper.
Presumably, one of the many “Hockey Stick” graphs would meet the criteria. If the climate were truly stable for the last 2000 years, and only in the last 30 has there been an abrupt rise, then I’d agree the warmists have something. The problem is that none of these papers are “scientific” in the classic sense. Most aren’t reproducible, a key requirement to be “scientific”. The rest aren’t robust, where a statistician can point out obvious flaws.
Presumably, any of the computer “Global Circulation Models” would meet the criteria. But computer models aren’t empirical evidence. They are a good way of coming up with theories, not proving theories.
Ultimately, would want is an “Old Science” proof of AGW, not “New Science” of irreproducibility, statistical hand waving, and computer models.
Jack Greer>
I think you’re missing the point. Sure, it’s a daft thing to ask for – unless ‘the science is settled’ in which case it should be there.
“”””” Laurie Bowen says:
February 2, 2011 at 11:59 am
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times . . . . and that ought to be enough . . .
22/7 = ? anyone . . . “””””
3+/-50%
Robert Wykoff said February 2, 2011 at 11:32 am:
“A better challenge is to give just one weather/climate scenario that disproves global warming.”
=========
Of course. Frustration seems to have pushed Dr. Spencer beyond his own tipping point.
3.1’4’2’8’5’7′
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out experimentation by little green aliens as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
I was having a discussion by email with a professor of astronomy, I had read his review of “Heaven and Earth” by Ian Plimer. This appeared in the Australian some years ago, but I didn’t get round to reading it until recently. The review was so totally biased and so utterly unfair that I could not resist sending an email to the author.
One thing I said was – science in never settled, I quoted the issue of peptic ulceration. Two doctors in Western Australia produced the idea that peptic ulceration was due to infection rather than gastric acidity. The overwhelming consensus at the time was that acid, or acid plus certain enzymes, caused ulcers. The West Australian doctors were laughed to scorn. They now hold a Nobel Prize.
The astronomy professor replied thus. This is not verbatim, but the sense has been retained.
Science is science. And good science will always triumph over bad science. There was no evidence whatsoever to support the acid hypothesis. The West Australian doctors did an experiment which proved that the rubbish their peers believed was wrong. They were quite rightly awarded a Nobel Prize.
The level of consensus within the climate science community is much stronger than that within the medical community. Because of this, climate science is more soundly based than medical science.
This is good thinking from a professor of astronomy. I don’t think that even a professor of theology could have done any better.
Let’s us look at the man- made global warming hypothesis from the point of view of medical science…
The system which almost all doctors accept today is the Cochrane system. Briefly, the Cochrane system works as follows.
The strongest level of evidence is level one.
Level one evidence consists of randomised controlled trials under extremely stringent conditions.
The next level of evidence is level two.
Level two evidence again consists of randomised controlled trials, but under less stringent conditions.
Next comes level three.
Level three evidence consists of observational studies.
Even if the series studied is large and the correlation is tight, an observational study can never prove a hypothesis. Correlation does not prove causation. An observational study might suggest that a hypothesis is “reasonably likely” But the proof lies in the randomised controlled trial. Preferably this trial will have reasonably large numbers of patients and have the tight parameters of level one.
Consensus gets low marks under Cochrane. Cochrane is about evidence rather than opinion. A single opinion has an evidential value of zero. Consensus might represent the opinion of 3,000 people. Multiply zero by 3,000 and the answer is still zero.
Now let’s look at man made global warming.
We can’t have a randomised controlled trial. We have one patient (planet earth). We don’t have even one single other planet to put in the control group.
So let’s do an observational study.
An observational study with one patient is not an observational study. It is an anecdote, or at best a case report.
OK, let’s be practical. We only have one planet earth, so our single patient is very, very important to us.
Since planet earth is so precious to us, we are prepared to accept an observational study with a tight observed correlation as being evidence enough to act on.
We have to look at the degree of correlation over four time periods.
There is the period 1900 to 1945. During this period the planet warmed.
Compared to today, there was not much in the way of heavy industry. There were very few cars on the road. Not a lot of CO2 was produced… But the planet warmed. 1938 may not be the hottest year ever recorded, but it fits comfortably into the top 10. I think that it is very reasonable to say that the warming seen from 1900 to 1945 was not due to carbon dioxide. We were coming out of an ice age.
Now let’s look at the period from 1945 to 1975. We are in the era of post war recovery. More cars are being built. More electricity is being generated. More heavy industry is starting up. More CO2 is being produced. But the temperature is in fact going down. How do we explain this? The IPCC says pollution with substances such as sulphur dioxide were the cause of the fall in temperature over this period.
Now this is an assertion. There are no quantitative measurements of all the aerosols and other pollutants and computer models of how each pollutant would affect the climate. But lets be generous. Lets say that there is a seventy five per cent chance that this explanation is correct.
Now we move on to the period from around 1975 to 1998. Her we have a period when a further rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is associated with a further rise in temperature. There arte alternative explanations. It could be the sun. It could be something that we haven’t thought of yet. But let us be generous and say we are 90% certain that global warming from 1975 to 1998 was caused by man made carbon dioxide.
Then we reach the period 1999 to 2010. We continue to produce lots of carbon dioxide. There is no statistically significant rise in temperature during this period.
But the warmists say that this 11 year period contains three, or five or six of the warmest years on record.
Well the temperature has been rising by fits and starts for about 150 years. We are on a high plateau, so it is not surprising that some of the temperatures we see are record ones. But are we going to stay on that plateau? Are we going to start moving gradually downwards in terms of temperature? Or are we about to take off with the climate getting warmer still?
Well, of course, there is no way in which this question can be answered with any certainty. But lets be generous again. Let us say that the fact that several of the years of the last decade are in the top 10 ever recorded means that there is a 70 per cent chance that this period of time supports man made global warming.
OK the global warming hypothesis rests on three lines of evidence.
The first line of evidence has a 75% chance of being correct.
The second line of evidence has a 90% chance of being correct.
The third line of evidence has a 70% chance of being correct..
If you roll a dice once, the odds against guessing the right answer are six to one.
If you roll the dice three times the odds against you getting the right answer three times running are six to one multiplied by six to one multiplied by six to one.
The odds against you are 216 to one.
The odds in your favour are the reciprocal of this. They are 0.00463.
Now we have three lines of evidence for the man-made global warming hypothesis.
The odds in favour of each piece of evidence are, respectively 75%, 90%, and 70%
Multiply 0.75 by 0.9 then by 0.7 and you get 0.475.
There is a 47.5% chance that the hypothesis is correct.
Does this show that the science is settled? Don’t make me laugh.
I have no idea what the temperature will be like in 100 years time. Neither has the IPCC.
You’re my hero………..
It is extraordinary that, with the economic and energy consequences of cAGW theory, the governments of the developed nations have not demanded a conference in which both sides of the debate present and evaluate the evidence for their positions.
Attendance should be mandatory so that no-one could avoid the cross examination and conducted in the spirit, not of Lisbon, but perhaps of Solway 1927.
Let the facts and the evidence decide.
Jack Greer says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Robert Wykoff said February 2, 2011 at 11:32 am:
“A better challenge is to give just one weather/climate scenario that disproves global warming.”
=========
Of course. Frustration seems to have pushed Dr. Spencer beyond his own tipping point.
My god the trolls have been dragged from under the bridge. Get your act together you guys. Read Trenberth et al they are far better at deflecting the question from the climate science is settled scenario.
McShane & Wyner are not quite what you are seeking, Roy, but they did shake things up quite a bit!
http://climateaudit.org/2010/08/14/mcshane-and-wyner-2010/
It will likely take years for the type of scientific evaluation you seek to see the light-of-day, although there might be something in the Russian literature. Would that count?
“What most people don’t realize is that the vast majority of published research on the topic simply assumes that warming is manmade.” – R.Spencer
This phenomenon drives me absolutely batty. How many thousands of studies have been done, with time, money and resources spent, that operate along the lines of such-and-such species displaying such and such behavior in the context of global warming?
All of these studies are absolute garbage, all those resources wasted, since the underlying assumption (that AGW is real) is a myth.
=====
Incidentally, Dr. Spencer, I downloaded your book “The Great Global Warming Blunder” to my Kindle the other day. I’m enjoying the read immeasurably.
AGW/Climate Change is not science but alchemy. An endeavour to turn CO2 into Au.
AGW is a belief system that does not need to be proven. You just need faith. It is exactly the same thing with God. There are never been any peer-reviewed papers on the existence of God. The whole thing is based on a bunch of gray literature papers (dead sea rolls) that they conveniently put together and named it Bible. Not an once of science in it, yet people always killed each other to impose their belief system.
This is just silly. Even the IPCC report doesn’t “rule[] out natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.” It is simply extremely unlikely.
Might as well ask for a biology paper that rules out the possibility of God.
Roy Spencer says:
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
From what I understand, the GCM’s show that without GHG’s from human sources, the increase in global average temperature can’t be explained. Look at the 3 graphs showing an ensemble of simulations on this page:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm
The graph with only natural forcings cannot explain the recent temperature increase. So this is one scientific study.
No one doubts that what appear to be internal cycles, have a strong influence on climate. However human influence through GHG’s and land use, has the capability to modify these internal cycles according to most scientists. So the observation of natural cycles determining climate doesn’t disprove the hypothesis that GHG’s are changing the climate of the globe.
Here is the question to put to the warmists: why are you guys still using global temperature curves of questionable and secretive origin if accurate satellite temperature measures have been available for thirty one years? They cover the globe and both hemispheres uniformly, are not affected by the urban heat island effect, and have been calibrated against radiosonde values. You will get a variety of answers but the real answer is this: they use their own secretive sources because their temperatures are cooked. As in falsified. I will be specific: what these secretive curves from NOAA, NASA, and the Met Office show is a period of warming in the eighties and nineties that is not present in the satellite record. Why is this so important? you may ask. The answer is that in 1988, right smack in the middle of this period, Hansen stood up in front of the Senate and testified that global warming had started. That was simply a lie as satellite temperature records show but his testimony became the founding event of the global warming movement we have today. If they admit the truth they will have cut the legs out from under this founding event of their religion. To find out how these temperatures were faked, get my “What Warming?” (second edition) and check out figures 15, 24, 27 and 29.
The most persuasive argument for AGW that I’ve heard so far goes along the lines of, “Do you think we can go on pumping tonnes of CO2 (anyone seen a CO2 pump?) into the atmosphere without it having an effect?”
It seems that personal incredulity is an accepted proof in climate science.
Why invoke natural variability when natural regularity will do, namely a smooth linear warming trend going back 350 years as directly measured by real thermometers in the world’s classic old cities? I plotted them in postcard format: http://oi49.tinypic.com/rc93fa.jpg
Finding these old records was the end of my interest in active debate. Neither side seemed very interested when I started posting this basic data in the days leading up to Climategate. How can history be a Hockey Stick if single site thermometer records failed to show even a hint of noticing?
Am a bit puzzled – many have said the same thing over the last few years – I know I have/did, once I started to actually look into the actual claims of AGW. It is a basic understanding of the scientifically minded skeptics (I believe) in that most enquiring minds do not take the ‘assumptions’ as always being valid and, as described , most of the AGW theory is based on various assumptions.
In short, I can’t see anyone accepting a challenge for something that doesn’t currently exist. If it did, as has been mentioned many times before, we wouldn’t be discussing the subject in the same manner!
Mainstream will say
(1) CO2 is a greenhouse gas – all agree
(2) human emissions clearly track CO2 rise – this seems self-evident
(3) isotope content proves the CO2 rise is manmade
(4) it cannot be the Sun (directly) because there’s too little variance – all agree
They can produce peer-reviewed papers “proving” (3). They will fail to mention papers that dispute (3) with equal or better science. They will fail to mention Bob Carter’s classic dismissal which shows that the recent rise, and rate of rise, of temperature, are both well within natural limits – if we look properly at the past.
“One study doesn’t prove global warming, HUNDREDS of studies taken together prove it as shown by the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change.”
Those studies are exactly what Dr Spencer is talking about; they all assume human caused warming and not one rules out natural variability. Having said that, I’m sure RC would still give that as an answer and delude themselves into thinking they’ve satisfied the question.
Laurie Bowen says: February 2, 2011 at 11:59 am
22/7 = ? anyone
22/7 = 2.22222 ….(recurring)
Which unless I’ve made an awful mistake in the maths is really true!
Pay attention to this paper, folks! Is Nature making a U-turn?
Late Holocene methane rise caused by orbitally controlled increase in tropical sources
Joy S. Singarayer, Paul J. Valdes, Pierre Friedlingstein, Sarah Nelson & David J. Beerling
Nature 470, 82–85 (03 February 2011) doi:10.1038/nature09739
This paper reminds me of the often-neglected work of Gerard Roe (Motl discussed it once), Anthony, will you please devote a post to this topic?
Roe, G. (2006), In defense of Milankovitch, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L24703, doi:10.1029/2006GL027817.
Robert Wykoff says:
February 2, 2011 at 11:32 am
A better challenge is to give just one weather/climate scenario that disproves global warming.
Well, first one would have to prove that our temperature measuring capabilities are accurate enough that we can determine either a cooling or warming trend. Then one would have to agree on the length of time to use to determine whether there has been either a cooling or warming trend.
Even so, if we accept that we have been in a globally warming trend since, say, the end of the LIA, then I fully agree with Dr. Spencer – the onus is on the claimants that any of the warming is anything but natural. The claim has been made: anthropogenic CO2 is causing warming on a global scale. Now the claimants must show how it is causing the warming and show that the warming is outside of natural causes. Once that is done, others can analyze the claim and either agree or disagree.
In the simplest terms – if I were to flip a coin, and cover it up so no one can see it, and claim that it is heads and therefore you owe me a great sum of money, would you give me the money or would you want to see the coin first? What I see a large number of AGW by CO2 supporters doing is accepting that the coin is heads without seeing the coin.
Spencer, Watts, McIntyre, McKitrick, etc. are asking (demanding) to see the coin.
They should not be required to prove that there is no coin or that the coin is not heads.
There is no such paper, Dr. Spencer.
If there were such a paper, the IPCC would have championed it far more than the hockey stick. McIntyre & McKitrick’s work would be entirely ignored if such a paper existed. All skepticism about the temperature record, the positive feedback caused by CO2, the dominance of clouds, the stability of the suns influence would all not exist to the degree they do if any such paper existed.
There is no such paper.
Lucy Skywalker says: February 2, 2011 at 12:36 pm
“Mainstream will say ….”
The simple answer is that if you look at the IPCC report, you will see that the natural variation present is a type of 1/f type noise which is a kind of noise doubles for every doubling of the period over which you measure it. So, if the noise amplitude is 0.05C/decade, it is 0.1C/2o-years 0.2C/40years and 0.4C/80-years and 0.8C/160-years.
So, it is very easy to measure the amplitude of this 1/f noise prior to extensive CO2 and compare it that afterwards, and the result is that the change we have seen is entirely compatible with natural noise.
That is how it is done, that I suggest is why there is no paper checking this – because anyone who did it found it disproved the whole basis of man-made global warming!
I still don’t quite buy this isotope content “proof”, btw. Has anyone studied the isotope content of the dissolved CO2 in the ocean at all depths to eliminate it as a source? Has anyone completely ruled out cosmic influence on altering the carbon isotope content of the atmosphere (cosmic rays do this)? To me, this avenue seems ripe for a major smackdown, but perhaps I just haven’t read the right papers. 🙂
OT: Steig has a some new comment on O’Donnell at RC.
first you have to state the null in a quantitative manner.
But failing that, we have some examples of things never seen before. The problem with the “null” as Spencer states it, is that he doesnt specify what that null is exactly.
Further and more importantly there are events that do not trangress the bounds of “natural variability” that can be explained by mechanisms. Volcanoes do not cool the atmosphere outside the bounds of natural variability, BUT we dont attribute the cooling to natural variability. Simply the existence of natural variability says nothing about the effects one will see from more C02 in the atmosphere.
But on to an example of the null being found inadequate: here on WUWT
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/01/the-ice-who-came-in-from-the-cold/
As I noted this data challenges ‘the null’
Steven mosher says:
June 1, 2010 at 10:46 pm
Dunno, looks like an issue for the null hypothesis. ice cycling like its never cycled before.
Willis, caretaker of ‘the null’ agrees
Willis Eschenbach says:
June 2, 2010 at 12:00 am
Steven mosher says:
June 1, 2010 at 10:46 pm
Dunno, looks like an issue for the null hypothesis. ice cycling like its never cycled before.
It would … if I thought it was real. I don’t, I think it is from the known change in the satellite and the way that is being dealt with by means of a new algorithm.
w.
BUT he thinks the algorithm must have changed.. rejecting the data.
I think:
Steven mosher says:
June 2, 2010 at 9:28 am
Willis:
“Me, I think this new pattern reflects a change in satellites, or a change in procedures, or something like that. But hey, I’ve been wrong before”
on what evidence? you have the data. It indicates a divergence from past normal behavior. It challenges the Null. I wouldn’t think the first response is to challenge the instrument on no colorable basis. but hey, its climate science. Now surely, we must accept the data and in the absence of any concrete evidence that the instrument is bad, we cant speculate that the instrument might be bad. As I pointed out, that would be exactly like the special pleading that Briffa did WRT his divergence problem.
So, I find the actual instrument for him and he promises to write the scientist.
“Good find, Mosh. I’ll take a look and see what’s going on there. I’ve written to Dr. Bilitza to see what I can find out.”
And 7 months later we still have no update.
cochrane says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Dice rolling is an independent probability at each throw. The odds remain the same no matter haw many times you throw the dice. Each throw cannot influence the next unless you eliminate the previous number and then the odds get better on you being right. Did I miss soemthing ?
Wonderful challenge, but issue one more. Challenge them to present one physical hypothesis that is reasonably well-confirmed and that can be used to explain and predict some so-called positive forcing. There is not one. Climate scientists cannot pull themselves away from their computers long enough to look out the window. At this time, there is no empirical science of forcings.
Cross-posted on Roy’s site:
No, but I can point to peer-reviewed papers that indicate that we still have a limited understanding of Earth’s natural variations, which makes it impossible to “rule them out” as a potential “cause of most of the recent warming”.
For example, Polar Vortices:
“Many atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs) and chemistry–climate models (CCMs) are not able to reproduce the observed polar stratospheric winds in simulations of the late 20th century. Specifically, the polar vortices break down too late and peak wind speeds are higher than in the ERA-40 reanalysis. Insufficient planetary wave driving during the October–November period delays the breakup of the southern hemisphere (SH) polar vortex in versions 1 (V1) and 2 (V2) of the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) chemistry–climate model, and is likely the cause of the delayed breakup in other CCMs with similarly weak October-November wave driving.”
“In the V1 model, the delayed breakup of the Antarctic vortex biases temperature, circulation and trace gas concentrations in the polar stratosphere in spring. The V2 model behaves similarly (despite major model upgrades from V1), though the magnitudes of the anomalous effects on springtime dynamics are smaller.”
“Clearly, if CCMs cannot duplicate the observed response of the polar stratosphere to late 20th century climate forcings, their ability to simulate the polar vortices in future may be poor.”
http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2009/EGU2009-651.pdf
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010JGRD..11507105H
“It is unclear how much confidence can be put into the model projections of the vortices given that the models typically only have moderate resolution and that the climatological structure of the vortices in the models depends on the tuning of gravity wave parameterizations.
Given the above outstanding issues, there is need for continued research in the dynamics of the vortices and their representation in global models.”
http://www.columbia.edu/~lmp/paps/waugh+polvani-PlumbFestVolume-2010.pdf
Or how about the Thermohaline Circulation:
“One of the “pumps” that helps drive the ocean’s global circulation suddenly switched on again last winter for the first time this decade. The finding surprised scientists who had been wondering if global warming was inhibiting the pump and did not foresee any indications that it would turn back on.
The “pump” in question is in the western North Atlantic Ocean, where pools of cold, dense water form in winter and sink beneath less-dense warmer waters. The sinking water feeds into the lower limb of a global system of currents often described as the Great Ocean Conveyor. To replace the down-flowing water, warm surface waters from the tropics are pulled northward along the Conveyor’s upper limb.”
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12455&tid=282&cid=54347
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n1/abs/ngeo382.html
We have a rudimentary understanding of Earth’s climate system. We cannot eliminate potential variables when we do not understand them, cannot effectively measure them and, in some cases, do not yet know that they exist.
Lucy Skywalker says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:36 pm
The CO² isotope one always gets me. Are they saying that C13 cannot be produced by any other means other than combustion ? If so I would want to see a very definitive proof. It after all only a matter of energy isn’t it?
Robert David Graham says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:03 pm
“Um, “scientific” paper, not “peer-reviewed” paper.
Presumably, one of the many “Hockey Stick” graphs would meet the criteria. If the climate were truly stable for the last 2000 years, and only in the last 30 has there been an abrupt rise, then I’d agree the warmists have something.”
But it doesn’t meet my criteria, which I will restate as follows:
Identify one physical hypothesis that is reasonably well-confirmed and that can be used to explain and predict some positive forcing. There is none. Therefore, there is no empirical science of forcings.
@Leif:
So I suppose you didnt have the paper, which proves that climate is stable without external forcings influencing it, right?
JohnWho says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Robert Wykoff says:
February 2, 2011 at 11:32 am
A better challenge is to give just one weather/climate scenario that disproves global warming.
Far more intellectual than I. I like you example very much.
Colin in Mission BC says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:21 pm
“Incidentally, Dr. Spencer, I downloaded your book “The Great Global Warming Blunder” to my Kindle the other day. I’m enjoying the read immeasurably.”
This book is a science classic and is the best book or article published in climate science. Its conclusions should be the starting point for all discussions of AGW.
I would pose to Dr. Spencer a counter-challenge, that he publish one peer-reviewed paper that convincingly establishes natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record. But Dr. Spencer has said he doesn’t want to publish in the peer-reviewed literature anymore and prefers more laxly refereed venues like Geophysical Research Letters. It seems a bit hypocritical to demand peer-reviewed rebuttals to his non-reviewed assertions. That’s not how the burden of proof works.
Right in the smack-dab middle of the biggest snowstorm in the history of the planet you’re expecting AGW’ers to drop their snow shovels, doff their fur-lined hats, take off their gloves and parkas, laboriously remove their snow-encumbered boots and write something in FAVOR of global warming?
Surely you jest; I see no takers.
Or we could just stick to the scientific method and ask for the paper describing the experiment or observation that promoted the AGW hypothesis to theory. If the issue were about science that should be really easy.
If we assume the issue is not about science then that should be made clear too.
stephen richards says:
February 2, 2011 at 1:01 pm
cochrane says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Dice rolling is an independent probability at each throw. The odds remain the same no matter haw many times you throw the dice. Each throw cannot influence the next unless you eliminate the previous number and then the odds get better on you being right. Did I miss soemthing ?
===========================
Ok, I’ll place a $100 dollar bet with you. You have to roll three sixes to win, and I’ll pay you $600 (the odds of rolling one six). If you fail you pay me $100. How does that sound?
Laurie Bowen says:
February 2, 2011 at 11:59 am
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times . . . . and that ought to be enough . . .
22/7 = ? anyone . . .
3.142857142857142857142857142857142857142857…
Leif Svalgaard:
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out experimentation by little green aliens as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
Leif, you have completely missed the point. That’s because several natural cycles exist and they can easily be identified. But existence of aliens is not scientifically proven.
Dr. Spencer makes relevant challenge: If science if settled, then the other hypothesis shall be ruled out. Not so easy.
Interesting challenge. I have one for Dr. Spencer:
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has demonstrated natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
You can’t prove a negative, particularly one that isn’t even defined (which natural cycles, for example?). You can prove (or disprove) a positive statement.
Here’s one more challenge for him:
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out actions of the lawn gnome Illuminati (they’re everywhere, and only move when you aren’t looking) as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
Undefined natural cycles, lawn gnomes, invisible pink unicorns – pretty much one and the same. It’s a dishonest challenge.
Dr Roy Spencer has now got Januar UHA update up on his Web site at http://www.drroyspencer.com/
January listed at -0.01C so I guess that there will be few people starting to proclaim that 2011 will be the warmest year ever. You never know though. Maybe James Hansen has found a way of getting 2011 warmer than 2010 already.
Considering most climate researchers are forced to work with temp data that has been fudged, the past keeps getting colder, their error bars are so large that any temp increase is within their “honest” error bars….
Trying to use trees, insects, sea sludge, and ice cores to reconstruct past temps, and claiming 1/10th and even 1/100th degree accuracy –
-who in their right mind would believe any of that
Making them prove their wild claims about how much the temps have increased…
…would be right up there with the nul
17. Cochrane says, Feb 2, 2011 at 1.03 pm
Am I to assume Sir that you are the famous Cochrane involved in all those medical studies that everyone has read about? If that is so we are greatly honoured by your visit.
Yes, you missed something. You don’t need a statistician – you need a bookie. Ask him to explain how a trifecta works,
steven mosher says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:56 pm
“first you have to state the null in a quantitative manner.”
So, what do you want? Are you asking that we specify quantitatively all inputs to natural variation in recorded weather and a maximum range for each and for all together? (You cannot be asking us to specify inputs to natural variation in climate because just what constitutes climate is one of the questions in dispute.)
Lucy Skywalker says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:36 pm
What they won’t say is what 350 ppm really represents. Not only that, but they don’t say anything either about how many of those 350 ppm we are responsible for. And of course, they don’t say anything about the carbon cycle and how important CO2 is for life on this planet.
In other words, they only say what they want to say in order to scare the ignorant people that don’t know better (including most politicians).
Ray you said:
“AGW is a belief system that does not need to be proven. You just need faith. It is exactly the same thing with God. There are never been any peer-reviewed papers on the existence of God. The whole thing is based on a bunch of gray literature papers (dead sea rolls) that they conveniently put together and named it Bible. Not an once of science in it, yet people always killed each other to impose their belief system.”
There is a major difference between the global warming debate and faith in God. A devout Catholic, such as myself, does not try to prove the existence of God. I accept this on faith. The problem with the global warming people is that they are claiming science has proven their theory. Accepting something on faith and being open and honest about that acceptance, is entirely different that stating that something is proven true by scientific methods.
The ones who often berate those of us who believe in the existence of God are actually comparing apples to oranges. There is no conflict in my mind between scientific reason and faith. They compliment each other but are entirely different approaches to truth.
I have no problem with your lack of belief in God but I often resent that particular argument being used in this on-going debate.
Theo Goodwin @ 41
“Challenge them to present one physical hypothesis that is reasonably well-confirmed and that can be used to explain and predict some so-called positive forcing. There is not one.
Really? Take a look at this: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/ – in particular figure 2a. Those numbers are apparently from Hansen 2007, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi?id=ha00210r
There are plenty of forcings, both positive (carbon, ozone, GHG’s, snow albedo) and negative (aerosols, land use, volcanoes, etc). The dominant current forcing change is the positive one from well-mixed greenhouse gases.
Scottie says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:30 pm
The most persuasive argument for AGW that I’ve heard so far goes along the lines of, “Do you think we can go on pumping tonnes of CO2 (anyone seen a CO2 pump?) into the atmosphere without it having an effect?”
It seems that personal incredulity is an accepted proof in climate science.
////////////////////////////////////////////
Scottie, this does seem to convince a lot of people but only because they do not know what quantity Mother Nature herself pumps out, which quantity completely dwarfs that quantity pumped out by man
steven mosher says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:56 pm
“But failing that, we have some examples of things never seen before. The problem with the “null” as Spencer states it, is that he doesnt specify what that null is exactly.
Further and more importantly there are events that do not trangress the bounds of “natural variability” that can be explained by mechanisms. Volcanoes do not cool the atmosphere outside the bounds of natural variability, BUT we dont attribute the cooling to natural variability.”
Isn’t that merely conventional? If so, then why not change it? If not, what are the reasons?
Please, Dr Spencer,…
The IPCC provides the exact answer to your question. It is ‘peer-reviewed’, right?
Dr Spencer’s challenge is dishonest/unfair, at least for IPCC members that follow IPCC principles.
Excerpt form the Principles Governing the IPCC’s work……
“…to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”
So, the IPCC is not interested in natural cycles and variability, according to its own principles.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles.pdf
Steven mosher says:
June 1, 2010 at 10:46 pm
“Dunno, looks like an issue for the null hypothesis. ice cycling like its never cycled before.”
So, you are claiming that this phenomenon of “ice cycling like its never cycled before” could only be caused by warming caused by manmade CO2? Is that what you want to discuss in this forum?
I bet that you cannot state in your own words one or more physical hypotheses which describe the regularities that make up this phenomenon of “ice cycling like never before.” Without such hypotheses, you are working with hunches. Have you done any empirical work to identify the regularities in the new pattern of cycling? Do you have one or more reasonably confirmed hypotheses which allow you to predict quantitatively this phenomenon of “cycling like never before.?”
The key number one problem with climate scientists is that not one of them has a clue as to the difference between a hunch and a reasonably confirmed empirical hypothesis.
steven mosher says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:56 pm
Would you please make a list of these “things never seen before”. Also, please prove that what we humans have witnessed is the sum total of all climate and weather events. Lacking that, your post is unfounded.
richard verney @ 63 – We know how much we pump out (~29 GT/year), and we know how much atmospheric CO2 is increasing (2 ppm, or 15 GT/year). Hmmmm….
If we weren’t pumping out 29 GT a year, we would expect the atmospheric CO2 to decrease at ~2ppm/year accordingly. At least for while – I suspect the rate of natural CO2 sink absorption would slow when it approached the 280 ppm pre-industrial levels.
Please, Dr Spencer,…
The IPCC provides the exact answer to your question. It is ‘peer-reviewed’, right
===================================================
No
Snow albedo is a positive forcing?
[Sarcasm Mode: On]
Top Ten Reasons Why Dr. Spencer’s Challenge Will Go Unanswered:
10) The so-called consensus can’t think of anything else; therefore it must be CO2.
9) The Earth’s climate was perfectly average from the end of the Pleistocene up until 1850 and CO2 levels had not been above 300ppmv since the Miocene; therefore it must be CO2.
8) If it is assumed that CO2 causes all of the observed natural variability, CO2 must be causing all of the observed natural variability.
7) The elimination of all data apart from the thermometer record, the Keeling Curve and Antarctic ice cores simplifies the equation; therefore Occam’s Razor says it’s CO2.
6) Geologists work for oil companies; therefore it’s CO2.
5) Renewable energy sounds Earth-friendly and makes me feel better about the planet; therefore it’s CO2.
4) The CO2 “math” works… The fact that the math is commutative and the causality is an assumption is irrelevant; therefore CO2 drives climate.
3) The utility companies can’t put a meter on the Sun; therefore it’s CO2.
2) Stefan-Boltzmann!!!
1) Even if carbon dioxide isn’t causing global warming, it still must be bad for children, flowers and other living things… At least as bad as dihydrogen oxide.
[Sarcasm Mode: Off]
The real answer is… If no effort is ever made to understand the drivers of pre-industrial Holocene climate change and every effort is made to ignore the overwhelming evidence that century-scale CO2 shifts of 30-60ppmv were common atmospheric features before Dr. Keeling reported to work at MLO… No serious investigation of natural, internal climate drivers can occur.
KR says:
February 2, 2011 at 1:36 pm
Theo Goodwin @ 41
“Challenge them to present one physical hypothesis that is reasonably well-confirmed and that can be used to explain and predict some so-called positive forcing. There is not one.
“Really? Take a look at this: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/ – in particular figure 2a. Those numbers are apparently from Hansen 2007, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi?id=ha00210r”
OK, I will do the elementary explanation once, even though I think you are a troll. The key words for me are empirical hypotheses. AGW claims that manmade CO2 causes heating in the atmosphere that causes greater water vapor in the atmosphere and that cashes out as clouds and clouds cause positive feedback, additional heating.
At each step physical hypotheses are needed. Take the clouds step. You need physical hypotheses that can be used to explain and predict the behavior of clouds in a warming atmosphere and then additional physical hypotheses that explain and predict the creation of increased heating by these clouds. None of those hypotheses exist. The regularities have not been specified. Inferences from computer models are worthless and have nothing to do with physical hypotheses.
You can test my claims. If any such hypotheses exist, use them (in your own words) to explain the changes in cloud behavior over Florida that I have observed in the last year.
Because I am trying to further this conversation, I accepted your homework assignment in your link. In the future, if you give me a homework assignment I will conclude that you cannot state the hypotheses in your own words and that you are as stupid as you are offensive, teacher.
Mike Haseler, “So, it is very easy to measure the amplitude of this 1/f noise prior to extensive CO2 and compare it that afterwards, and the result is that the change we have seen is entirely compatible with natural noise.” This is totally to the point.
I’m not a scientist. I’m an engineer which means I have to make things work in the real world, not some ether in cyberspace. My specialty is designing machines which use IR, UV, and X-Rays energy transfer for a variety of operations. It turns out that scientists should really get down and get some experience. My theories and concepts are required to actually work out as planned. I do not have the luxury of predicting something and having it not work correctly to simply say the experiment must be wrong or to manipulate data to fit my theory.
Having said that, none of the climate models have predicted anything correctly. None of them have been able to regress from current data. That means it is a failure.
It. Is. That. Simple.
This question/challenge was cross-posted on Skeptical Science ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?a=7&p=5#38769 ) – they are currently up to >20 peer-reviewed papers from multiple discussion threads, primarily the “It’s not us” thread ( http://www.skepticalscience.com/its-not-us-advanced.htm ), that rule out natural cycles as the major cause. The highest percentage was that ~15% of recent changes could be attributed to natural variation (Schwartz et al. 2010, http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI3461.1).
I would consider the challenge busted.
eadler,
“From what I understand, the GCM’s show that without GHG’s from human sources, the increase in global average temperature can’t be explained.”
Leaving aside this issue of whether the GCM’s with all their documented diagnostic issues have the credibility to “show” anything on the order of the hypothesized energy imbalance, the charts you refer to are not specific to GHGs, but confound them with anthropogenic aerosols. Solar also probably could not explain the mid-century cooling and the slope of the increase in temperature of the 80s and 90s without anthropogenic aerosols. There just is not good evidence that GHGs are responsible for more than their direct effects, which assuming the net feedbacks are not negative, would explain as much as 30% of the recent warming and project to about a 1 degree C warming by 2100, which is less than the natural variation, so the decades around 2100 may actually be cooler.
They can’t,they won’t,they don’t need to…
What they will do is say that thousand of scientists agree with the findings
and then use MSM to do the dirty work, UNTIL some thing like ClimateGate part 2 comes out.We fight the good fight and WUWT,Cimate Adit etc.,stay’s gatekeeper
WheelsOC says:
February 2, 2011 at 1:14 pm
“I would pose to Dr. Spencer a counter-challenge, that he publish one peer-reviewed paper that convincingly establishes natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.”
Oh, well, you have my memory for that. To sum it up as Richard Lindzen has, the idea that temperature changes in tenths of a degree can be measured over the period of a century is nonsense.
@Laurie Bowen:
22/7 = ? anyone . . .
pi.
Well . . . . near as dammit . . . .
Helen Hawkins –
Amen.
KR says: Here’s one more challenge for him:
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out actions of the lawn gnome Illuminati (they’re everywhere, and only move when you aren’t looking) as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
Undefined natural cycles, lawn gnomes, invisible pink unicorns – pretty much one and the same. It’s a dishonest challenge.
That’s OK . . . . . KR, next time you come to my neck of the woods, we can sit and watch a flower blossom, . . . . I promise you won’t get bored . . .
So Leif-let me get this right-you are obviously a warmmongerer but instead of posting a link taking up Dr Spencers challenge you try and turn his challenge around in a way that makes his look ridiculous. Well the joke is on you knuckle brain-no-one has ever suggested little green aliens are the cause of global warming. Plenty of people are saying there is a consensus that the main cause of it is humans. Unfortunately the majority of the population have now woken up that a consensus is not proof. Just post your link proving Mrr Spencer wrong rather than,quite frankly,chlidish attempts to belittle the challenge.
KR above nailed it, but I’ll add a little here. First evidence GW is caused mainly by human GHG emissions can be found here and you can follow links to peer reviewed papers.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-natural-cycle.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/its-not-us.htm
If the current warming were caused by the pink unicorn cycle then we’d be in real trouble because that would mean the GHG warming will come on top of that. There is a small chance scientists have missed something fundamental. But we have to make decisions based on imperfect knowledge. We need to weigh different risks and decide which to take. It is possible that the sun will cool down and save us. It is possible that clouds will save us. But neither event is likely. If the sun cools now, it may well warm up later and there is no evidence the cloud feedback will be negative and strong enough to let us burn up all the coal and oil we can find. Indeed there is some work suggesting cloud feedback may be positive. So, if you’re a betting man, which bet would you take? Roy’s mystery cycle will save us, or the scientific community is likely correct?
You know the weirdest branch of science out there is quantum mechanics. Yet, politicians and ideologies seem OK with QM. But if a science bugs some people’s ingrained religious or political beliefs there’s a whole lot of opposition. Do you ever wonder about that?
Leone says:
February 2, 2011 at 1:22 pm
Leif, you have completely missed the point. That’s because several natural cycles exist and they can easily be identified. But existence of aliens is not scientifically proven.
The point was that you cannot prove a negative. You mention that several natural cycles exists. Some would say that they don’t exist [hockey stick people] or are actually man-made [aerosols, CO2, land use, etc], so we are back to square one on that.
I am confident that Dr Spencer will win the challenge for one very good reason. To prove the null hypothesis one would have to show that the sun could not be the cause. The problem with this is that we do not know all the ways in which the sun affects the climate. All climate scientists agree that the Milankovitch cycles are real and that they are the main drivers of ice ages and interglacials but when they calculate the resulting changes in insolation the forcing is too small to bring about the dramatic changes we see. Some try to suggest that CO2 released from the oceans accentuates the warming but unfortunately the greatest warming occurs when CO2 is at its minimum and the cooling cycle begins when CO2 is at its maximum – this is a a rather inconvenient truth that makes a nonsense of the amplification by CO2 theory. The cycles do involve changes in the season lengths between the hemispheres and this may be the trigger but at the moment the exact mechanism is unknown. So when the most dominant climate driver is not fully understood how can anyone argue that it is not causing today’s changes. I am not arguing that the sun is the cause I am just saying it is impossible to rule it out.
“Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out experimentation by little green aliens as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.”
Show me one claiming the little green aliens are. Quite a difference, what a crap statement.
Robert Wykoff says:
February 2, 2011 at 11:32 am
A better challenge is to give just one weather/climate scenario that disproves global warming.
The last ice age and perhaps more to come. Show me where the earth has been warming over the last 500 million years.
KR says: February 2, 2011 at 1:27 pm
“Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has demonstrated natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.”
“Empirical evidence for interannual and longer period variability in Thailand surface air temperatures”;
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V95-4PBDPT6-1&_user=10&_coverDate=02%2F29%2F2008&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1628521110&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f57f02a751cc1339ef7f2a2be27a3ade&searchtype=a
“The spatio-temporal variations of monthly averaged maximum, mean and minimum surface air temperatures (Tmax, Tmean, Tmin) in Thailand for the period between 1951 and 2003 have been examined using Principal Component Analysis. The objective of this study was to determine the dominant patterns of interannual and longer period variability and illustrate their connection to large-scale climate variability.
The results reveal that the dominant variability in Tmax, Tmean and Tmin can be explained in large measure by the first principal component (PC1), which accounts for 60%, 61% and 62% of the total variance, respectively. The coefficient time series associated with PC1 appear to have oscillated in relation to the primary global climate variability. There are significant indications that El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events are an important source of interannual/interdecadal variability in Thailand surface air temperatures.”
Also, not peer-reviewed, but here is an abstract to a presentation by Wang, Y.; Yao, T. at the American Geophysical Union’s 2010 Fall Meeting on the influence of the Northern Hemisphere atmosphere-ocean couple systems on the 20th century warming on the Tibetan Plateau.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010AGUFMGC41A0875W
Their “REOF analysis suggests that the 20th century warming revealed by the Malan ice core was remarkably influenced by the summer NAO and AO indices, and winter AO and PDO indices. A multivariate linear regression shows when combined, the summer NAO and winter PDO and AO account for 63.2% variations of the total variance in δ18O over the past century. ”
THANK YOU, ROY.
(please excuse the caps…)
The single reason I am a skeptic is because back in the mid-1990s I went looking for that one peer-reviewed paper you talk about. I mean, that is basic science, isn’t it? You have multiple candidates and you create a study to eliminate them, one by one.
Then, to be thorough, you think again and ask yourself if there is anything at all you didn’t think of.
When one possible cause is left standing, after you’ve proven the others weren’t the cause, then, “Voila!” you’ve got a peer-reviewable paper and consensus will form a circle around you and hoist you up on its shoulders. You’ve found it. Eureka!
I went looking, and I am still looking 15 years later.
The thing is, I thought they probably had one. I just went looking to see what it was they’d found. But they freaking never looked. I assume that if Roy hasn’t found it, then it doesn’t exist.
Wankers! Science by declaration… Yoiks!
KR says: February 2, 2011 at 1:27 pm
“Interesting challenge. I have one for Dr. Spencer:
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has demonstrated natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.”
KR, go read a book about basic statistics in science!
There you will learn that all systems have noise and the climate is no exception. Climate variation is all the changes in the climate that cannot be readily attributed to other factors. This is totally different from climate cycles, climate cycles are predictable, climate variation isn’t (that’s why its dealt with statistically).
This really is first year science stuff and your ignorance of this subject is just typical of the poor science of the warmers!
There is no null hypothesis to AGW — it has always been a moving, expanding target, which now encompasses “everything”.
Hot temperatures and cold temperatures, droughts or floods, hurricanes or no hurricanes, everything falls under the their banner. If at some point the Sun itself is determined to be the major driver of our climate, then rest assured, the Sun will be deemed part of the theory.
What is the null theory on a theory that includes everything?
Leif Svalgard, somebody who is only pretending to be a scientist is making stupid comments here using your name.
Cochrane: Just to add a little to your contention with regard the “rebel Doctors” and ulcers:
“The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2005 was awarded jointly to Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren for their discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease.”
Suggest: http://www.helico.com/
For the full story. YES, the most DAMNING case I know of in human history where bright, educated, smart people were DEAD WRONG based on “consensus” in a “scientific” matter for 100+ years.
My Father’s upper aorta dissected in 1983. Fine work at the local county hospital saved him and he lived another full 20 years. Between the heart lung machines, the skill of the surgeons and the artificial heart valve and the aortic patch, there is NO DOUBT there was good science, and practice here. I also have NO DOUBT that most of the MD’s who worked on my Father, in 1983, if he had a ulcer, would have told him to reduce his stress…take Tagamet (TM) and to be “operated on” if they began to bleed.
Strangely, in 2000 my Father developed “stomach problems”. After a couple months struggle, I called and told him he and my Mother (various reasons for that) should be tested for H. Pylori. They were. Father positive, Mother negative…Father on antibiotics and successful alleviation of the “stomach problems”. Should we THROW OUT the work of the 1983 MD’s because they held an ERRONEOUS BELIEF? No, but this is a good example of why we need to be KIND to our “climate brethren” and mostly try to get them to see DOGMA for DOGMA and real “science” (based on test, hypothesis, data, analysis, cross checks, and challenge!) for what it SHOULD BE and try to chide them back to intellectual honesty.
The null hypothesis has not been rejected then that the warming we have experienced is outside natural variability.I would like to see some proof that the warming we have experienced(or part of it) was caused by increasing co2 emitted by man.There is no clear evidence that the world is heating up as predicted by AGW theory.All the thermometer temperature data is adjusted to make the past cooler and the present warmer.I wrote to my MP about the money wasted on global warming and got back a reply which ignored satellite data provided by people like Roy Spencer and only gave the adjusted thermometer record as proof of warming.Claims that we would see increased hurricanes,floods and heatwaves etc when the world warmed(if the world warms) all given without proof.All the evidence and data that is presented in support of AGW is all disputed certainly the computer generated weather forecasts for the next century.I do not expect the world to follow AGW predictions in the future and that is the only hope I have that this ridiculous world view can be overturned.
The elephant in the room is the assumption that natural climate variation is internal, that the earth is a closed system. If it can be shown that climate is dominated by externalities, then the increased CO2 would have to be considered a response to an external change, whatever that be.
I should add that geology suffers in a similar fashion – that all geological phenomena are due to earth centric forces, with an occasional extra-terrestrial impact to complicate matters from time to time.
It’s simply the geocentric view, the one Galileo had the misfortune of contradicting.
Jeremy @ 72
Snow albedo is a positive forcing due to the shortening winters (~1 day shorter each year), meaning there’s snow fewer days of the year.
Maybe instead of asking for the paper Dr Roy should have asked “What was (is) the Null Hypothesis?”
Well put Roy. It’s Climate Science’s “Missing Link”, until you have this piece of the jigsaw everything else is just Bluster and Froth.
Doctor Majogo Brifberth here, says CO2 causes global warming, and that’s that. QED.
http://thegarv.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/witchdoctor1.jpg
eadler @ February 2, 2011 at 12:29 pm references graphs at http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm
These graphs are a great source of frustration. They reveal that promoters of the CAGW theory either do not understand skeptical questions or do not want to confront them. There are several flaws in those graphs. Let’s start with their definition of anthropogenic forcings. It includes not only CO2 emissions and other GHGs, but also aerosols. Do you want to defend the quality of aerosols inputs over multiple decades over multiple geographical areas? The data do not exist, but that does not stop the incorporation of aerosols into the models – and only by incorporating such data do the models get a good fit. I have spent an excessive number of my days examining the data sources for aerosols in the models. I could not have a good argument against those who say that the inputs were arbitrarily and capriciously chosen. For myself, I would say they were conveniently chosen. Persistent use of these graphs by promoters of CAGW theory suggests to me that the CAGW is on very weak ground.
We could also discuss initial-state problems of the models, but that would make this post too long. But perhaps, we can make this quick observation. The fossil record, ice core drillings, and even biological residue confirm that the earth’s climate in its history has changed more – without human intervention — than what we have experienced since humans started pumping CO2 into the air. The models do not explain this natural variability; furthermore, the claim that they have matched history in the last 120 years is not accurate because of their use of dummy variables.
@Robert David Graham February 2, 2011 at 12:03 pm:
I don’t think so. Models are something you use after you’ve got settled science, like in modeling buildings (or windmills) so they don’t fall down or get blown over. Models are something engineers use to make sure they recognize all the stresses and deflections.
Models built on assumptions and formulas untested in the real world can only give GIGO results – who knows if they are right or not? You can code anything you want to – but is it reality? As Dr Spencer says, they all assume the meme is correct.
Science is reality, reality, reality – empirical, empirical, empirical. It ain’t science till it works in the real world, over and over and over, when prediction isn’t guesswork, but KNOWING what the result will be. Because it has been repeated, over and over and over.
Models not based on all that repetition is just guesswork. You can say that theories are “just” guesswork, but that ain’t true. Hypotheses are guesswork supported by some evidence. Before hypotheses you have suggestive concepts that are untested. After hypotheses you have theories, when comprehensive evidence makes the principle all but certain. After theories you have scientific laws, and boy, there aren’t many of those!
But theories don’t come from models. Models as applied in recent years come from theories. Not the other way around. Actually, models come from hypotheses much more often as applied in recent years. But running models doesn’t give anything useful, just some guys stroking themselves into thinking it is reality. If that is useful, okay, but I don’t think so. Gawd, especially when there is so much evidence that refutes the models – stuff they won’t put in because it would mean starting the model all over again.
Every formula used in the code of a model should be 100% solid and repeatable empirical fact. If it isn’t what in the world is it doing in there?
And if they don’t have enough repeatable empirical fact, they should stop writing code and go do some real science.
But they have to justify the expenditures on Crays, so they write on and on… they can’t admit that the code they are writing is based on nothing proven in the real world.
As I get it, all this started when someone decided that everything could be reduced to math. At some point that idea got taken over, and they began to think of the math as the real thing. That was, I think, pretty much in 1905 with Einstein’s work. He became the shining beacon, and thought experiments became more real than reality. Models are modern day analogs to Albert’s thought experiments. It was the beginning of the end, in a way. But it was the beginning of imaginary science taking over real science. As much as I admire Albert, I just think we’ve gone down some primrose path. Okay, off the soapbox now…
Theo Goodwin @ 74
A troll? I consider myself someone interested in what we know about the world, and in making decisions based on the best knowledge we have. If you consider that viewpoint “trolling”, well, there’s not much to discuss with you.
Hypotheses and measurements? Certainly. CO2 is measured increasing at 2ppm/year. Absolute humidity is ~4% higher than it was in 1970, roughly the volume of Lake Eirie (484 km^3), increasing the greenhouse trapping of water vapor. Both of those, incidentally, can be demonstrated as GHG’s in the average high school lab. Clouds have uncertainties, most definitely – high clouds primarily trap energy, low clouds primarily reflect sunlight – current thinking is that the overall effect is somewhat positive, but there’s definitely room for better measurements there.
Satellite data over the last 30 years or so seems to indicate a negative correlation in global cloud coverage to temperature – as it gets warmer, we get fewer clouds – but again which clouds they are is very important. I’ve spent some time looking at ship log data reporting clouds from the 40’s-80’s, and how they tie in with satellite data; they seem to have stayed essentially flat in the 1940-1970 period, but that’s much less certain data.
As to Florida? I have no opinion on cloud cover over Florida, although I’ll note that it’s a _tiny_ part of the overall world. And weather shifts are everywhere – I’ve been spending a lot of time shoveling the snow due to the jet stream moving south, apparently in response to Arctic warming.
Mike says:
February 2, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Not at all, because it is the AGW’ers that are the “ingrained religious or politial beliefs” crowd.
If you don’t believe me, you apparently haven’t read Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, have you?
Have you?
And you haven’t determined the origin of the Global Warming/Global Warming/Climate Change/Global Climate Disruption faction of humanity, have you? It really is a veritable cesspool of cult and Fabian Socialist acolytes.
@Helen Hawkins:
The ones who often berate those of us who believe in the existence of God are actually comparing apples to oranges. There is no conflict in my mind between scientific reason and faith.
Quite so, but it’s perfectly simple to see why this happens. We are dualistic creatures – meaning we have two centres: what conventional psychology would call left-brain and right-brain. The left being concerned with the intellectual, logical, analytical etc and the right with the creative, emotional, intuitive etc.
Science, in its purest form at least, is entirely a left-brain activity. We don’t bring the emotional or creative into it any more than we’d bring isotope analysis to bear on the paint on a Rembrandt in order to deduce what was in the painter’s mind.
Since the advent of post-normal science, we’ve seen an unprecedented level of emotion surrounding what should be an emotion-free field. If we can stand far enough back we see a rather bizarre spectacle: that of the right-brain in combat with the left. Indeed, much of human activity can be viewed in these terms, greatly enhancing our understanding of any number of unnecessary conflicts.
When Archimedes had his flash of inspiration regarding displacement, this thought had its origins in his right-brain. But he then had to go into purely left-brain mode in order to conduct the experiment that would prove his right-brain intuition correct. The result of his left and right being in complete harmony? A Eureka moment.
Science and the metaphysical are not opponents: they are twin windows into the nature of reality. As such, we need them both – and in equal measure.
Louis Hissink says:
February 2, 2011 at 2:34 pm
I’m a geologist and have never been under such a constraining viewpoint.
I think a much better test would be to challenge the AGW crowd to publish global temperature maps for each season for the next ten years, i.e., now through 2020. Make them lower troposphere maps so that they can be compared directly to the satellite measurements. No mish-mash of models either, each one stands on its own. A prediction of real physical temperatures like this will tell us if the models, which ARE AGW theory, have any value. I’d bet against them.
KR says:
February 2, 2011 at 1:36 pm
KR, that’s a model not data. To demonstrate that a GCM model might reasonably represent the real world you have to have it make a prediction that could be verified by real world data or evidence. The GCM models have failed on at least two counts:
(a) They failed to predict the plateau in temperatures of the last decade
(b) They predict a middle atmosphere “hot spot” which is not observed in the real world.
@max Hugoson February 2, 2011 at 2:29 pm:
I have no idea at all if it is connected to these two Aussie scientists, but in 1989 I listened to a nutritional tape in which it argued exactly the same thing as Marshall and Warren found. The speaker said that since 1950 veterinarians had been treating pig ulcers with Pepto Bismol and antibiotics. He argued that ulcers in humans were exactly the same as in pigs and that the same treatment would be as effective in humans as it was in pigs. He did also claim that veterinarians had tried to convince MDs of this ever since the 1950s. I don’t have the tape anymore, and I have no idea if the guy was blowing it out his arse and trying to steal the thunder from Marshall and Warren. But I suspect that Marshall and Warren weren’t the only Wegener types on this issue. It was as simple enough premise that must have occurred to people long before Marshall and Warren. But they did the lab work and they should get the credit. Someone needs to, and it is good they did, because the stink raised made the whole issue a bigger deal – as it should have been. Good on them.
I just wonder how many people did think of it… and actually do something with it.
Climate Science is in its infancy. Climate Science is not ready yet to prove anything. The necessary order:
1. Develop the tools to measure data accurately, eg:
A. temperatures all over the Earth, including sea surface and depths, land surface and at various elevation in atmosphere.
B. percent and type of cloud cover, with albedo measurements
C. solar energy input (insolation) across EM spectrum as well as solar wind (charged particles)
D. undersea volcanic activity as well as net global volcanic activity
etc.
This is all being developed, but only so recently that we have to reconstruct the Earth’s climate history via proxies and scattered anecdotal reports and records (eg sea captains’ readings of ocean temps).
The data, meaning raw data, must be generally available, not locked up at Hadlely CRU with access restricted to the anointed. Ongoing comparative studies of this data with with various bio and geo proxies (tree rings, ice cores, etc) can gradually discern the usefulness, if any of those proxies. A generally accepted climate history of the Earth might evolve.
Climate scientists ought to be humble enough to acknowledge that without the above, any computer-model-based prediction will be garbage, as in GIGO. Global warming, at present, is not even a scientific theory. It is speculation.
They, the global warming supporters, intend to keep the claim alive until at some time they have a democratic majority to enforce their desires or to get it through international agreements. Anyway if they let it collapse under the weight of proof climate change is not happening because of man they will not be able to revive it.
cochrane says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Sorry, but you’ve missed one of your time periods. The first two that you show (a 75% and 90% chance of there being global warming due to man) are ok, but the VERY first you mention (from 1900 to 1945) is what I’ll call Period 0 and apply a 10% chance of it supporting global warming (I believe that’s even generous; it could be 0, negating the other three). I’ll allow your assumptions of the other three time periods, so the cumulative probability of man being the cause of global warming since 1900 is:
Multiply 0.1 by 0.75 by 0.90 by 0.7 and you get 0.04725.
There is a 4.7% chance that the hypothesis is correct.
(You can’t cherry pick data to support a bias.)
KR writes:
“Satellite data over the last 30 years or so seems to indicate a negative correlation in global cloud coverage to temperature – as it gets warmer, we get fewer clouds – but again which clouds they are is very important. I’ve spent some time looking at ship log data reporting clouds from the 40′s-80′s, and how they tie in with satellite data; they seem to have stayed essentially flat in the 1940-1970 period, but that’s much less certain data.”
You really do not understand the words ‘hypothesis’ and ‘prediction’. “Seems to indicate a negative correlation” does not belong in science but in hunches.
Warmista, not necessarily you, want me to endorse a fundamental restructuring of our economy, at considerable cost to me, yet they cannot so much as explain or predict cloud behavior over a chunk of Earth the size of the state of Florida. Is that preposterous or what? It certainly is not scientific?
Mike says:
February 2, 2011 at 2:10 pm
“KR above nailed it, but I’ll add a little here. First evidence GW is caused mainly by human GHG emissions can be found here and you can follow links to peer reviewed papers.”
“http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-natural-cycle.htm
http://www.skepticalscience.com/its-not-us.htm”
Goodness, people, this is a discussion forum. Don’t assign homework. If you cannot state the matter clearly, concisely, and in your own words, then you do not understand it.
KR says:
February 2, 2011 at 2:00 pm
This question/challenge was cross-posted on Skeptical Science (http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?a=7&p=5#38769) – they are currently up to >20 peer-reviewed papers from multiple discussion threads, primarily the “It’s not us” thread (http://www.skepticalscience.com/its-not-us-advanced.htm), that rule out natural cycles as the major cause. The highest percentage was that ~15% of recent changes could be attributed to natural variation (Schwartz et al. 2010, http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI3461.1).
“I would consider the challenge busted.”
Can you state the argument in one of those papers in your own words, clearly, and concisely? If not, why are you directing us to them? You do not understand them, right? This is a discussion forum. After you have stated a position in your own words, then you can give links.
i read your blog daily keep up the good work.what has happened to climate depot? i havent been able to get it for 2 days is there a bit of skull duggery going on here?
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I was looking at several books on the AGW topic before settling on Blunder. In truth, I actually was pretty committed to buying The Hockey Stick Illusion, but it wasn’t available for the Kindle so I had to look at other options. Thanks for your feedback, I’m glad I chose wisely. 😉
Good post, and spot on. I’ve long maintained the view that CAGW fell far short of rising to the status of theory, thinking it best fit the status of hypothesis. However, I was recently challenged on this assertion, that even raising CAGW to status of hypothesis was charitable in the extreme. I am now of the view that the notion of CAGW has never left the realm of conjecture since it has never gone through the rigorous process of dismissing alternate theories. Even the warmers admit that the measured warming must be due to CO2, since it fits their models (i.e. they are arguing from ignorance). Talk about circular logic!
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Feet2theFire says:
February 2, 2011 at 2:48 pm
@Robert David Graham February 2, 2011 at 12:03 pm:
…computer models aren’t empirical evidence. They are a good way of coming up with theories, not proving theories.
I don’t think so. Models are something you use after you’ve got settled science, like in modeling buildings (or windmills) so they don’t fall down or get blown over. Models are something engineers use to make sure they recognize all the stresses and deflections.
#####
Wrong. First, science is never settled. Second in some engineering and scientific disciplines you have to construct models with uncertainities that cover processes that you don’t necessarily have a full understanding of. Models are tools. just like theories. Third, there are sciences where you cannot do controlled experiments so you are forced to use models.
“I’ve been picking up a lot of chatter in the last few days about the ’settled science’ of global warming. What most people don’t realize is that the vast majority of published research on the topic simply assumes that warming is manmade. It in no way “proves” it.”
So, with a proof we would have something like the “Law of Climate Change”?
That’s a pretty ambitious challenge since even electromagnetism is still just a theory.
Colin in Mission BC says:
February 2, 2011 at 4:09 pm
The “Hockey Stick Illusion” is a wonderful book and I recommend it highly. It is here on my desk. Spencer’s book is a little masterpiece that provides exactly the big picture that everyone needs now, describes and embodies scientific method, and places the focus exactly where it should be: on the non-existence of physical hypotheses that explain how manmade CO2 causes cloud behavior that creates a positive forcing.
Spenser has not stated a falsifiable NULL. Nevertheless, As seen on the ice thread I linked to even Willis agreed that the “null” whatever that is is challenged by the hitherto unseen cycles in the ice record.
So what is the Null? precisely.
You’ll note that nothing in AGW demands that temperatures move outside their historical extremes. AGW merely requires that temperatures with More GHG in the amosphere be warmer than it would be without that GHG.
The early models that suggested CO2 was the key factor typically kept ocean advection of warmth constant or used an average for solar input instead of the increasing trend as reflected in sunspots. Nevertheless, even then models such as Wigley’s in a 1990 Nature paper showed the internal variability, with El Nino factored out, created a 0.4 C /century rise in average temperatures. Even Hansen’s models showed similar natural variability. Often people show the trend from Hansen’s 1988 paper A,B and C scenarios showing how” accurate” he was. But they ignore how his model also predicted uniform rise in sea surface temperatures, which we know just didn’t happen. It was very wrong! His model never included oscillations such as the PDO and therefore completely missed regional ocean coolings. His predicted scenario B average temperature rise was close but his model was really wrong.Sounds ike he was mostly lucky.
Other models relying on CO2 always heated up the temperatures so the temperatures were 2X observed. So they added things lie heat-sponges, which have no more real connection to reality than SpongeBob. Or they added grossly inflated numbers for sulfates to cool the temperatures back closer to observations. They still can’t model El Nino (or El Nina) right, never mind the whole ocean.
When someone argues that the science is settled, it sounds more like they are out of real ammunition. They are seeking a political solution instead of a scientific one!
Steven Mosher,
Since you’ve asked about the null hypothesis in the past, here’s a good definition:
The null hypothesis is the statistical hypothesis that states that there are no differences between observed and expected data.
It’s a very valuable tool. Any alternative hypothesis must be tested against the null. If there is no measurable difference, then the alternative hypothesis should be looked upon as a placebo: something you think works, but doesn’t really.
Because there is no measurable, testable, empirical difference between today’s temperature cycles and temperature cycles during the Holocene, the alternative AGW hypothesis necessarily fails.
Although like a placebo, some folks swear by it.☺
I’d just settle for someone at GISS to state, with scientific certainty, that those anomalies will never, ever go below “zero” again.
That’s their biggest fear – that somehow, that 1 degree rise we’ve seen in the past 150 years will be lost. All of their papers feeding into the self-fulfilling prophecy of AGW depends on ever increasing temperatures.
I mean, they’ve worked so hard to get those numbers up, and constant monitoring of the data to keep them high.
Mike Borgelt says:
February 2, 2011 at 2:28 pm
Leif Svalgard, somebody who is only pretending to be a scientist is making stupid comments here using your name.
I don’t think so. My point was [and is], that you cannot prove a negative. If you want to rule out natural cycles [as defined by the climate itself] as the cause of recent climate change, then you have to assume the existence of what you want to rule out. Some people will dispute that natural cycles exists [hockey stick belief] as well as dispute that liitle green men exists. Perhaps if I replaced the aliens by ‘angels’ then millions of people would accept that the latter exists.
KR: “Absolute humidity is ~4% higher than it was in 1970, roughly the volume of Lake Eirie (484 km^3), increasing the greenhouse trapping of water vapor.”
First, the last part of the sentence doesn’t seem to flow logically from the first part of the sentence. Maybe, there is an issue with the English language.
Second, could you provide a reference for that?
Third, this statistic may be meaningless in itself. It would not be surprising that there was an increase in absolute humidity from the La Nina dominated years to the El Nino dominated years. To get a good handle, the statistic should be compared to the 1930s humidity level.
Fourth, I would be somewhat dubious about the 1970 value. Where would we get a reliable measure of global humidity in 1970, consistently measured to today’s measurement?
Mike says: February 2, 2011 at 2:10 pm
“KR above nailed it, but I’ll add a little here. First evidence GW is caused mainly by human GHG emissions can be found here and you can follow links to peer reviewed papers.
Those are pathetic websites whose sole argument is: “it’s got to be caused by something so it can’t be natural variation”. Which is really the same as saying: “nothing is random, therefore there is no such thing as random noise, so random noise can’t cause any kind of variation … so as it can’t be random noise (as random noise doesn’t exist, it must be human.”
This is also a great way to prove that solar flares are human induced … they can’t be random (as according to warmers nothing is random), so they’ve got to be caused by something, as its caused by something it can’t be natural variation, non-natural means humans QED humans cause solar flares.
Mike Haseler says:
February 2, 2011 at 2:25 pm
KR says: February 2, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Interesting challenge. I have one for Dr. Spencer:
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has demonstrated natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the the thermometer record.
KR, go read a book about basic statistics in science!
There you will learn that all systems have noise and the climate is no exception. Climate variation is all the changes in the climate that cannnot be readily attributed to other factors. This is totally different from climate cycles, climate cycles are predictable, climate variation isn’t (that’s why its dealt with statistically).
KR, the current warming in the thermometer record is being peer reviewed here on WUWT, and similar sites, I’m surprised that you haven’t picked up that the flow of opinion around here is that these records are so badly tampered with, and on an on-going basis, they are indicative only of major duplicity from the AGW camp promoting them. However, there are many other studies confirming the natural, internal climate cycles as depicted in the Vostok graph, which Gore produced in his film.
If you look at this carefully, you’ll see that the current rise we’re in since the end of the Little Ice Age is but a mere blip in the overall falling temperature sequence of blips from the dramatic global warming high at the beginning of our Holocene; which has taken us, all too briefly, out of the full grip of our current Ice Age, and into which we’re returning. Unless we can change the pattern..
So there you have your demonstration.
Re Mike Hasleler’s point about statistical noise, this paper might help: http://www.mnm.ifrf.net/2001/viewpoint.pdf
which gives an explanation of “o that the CO2 contribution to atmosphere from combusion is inside the statistical noise of the major sea and vegetation exchanges so a priori it can not be expected to be statistically significant.”
……..
Mike says:
February 2, 2011 at 2:10 pm
KR above nailed it, but I’ll add a little here. First evidence GW is caused mainly by human GHG emissions can be found here and you can follow links to peer reviewed papers.
Which says: “A natural cycle requires a forcing, and no known forcing exists that fits the fingerprints of observed warming – except anthropogenic greenhouse gases.”
What fingerprints? The Vostok graph like others of its ilk shows clearly that something is forcing, but that CO2, Methane and so on, let alone ‘anthropogenic’ such, follow temperature rises and, importantly, lag behind by a considerable number of years, around 800 years, so they can hardly be thought of as forcing anything.
Unless Carbon Dioxide has some supernatural powers to influence the rise of global temperature 800 years before it itself begins rising, then it’s fairly safe to assume its own rise is an effect and not a cause. It is not doing the forcing.
To anyone not trying to force Carbon Dioxide into this supernatural power role, the obvious analysis is that CO2 is irrelevant to global warming now as it was irrelevant in the past.
Whatever is doing the forcing is actually powerful enough to effect huge, very real, changes in our global climate, taking us spectacularly out of our Ice Age for a few thousand years before plunging us back into it. That natural cycle has been repeating itself around every 100,000 years for the last million.
If you want to understand just how dramatic these moves into interglacials, there’s a lot of information available about our current one. Rapid sea level rises of hundreds of feet from the melting of the vast, deep ice cover of the Ice Age can be rapid when containing walls finally break, in a decade or less in some cases.
The fingerprints of our present warming are in the patterns of the past. We know roughly where we are on that graph, while the when of the actual seemingly inevitable drop back into our Ice Age can still be speculated about – how imminent is imminent?
We don’t need to bother considering CO2 at all because it’s irrelevant in this, we have data to show it is irrelevant in these natural cycles. My advice, though you haven’t asked for it, is, don’t be taken in by those still promoting this really weird idea of a trace molecule with supernatural powers. They say it’s capable of doing everything, from driving runaway global warming and melting the arctic and antarctic and all the glaciers, to taking us into the ice age again.. The only constant in the spiel is that regardless of all the evidence that CO2 has nothing to do with these dramatic natural cycles, it is blamed for it.
Because they can’t think of anything else..
It seems to me that predictions have been made, endlessly over the last decade.
eg. Hurricanes will be stronger and more frequent (ala Trenberth, prediction made after Katrina.). – Fail.
Snow will be a thing of the past. Our children will not know what snow is. (UK Met office.) – Major Fail.
The snow line/belt will move north. (don’t remember the source, but that certainly does not appear to be the case. Atlanta will certainly agree.)
Then the symptoms keep shifing.
“It’s colder because it’s getting wamer, which is what we said all along.”
“It’s snowing more because it is getting warmer.”
And it goes on and on.
If you are soooooo bad at two years out, how on earth are we supposed to believe you about 20-50 or 100 years out?
Conclusion:
Either the magnitude of the forcing is not as great as previously believed (which is good news, really!) or; there is more to the climate than the models currently allow, for which false assumptions have been made.
steven mosher says:
February 2, 2011 at 4:33 pm
You’ll note that nothing in AGW demands that temperatures move outside their historical extremes. AGW merely requires that temperatures with More GHG in the amosphere be warmer than it would be without that GHG.
============================================================
So AGW theory is, in effect, completely unfalsifiable, since whatever the global temperatures happen to be, proponents of AGW can always claim that they would be “x” degrees lower if CO2 levels had remained at their pre-industrial revolution levels.
Catch 22.
steven mosher says:
February 2, 2011 at 4:33 pm
“You’ll note that nothing in AGW demands that temperatures move outside their historical extremes. AGW merely requires that temperatures with More GHG in the amosphere be warmer than it would be without that GHG.”
Nope, sorry, but AGW demands that manmade CO2 is the unique cause of the warmth. If Earth warms because of all the hot babes at the beach, that is not AGW. AGW is specifically manmade CO2.
steven mosher says:
February 2, 2011 at 4:25 pm
“Models are tools. just like theories. Third, there are sciences where you cannot do controlled experiments so you are forced to use models.”
If you reflect on this a minute, you will note that there can be two or more models that have all the same output yet have internal conflicts with one another. That is, one modeler will say the “The system does X” and the other modeler will say “No, the system does not-X.” Because the two models have all the same output, there is no basis for choosing between the two claims. You have just given up the concept of scientific truth. When I hire a scientist, I insist on one who recognizes the concept of truth as it applies to hypotheses and those honored hypotheses that we call theories and laws.
William James agreed with you. But he recognized that he had given up the concept of truth as it applies to science. He put scientific truths on the same level as religious truths; either were to be judged on the basis of the good that they produce for society. Fortunately, James died before discovering that he was giving cover to Lenin, Stalin, and all the rest.
The wager does need to better worded. Longer term oscillations like the PDO and AMO would need to be named specifically. Since Tsonis et al. 2007 showed a relationship between oscillations and climate shifts, it would need to be proven that Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gas variation has or has not over powered these oscillations. Better worded, it would be a neat bet.
Laurie Bowen says:
February 2, 2011 at 11:59 am
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times . . . . and that ought to be enough . . .
22/7 = ? anyone . . .
—
Laurie, I never quite followed your logic. Is it that 22/7 – 1/2/5/79 + 2/2/2/2/2/2/3/5/5/5/5/5/5 + 3/2/2/2/2/89/353/32413 would be a bit closer? That they are missing some terms?
Leif says:
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out experimentation by little green aliens as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
I say:
Oh good heavens.
This is what AGW must fight against: Within each short term weather forecast event, weather pattern variation parameters (SST, water vapor, pressure systems, jet stream, etc) come into the field of view that then leads forecasters to predict cooling or warming temperatures, wind speed and direction, and precip, 2 or 3 days in advance. The predictions are getting quite close to the actual observations. AGW does not appear to be a part of these calculations. As far as I can tell, at least here in NE Oregon, the predictions don’t add a layer of AGW to the forecast. It is what it is based on the presenting weather pattern variation parameters coming into view.
Therefore, AGW cannot be extrapolated from the data because it didn’t exist as an input. End of discussion.
Windmill Impotency is a huge problem..
Pfizer is working hard on a remedy..
KR: “Absolute humidity is ~4% higher than it was in 1970, roughly the volume of Lake Eirie (484 km^3), increasing the greenhouse trapping of water vapor.”
1. The 2nd part of the sentence does not follow logically from the 1st part – and probably is not logical in itself – perhaps there is a problem with the use of the English language?
2. Can you provide a reference for that?
3. Such a statistic may not be meaningful without examination of context. To increase absolute humidity from the La Nina-dominated years of the 1970s to El-Nino years may not at all be impressive. We need to compare it to humidity levels in the 1930s.
4. I am dubious about the reliability of a measure of global humidity in 1970 – and that we can reliability compared it to our current estimates of humidity.
KR said:
1. “….CO2 is measured increasing at 2ppm/year. Absolute humidity is ~4% higher than it was in 1970…”
2. “Satellite data over the last 30 years or so seems to indicate a negative correlation in global cloud coverage to temperature – as it gets warmer, we get fewer clouds…”
3. “I’ve been spending a lot of time shoveling the snow due to the jet stream moving south, apparently in response to Arctic warming.”
At least you are consistent in your unquestioning attribution of cause and effect.
KR says:
February 2, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Interesting challenge. I have one for Dr. Spencer:
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has demonstrated natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
You can’t prove a negative, particularly one that isn’t even defined (which natural cycles, for example?). You can prove (or disprove) a positive statement.
Here’s one more challenge for him:
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out actions of the lawn gnome Illuminati (they’re everywhere, and only move when you aren’t looking) as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
Undefined natural cycles, lawn gnomes, invisible pink unicorns – pretty much one and the same. It’s a dishonest challenge.
————————————————————-
Hold up a second.
“This is a critical point. We cannot explain the temperature observations without CO2”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/
That sound is a scientist leaning on his crutch, the GCM. Now the idea is that since natural cycles cannot explain the warming, it must be explained by CO2. So asking how you got there from here is not a dishonest challenge, it’s a fair question that cannot be answered.
If temperature anomalies vary so widely on a month to month timescale, I would say that any trend you think you see may not even be a trend at all, just smoothed noise.
Or, in other words, somewhere in the papers analyzing the global climate models, there should be a paper explaining why natural cycles are insufficient in explaining temperature. Where is it? They make the claim, asking for the proof is not a dishonest challenge.
Roy, what bothers me is the world at this very moment is reverting back to the state of the late 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s and I sincerely hope there are at least some real scientists that are watch this event very, very closely. To hell with co2. The jet streams are moving south not from co2 but from a cooling Earth. In that same period the jet stream was almost always over Oklahoma or north Texas and that is how it got the title “Tornado Alley”. During the previous two decades it was tightened northward.
So, don’t apply too much time trying to fight the “AGW Church”, they are the truly lost scientists. I hope you, Dr. Christy, and your division staff need to use this time to record exactly HOW the Earth does cool. That seems to be the key. Ignore TSI for the moment, when the sun goes dormant, what physical events occur to allow the cooling even though our TSI instruments show little change.
It is cooling and right now we can watch (satellites, radiosondes) and record events that haven’t occurred for some decades in the past. Please don’t miss this opportunity.
And sorry, Mosher, wrt ‘hitherto’ unseen ice cycles, what about the recent findings about ice-free summers in the arctic ~3,000 years ago? Or the evidence from the 1930s that ice conditions were similar to today?
Leif Svalgaard says:
February 2, 2011 at 4:59 pm
I don’t think so. My point was [and is], that you cannot prove a negative. If you want to rule out natural cycles [as defined by the climate itself] as the cause of recent climate change, then you have to assume the existence of what you want to rule out. Some people will dispute that natural cycles exists [hockey stick belief] as well as dispute that liitle green men exists. Perhaps if I replaced the aliens by ‘angels’ then millions of people would accept that the latter exists.
—————————————————–
Well, climate modelers have stated time and again that they cannot explain global temperatures without CO2. They should have proof somewhere they couldn’t do it, and why they couldn’t do it, right? Is producing this proof really comparable to proving angels exist? Because sorting through paperwork is probably not the most convincing way to get that done.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-4.html
That would seem like a good place to start. Now, I certainly wish I had the time and resources to pore through journal after journal, but I don’t. But if you start to dig through their report, they don’t sound certain at all.
Thus, an accurate simulation of stratosphere-troposphere and ocean-atmosphere coupling may still be necessary to accurately simulate the SAM.
All they need is an accurate simulation to accurately simulate the SAM. Got it?
Eadler et al;
Every time I see someone using the GCM’s as evidence of any sort, I just want to cry. Read the IPCC report. Of all the models that they used results from, NOT ONE CAME CLOSE TO THE TEMPERATURE RECORD. The only way they got even close was to take all the model results and average them. So, they took a bunch of results that they KNOW ARE ALL WRONG and averaged them to come up with something that is LESS WRONG BUT WITH LARGER ERROR BARS. They didn’t even use all the model results they had, they eliminated some for various reasons, and they didn’t use some that were submitted. Hey, if we get enough model results that are wrong and average them in various combinations we should be able to come up with an average that is bang on the temperature record. Of course for predicting the future it will be total useless since it is just a bunch of wrong answers jumbled together in a nice picture so that someone can point at it and go “see?”
…and while I am at it… the geological record and the ice core record and the historical record all show more natural varaiability than we are seeing now. For those still staring at the hockey stick graphs like they mean something, look at the scale. Draw that same graph properly, degrees K which starts at zero and earth norm is roughly 288…now the tip of that hockeystick looks exactly what it is. A fraction of a fraction of a blip in the normal range of variability. Take out the tree rings or the thermometer data or what ever else and use satellite data for the last 30 years and POOF! no more hockey stick, just a shaft.
Isn’t playing with a broken off hockey stick a major penalty? 3 minute minor or something? How does that translate into climate science? 3 year suspended incredulity?
steven mosher says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:56 pm
Mosh, your implication is ugly. I tell you that I have written to Dr. Bilitza, and you interpret this as me promising to write him. Then you say “we have no update”, as though I didn’t follow through on my supposed “promise”.
Now that’s not nice, Mosh, not nice at all. As I said, I had already written to Dr. Bilitza. He never wrote back, so save your snark and your nasty insinuations for him.
And if that’s your best evidence, I thought Dr. Roy had asked for a peer reviewed paper, not a discussion between you and me.
w.
…and just as I cease my ranting, let’s get some focus on all this “well you can’t explain xyz or abc etc without GHG’s”. Why oh why do we let ourselves get sucked into debates over 2nd, 3rd or 4th order measures of CO2’s effect on global temperatures?
I’ve never seen a single warmist dispute that CO2’s warming effects are logarithmic, not one. Known science. Accepted science. Skip settled, that term has become meaningless, but the logarithmic effects of CO2, if they can be disputed, then all I can say is that no one is disputing them.
So take ALL the warming from the last 100 years. DOUBLE it. Blame CO2 for THAT number including feedbacks. What are we at? About one degree? OK, now calculate how many barrels of oil we have to burn in the next century to get just ONE more degree. C’mon, how many?
As soon as we start doing the ACTUAL numbers from DIRECT effects even giving ALL the warming and DOUBLING just in case there’s some cooling effects compensating, we STILL have to burn an amount of fossil fuel that isn’t possible even with China and India and everyone else industrializing at full tilt.
Mosh:
Rather than spending your time making insinuations about Willis’s integrity, why don’t you write Dr. Bilitza yourself if you’re so breathlessly interested in his work.
Frankly, I’m at a complete loss as to why you felt it necessary to even mention Willis in this thread.
> A better challenge is to give just one weather/climate
> scenario that disproves global warming.
Can’t be done. So flexible is the theory, that there is not now
any possible climatic event that is inconsistent with the AGW
hypothesis. Unfortunately this comes with a price tag. Because
the theory is immune from refutation, it is no longer Science.
steven mosher says:
February 2, 2011 at 4:33 pm
You’ll note that nothing in AGW demands that temperatures move outside their historical extremes. AGW merely requires that temperatures with More GHG in the amosphere be warmer than it would be without that GHG.
========================================================
lol, dang Steve, you sure are stirring the pot today! As to your definition of AGW, …. puh-leez.
No one is arguing water vapor doesn’t retain heat for the earth. But you knew that.
Prove that its CO2. Prove that man’s contribution is significant, spectrum and all. And prove that the results will be catastrophic. That’s what people are arguing about. I didn’t even get into the sub-topics such as albedo or other fictional excaserbating issues. (tipping points, ect.) Funny thing is, I can’t tell you how many times today I was wishing that it was true. But, being able to warm the world with my actions or will, is simply a fantasy. For me, and everyone else on this marble.
Mosh, your implication is ugly. I tell you that I have written to Dr. Bilitza, and you interpret this as me promising to write him. Then you say “we have no update”, as though I didn’t follow through on my supposed “promise”.
Now that’s not nice, Mosh, not nice at all. As I said, I had already written to Dr. Bilitza. He never wrote back, so save your snark and your nasty insinuations for him.
And if that’s your best evidence, I thought Dr. Roy had asked for a peer reviewed paper, not a discussion between you and me.
w.
######
you’re reading too much into it.
1. I’m pointing out that spencer never gave a quantified null.
2. I’m pointing out what that can lead to.. somebody finding something odd that was not specifically specified as a NULL
Now WRT the mail you wrote.
1. When we wanted Jones data because we thought we might find something wrong with it we were pretty damn dedicated about finding it. I think You FIOA’d it.
2. Have you FIOA’d the info about the algorithm?
3. Folks get in a huff when scientists doubt the data.. just pointing out a similar case.
No paper means no null hypothesis rejected and no settled science. However that doesn’t make the AGW hypothesis a bad one. It is still the most likely explanation for at least part of the warming. There are lots of reasons to think that increased CO2 in the atmosphere should lead to warming, whether it has or not. And there is no paper either which proves that an increase of CO2 cannot cause some warming. So AGWers cannot scientifically reject the posibility that the rise in temperatures is mostly due to natural variation, and Skeptics cannot rule out either that CO2 played an important part. No settled science works both ways.
Climate sensitivity is a completely different matter, though. Not only no paper demonstrates it to be 3C/doubling or more, they are not even close to making us believe that it is a most likely estimate. All past and present data point to a much lower value. Only “virtual computer games” support the 3C/doubling estimate.
I’m hoping and thinking that we’ll see a sharp drop this year and next, accompanied by a strong arctic ice rebound. Revenge served cold, IOW.
Re steven mosher says,
Feb 2, 2011 at 4:33pm
“You’ll note that nothing in AGW demands that temperatures move outside their historical extremes. AGW merely requires that temperatures with More GHG in the amosphere be warmer than it would be without that GHG.”
Steven
Frankly I’m a bit distressed about what you wrote above because over the years I have come to expect high quality thinking in your posts (despite your too often exposed proof-reading aversions). There are two things here that I find upsetting. First the whole statement is, at first glance, arguably a logical howler, equivalent to, “Red is always black, except when it’s red”.
I’ve tried to think of any possible way that statement could have meaning —even the possibility that it could be true if it included a simple hitherto hidden element. The temperature would increase only at the “string” (or even Platonic forms) level of reality (i.e. not measurable in any fashion we know of yet) and would exist only as long as it takes the relevant higher frequency photons to exit the earth’s atmosphere. So it really would get warmer, it just would not actually be any warmer. (Nah, I didn’t really think you’d buy that—but.)
On the other hand, at second glance at this first point, are you saying that AGW theory contains the qualifier that no matter how high the temperatures get they will NEVER get higher than they were at some previous time, unless caused to be so by something other than GHGs?
The other thing that causes a wince is your assertion that AGW “merely” requires “warmer” temperatures. What? Are you serious? Do you mean that all the disastrous consequences, the economic, social and psychological trauma, the guilt, the sometimes bitter debating and yelling back and forth is just a whole lot of —words signifying nothing???? That’d be grrrreat!!!….for some of us.
But maybe you’ve got something here that can make everybody happy. Some folks get their AGW, but it won‘t make a bit of difference to anybody else. Really GRRREAT!!!
But then again, maybe you just misspoke yourself.
Ron
@ Leif Svelgaard: “Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out experimentation by little green aliens as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.”
Show me one scientific paper peer reviewed or otherwise that suggests little green aliens as the most likely cause of the recent warming in the thermometer record>
It is a good idea. In fact I usually add that little challenge to any comments I make in the MSM. So far I have been treated to a thousand and one effects of warming that, “I am just too stupid to understand”. But not one link to a single paper.
Seems the world is strong on opinion and short on facts.
Nylo says:
February 2, 2011 at 10:10 pm
So AGWers cannot scientifically reject the posibility that the rise in temperatures is mostly due to natural variation, and Skeptics cannot rule out either that CO2 played an important part. No settled science works both ways.
——————————-
Null hypotheses are never proven. They are just more true than the alternative hypothesis. The scientific method proves things by throwing alternative after alternative at the null, in an attempt to disprove it. If CO2 causing the warming is the null, what is the alternative? CO2 is not causing the warming. This means that there is a natural component, no matter which you choose as the null. There must be, therefore, a defined component that applies to the variations that occur without man-made perturbation.
What we know about this component is commonly referred to as ‘weather’ and dismissed as too noisy to be a part of the climate. Daily variations transact large amounts of energy, which poses problems for the logic in choosing AGW as the null hypothesis. The logical choice of a null hypothesis is that normal variations that happen on the daily scale can explain warming and cooling trends.
If this is the null, and it deserves to be so, then the alternative is that CO2 is causing the warming. This means you have to rule out the daily variations. Good luck using averaged data to rule out daily variations.
Leif Svalgaard says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out experimentation by little green aliens as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.>>>
Leif, Leif, Leif, you have your aliens mixed up. Its little white mice running their experiments on us. Its all documented in great detail in Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. You can’t claim its not peer reviewed, I have a lot of peers and they’ve reviewed it, in fact millions upon millions have, many of them real scientists with degrees and everything. In fact, read the reviews, you’ll find all kinds of comments, but not one that it isn’t true.
Its may be funny to you, but by the standards of AGW and CO2, that book is science too.
One of the themes in this thread is the idea that the historical temperature data can only be fitted with models that include AGW CO2. This is nonsense and only really tells us something about the modelers ie that they are too lazy to include other effects. A few examples of important effects not included in models:
(a) Clouds
(b) Cosmic rays
(c) Undersea volcanic eruptions
The second point about models is that they can fit observations without having any physical basis whatsoever. A simple linear regression model fitted to temperature data gives quite a good fit. So does a sine wave with a reasonably long period, at least half as long as the temperature series itself. The fit of any model to the data can always be arbitrarily improved by adding more terms. For example, the simple y = mx + c linear model fit could be improved by adding an x^2 term. By improved we mean that the residuals are smaller. This does not make it a better model.
You cannot prove a model write or wrong. What you can do is make predictions using the model and then compare these predictions to new data. It is difficult to make controlled experiments on the climate of the earth, although not impossible – Svensmark and Calder describe very interesting controlled experiments to relate cosmic rays to clouds development in The Chilling Stars. However the difficulty of running a controlled experiment for the climate of the earth means that the only real test of a model is to make a clear and measurable prediction of future data (eg temperature of the planet) for a useful period into the future such as for 10 years. Then you wait until you have collected the data and compare.
As far as I can see most of the IPCC predictions of the future based on their report in 2001 have failed such as:
(a) Increase in global temperature has plateaued, not increased as predicted
(b) Sea level rise of up to 60 cm per decade has not happened
(c) Sea level rise has not accelerated and indeed the change for the last couple of years is actually negative! (Likely a temporary effect in the long march out of the LIA)
(d) Hurricane frequency and strength has not increased
I use the 2001 report as the reference because then we have a close to 10 year period to observe new data and test the predictions. Where is the IPCC analysis in the 2007 report to compare the predictions of the 2001 report with the actual outcomes in the real world?
If climate scientists were doing science properly they would be arguing for better data collection systems to be available so as they could test their predictions. While satellite data fulfill some of this requirement we should remember they are remote sensing systems. Climate scientists should be arguing for more, better and properly sited temperate and climate monitoring stations to be put in place – instead we have witnessed the great “decline of the thermometers” in the GHCN data series and amateur groups such as WUWT having to point out the inadequacies of many meteorological collection points as climate monitoring sites.
Leif Svalgaard:
The point was that you cannot prove a negative. You mention that several natural cycles exists. Some would say that they don’t exist [hockey stick people] or are actually man-made [aerosols, CO2, land use, etc], so we are back to square one on that.
What do mean? For example AO/NAO cycle is identified back to many centuries and affects temperatures over NH. Can you show a reference which claims that there is no such cycle?
Myrrh says: February 2, 2011 at 5:17 pm
“What fingerprints? The Vostok graph like others of its ilk shows clearly that something is forcing,”
Then Myrrh, the task is pretty simple. Show statistically that the signal (forcing) to noise (natural variation) ratio is higher enough to make your (bogus) assertion of 95% confidence.
Let me even help you do it: according to the IPCC report, the noise is 1/f type noise. We have enough instrumentation reading before CO2 and after for you to characterise the natural variation before the CO2 and then test using statistics to see whether the change in signal is compatible with that noise model (null hypothesis not disprove) or incompatible with that noise model (null hypothesis disproved and so it must be external forcing).
That is all we are asking you to do: PROVE IT STATISTICALLY and stop talking BS about the “hand of god”. (referring to a notorious incident of handball, which was not spotted, but which very much had human fingerprints on it!)
David Falkner says:
February 2, 2011 at 8:03 pm
Well, climate modelers have stated time and again that they canot explain global temperatures without CO2. They should have proof somewhere they couldn’t do it, and why they couldn’t do it, right?
What they are actually saying is they have not the faintest idea of the causes of climate change because CO2 is consistently shown to be irrelevant to any such changes in the past.
Bringing in CO2 and arguing that it is the cause is a red herring, because they already admit, tacitly by accepting past records as in Vostok, it is one of the things shown to not cause climate change.
What they are actually saying is that they are not climate scientists.
@KR Feb 2, 2:00pm –
I followed your link to skeptical Science’s blog and muoncounter’s comment there and his Santer link.
The Santer paper is just awful science. How in the world did Science actually publish such a weak, sloppy, illogical mess such as that?
I tried to post this response to his comment as follows, but it kept rejecting it as having ad hominem attacks in it. No, there are not any in it.
@228 (muoncounter) said:
Is Santer kidding?
It is a model. Models are not empirical evidence.
First of all, Santer is using tropopause height as a proxy for, not just warming, but he takes it to an unwarranted next step, bypassing the warming itself and going straight to “humans did it.”
His statement should have been in two parts. First it should have said, “We show that tropopause height is a quantifiable proxy for a warming climate,” and then he should have shown his evidence that it was humans that caused the tropopause height change. His logic is flawed. His CO2 = humans thinking is getting in the way of his logic.
Wow. The only empirical evidence here is the first, radiosonde data, and it is only evidence that the tropopause has changed. Nothing in that fact points at humans. The 2nd one is weather forecasts, and forecasts are not empirical evidence. They are guesses. The 3rd is climate models, and models are not empirical evidence, either. So all he is left with is “Weather balloons say the tropopause changed height.” That says nothing about humans. To Santer maybe it does, but it isn’t scientific to take that quantum leap. Santer: In logic you can’t leave steps out.
Again, models are not empirical evidence. They are lines of code and can only give back what is programmed in. GIGO anyone? I am not slurring the modelers intentions, just that they need each physical process to be 100% proven out before they can rely on the output of that portion of the code. And they also need to not include even one code character of supposition or surmise or assumption.
THIS one is beautiful. Santer here is admitting that as of 2003 no one – I repeat, no one – had done what Dr. Spencer is asking in 2011. So, the first question should be, “Has anyone done it since then?” Of course, in this paper Santer is claiming that he and his cohorts have come to rescue climate science from that oversight.
But has he?
Sorry. Demonstrating based on estimates? Not science. Come on Santer! You can do better than that.
Really guys, this is sad. On this site where you claim to be properly skeptical, you don’t let that pass as science, do you?
And ohmygod, this one in the Abstract caught my eye:
I’ll even pass on the “simulated” and get to the real goody:
This is the same solar irradiance that has been shot down as a direct and naturalforcing for warming itself, but it is okay for Santer to drag it out and claim a causal link to tropopause height? For a proxy? Holy crap! Talk about a double standard! But at the same time, let’s see what Santer does with it…
Okay, he only mentions it twice in the body of the text. The first is
“The natural external forcings considered are changes in solar irradiance (S) and volcanic aerosols (V)”
where he assigns a variable name to it. Okay… No real science there. . .
Then the last mention of solar irradiance is:
First here, let’s point out that this is the only meaty (?) use of solar irradiance in the entire paper.
But this is puzzling. Without any sourcing, he states that as fact, leaving everyone to stipulate that it is an uncontested fact, I guess. But, wow. He is giving solar irradiance a power that isn’t referenced and a power that isn’t allowed to anyone who tries to use it as a direct forcing on climate, who want to use it as a “natural forcing.” They can’t use it directly, but he, Santer, can use it as a forcing for a proxy – with no demonstrated evidence that it really is true.
Do I have that right?
I have to ask, where did he pull that out of?
All in all, if you, muoncounter, call any of that solid science, you don’t seem to have have very high standards.
VERY poor logic, sloppy concepting of the paper – what can I say? Terrible…
And in conclusion, nowhere in it does Santer develop an answer to Dr. Spencer’s challenge.
Models and simulations and estimates – none of them are empirical evidence that does what Santer claims it does.
Solar irradiance – if he wants to use that for proxies, he has to “show his work,” and prove why it is valid to use it.
Seriously, if I were a grading it as a paper, I’d flunk the dude.
KR says:
February 2, 2011 at 2:00 pm
This question/challenge was cross-posted on Skeptical Science.
I would consider the challenge busted.
I tried to follow that last link and it is behind a paywall (as I suspect you know). Over the years I have followed many such links posted by warmers (that is the only “evidence” they ever post) and not once has the article said what it was supposed to say. And if you challenge the warmers … they just post another link … and another link and none of them ever back up their assertions.
What is it with you guys? Do you have some frigging random link generator?
I propose another “Null hypothesis” … these global warmers are all just automatons from some horrible science experiment that went wrong. They are all just part of some big simulation to come back with random scientific sounding responses … random links to articles, random scientific ideas picking up any news article on the weather and adding the phrase … “yet more proof of global warming”.
Seriously
Put the evidence. Not some frigging useless link and certainly not ones behind pay walls. Put up the evidence or shut up!
I was all set to agree with those here who argue that Dr Spencer should be asking for a null hypothesis. But on relfection I don’t think so.
As I understand the null hypothesis, asking to prove others are not genuine forcings is not the same as asking if CO2 has no effect.
As a null hypothesis for each of the natural forcings, maybe that would work, as long as it is the change that is being looked at. They all do have some effect. AGW argues that all the other ones (at least in toto) are a fixed value, thus leaving CO2 to be the change culprit by default. That is really their underlying mantra.
Dr Spencer is asking if that assumption – that the total of all the other forcings never changes – has been proven. That is what got me to change sides, that it was never proven. I am still looking for that paper, after 15 years.
I do think it is significant that Santer admitted in his paper that no one had done this by 2003. Even one of their own admits it. And if it had been done since then, WUWT would have been right on it.
_____
BTW, it is amazing how many comments on this thread have not been responsive to the question asked. That is unusual here.
dallas says: February 2, 2011 at 6:28 pm
“The wager does need to better worded. Longer term oscillations like the PDO and AMO would need to be named specifically. Since Tsonis et al. 2007 showed a relationship between oscillations and climate shifts, it would need to be proven that Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gas variation has or has not over powered these oscillations. Better worded, it would be a neat bet.”
Dallas, that is a superb post and though I’ve said too much, it deserves comment.
My assessment of the climate is that it consists of a lot of random fluctuations in the form of semi-stable “oscillations”. We see these large shifts from one state to another with El Niño/La Niña. Or to be accurate we see events that we ascribe the name El Niño/La Niña, because they are more like Atlantic highs/lows. We know they exist because we can pin a name on them, and they are to some degree predictable, but in terms of a total noise model for the climate, they are not really predictable because they arrive at random times and at random intensities and as such are really constituent parts of the total variation just as weather is a constituent part of the total climate.
So, what I would say, is that if you can provide a prediction for any of these oscillations with say >95% confidence of their absolute contribution to global temperature within the time span we are considering, then sure they aren’t random and so after doing the basic analysis with them it sure … we can take out their contribution and see if that makes any significant change.
Humans have such a difficult time with science because it’s so easy for them to be human.
David Falkner:
At February 2, 2011 at 11:16 pm you attempt the same ‘bait and switch’ that Trenberth recently advocated when you write:
“Null hypotheses are never proven. They are just more true than the alternative hypothesis. The scientific method proves things by throwing alternative after alternative at the null, in an attempt to disprove it. If CO2 causing the warming is the null, what is the alternative?”
The null hypothesis is NOT “If CO2 causing the warming” and a claim that it could be is a denial of the scientific method.
I said this in another thread but it seems proper to quote it here.
“A scientist has to work within the scientific method. He/she does not have the luxury of changing the method because of any personal desire. And part of the scientific method is an acceptance of the nature and importance of the null hypothesis in any investigation.
The null hypothesis is that in the absence of evidence of a change then it has to be assumed there has been no change.
So, in the case of AGW, it has to be assumed that climate behaviour has not changed from previous climate behaviour unless and until there is evidence that climate behaviour has changed.
There can be no compromise with this.
The null hypothesis in AGW is that climate behaviour has not changed as a result of the anthropogenic emission of GHGs (i.e. following the industrial revolution) and it is the ONLY scientific assumption because there is no evidence – none, zilch, not any – evidence of such a change. If such evidence were produced then the null hypothesis would be disproved and there could be investigation of what caused the change. But unless and until such evidence exists there is not – and there cannot be – any scientific purpose in investigating the cause (perhaps AGW or something else) of a change which is not known to exist.”
Roy Spencer’s challenge is merely a statement of what is required by science before AGW can be considered as being a likely reality.
You and Stephen Mosher are right that this requirement is not fair: it is not. But science is not about what is and is not fair: it is a method to discern what is and is not most likely to be true.
Richard
Great challenge. It is equal to the challenge: prove that CO2 is no GHG.
Re steven mosher says,
Feb 2, 2011 at 4:33pm
Gee Steven, took a while for me to realize exactly what had just said and the implications.
You see there is more CO2 today and no increase in temperatures. Since CO2 levels have increases markedly in the last 31 years, and temperatures are now hitting the exact same level they were at 31 years ago, and having never exceeded their historical extremes upward or downward, seems by your very statement above you seem to have just refuted an entire string of theories flying around:
— that CAGW exists and the warming was cause by mankind made CO2 and it’s consequences will be catastrophic
— that AGW exists and the warming was cause by mankind made CO2
— that GW exists and the warming was caused by elevated CO2, natural or not
And we’ll just let the satellite temperature readings in coming months and years prove beyond a reasonable doubt that CO2 has had not a little but in actuality no affect on temperatures at all, global or otherwise.
Congrats and thanks for finally saying that so clear. You the man!
RR Kampen says:
Right. Try to prove a negative.
RR, it scares me that you’re a teacher.
I like to compare this AGW issue with a murder trial. Your wife was killed and they found her buried in your garden. You have no alibi, and given that the relationship was not good, it can be claimed that you had motives. Yet there is no solid proof that you did it, no fingerprints, ADN, witnesses, etc.
It is certainly posible that you didn’t do it. You can claim that, historically, there have been lots of murders of the wives of other people, with the victim being buried afterwards in her own garden, and it wasn’t always the husband. You can claim that you are not the only person who may want your wife dead. You can claim that your garden can be easily accessed by anyone (no alarm, no dog, easy fence…). But in the end, the jury only has to find you guilty “beyond any reasonable doubt”. And “reasonable doubt” is such a subjective term. If you are very lucky, they will declare you not-guilty due to lack of proof. But even in that case, that doesn’t mean that you are truly inocent, nor does it mean that the most likely thing isn’t still that you did it. It only means that they couldn’t find the final proof yet.
In this analogy, your wife’s murder is the temperature rise and you are the anthropogenic explanation, and other people who may also have motives to kill your wife are the other posible natural factors. Yes, there may be no solid proof against you, but all of the admittedly weak evidences point to you, and you cannot prove that any other person did it. Even if declared not-guilty, you are still the most likely murderer.
WheelsOC says:
February 2, 2011 at 1:14 pm
“I would pose to Dr. Spencer a counter-challenge, that he publish one peer-reviewed paper that convincingly establishes natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record. But Dr. Spencer has said he doesn’t want to publish in the peer-reviewed literature anymore and prefers more laxly refereed venues like Geophysical Research Letters. It seems a bit hypocritical to demand peer-reviewed rebuttals to his non-reviewed assertions. That’s not how the burden of proof works”.
Peer reviewing only works if those who are invited to review are prepared to see a piece of work which flies contrary to their views but is otherwise sound, get into print. Many years ago the editor of one professional journal sent a well-researched article by a friend of mine to two of his university peers. One liked it and there were only a few minor suggestions. The other hated it and came up with a number of destructive reasons for not publishing. But the editor was determined that the article should be published. So she sent it to me as the third reviewer, knowing full well that because the author was a friend of mine and that we shared the same views, she would secure a majority for publication.
Dr. Spencer is probably fed up with having his papers turned down because journals like Nature send them to be peer reviewed by ardent AGW propagandists.
Nylo,
You have stated the classic argumentum ad ignorantium.: “Since I can’t think of any other reason for the temperature rise, then it must be due to CO2.”
It’s a false argument from ignorance. We don’t know everything about the climate; presuming that CO2 is the culprit, without any empirical evidence is foolish. And because the climate acts the same now as it did prior to the industrial revolution, assigning blame to a tiny trace gas is anti-science. Especially when the evidence shows that CO2 follows temperature.
Steve Mosher
I am currently reading your book for the second time and admire your work immensly.
However your attitude to AGW puzzles me.
Starting with your last point first.
I looked at the Willis’ post that you cited and saw his charts start in 1978.
I presume that they are drawn from satelite data which have many strengths, but one fatal flaw, or rather shortcoming:
You cannot deduce the bounds of any element of the climate from data only a mere 30 years long.
Climate cycles are far longer and being chaotic, have enormous fluctaition, relative to trend, which cannot be bound by any thirty year period. Your example fails.
Any others?
Secondly, or rather, reverting to your first point.
I can see what you’re getting at.
Dr. Spencer’s challange is all in words, concepts, not hard facts and data.
But after all, that is exactly what he is challenging.
The whole AGW is just shock and horror, smoke and whimsy stuff.
“Our models show that ….. bla bla blah”.
“The very heavy snow in the northern hemisphere is due to global warming causing the freezer door in the artic to be left open and ….. bla bla blah”.
I realise that I am just making fun of a serious subject, so I’ll change tack.
The point I am trying to make is that there are such large gaps between the physics of the CO2 molecule and the global climate, as measured by indexes compiled by frail human beings like you and me.
Any very finely honed NUL hypotheses could not possibly encompass the huge range of AGW theorising. I mean, look at AR4 or whatever the IPCC 2007 report was called. An ensemble of models with outputs between 1.5 and 6 degrees increase, and you want Dr spencer to be more precise!
Fair go mate, as my friends would say.
Fair go, please Steve.
Mike Haseler says
February 3, 2011 at 12.25
in reply to Myrrh: “What fingerprints? The Vostok graph like others of its ilk shows clearly that something is forceing,”
Then Myrrh, the task is pretty simple. Show statistically that the signal (forcing) to noise (natural variation) ration is higher enough to make your (bogus) assertion of 95% confidence.
Mike Haseler, you’re mixing up contexts here. There are two distinct aspects in my post. The paper I linked to was CO2’s statistical significance in the noise re climate variation, the Vostok reference was to climate cycles, not to be confused. You yourself made the point that these two were different.
Are you really the same Mike Haseler who first replied to KR by pointing this out?
Because the tone of your reply to me, let alone the mix up of context, is at odds with it.
My Vostok/fingerprint was a reply to the Mike who was adding to KR’s post, and was in reference to his first link which stated:
“A natural cycle requires a forcing, and no known forcing exists that fits the fingerprints of observed warming – except anthropogenic greenhouse gases.”
So this is about CYCLES, of which you said to KR – ..climate cycles are predictable, climate variation isn’t (that’s why it’s [climate variation] dealt with statistically).
The climate cycle shown in Vostok and the rest shows something is forcing, and it isn’t CO2. And that something is still forcing because we’re still in that same cycle.
So AGW statement is nonsense here, the known forcing exists – it is x and not CO2. The same fingerprint now as in the past; and doesn’t require the known non-forcers to in the past explain it now.
[As an aside to mods and readers, maybe I’ve got this wrong, but there were posts recently from “Michael” which seemed to be from two different people, or a dual-personality.., one ardent AGW and the other saying he was a skeptic]
Nylo:
At February 3, 2011 at 3:34 am you use a flawed analogy and conclude;
“In this analogy, your wife’s murder is the temperature rise and you are the anthropogenic explanation, and other people who may also have motives to kill your wife are the other posible natural factors. Yes, there may be no solid proof against you, but all of the admittedly weak evidences point to you, and you cannot prove that any other person did it. Even if declared not-guilty, you are still the most likely murderer.”
No, you are plain wrong.
As Smokey says to you at February 3, 2011 at 3:43 am :
“You have stated the classic “argumentum ad ignorantium.” “Since I can’t think of any other reason for the temperature rise, then it must be due to CO2.” ”
Inportantly, according to a fundamental principle of the scientific method, CO2 is NOT the most likely explanation. Please see my explanation of this above at February 3, 2011 at 1:51 am .
Richard
Leone says:
February 3, 2011 at 12:14 am
What do mean? For example AO/NAO cycle is identified back to many centuries and affects temperatures over NH. Can you show a reference which claims that there is no such cycle?
Is the AO/NAO cycle the cause of recent warming then? Or is it the other way around: we deduce the cycles from the observed climate variations? If so, there is a circular argument.
Well said JohnWho!
In the simplest terms – if I were to flip a coin, and cover it up so no one can see it, and claim that it is heads and therefore you owe me a great sum of money, would you give me the money or would you want to see the coin first? What I see a large number of AGW by CO2 supporters doing is accepting that the coin is heads without seeing the coin.
Spencer, Watts, McIntyre, McKitrick, etc. are asking (demanding) to see the coin.
They should not be required to prove that there is no coin or that the coin is not heads.
Dr. Spencer, I can tell from that very simple question/challenge that you are a man banging his head against the wall; I know the feeling.
I propose Steve McIntyre as the judge.
^^ and that is not a frivolous proposal, BTW ^^
I was teasing the twitter agw bot with this, he/she does actually watch the account. I put it out there and told him to PUT UP, OR SHUT UP. Sure enough he hit my tweet with a very uncomplimentary Utube about you:)
Then when pressed he answered “You’re asking to prove a negative, the classic creationist trick” .. well we bantered back and forth for almost an hour, which from a non scientist little me is probably pretty frustrating for the guy until I finally got this out of him: “There a very few things in life that are 100% certain… actually nothing that I can think of” .
That was my ah ha! moment and I told him that was probably the most honest thing I’d ever seen him tweet. But alas, he went right back to business as usual afterward. I did get a few good ones in there especially after he asked me what it was about global warming I didn’t agree with, and I had a really good time doing it.. so thanks Dr Roy for the challenge because right now, somewhere in twitterland there is a frustrated AGW bot/guy.
He left off and another warmer hit, and is still waiting impatiently for an answer why we should believe evil oil company propaganda.. SIGH!!!
and if you hadnt noticed, twittering too long will ruin any knowledge of complete sentences and punctuation you ever knew. 🙂 🙂 🙂 My apologies to proper writing.
Robert Wykoff says:
February 2, 2011 at 11:32 am
A better challenge is to give just one weather/climate scenario that disproves global warming.
No, that’s not a better challenge, that’s a stupid challenge – because there is no argument being put forward that global warming (or more generally, climate change) does not exist. We all accept that there has been some warming over the last 150 years or so (and a zillion other warmings and coolings before then). We also fully accept Kevin Trenberth’s assertion that warming ceased about 10 or 11 years ago (a travesty). He hypothesises that this missing warmth is deep in the oceans, but so far has not backed it up with any actual evidence. Now that would be a better challenge.
Lucy Skywalker says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:36 pm
Mainstream will say
…
(3) isotope content proves the CO2 rise is manmade
..
They can produce peer-reviewed paper “proving” (3). They will fail to mention papers that dispute (3) with equal or better science.
I think this AGW claim is in the same category as their Arrenhius claim – it begins by ignoring what has actually been said in contradiction even by those it claims prove their arguments.
http://carbon-budget.geologist-1011.net/
3.0 Abusing Doctor Suess: Pulling the Cat out of the Hat
The misuse of the Suess Effect as a fossil fuel fingerprint instead of an empirical standard for the correction of carbon dating contamination, lead to an initially idiosyncratic expansion of this concept by Keeling (1979), who sought to include C13 depletion of vegetation and its effect on the atmosphere. … However, when the Keeling (1979) article expanded its internal definition of the Suess Effect to include this observation, it was once again to the exclusion of volcanic influence.
In point of fact, magmatic carbon is, for the most part, C13 depleted. This is solidly confirmed by numerous studies of deep mantle rocks, etc.
Idiosyncratic the key word, I think, in all AGW claims to ‘authority’.. 🙂
If this were about building actual machines that worked such idiosyncratic interpretations of the blueprints would be obvious, which is why AGW proponents argue only about the blueprints. Which they’ve developed into the art of modeling. This period should be in the Tate Modern together with unmade beds not in policy making in real life decisions about the welfare of our planet and all created out of Her.
Nylo:
In this analogy, your wife’s murder is the temperature rise and you are the anthropogenic explanation, and other people who may also have motives to kill your wife are the other posible natural factors. Yes, there may be no solid proof against you, but all of the admittedly weak evidences point to you, and you cannot prove that any other person did it. Even if declared not-guilty, you are still the most likely murderer.
—
Nylo, I had to laugh at your “murder trial”. One possibly suspectable husband and a slew of known wife murders as the other suspects. I see old El Niño is one of them over there. He’s a bad one, convicted hundreds of times of killing other wives. And you are going to convict the husband. You’ve got to be kidding.
Crispin in Waterloo says: February 3, 2011 at 4:47 am
“What I see a large number of AGW by CO2 supporters doing is accepting that the coin is heads without seeing the coin. (we) are asking (demanding) to see the coin. (we) should not be required to prove that there is no coin or that the coin is not heads.”
The warmist position really amounts to “guilty unless proven innocent”. Moreover, we (the defendants) are not allowed to see the evidence against us. (FOI denied) We are not allowed the money to employ a defence barrister. (no funding for non-warmist research) The jury are being told to watch a hostile media constantly telling them we are “hc deniers” (BBC, guardian, etc.)
And after the jury has been allowed to hear nothing from the defence … except the vitriolic half-truths of our position from the prosecutor, he (Trenberth) has the gall to reverse the burdern of proof and say: “everyone you have heard agrees the defendant is guilty and you must convict him unless he can prove to you that he was innocent.”
And … as the defendant gets pounced on by 2o prison officers we are just heard to cry … but where was the evidence?
22/7=
in hexadecimal the answer is 4.8571….
So what should we assume to come up with your answer?
Myrrh says:
Mike Haseler says
February 3, 2011 at 12.25
Mike Haseler, you’re mixing up contexts here. There are two distinct aspects in my post. The paper I linked to was CO2′s statistical significance in the noise re climate variation, the Vostok reference was to climate cycles, not to be confused. You yourself made the point that these two were different.
Are you really the same Mike Haseler who first replied to KR by pointing this out?
I’m the same one and only. Unfortunately … well … no excuses I cocked up!
It’s like a flashback:
“If there is evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There are no such documents” – Kary Mullis.
I do wonder where exactly all the money spent on climate research goes to, sometimes it seems the sole output is single global temperature anomaly value.
Are there papers that discuss effects that have a signature specific to CO2? For example I was wondering if the warming trend should be higher for surface stations that have a less humid climate, e.g. San Francisco might be independent of CO2 effects while Death Valley might have a CO2 signature in its history?
Myrrh – “the current warming in the thermometer record is being peer reviewed here on WUWT, and similar sites – I have been following that, and I’ve noted that http://www.surfacestations.org/ hasn’t been updated since July 09. A lot of people, myself included, have been waiting for Watts to produce some data and analysis for a couple of years… and we’re still waiting.
All of the temperature records show the same thing – warming, in particular over the last 30-40 years: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/comparing-temperature-data-sets/
“they are indicative only of major duplicity from the AGW camp promoting them…” Ah, the conspiracy theory. Sorry, but reputations in science are made when you overthrow somebody else’s theory. If there were holes that big in the science I guarantee that graduate students the world over would be pointing those out to make their rep. Have you ever dealt with grad students? Half-starved overworked cut-throat competitors for recognition and the earth-shaking papers? Trying to maintain a consistent conspiracy in that group would be like trying to herd wet cats. Stand between them and a world-shaking paper, and you’re going to end up on the ground covered in footprints!
You can look at the raw data, the adjusted data, data with and without the surface stations Watt has complained about. The adjusted data with the stations Watt’s has complained about shows less warming than either the raw data or data with ‘suspicious’ stations removed! The net effect of making the adjustments and corrections is to show a cooler record. I rather suspect that’s why we haven’t seen surfacestations updated in a while.
—
Just The Facts – Thanks for the references! Looking at them, the Limsakula paper discusses ENSO influences, along with minimums increasing faster than maximums. Increasing minimums are actually expected under greenhouse warming – nights cool less with increased GHG’s. I don’t see anything in that paper regarding long term cycles causing the late 20th century warming trend, though. The Wang et al paper looks much more relevant, although it’s a bit hard to tell from the abstract. I’ll continue to look for a publicly accessible version, as I don’t have AGU access.
It may be hardly worth mentioning, but an increase in the mean
annual global temperature (which I personally believe to be a statistical
artifact that means nothing) is NOT proof of ‘warming’ : all it means is
that there has been an increase in the mean. And such an increase tells
us nothing about whether there have been increases in maxima.
After all, if there is a ‘cool’ season of 6 months at 10C and a ‘warm’
season of 6 months at 20C, then an extension of the warm season by a
day or two will result in an increase in the mean temperature, even though
there has been no increase in temperatures. Similarly, it is easy to demon-
strate that it is is possible to have an increasing mean temperature and
decreasing maximum temperatures.
‘Means’ by themselves often tell us less than we think, and other data may
be necessary to prove a point.
Besides, the mean temperature is derived from a sample of potential
temperature station sites, and as such is a survey, not a census, and is
therefore subject to error limits like any other survey.
Looks like another case of scientists trying to do market research.
Scientific opinion on climate change – Wikipedia, the free …
As reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), …… at Chicago received replies from 3146 of the 10257 polled Earth scientists. …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
Global warming controversy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A compendium of poll results on public perceptions about global warming is …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy
List of scientists supporting the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming
http://www.iterasi.net/openviewer.aspx?sqrlitid=r_1n_yl-b0y4znq7c3tuxg
List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
And then there is:
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Special:Search?search=As+reported+by+the+Intergovernmental+Panel+on+Climate+Change+%28IPCC%29%2C+&go=Go
Once again, I have not vetted . . . But, last time I checked . . . according to the rules of rational reasoning an ad populum approach can be a mistake.
Can you FOIA and international organization?
*****
Leif Svalgaard says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Show me one peer-reviewed paper that has ruled out experimentation by little green aliens as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.
*****
Little green aliens experimenting isn’t a reasonable explanation.
beng says:
February 3, 2011 at 8:23 am
Little green aliens experimenting isn’t a reasonable explanation.
But CO2 is? 🙂
The point is [and was] that if natural, internal cycles exist and their existence is derived from observations, then the game has already been conceded, and that it therefore is not reasonable to try to show that they are not active. If their existence is denied from the outset, then again it is not reasonable to try to show whether something that does not exist has effect. You cannot prove a negative.
eadler says:
“From what I understand, the GCM’s show that without GHG’s from human sources,
the increase in global average temperature can’t be explained.”
Tell me, do the models explain the medieval warm period, the Roman warm period, and the end of the last Ice Age ?
feet2the fire says:
“But theories don’t come from models. Models as applied in recent years come from theories. Not the other way around. Actually, models come from hypotheses much more often as applied in recent years. But running models doesn’t give anything useful…”
Models ought to give a test of hypothesised cause-and effect relationship by means of predicted effect. For example, we program in all the cause and effect relationships between temperature, cloud cover, precipitation, ocean / atmosphere exchanges, orbital variations, sunspot cycles etc, apply the data for eg 1400, and watch the Little Ice Age appear. If it does we know we have made real progress in establishing cause and effect.
If it doesn’t appear, we have a problem. The problem could be 1) We just don’t understand enough about the cause-and-effect relationships involved 2) Key data is missing or wrong or inaccurate for our purpose – obviously the further back we go the more the data is both sparse and imprecise 3) Elephant in the room is that since we know weather is a chaotic phenomenon and thereby intrinsically unpredictable beyond a short horizon, it may well be that climate has the same characteristics, in which case we cannot expect output from any model to be a good guide to future reality.
Leif Svalgaard said February 3, 2011 at 8:40 am:
“… The point is [and was] that if natural, internal cycles exist and their existence is derived from observations, then the game …” … is over
Exactly. The “skeptics” should have at it – they have lots of work to do.
Leif Svalgaard:
The point was that you cannot prove a negative. You mention that several natural cycles exists. Some would say that they don’t exist [hockey stick people] or are actually man-made [aerosols, CO2, land use, etc], so we are back to square one on that.
I think that it is possible to suspect that something exists without having proof for its existence take as an example the atomic theory of matter before very recently it was just a belief but now we have even observed atom using electron microscopes.
An Inquirer – There are a number of references on the increase in atmospheric water vapor, particularly stratospheric vapor which raises the height (and drops the temperature, hence less IR) where that water vapor radiates to space:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2000/2000GL012133.shtml
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2001/2000GL012502.shtml
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/mem/oldftp/taperecorder.ps.Z
Since water vapor is the strongest greenhouse gas, increasing water vapor has an effect – additional heat trapping.
WheelsOC @ February 2, 2011 at 1:14 pm says:
“I would pose to Dr. Spencer a counter-challenge, that he publish one peer-reviewed paper that convincingly establishes natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.”
In other words, you accept Trenberth’s assertion that the null hypothesis should be inverted. Post-modernists are scary.
KR says:
February 3, 2011 at 8:09 am
Sorry, but reputations in science are made when you overthrow somebody else’s theory. If there were holes that big in the science I guarantee that graduate students the world over would be pointing those out to make their rep.
KR, yes, you would think that to be the case, but it isn’t: for example, no one at all had seriously reviewed the MBH Hockey Stick graph until McIntyre and McKitrick did it, with some difficulty including obstructive threats from the ipcc to McIntryre, who was in fact an ipcc reviewer!
The fact is that ipcc Climate Science is not real, scientific method and principle, science. As to critical studies, including Jones’ GMT reconstructions, the Climate Scientists and Journals such as “Nature” and “Science” do not make the “materials and methods” of a study, which is its science, available for sceptical review as per real science and the Journals’ own protocol. That also explains the ‘evil’ FOIA requests to Jones and the CRU.
Then they also claim that “peer review” by a few selected reviewers guarantees the ‘given truth’ of the study reviewed, when this is totally false and grossly unscientific.
You are making the reasonable mistake of assuming that ipcc Climate Scientists are following the principles of real science, when it turns out that they aren’t. I made the same assumption until yr. 2000, when I started looking at the way ipcc Climate Science actually operates and found that it is not doing real science. The more you look, the worse it gets. The m.o. ipcc Climate Science really demonstrates is that of a massive Propaganda Operation. Sad but true.
Jack Greer says:
February 3, 2011 at 9:07 am
Leif Svalgaard said February 3, 2011 at 8:40 am:
“… The point is [and was] that if natural, internal cycles exist and their existence is derived from observations, then the game …” … is over
Exactly. The “skeptics” should have at it – they have lots of work to do.
======================================================
Naw, we’ll just let the alarmists continue to talk circles around themselves.
“Snow is a thing of the past” because of global warming.
“We would expect snow with the warming of the arctic.” (Because of global warming.)
“In twenty years, Manhattan will be underwater.” (Because of global warming)
Aussies may remember this one…..”But for half a decade or more the government has been in a state of denial on climate change and [lack of] water.”
Now we’ve gone to warmcold and drywet. Like the Met, they predicted this all along, only publicly predicted everything but this. Skeptics don’t have to do anything, and certainly not go on a fools errand for alarmists. All skeptics have to do is watch and record the foolish circular “doublethink” of the alarmists.
For those not familiar……. “The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them….To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”
“From what I understand, the GCM’s show that without GHG’s from human sources, the increase in global average temperature can’t be explained.”
I.e. we don’t understand what drives climate change, therefore it must be due to humans.
If you compare the ups and downs of the last 10,000 years of temperatures suggested from the GISP2 records you will see a strong 9-10,00o year cooling trend, punctuated by periodic warmings. The trend ends with another upswing after the LIA, our current upswing. At very the same time CO2 records show a steady increase in CO2. Thus the 2 trends seem not only very much unrelated but in direct opposition . (For the CO2 believers you can easily down load that ice core data to see this contradiction.)
So contradictory is this observed arctic cooling trend vs the rising CO2, it prompted Keeling himself to write a paper suggesting ~1300(?) year a lunar gravitational cycle, a lunar orbital cycle akin to the Milankovich cycles. The cold water becomes stable on the bottom and warmer water remains in the upper strata. But the slight changes in gravitational fields can lift and mix the water which would then result in periodic coolings, followed by surface warming. MIT’s Wunsch has also published on this gravitational idea and its climate effects.
It also is curious how the CO2 advocates when they want to show the tight correlation of CO2 and temps, that they either focus in on the recent 50 year Keeling curve or the 500,000 year curves of Co2 and the alternating glacial and interglacials (such a large scale that it is hard to detect by eye the lags and contradictions that have been mentioned in other research) . The most recent 10,000 year contradicting trends should get more attention in this discussion. The GISP2 ice core temps also suggest that the polar bears endured much warmer weather 9,000 years ago. That warmth and low ice conditions is also supported by several published studies on driftwood and Bowhead whale fossils.
@James Sexton
Use all of the hyperbole and misapplication of 1984 references that you wish, James, but it doesn’t reflect well on your position. Your comments don’t seriously address what the actual climate scientific work says. I’d suggest you get to work on that alternative theory and start collection observed data in support of it …
don penman says:
February 3, 2011 at 9:09 am
About ‘existence’:
There is a circular argument here. The ‘natural cycles’ are deduced from the data, so it is circular to discuss whether the cycles explain or do not explain the data.
Jack Greer says:
February 3, 2011 at 10:27 am
@James Sexton
Use all of the hyperbole and misapplication of 1984 references that you wish, James, but it doesn’t reflect well on your position. Your comments don’t seriously address what the actual climate scientific work says. I’d suggest you get to work on that alternative theory and start collection observed data in support of it …
=======================================================
Again, its a fools errand. Further, that wasn’t hyperbole, at least from the skeptic side, what you saw in quote-marks were quotes of alarmists. I’ve a few more. 😉 Moreover, the data collection is already being done. Increased atmospheric CO2 causes increased global average temperatures. Isn’t that a base tenet of the quasi-theory? When did we close all of the coal plants? http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2001/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2001/trend ……… Must have been about 2000. Be sure to click on the “see raw data” link to verify the data.
Of course, if I were to work toward an alternate theory, I’d have to ask alternate to what? To why we warm sometimes? Or why warming scares people? Or how CO2 emissions correlate with lower ACE values? Or why ice can leave an area without melting? Alternate theory to exactly what?
Jack, I’m sorry you can’t see the parallels between Eric Blairs prognostications and the collective totalitarian overtones used in the CAGW/CC/CD/(whatever we call it today) theory. He was spot on. Consider, just for the moment of the current alarmist message of the warming of the Arctic causes winter cooling.(Except for the years that it didn’t.) It is, for the lack of a better descriptive term, warmcold, not to be confused with the drywet our friends down under are going through. The selective memory of alarmists is something that will be written about for centuries to come. The fact that they’ve been wrong on every major issue regarding CAGW is flabbergasting. But they’ve fixed that now to where any climatic event is charged to the dreaded CO2 induced climate change. I expect a study any day now that shows CO2 causes a decrease in hurricane activity.
Here’s one for you, define what normal climate should be. What’s our temp goal? Is it the global average from 1945-1975? Who said? Why? How would it be beneficial to revert towards that climate? For whom? Who gets to pick? Understand the implications of believing such ludicrous tripe. There is only one sort of person that would even consider that we could control, and, thus should, our climate. It is a collective totalitarian.
Alternate theory indeed. If I could prove one, I would not.
coldfinger says:
February 3, 2011 at 10:02 am
“From what I understand, the GCM’s show that without GHG’s from human sources, the increase in global average temperature can’t be explained.”
I.e. we don’t understand what drives climate change, therefore it must be due to humans.
Add to that particular unwarranted implication, that the ipcc Climate Scientists also incorrectly tout the fact that the Warming Models can’t explain/postdict the past GMT’s without using measured CO2 levels – which is merely an ex post facto adjustment/fitting process – while at the same time diverting everyone from the truely significant failure of CO2AGW Models to be able to make any successful unique predictions with measured CO2 levels…
And after over 20 yrs. of “work”, all that is left of CO2CAGW Climate Science is a massive Propaganda Op..
Dr. Spencer, I think know the frustration you feel in trying to address the issue of who is right!
For me . . . as the issue unfolded, I recognized it for it’s marketing . . . For me, it went like this. You may not comment until you have seen Al Gore’s movie . . . to but, all the scientists agree . . .
. . . What was Man made Global Warming . . . is now also just called Global Warming, (which now appears to be changing to a Cooling Cycle) which is now called Global Climate Change.
In order for it to work, it still has to work like a Ponzi Scheme . . . .
And in looking at a Google timeline the prosecutions for ponzi schemes are at an all time high. . . Granted so is population and Internet usage . . . We may not be able to pin Climate Change to Man’s behavior BUT . . . ponzi schemes are based on false confidence and grand delusions. The only way to beat that game, is not to play.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Ponzi+scheme&hl=en&sa=X&tbo=1&tbs=tl:1,tl_num:100&prmd=ivns&ei=M_xKTZG5DMH88Ab_s82EDw&ved=0CFwQywEoBA
I do think that’s why we do have a Department of Justice! But, by that time all the players of what I call a scam, will be dead.
“”””” Mike Haseler says:
February 2, 2011 at 12:37 pm
Laurie Bowen says: February 2, 2011 at 11:59 am
22/7 = ? anyone
22/7 = 2.22222 ….(recurring)
Which unless I’ve made an awful mistake in the maths is really true!
Dunno who said what but whoever said there’s a mistake in the math gets the cigar; well assuming it is supposed to be base 10 arithmatic.
22/7 = 3 1/7, and 1/7 is 0.1’4’2’8’5’7′ where the (‘) marks indicate that that entire group of digiits recurs, as in .142857142857142857142857….
And 2/7 is 0.2857142857142857………
And 3/7 is 0.42857142857142857……….
And 4/7 is 0.57142857142857142857…….
and 5/7 is 0.7142857142857142857……….
And 6/7 is 0.857142857142857142857………..
And 7/7 is 1.000000000000000000………
So you are rightl; the math is wrong.
“”””” frank verismo says:
February 2, 2011 at 2:03 pm
@Laurie Bowen:
22/7 = ? anyone . . .
pi.
Well . . . . near as dammit . . . . “””””
Well not quite: pi = -sqrt(-1) Ln(-1) which is also = sqrt(10).
Actually;
22/7 = 355/113 Which gives pi to within 2.67 E-7
“”””” KR says:
February 3, 2011 at 9:22 am
An Inquirer – There are a number of references on the increase in atmospheric water vapor, particularly stratospheric vapor which raises the height (and drops the temperature, hence less IR) where that water vapor radiates to space:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2000/2000GL012133.shtml
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2001/2000GL012502.shtml
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/mem/oldftp/taperecorder.ps.Z
Since water vapor is the strongest greenhouse gas, increasing water vapor has an effect – additional heat trapping. “””””
Well not exactly; one thing that CO2 does not do, (in the atmopshere) is “Trap Heat”.
It may temporarily inhibit the escape of LWIR EM radiation; which is NOT “heat”.
“Heat” would be affected by the likes of CO2, if the amount of CO2 in the atmospehre was sufficient to make a measurable change in the average specific heat of the atmosphere; or some other measure of the heat content of the atmosphere. CO2 affects the heat content of the oceans, and land, in no way, that anybody has every observed or measured; and it is such a minor part of the atmosphere that it can’t even significantly (measurably) change the thermal properties of the atmosphere.
Show ME a peer reviewed paper, that shows measured differences in vertical convection in the atmosphere (or ocean) as a function of the ppm of CO2.
Show me a measured or even Clausius-Clapeyron computed change in the atmospehric abundance of H2O as a function of the CO2 abundance. Show me a measured change in the amount or nature of global precipitation as a function of the CO2 abundance.
It is TRUE that the small trace amounts of CO2 do capture some surface or atmospheric emitted LWIR EM radiation; which subsequently will change the warming extent of the atmosphere; but CO2 (in its trace amount) does not affect any thermal processes in the atmosphere, or oceans, or land; it is entirely a radiation physics effect that GHGs (non condensing) have; not thermal.
Dern George, what are you tryin’ to do, confuse me?
Mike Haseler – 🙂 Thank goodness for that. I wondered if I’d stepped through yet another looking glass.
KR says:
February 3, 2011 at 8:09 am
Re my “the current warming in the thermometer record is being peer reviewed here on WUWT, and similar sites”
I have been following that, and I’ve noted that http://www.surfacestations.org/ hasn’t been updated since July 09. A lot of people, myself included, have been waiting for Watts to produce some data and analysis for a couple of years.. and we’re still waiting.
Hmm, you’ll have to take that up with Wattsi, I meant it in a more general sense of the subject been very well peer reviewed on such sites. The Hockey Stick thoroughly debunked came from persistent and dogged insistance, against the odds, for the data which wasn’t at all forthcoming as it should have been in real science scenario for example, and the New Zealand thermometer record proved to have been tampered with by Salinger from the CRU in the early 70’s (this is a scam long in the planning).
All of the temperature records show the same thing – warming, in particular over the last 30-40 years: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/comparing-temperature-data-sets/
But not in the last 15..? Forty years ago we were in a cold spell, if you measure from that of course there has been warming because we’re no longer in it. Before that cold spell there was a hot spell, so if we measured from that at the beginning of the cold spell, we’d have been saying that temperatures are falling. Which is what they were saying. It was around this time of some decades of falling temperatures that the prognosis was that we would be entering into the Ice Age again.
The one constant from the proto-AGW environmentalists through these earlier periods of warming and cooling, was putting the blame on coal. During the 30’s these embryonic greens latched onto Arrhenius’s first paper, 1896, and ignored what he later said, and began using CO2 as the whipping boy against coal saying it was causing global warming and the world would burn up; later in the cold period this line of attack couldn’t be used so coal was demonised directly, saying the dirty stuff it produced in the atmosphere would block out the sun and send us into the Ice Age. Coal was cleaned up, but when it started warming again they reverted back to CO2 the culprit. Now, CO2 causes both! The common denominator here is coal.
Demonised by the Greens because of who knows why, but demonised by the oil and nuclear industry because it’s cheap, abundant everywhere to most people and so difficult to control. That’s why oil interests began supporting CRU and Salinger went off to do their bidding. Maggie Thatcher couldn’t believe her luck in being able to rope in the Greens to her cause, the destruction of Britain’s coal industry.
So, temperature is either rising or falling depending on which start point you use. That’s why the Hockey Stick was created, to eliminate the MWP and LIA so that the cold start of the thermometer record at the time of the LIA could be used as a “norm”. Of course temperatures have risen since then, with ups and downs, but you’ll only get the true picture of it now if you don’t use these doctored AGW tricks to hide the climate changes.
Ah, the conspiracy theory. Sorry, but reputations in science are made when you overthrow somebody else’s theory
JPeden answered you here as to the real life state of “science” nowadays, and I’ll add that this has become so ingrained in the education system, start them young, that there’s a whole generation who believe the unproven assumptions given as facts by AGW (that CO2 can stay up in the air accumulating for hundreds and thousands of years the most immediately ridiculous, but gosh, the convoluted reasons for this being ‘fact’ are really quite creative). There’s been an awful lot of co-ordinated effort to produce seemingly real science, but on closer inspection it all collapses – real science doesn’t need to travel to New Zealand to corrupt their thermometer readings. Luckily, the original data was still intact and so the corruption brought to light, CRU says it can’t find theirs anymore..
… I rather suspect that’s why we haven’t seen surfacestations updated in a while.
Well, I don’t know the reason, but I could think that it’s because it’s a waste of space. If you do go to the trouble of reading what else has been said about these you’ll find lots of discussion about the number of stations axed, the problem of UHI and so on, besides, what has now become quite a joke around here, the continual downgrading of previous warm temps last century to be able to continue making claims of ‘hottest day yet’, and so on. Really, there’s just so much skullduggery going on in the AGW camp re these, that it’s a full time job to keep up with the tweaks and misinformation.
So, taking the end of the last Ice Age glacial as our starting point and from the huge increase in global warming then, around 10-12,000 years ago, what direction do you think we’re headed now? Up or down? Look at the Vostok graph. Does that help in putting the last 30-40 years warming in perspective?
oakgeo says:
February 3, 2011 at 9:25 am
WheelsOC @ February 2, 2011 at 1:14 pm says:
“I would pose to Dr. Spencer a counter-challenge, that he publish one peer-reviewed paper that convincingly establishes natural, internal climate cycles as the cause of most of the recent warming in the thermometer record.”
“In other words, you accept Trenberth’s assertion that the null hypothesis should be inverted. Post-modernists are scary.”
Absolutely, oakgeo. The new memes are “the funding is settled” and “reverse the burden of proof.” This entire discussion is an attempt to reverse the burden of proof. I am amazed that Mosher is part of it. Maybe the Lisbon conference coordinated efforts of Warmista. Both memes are truly desperate and despicable.
Jack Greer says:
February 3, 2011 at 9:07 am
Leif Svalgaard said February 3, 2011 at 8:40 am:
“… The point is [and was] that if natural, internal cycles exist and their existence is derived from observations, then the game …” … is over
“Exactly. The “skeptics” should have at it – they have lots of work to do.”
What a wonderful idea! Immediately withdraw all research funds from the proAGW camp and dedicate them to proving that natural cycles cause global warming.
Smokey says:
February 2, 2011 at 4:51 pm
Steven Mosher,
Since you’ve asked about the null hypothesis in the past, here’s a good definition:
“The null hypothesis is the statistical hypothesis that states that there are no differences between observed and expected data.”
It’s a very valuable tool. Any alternative hypothesis must be tested against the null. If there is no measurable difference, then the alternative hypothesis should be looked upon as a placebo: something you think works, but doesn’t really.
Because there is no measurable, testable, empirical difference between today’s temperature cycles and temperature cycles during the Holocene, the alternative AGW hypothesis necessarily fails.
Although like a placebo, some folks swear by it.☺
Brilliant post, Smokey. Yes, the pro-AGW crowd are denying the very idea of a null hypothesis. Glad you posted the definition. Paraphrasing Orwell, in these times with these communists on the government payroll, ordinary people have a duty to shout out the obvious again and again.
Leif Svalgaard says:
February 3, 2011 at 4:41 am
Is the AO/NAO cycle the cause of recent warming then? Or is it the other way around: we deduce the cycles from the observed climate variations? If so, there is a circular argument.
Isn’t their a similar problem with deducing the correlation of temperature and CO2? With the added problem of CO2 rise lagging temperature rise by about 800 years. And the lack of an explanation for the initial cause of warming except, well, natural variation. It’s all a bit circular, don’t you think?
Ugh, should be ‘Isn’t THERE…’ Long day, sorry.
@climatebeagle February 3, 2011 at 7:06 am:
Wow, amen to that.
If people only knew how little science was behind that HTLV-III = HIV = the cause of AIDS is political. To anyone else interested, Google “Dr Robert Gallo” and “Luc Montagnier”. The world will never find a cure for AIDS as long as HIV is on the table sucking up all the research money – and all the while Gallo gest richer and richer, the crooked SOB.
@Robbo February 3, 2011 at 8:41 am:
Exactly. The models have never succeeded in replicating recent climate history, telling us that for 1) no, we don’t, for 2) it is not just data but getting the formulas correct and translated into code correctly – including constants, and for 3) I think that is one of the major reasons WUWT even exists, to point out that the model’s predictions are hooey.
If models predict correctly over a reasonable period of time, it would be because the underlying assumptions, data and constants are correct. Those models need to be differentiated from the prototype models such as are ubiquitous in climate science.
I posit the obvious: That the models aren’t predicting correctly because the underlying science is poorly understood, the data is improperly processed and the constants – the “fudge factors” such as used for clouds – are arrived at inductively instead of deductively (meaning they adjust the constants until the output “looks good” and then assume that means the constant has veracity.
Feet2theFire says:
February 3, 2011 at 5:41 pm
Nice work, Sir. I hope you visit often. Our PNS vanguard would benefit enormously. Well, they could benefit.
David Falkner says:
February 3, 2011 at 5:03 pm
It’s all a bit circular, don’t you think?
Indeed, which is why the ‘challenge’ is no good.
KR says: February 3, 2011 at 8:09 am
“Looking at them, the Limsakula paper discusses ENSO influences … I don’t see anything in that paper regarding long term cycles causing the late 20th century warming trend, though.”
The only “late 20th century warming trend” I see was related to the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO):
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_Jan_2011.gif
If we remove the 98 El Nino there is no “late 20th century warming trend”. And if we remove last year’s El Nino, all I see is a .2 degree increase between 2001 and 2007. Which non-ENSO related “late 20th century warming trend” are you referring to?
Leif Svalgaard says:
February 3, 2011 at 8:31 pm
Indeed, which is why the ‘challenge’ is no good.
The dataset has naturally (to the dataset) occurring boundaries of variance. It has been claimed by those who model the dataset that you cannot produce the data without CO2 forcings, which means that the naturally occurring variations have been eliminated as a cause (says they). Dr. Spencer is asking when this happened.
What causes the data to vary is important for the purpose of this question, but neither side can lay claim to it. That is why the null hypothesis should be that the dataset is varying within its normal boundaries. Since the null hypothesis always contains the equation of equality, the null should reflect a state of no change in this scenario. μ=0 as it were.
KR says: February 3, 2011 at 8:09 am
“Looking at them, the Limsakula paper discusses ENSO influences … I don’t see anything in that paper regarding long term cycles causing the late 20th century warming trend, though.”
Empirical evidence for interannual and longer period variability in Thailand surface air temperatures – Atsamon Limsakul and Joaquim I. Goes
” In addition, the overall warming trends of Tmax, and Tmin in the 1980s and 1990s were consistent with the tendency for more frequent El Niño events and fewer La Niña events since the late 1970s.”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V95-4PBDPT6-1&_user=10&_coverDate=02%2F29%2F2008&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=browse&_origin=browse&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=e197d12b2e643d922e656e7dc35c6eda
“Long term cycles”? For ENSO we have basic index and episode data back to 1950;
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
Pacific Ocean Equatorial Heat Content back to 1979;
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ocean/index/heat_content_index.txt
and “Argo deployments began in 2000 and by November 2007 the array is 100% complete. “:
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/
The longest ENSO cycle we can measure at present is 60 years. Should Limsakul and Goes write on the 90 year cycle that may or may not exist, but we won’t know until we have sufficient historical records to be able to measure it?
Also, Earth’s Thermohaline Circulation;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation
is caused when “wind-driven surface currents (such as the Gulf Stream) head polewards from the equatorial Atlantic Ocean, cooling all the while and eventually sinking at high latitudes (forming North Atlantic Deep Water). This dense water then flows into the ocean basins. While the bulk of it upwells in the Southern Ocean, the oldest waters (with a transit time of around 1600 years) upwell in the North Pacific (Primeau, 2005).”
We have 60 years worth of basic and 4 years of reasonable quality ocean temperature data on a cycle “with a transit time of around 1600 years”. At present, our capacity to predict changes in the Thermohaline Circulation is essentially nil.
As I pointed out earlier, “One of the “pumps” that helps drive the ocean’s global circulation suddenly switched on again last winter for the first time this decade. The finding surprised scientists who had been wondering if global warming was inhibiting the pump and did not foresee any indications that it would turn back on.
The “pump” in question is in the western North Atlantic Ocean, where pools of cold, dense water form in winter and sink beneath less-dense warmer waters. The sinking water feeds into the lower limb of a global system of currents often described as the Great Ocean Conveyor. To replace the down-flowing water, warm surface waters from the tropics are pulled northward along the Conveyor’s upper limb.”
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12455&tid=282&cid=54347
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n1/abs/ngeo382.html
Based on our limited understanding of Earth’s climate system, any predictions about Earth’s climate system and the long term trajectory of its average temperature are, at best, educated guesses. We are still learning how to accurately measure Earth’s temperature, much less accurately predict it 50 – 100 years into the future. Those who claim to be able to accurately predict the long term trajectory and likely future state of Earth’s average temperature, are either deluding themselves, or lying.
Leif Svalgaard says:
You mention that several natural cycles exists. Some would say that they don’t exist [hockey stick people] or are actually man-made [aerosols, CO2, land use, etc], so we are back to square one on that.
Natural cycles have been known to man for millennia before the hockey team started abusing statistic methods. Take the claim that there’s anything “unnatural” about the current Arctic warming: Not only does the thermometer record of the first half of the 20th century prove this claim wrong, Greenland provides evidence in the form of norse settlements. Going further back in time, the current tundra of Hardangervidda in Norway contains 6000 year old trees buried in marshes.
Hockey stick people and their artifacts of severe statistical abuse are no more credible than ufologists or astrologists.
Theo Goodwin said “Both memes are truly desperate and despicable.”
Could some one clue me in as[] to what a memes is?
The problem with Dr Spencer’s challenge is that the null hypothesis, that natural climate variation is responsible for the observed warming, is inherently unfalsifiable, even if it is false. I pointed this out on Dr Spencer’s blog, and challenged him to give an example of an experiment or observation that would potentially falsify that hypothesis. No answer has been forthcoming and my posts now seem to be in some from of moderation limbo, perhaps never to see the light of day. Make of that what you will.
Karl Popper says that a scientific theory should prohibit things, the more it prohibits, the better the theory. The reason for this is that it is fundamentally impossible to prove any proposition regarding the real world, they can only be falsified. A theory that makes prohibitions is a theory that is falsifiable, it can be proven wrong. Unfalsifiable hypotheses are unscientific, if everything that could possibly ocurr is consistent with the theory then it explains everything and yet nothing. It is not unduly surprising that an unfalsifiable theory has not been falsified, or that nobody has attempted to do so.
The challenge also involves several straw men, such as the idea that “The science is settled”. Gavin Schmidt and Phil Jones have gone on record as explicitly saying this is not the case, see here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/unsettled-science/ and here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8511670.stm (question N)
Dikran Marsupial:
At February 4, 2011 at 9:12 am you assert:
“The problem with Dr Spencer’s challenge is that the null hypothesis, that natural climate variation is responsible for the observed warming, is inherently unfalsifiable, even if it is false. I pointed this out on Dr Spencer’s blog, and challenged him to give an example of an experiment or observation that would potentially falsify that hypothesis.”
The null hypothesis is NOT unfalsifiable. It would be disproved if AGW – or anything else – were seen to have induced a change to climate not observed (in the geological record) to have happened previously in the holocene.
And if the null hypothesis is not disproved then there is no reason to suppose that AGW – or anything else – is significantly changing climate.
That is NOT a “problem” to anybody except true believers in the – AGW-hypothesis.
Richard
Richard Courtney, You cannot falsify the null hypothesis by showing that AGW is responsible for some of the warming as that would require a circular reasonong; you yourself said (words to the effect) that there is no reason to suppose the warming is due to AGW if you have not disproved the null hypothesis!
If you want to show the natural variability hypothesis is falsifiable, it is straightforward. Specify an experimental result or observation that would not be consistent with natural variability being the cause of the rise. It appears Dr Spencer could not, can you?
By the way, David Hume said that you should apportion your belief to the evidence. That is exactly what scientists still do today. Neither hypothesis has been falsified, so both are plausible; the reason that mainstream scientists apportion more of their belief [in the sense of a Bayesian probability rather than religious faith before anyone gets in the obvious one-liner] to AGW is that there is more evidence to support it than there is the hypothesis that it is due to “natural variation” (for which no mechansim has been specified and which apparently makes no quantitative predictions that could be proven wrong and hence allow the falsification of the theory).
An Inquirer References on increasing specific (absolute) humidity can be found at:
Dai 2006, Recent Climatology, Variability, and Trends in Global Surface Humidity, J. Climate, 19, 3589-3606, Willett et al. 2008, Recent changes in surface humidity: development of the HadCRUH dataset, J. Clim..21, 5364:5383, Berry & Kent, 2009, A New Air-Sea Interaction Gridded Dataset from ICOADS with Uncertainty Estimates, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 90(5), 645-656 (DOI: 10.1175/2008BAMS2639.1). The last is ocean only, but since that’s the majority of the Earths surface it’s relevant.
These are discussed at Tamino’s blog (http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/urban-wet-island/) where he shows the agreement between these data sets and rather astounding consistency with GISS temperatures.
With regards to natural cycles (such as ENSO), Tamino has a post (http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/sharper-focus/) regarding what the trends look like when accounting for ENSO cycles, volcanic forcings, etc.
Note that a serious issue with “natural cycles” causing recent heating is that atmospheric outgoing long wave radiation has decreased since 1970. If an ENSO or other oceanic cycle was redistributing heat in a temporary cycle, we would expect OLR to increase as the world warmed, not decrease.
The only way we can see warming with decreasing OLR is if less OLR is getting out of the atmosphere – an atmospheric effect. Clouds? Clouds respond quickly to temperature and humidity. Aerosols are fairly well understood (not perfectly), but mostly seem to have a cooling effect.
And any claims that natural cycles are causing recent heating need to explain why measured CO2 increases are not causing it, in defiance of all known physics. Two arguments, not one.
Dikran Marsupial,
You don’t understand the concept of the null hypothesis, which is the statistical hypothesis that states that there are no differences between observed and expected data. Try to follow what this means.
It means that any alternative hypothesis must be tested against the long-held null hypothesis of natural climate variability within the parameters of the Holocene climate. The alternative CO2=CAGW hypothesis expects catastrophic AGW from an increase in CO2. That has not happened, and every attempt to show a global effect has been debunked in turn: sea level rise, glacier retreat, ocean acidification, sea ice, ocean pH, coral bleaching, migration, species extinction, etc. The claim that CO2 is the cause has been debunked in every instance; no exceptions.
If an alternative hypothesis, such as CO2=CAGW, when compared with the past climate cannot show any measurable difference from past episodes of temperature trends, global temperatures or other climate variables, then the alternative hypothesis fails. Only if the alternative hypothesis shows that there are measurable differences between observed and expected data would the alternatie hypothesis show that CO2 has made a quantifiable difference.
But we find that, in fact, there are no differences between the climate during the Holocene and the current climate. What is happening now has happened repeatedly in the past. It is the same now as then. In fact, the current climate is especially benign compared with the extremes of the Holocene – when CO2 was quite low.
The verifiable fact that there is no identifiable global harm attributable to CO2, and the fact that computer climate models have an abysmal prediction record, and the fact that one by one, all alarmist predictions of global doom have failed to materialize, supports the null hypothesis – which has never been falsified.
The *very mild* natural warming cycle of 0.7°C over the past century is not only nothing unusual, it has been beneficial to the biosphere. Temperatures have risen as much as 27°F in only a decade prior to the industrial revolution, and have fallen almost as fast – at a time when CO2 was very low. The current climate is excellent, and shows no signs of runaway global warming or other planetary climate catastrophes. Thus, the alternative hypothesis has been tested against the null hypothesis, and it has failed.
When you understand the function of the null hypothesis, you will see why it is such a powerful concept. It allows us to separate wild-eyed hand waving over an evidence-free belief in climate catastrophe from entirely normal and natural climate fluctuations, which have been repeated over the past ten millennia, and which continue unchanged in either duration or extent.
Nothing unusual is happening, and the addition of harmless and beneficial CO2 has been a net benefit with no downside, as there is zero verifiable evidence of global harm due to the rise in that minor trace gas, and with substantially increased agricultural production resulting from the addition of beneficial carbon dioxide.