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.
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 @ur momisugly 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.