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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.