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.
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.