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.
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 @ur momisugly 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 Baldwin 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 Baldwin 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 @ur momisugly 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.