I’m rather tired still from my trip, and so I don’t have the energy to get into a detailed read and analysis of this document which was posted up on the IPCC website just 14 hours ago. This is the first time I’ve seen this document, though others may know of it.
But, I’m sure WUWT readers will have some insight and we can look at it in more detail tomorrow.
WUWT reader Alan writes in an email:
Searching around the internet just now I chanced upon an IPCC document, listed as being posted 14 hours ago. Curiously, however, it isn’t a recent document at all, rather an IPCC pdf from 1990! I know the date from cross-checking and finding it mentioned in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, June 1992. Anyway, its title is Detection of the Greenhouse Effect in the Observations, and it deals with the conditions needed to confirm that global warming is due to a human-induced enhanced greenhouse effect. In other words, the document admits that these conditions have not yet been established but — in Section 8.4, When Will The Greenhouse Effect be Detected — stipulates what MUST occur in the future in order to diagnose a human cause.
The document is here: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_chapter_08.pdf
Alan
In case the document disappears, I’ve also loaded it onto WUWT here:
ipcc_far_wg_I_chapter_08 (PDF)
In my very brief scan, I found this section most interesting:
Note that in 1988, four* two years earlier, in his testimony before the US Senate, Dr. James Hansen said this in his opening remarks:
Source: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Environment/documents/2008/06/23/ClimateChangeHearing1988.pdf
Mind you, this is only 10 years after the fiercely cold North American Winter of 77-78 in which ideas of another ice age were being bandied about in scientific and media circles.
Maybe, giving the benefit of the doubt, they are talking about different things, but there seems to be a significant profound confidence gap between Dr. Hansen’s testimony and that of the IPCC working group 1 on the ability to discern “global warming” in the surface temperature record. The disparity is striking due to the similarity of wording.
I’ll leave the rest in the hands of our capable readers for further discussion.
* Note: I made a mistake, originally saying 1992 in the title, which was the year the BAS report mentioned the 1990 IPCC FAR document. Corrected. – Anthony
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Truth shall out. Well, usually, anyway.
=============
Mike Fox says: {March 18, 2011 at 12:17 am}
“Well, I think the more interesting sentence is the one below the yellow highlighting:
“. . . [I]f the global warming becomes sufficiently large, we *will be able to _claim_ detection* simply because there will be no other possible explanation.” ”
Yes, much like the Egyptians knew that the Sun was a god simply because there was no other possible explanation.
Bob @ur momisugly 1:27 AM
Nice.
===
Yep – Links to the FAR pdfs have been on wiki since last October according to the history page.
I, for one, detect no great chasm between Dr Hansen’s opinion – that the low probability of the warming signal being ‘chance’ combined with the observed warming being in line with predictions and having characteristics such as a cooling stratosphere, that were inconsistent with natural warming made a strong argument for the reality of the ‘enhanced’ greenhouse
effect, and the IPCC’s cautious view that it was not possible unequivocally to rule out natural variability as the primary cause.
The IPCC reports are authored by committee, then approved by politicians so tend to the conservative end of the spectrum.
As we now know, in time the observations nearly always end up in the high end of IPCC projection ranges.
Remember also that the IPCC only considers studies that have been published before its cutoff date, which is quite some time before the report publication date, so Dr Hansen may well have been using material ‘in press’ or not available to the authors of AR1.
You chaps need to read “Slaying The Sky Dragon” and get properly sceptical/Realist -less of the lukewarmer at WUWT. There IS NO greenhouse effect from CO2. This whole theory is impossible according to the laws of thermodynamics!
1990
“scientists working in this field cannot at this point in time make the definitive statement: Yes we have now seen an enhanced greenhouse effect”
“However, a number of other factors could have contributed to this warming and it is impossible to prove a cause and effect relationship”
“Thus it is not possible at this time to attribute all or even a large part of the observed global mean warming to the enhanced greenhouse effect on the basis of the observational data currently available”
AR4 2007:
“The understanding of anthropogenic warming and cooling influences on climate has improved since the TAR, leading to very high confidence that the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming”
“Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.12 This is an advance since the TAR’s conclusion that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations”.
So climate science must have improved significantly between 1990 and 2007, it went from “not possible”, to “likely” to “very likely”. Should be easy for climate science to definitively point to the list of papers and findings that forge this path of enlightenment.
“If the global warming becomes sufficiently large, we will eventually be able to claim detection simply because there will be no other possible explanation.”
This reasoning has been used in the UK for quite some time to the point where it is presented as evidence. In panel discussions and television interviews, the only evidence, other than their favourite models of course, proffered by the likes of the Government Chief Scientist, Sir John Beddington and his predecessor Sir David King is that global warming is happening and it must be due to anthropogenically produced carbon dioxide “because we can’t find any other reason.”
Perhaps I too would sell my soul to the CAGW Devil for £165,000 per annum.
Professor Bob Ryan says:
March 18, 2011 at 1:27 am
First, statistically, it is almost impossible to establish any meaningful correlation between co2 and temperature.
Try the monthly CO2 & temperature, with temperature lagging CO2 by 3 months. I recall a comment by J. Hansen regarding this conundrum (wish I’d kept the link).
“The magnitude of this warming is broadly consistent with the theoretical predictions of climate models, but it remains to be established that the observed warming (or part of it) can be attributed to the enhanced greenhouse effect.”
“Natural variability of the climate system could be as large as the changes observed to date but there are insufficient data to be able to estimate its magnitude or its sign.”
“Global-mean temperature alone is an inadequate indicator of greenhouse-gas-induced climatic change.”
“The fact that we are unable to reliably detect the predicted signals today does not mean that the greenhouse theory is wrong or that it will not be a serious problem for mankind in the decades ahead.”
That refutes Hansen’s testimony.
The fact that Hanson is a liar and a fraud is not something that we are only now finding out. We’ve known it for years. It is good to have documented proof though.
I have yet to see one model that accurately matches the global temps between 1980 and 2010 (the latest 30 year period).
Phil Clarke says:
“Remember also that the IPCC only considers studies that have been published before its cutoff date.”
Well, that was shown to be wrong. And the WWF provided a large part of the IPCC’s supporting information, which turned out to be non-peer reviewed eco-propaganda.
You can claim that Hansen was right, but that’s just putting lipstick on a pig. He was way off in his wild-eyed predictions, and every month that goes by makes him more wrong.
rbateman says: “…If you cannot see the signal over the noise with the raw data, you cannot see it with adjustments.”
You can if you make the “right” kind of “adjustments.” :]
Sounds like the article on Jo Nova’s site:
Way back when climate scientists were scientists:
It’s gets harder to Delete inconvenient articles.
I keep saying it, I would fire Hansen in a New York minute. I know he is under civil service rules, but he is a fraud and an incompetent. This thread only reinforces that belief.
Stevo,
My impression is that the first AR reflected a group of scientists that had not yet become dysfunctional. They were careful and aware the magnitude of the uncertainties. At some point that changed, and I don’t think it was because new data suddenly made everything clear.
Global cooling was not discussed only in the media. There was not a scientific consensus regarding global cooling in the 70s, but it certainly did appear in the scientific literature as a significant minority view, back in the days when dissent was allowed (journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1).
Actually, the physics of contrails are like almost everything else in nature: more complex than expected (http://www.celsias.com/article/9-11-contrail-climate-effects-questioned); and some believe they do contribute to warming.
The critical point is that there has been no warming for 13 years, so the consensus position of climate science now must be that carbon dioxide has been driving an unusual period of warming for the past 30 years, but somehow for the last 13 years of that period the warming stopped even though the rate of increase in carbon dioxide was greater. Please put that together with the idea (as eloquently stated in post-climategate interviews by Phil Jones) that the reason warming must be caused by carbon dioxide is because “we can’t think of anything else that could to it”. To anyone with even a slight sense of normal scientific caution or reasonable humility, these observations would suggest that there are some very important sources of warming and/or negative feedbacks that are not currently understood, so predicting the consequences of continued carbon dioxide increases is nothing more than guesswork. I get more and more amazed as time goes on that the climate science community (with a few notable exceptions) shrugs this off and says “that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it” (i.e., CAGW is TRUE).
stevo – ” Only in media circles , actually ” Wrong . I heard this bandied about in classes in college in the early 70’s . Furthermore , the late Steven Schneider was a big proponent of the impending ice age at that time . He was even on tv saying so – it was that show with Leonard Nimoy , I forget the title . I’m sure that someone here can find a link – it’s probably on youtube .
Chris.
1. which models have you looked at?
2. did you look at model means ( which will never match observations)
3. did you look at particular runs?
4. what do you mean by “match”
5. Did you read the first sentence of the IPCC section?
6. Do you understand what is meant by multi variate fingerprinting?
It seems to me that very few have even comprehend what they said in the 1990 document.
Smokey:
“And the WWF provided a large part of the IPCC’s supporting information, which turned out to be non-peer reviewed eco-propaganda.”
You’ll have no difficulty then, in furnishing say, three substantive IPCC assertions or conclusions based on the grey literature….
>>”You can claim that Hansen was right, but that’s just putting lipstick on a pig”
Hansen’s model projections were astonishingly accurate, [his 1988 testimony was based on an early iteration of GISS Model E, the climate sensitivity used was around 4.2, which is higher than more recent estimates; this has little effect during the first few decades of the projection, but if the modern value of circa 3C is correct, then the projections will tend to read higher than reality over time, which is exactly what is observed.]
Dr Hansen’s core contribution, of course, lies in his peer-reviewed science, which informs his political views. Correct me if I am wrong but nobody has ever laid a glove on aforementioned science. What we do see, every time his name comes up, is an amazing ad hominem display of bile: in this thread alone, apart from the porcine reference we have ‘fraud’ (twice), ‘incompetent’, ‘liar’. He has also been likened to Adolf Hitler in comments here at the Science Blog of the Year.
Free expression of opinion, and all that, but you might like to consider the impression this creates.
Will.
How right you are.
I actually think that we put ourselves at a big disadvantage by using their ridiculous terminology to argue against them!
Each time a skeptic talks of ‘greenhouse’ gases, they are accidentally reinforcing the idea of the Greenhouse Theory/Greenhouse Effect which, with its implied absolute
impervious barrier (pane of glass) trapping heat, is clearly un-scientific balderdash!
Let’s not refer to the Greenhouse Effect any longer…I prefer to visualise the atmosphere as a blanket protecting the earth and keeping us warm…it’s about time
someone comes up with a better descriptive term.
Just an aside on the subject of language…and how it can be used to gain the upper hand in certain contexts….someone once had a brilliant idea..let’s call our organization GreenPeace…how could any right minded person be opposed to an organization called Green-Peace? You’d have to be a monster – you’d have to be in favour of….BrownWar…BlackDeath…GreyRage…
see what I mean?
Tim Curtin – many thanks, I appreciate it! I cannot get the email link to work. I hope the moderator can help make the link.
Gene Zeien: many thanks, I will have a try and would be interested to see the link if you can find it. I have worked annual lags and a 5 year distributed lag model. Not knowing enough about the physics I assumed that CO2 mixing would not be instantaneous but would be homogenised over a maximum of 5 years. I suspect Hansen may have just regressed emission ppm against T anomaly – given the nature of the stochastic processes involved that would almost certainly throw up a spurious result. Using 1959 – data forwards I can manage a polynomial regression that gives an R2 > 0.8 – totally meaningless of course. There is an interesting paper by Paulo Cesar Soares (2010) Warming Power of CO2 and H2O: Correlations with Temperature, Changes in International Journal of Geosciences, 2010, 1, 102-112. He comes to a similar result but sadly I suspect he has incorrectly handled the pre- ’59 Co2 data incorrectly so his results may not be quite as robust as he thinks. However, I am pretty sure that there is no significant correlation on any reasonable lag although I am open to being proven wrong. A zero correlation does not automatically rule out any causal link between T and CO2 but it does suggest that any link is so tenuous that it is not revealed in the data. At the moment all the data says – if taken at face value – is that temperature is drifting upwards and so are CO2 emissions. But so too are the average salaries of vicars. Hard to see any causality there!
Phil Clarke @ur momisugly 6:33 am says: “…as we now know, in time the observations nearly always end up in the high end of IPCC projection ranges….”
The IPCC First Assessment Report 1990 states:
“…based on current models, we predict ….increase of global mean temperature during the [21st] century of about 0.3°C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 to 0.5°C per decade)…
….under the IPCC business as usual emissions scenario, an average rate of global mean sea level rise of about 6 cm per decade over the next century (with an uncertainty range of 3 – 10 cm per decade)…”.
The observed temperature increase 1990 – 2011 is 0.2°C per decade.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1990/plot/wti/from:1990/trend
The observed sea level rise 1990 – 2011 is 3 cm per decade.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/sl_noib_global_sm1.jpg?w=500&h=358
Steven Mosher,
Are you aware of any models that accurately predict 1990 to present? If so, could you give us the reference? I have used multivariate models and they were helpful in determining the portion of the variance in a dependent variable that was contributed by each of several explanatory variables. However, the ones I used were static, not dynamic. Do dynamic climate models include classical multivariate analysis? Sorry for the basic questions, just trying to learn a little.
I has just been announced that James Hansen is coming down to New Zealand to do a series of engagements. So we are in for yet another round of alarmist hype and political pressure down here. Personally I could do without it.
Will said:
“This state of balanced heat flow at elevated temperature is called thermal equilibrium, and is driven by Kirchhoff’s Law – which applies to all bodies.”.
I think you missed the point of the paper that I linked to.
Kirchoff’s Law refers to radiative physics but in the climate system that is not enough being only a part of what goes on.
There is an additional energy transfer system involving evaporation and the hydrological cycle and its effect is to supplement the surface cooling over and above that to be expected from Kirkhoff’s Law.
As a result, instead or reaching radiative equilibrium at a higher temperature the accelerated energy loss reduces or neutralises the increase to a higher temperature.
The atmospheric heights change due to the faster energy loss from the surface so radiative equilibrium is achieved at a different height for little or no temperature change at the surface.
The ocean skin warms a little and the air circulation systems shift a miniscule distance from more CO2 induced energy in the air but the faster upward energy transfer from more evaporation, conduction, radiation and convection negates any significant temperature increase above or below the ocean skin.