This seems like a good idea, and I’ll be happy to dedicate a page to it if readers help fill in.
WUWT reader Charles Harrison uses the new submit story feature (see header menu) to ask this:
I would like to have a personal collection of AGW quotations to use in presentations, etc. Things like no more snow, the latest proposal to tattoo skeptics, the need to bring about the end of industrial civilization, etc.
I think this would be fun and useful and maybe Anthony could make a spot for it on the reference page. If nothing else, I would like to be sure I have correct attributions when I use these quotes.
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One more quote on snow, from CSIRO in Australia, via Andrew Bolt
In May 2008, the CSIRO’s warmists warned of vanishing snow:
Scientists say Australian skiers should prepare for shorter ski seasons because of global warming… CSIRO climate change expert Dr Penny Whetton says Australia’s mountain snow cover could be reduced by up to 54 per cent by 2020.
In August 2008, skiers were snowed in:
CARS buried at Falls Creek and Mt Buller, others abandoned on the Kosciuszko Rd and Alpine Way, massive snow drifts up high at Perisher and Thredbo, blizzard conditions, snowfall accumulations in excess of 40cm. As the big dump continues Friday, skiers are looking up at the scoreboard – with a 2m season well within our sights….Clearly, July 2008 has delivered the best consistent skiing conditions since the great 2004 season – and there is potential for a cold and snowy peak month of August.
And now, in June 2011, the snow has only got better:
Every major resort is opening lifts for the start of the ski season and this is set to be the biggest opening weekend in more than a decade.
Is there something wrong with the CSIRO’s models?
When somebody makes a prediction that X will occur by year Y, is it not customary to wait until year Y before judging the skill of the prediction? Rather than declaring the prediction falsified when most of two decades has still to elapse before the prediction date?
Just askin’… Oh I see how this works, we take an ad hoc remark from an interview with a journalist, described by the journalist himself as a ‘casual phone interview’, containing at least one error of fact that we know about, a prediction that was for about 40 years from 1988, or after a doubling of CO2, and present that as a killer quote that discredits the scientist, all the time of course, ignoring his actual science.
Embarassing.
Phil: your
When somebody makes a prediction that X will occur by year Y, is it not customary to wait until year Y before judging the skill of the prediction?
Depends. If the prediction is sudden onset, one should wait before giggling. Campings rapture is one example. If the projection depends on increases year over year, it can be measured against current progress. This would be Jim’s.
At the current rate of sea level increase, 2.77mm/year at The Battery, it will take 1000 years for the west side highway to flood (which is still there, BTW). For the west side to flood by 2028, the rate of sea level rise will have to increase by a factor of 63.7, from 2.77 to 176.47 mm/year.
There has been no change in the trees in the median strip.
There has been no taping of the windows for higher winds.
The same birds are still there.
The crime rate in NYC has fallen since Jim’s prediction.
By any measure, there is not much progress to report. In fact, at current flood and crime rates, we can project failure.
And you still will not admit that you were wrong on the west side road. Interesting.
ok, let us now look at Jim’s famous 1988 prediction of global temperatures, scenario a, b and c.
Nope, fail there, too. Current temps are below the “c” scenario, which assumed massive cuts in CO2.
Maybe we are going about this all wrong. Perhaps you could give us an example of something that Jim did predict, that actually came to pass.
If the projection depends on increases year over year, it can be measured against current progress. This would be Jim’s.
Cuts both ways. If new information comes to light during the period then it is legitimate to reassess the prediction. There are at least two such pieces of information. Firstly Hansen would have had in mind the contemporary thinking on climate sensitivity, which was then thought to be around 4C for 2xCO2 . Research since then, some of it from Dr Hansen himself indicates a sensitivity nearer 3C. [which is why his model studies from that period, which have proven startlingly accurate up to now are now starting to read a little warm. Plug in the modern number for sensitivity and they are spot on.] So, if we are acutally interested in applying ‘scientific’ rigour to this speculation in a ‘casual phone interview’, then the prediction should be adjusted accordingly.
Secondly: try reading what Hansen was actually asked. He reports
“Reiss asked me to speculate on changes that might happen in New York City in 40 years assuming CO2 doubled in amount”
So the 40 year timeframe is actually arbitrary, Hansen was being asked for a prediction after a doubling of CO2; which nobody on the planet now expects to occur by 2028.
This is one difference between science and reports in the media, a scientific prediction is a test, in this case of three assumptions,
a) CO2 levels can plausibly to double by 2028;
b) Climate sensitivity is 4.2 degrees C per doubling of CO2; and
c) A 4.2 degree C rise of global temperatures above preindustrial levels will raise sea levels sufficiently to flood the West Side Highway.
we now know that (b) is moot, thanks in part to work by Hansen himself, so if by 2028 the highway is not flooded, all we learn is that either CO2 has not doubled, or climate sensitivity is lower than 4.2, or sea rise at 4.2 degrees C is not sufficient to flood the West Side Highway. As we are already fairly certain about the second of those possible conclusions, the prediction is now not terribly interesting. (c), however is actually highly plausible. As the facts change, I change my opinions, what do you do?
So he was right except where he was wrong.
I’d hate to play golf with that guy. He’d claim a Mulligan on every hole.
So he was right except where he was wrong.
Saying Hansen claimed the highway would be underwater by 2008, as happened here, was wrong. Saying he claimed the highway would be underwater by 2028 is equally wrong.
Apart from that – great quote!
I was referring to his 1988 scenarios. You know, the one’s he nailed, except for the sensitivity.
Oh, and Phil…
The current sensitivity is not a “fact”. It is a postulate. If I determine that my previous postulate was wrong, I generally would say “I was wrong”, which is not quite the same thing as changing my opinon.
The new sensitivity is not a “fact”, but it fits the data since 1988 better and allows for a better looking hindcast. It remains to be seen if it is a “fact”.
Phil: your
[which is why his model studies from that period, which have proven startlingly accurate up to now are now starting to read a little warm.
Hardly. Current GISS temps are lower than the projected Scenario C, which involved massive cuts in CO2. I am not sure how you can call this “startlingly accurate”.
Now lets look at Jim’s “assumptions”:
a) CO2 levels can plausibly to double by 2028;
Implausible. CO2 is increasing at 0.6% per year in the atmosphere. It will take 120 years for a doubling. Even doubling the rate of increase will take 70+ years for a doubling of CO2.
b) Climate sensitivity is 4.2 degrees C per doubling of CO2; and
Supported by no known facts. Its “assumed” that a positive feedback exists. A doubling of CO2 by itself will give only about 1 deg C of warming. Positive feed backs need to supply the rest.
c) A 4.2 degree C rise of global temperatures above preindustrial levels will raise sea levels sufficiently to flood the West Side Highway.
4.2 degree C will NOT cause sufficient steric sea level rise to flood the west side. Only melting the ice sheets would give sufficient volume to rise 1 meter or more. And this is impossible in a 40 year time frame.
So, Jim strikes out in the “assumptions” you assume he made. That suggests that the predictions are based on poor foundations, and are not likely to prove out.
According to the mythology the concern in the 1970s was all about global cooling (not the case in the actual literature, of course). In 1988, using the state of knowledge of climate science at the time, and a model that you could run today on a small desktop computer, Hansen projected not only that the climate would warm, but his scenario B got the trend right, to within the limits of observational accuracy, for the next 20 years. In other words, a ‘perfect’ model would not have done better. I call that startling.
Science is always ‘wrong’ in the sense that it is subject to constant revision and improvement and in the decades that followed, one of the parameters used back in the late eighties was revised downwards. The impact is small in the early years but will cause the projections to diverge going forward, however if you recalulate with the new sensitivity parameter the fit to observations remains excellent.
About the same time Hansen was asked to speculate, off the cuff, about the effects of doubled CO2, with an assumed timeframe of 40 years. I am sure he would be amused to find his remarks subject to such scrutiny, almost a quarter of a century later, yet we now think that doubled CO2 is likely to occur mid-century. Here is a study on the likely effect on New York …http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_05/ which includes sea level rises easily sufficient to bring the much-discussed highway into the zone at severe risk of flooding.
This was not the academic literature, it was Hansen being given rein to speculate for a press interview within certain parameters, I am not aware that anyone else would be held to the ridiculous standard of every word in such a piece from so long ago being picked over, ignoring all that has transpired in the intervening decades. But I guess if that’s all you’ve got, then that’s all you’ve got…..
Phil: your
According to the mythology the concern in the 1970s was all about global cooling (not the case in the actual literature, of course).
But of course, that was the case. At least according to the NOAA. Well, except Peterson, of course. I don’t know how he missed this, inside his own organization.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/outreach/proceedings/cdw29_proceedings/Reeves.pdf
In 1988, using the state of knowledge of climate science at the time, and a model that you could run today on a small desktop computer, Hansen projected not only that the climate would warm, but his scenario B got the trend right, to within the limits of observational accuracy, for the next 20 years. In other words, a ‘perfect’ model would not have done better. I call that startling.
I call it startling that you said this with a straight face. Hansen got Scenario B right, but only the CO2 trends, not the temperature. Oops. Batting .500 will get you into Cooperstown, but not the Jeane Dixon hall of fame.
I am not sure that he even got B right. B was the scenario with stopping CO2 at the then current levels. Did I miss a Kyoto treaty in 1990? I mean, one that actually worked?
Currently, Hansen’s GISS temperature is below Scenario C levels, which involved massive CO2 cuts. I call this a startlingly bad prediction.
But I guess if that’s all you’ve got, then that’s all you’ve got…..
Oh, heck no. I’ve got pages of your incorrect parsing and data. That keeps me busy enough.
Phil: your
which includes sea level rises easily sufficient to bring the much-discussed highway into the zone at severe risk of flooding.
No, not really. Those charts you posted show less than a meter of rise in the most extreme model. Water levels need to rise 3 meters to flood the highway. Note that even now, the highway is subject to storm surge, as occurred in 1992. But it will be at least 300 years before the highway is permanently under water, and up to 600 years using the model mean.
Do you even read your own sources?
Hansen got Scenario B right, but only the CO2 trends, not the temperature.
Factually wrong. From 1984 to 2006, the trends in the two observational datasets are 0.24+/- 0.07 and 0.21 +/- 0.06 deg C/decade, where the error bars (2\sigma ) are the derived from the linear fit. The ‘true’ error bars should be slightly larger given the uncertainty in the annual estimates themselves. For the model simulations, the trends are for Scenario A: 0.39+/-0.05 deg C/decade, Scenario B: 0.24+/- 0.06 deg C/decade and Scenario C: 0.24 +/- 0.05 deg C/decade.
The bottom line? Scenario B is pretty close and certainly well within the error estimates of the real world changes. And if you factor in the 5 to 10% overestimate of the forcings in a simple way, Scenario B would be right in the middle of the observed trends. It is certainly close enough to provide confidence that the model is capable of matching the global mean temperature rise! http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/
Phil: perhaps you aren’t paying attention. The current GISS temperature is below Scenario C. Feel free to check.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
As for “startlingly accurate”? Even RC says that to get inside Scenario B, you need 2 sigma error bars, then even larger error bars for “true error”, then 5-10% more on an overestimate of forcing.
That is is lot of fudge factors. Do you think I could use these factors in making up my next budget presentation? It would make proving my forecasting skills an easier task….
Read it again. The conclusion that Scenario B matched observations for the period does not depend on the error bars or forcing discrepency. The predictions were revisited in 2006 in the literature:
Modeled 1988–2005 temperature changes are 0.59, 0.33, and
0.40°C, respectively, for scenarios A, B, and C. Observed temperature
change is 0.32°C and 0.36°C for the land–ocean index and
meteorological station analyses, respectively.
Warming rates in the model are 0.35, 0.19, and 0.24°C per decade
for scenarios A, B. and C, and 0.19 and 0.21°C per decade for the
observational analyses.
Global temperature change PNAShttp://www.pnas.org/content/103/39/14288.full.pdf+html
So the scenario B trend was spot on for 17 years, and continued to be so for several years afterwards.
As I said.
Phil,
From your reference, and for everyone’s lyin’ eyes, Figure 2 with data added through 2010.
http://i51.tinypic.com/rk0wpi.jpg
Remember now, your boy says
Not exactly “spot on”, especially when one considers that 2011 is not going to be as warm as 2010.
I missed this thread first pass. What about the old faithful(s) from Trenberth:
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
And my personal favorite:
“How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty! ”
Speaking of Old Faithful, the site is down at the moment (hopefully not for long), but here’s the link to the infamous email:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1052&filename=1255523796.tx
Wait a minute. What’s up WUWT’s Up crew? Nobody posted this?
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
C’mon. MBH 2009:
“The claim that ‘upside down’ data were used is bizarre.”
Jones, BBC 2010, answering this: Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
“Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different .”
There are tons of quotes that could be categorized: team climategate, steer review, abstracts, etc. I personally think it would be a worthy endeavor but it is easy for me to say because I know I can’t contribute much to making it a reality at the moment. But such a repository would be useful. I still have this page bookmarked even though the links are dead:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/20/climate-cuttings-33.html
Never enough time I suppose.
Phil: I will let John M’s chart speak for itself.
Well, thanks, I was aware that the 1988 projections are now starting to diverge from observations. That is what I meant when I wrote
‘The impact is small in the early years but will cause the projections to diverge going forward,’
The cause is almost certainly that Hansen’s assumed value at the time for climate sensitivity of 4.2C was too large, that is what I meant when I wrote that
‘one of the parameters used back in the late eighties was revised downwards.’
However for the first two decades after the predictions were made, the predicted and the observed trends were indistinguishable. That is what I meant when I wrote
‘his scenario B got the trend right, to within the limits of observational accuracy, for the next 20 years. In other words, a ‘perfect’ model would not have done better.’
If you ‘reverse-engineer’ the climate sensitivity from the data we now have using the 1988 version of the model, you get a value of 3.4C, which is strong evidence that the IPCC have got it right….
Alternatively, if your agenda is political rather than scientific, you could insist that every assumption made a quarter century ago must remain fixed forever and so Hansen was ‘wrong’.
See here or here
Phil: your
‘The impact is small in the early years but will cause the projections to diverge going forward,’
Of course it will. They curves all have the same origin. They have to be close at the start of the series. But they are not close now. That would indicate a low predictive skill. Startlingly low, I would say, as current GISS temps are below scenario C.
you get a value of 3.4C,
Which would mean you should see 0.34 degree per decade increase. How much has the temperature gone up in the last decade?
Phil: And Hansen might be fibbing just a bit on his scenarios. In the paper where he describes the scenarios, C is massive cuts, and CO2 levels stabilizing.
Scenario B is where some cuts are made, and atmospheric CO2 only increases linearly.
Scenario A is BAU, and CO2 increases exponentially.
CO2 has been increasing exponentially since records started at Mauna Loa. If it increases by X% per year, its exponential. Or, super exponential, according to Joe Romm.
Over twenty years on, Hansen’s ‘most plausible’ scenario is <0.3C from observations, (compared to a null hypothesis of no warming) … the 95% uncertainty bands in the observed and modelled trends overlap. Not entirely lacking in skill, then.
Which would mean you should see 0.34 degree per decade increase.
You might want to look up the definition of climate sensitivity. It’s fairly key to understanding this stuff.
Not entirely lacking in skill, then.
So which is it? “Startlingly accurate”? Or “not lacking in skill”. There is a big difference in hitting the dart board, and hitting the bulls eye.
You might want to look up the definition of climate sensitivity. It’s fairly key to understanding this stuff.
Its painfully obvious I won’t learn anything from you, Phil.
So, back to the scenarios. “a” is exponential, and “b” is linear. Please describe the slope of the Muana Loa CO2 graph. Is it linear or exponential?
Back to the west side, again. Your own sources show that it will be 300-600 years before that road is flooded. Would you care to comment on Jim’s accuracy in this prediction?