The Kaufmann et al 2011 paper (Note: Michael L. Mann is a co-author, not the same as Michael E. Mann of hockey team fame) was embargoed until 8PM GMT (12PM PDT) today, and we have an advance copy thanks to Dr. Benny Peiser .
Here is the PDF file: pnas.201102467
The headline from the abstract:
Given the widely noted increase in the warming effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations, it has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008.
But in the conclusion:
The finding that the recent hiatus in warming is driven largely by natural factors does not contradict the hypothesis: “most of the observed increase in global average temperature since the mid 20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations (14).”
From the GWPF:
Comments by Dr David Whitehouse on the PNAS paper Kaufmann et al.
Reconciling anthropogenic climate change with observed temperature 1998 – 2008.
It is good news that the authors recognise that there has been no global temperature increase since 1998. Even after the standstill appears time and again in peer-reviewed scientific studies, many commentators still deny its reality. We live in the warmest decade since thermometer records began about 150 years ago, but it hasn’t gotten any warmer for at least a decade.
The researchers tweak an out-of-date climate computer model and cherry-pick the outcome to get their desired result. They do not use the latest data on the sun’s influence on the Earth, rendering their results of academic interest only.
They blame China’s increasing coal consumption that they say is adding particles into the atmosphere that reflect sunlight and therefore cool the planet. The effect of aerosols and their interplay with other agents of combustion is a major uncertainty in climate models. Moreover, despite China’s coal burning, data indicate that in the past decade the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere has not increased.
The researchers seek to explain the temperature standstill between 1998 and 2008. They say that the global temperature has increased since then.
This is misleading. There was an El Nino in 2010 (natural cyclic warming) but even that did not raise temperatures above 1998. In fact the standstill has continued to 2010 and 2011 appears to be on course to be a cooler year than any of the preceding ten years.
Tweaking computer models like this proves nothing. The real test is in the real world data. The temperature hasn’t increased for over a decade. For there to be any faith in the underlying scientific assumptions the world has to start warming soon, at an enhanced rate to compensate for it being held back for a decade.
Despite what the authors of this paper state after their tinkering with an out of date climate computer model, there is as yet no convincing explanation for the global temperature standstill of the past decade.
Either man-made and natural climatic effects have conspired to completely offset the warming that should have occurred due to greenhouse gasses in the past decade, or our estimation of the ‘climate sensitivity’ to greenhouse gasses is too large.
This is not an extreme or ‘sceptic’ position but represents part of the diversity of scientific opinion presented to the IPCC that is seldom reported.
Dr David Whitehouse
The Global Warming Policy Foundation
e-mail: david.whitehouse@thegwpf.org
=============================================================
My take on it from the paper – “We don’t know what’s going on, but we aren’t going to admit that” – Anthony
============================================================
From Ryan Maue: Mainstream media coverage example headline:
Asia pollution blamed for halt in warming: study — from Reuters
blah blah blah — and the conclusion quotation: “Long term warming will continue unless emissions are reduced,” said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at Britain’s Met Office.
Well, hells bells.
Excellent paper – moreover as AGW “scientists” begin to understand the chances of Obama being re-elected are somewhere between slim and none we may well see more actual science once again coming to the forefront. That is if any of those “scientists” even want a grant from a republican administration for the remaining years of their lives they better show actual science or perish the though actually work for a living. And I suspect a whole lot of “green” Obama monstrosities are gonna go the way of the dinosaurs come 2012. Who said there wasn’t a God?
thingadonta says:
July 4, 2011 at 3:26 pm
Actually 1950-2000 was the most active sun in the 400 record of sunspot counts. The period is called “The Modern Maximum”. It appears to have ended now. I’m pretty close to certain at this point most of the warming since 1970 was due to the modern maximum. I was just waiting for Svensmark to confirm via experiment (which he did this year) his cosmic-ray cloud seeding hypothesis. It’s all over for AGW except for the crying. Get ready for the cold and the snow and the falling line (chorus: hide the decline).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sunspot_Numbers.png
Forgot the link to 400 year record of sunspot counts showing 1950-2000 modern maximum.
R Taylor says:
July 5, 2011 at 7:31 am
“Polistra, (polistra says: July 4, 2011 at 12:50 pm), I’m glad to find someone who shares my view that CAGW is a new Ptolemaic system, an intellectual conceit to defend political power. I have to disagree however and say the Ptolemaic system is “wrong”, as it is inconsistent with everthing else we observe about gravity and momentum.”
You’re wrong to disagree. Previous poster was correct. Ptolemaic astronomy could accurately predict positions of stars and moons and planets but the math was complex, contorted, and got more complex & contorted with each discovery of new objects. The center of the universe is relative and if you want to name the earth as the center that’s as good as any other place although no longer the usual choice in science but still is for many religions.
Technically the earth doesn’t orbit the sun. The sun and earth orbit about a common center of mass, sometimes called the barycenter, which is not precisely the center of the sun. As the difference in mass between two objects decreases the barycenter moves towards the halfway point between them. For most (but not all) practical purposes the earth can be said to orbit the sun. Three or more body problems become notoriously difficult to solve and mathematical shortcuts are taken that (usually, depending on precision needed) give practical working results. We have no theory of gravity, by the way. All we have are empirically derived formulas that, most of the time, yield practical results. However, at the boundaries of our empirical observations at the largest and smallest scales anomalies exist. Mention “the angular momentum problem” to an astronomer who thinks we know it all to elicit some angst.
http://lifeng.lamost.org/courses/astrotoday/CHAISSON/AT315/HTML/AT31505.HTM
Another anomaly that’s been known for some time now is that the farthest manmade objects from the earth, Voyagers I and II, just now existing the heliosphere into true interstellar space aren’t quite where our equations of gravity predicted they should be. There’s also some discrepancy in the outputs of their radiothermal electric power supplies which aren’t satisfactorily resolved and could be explained by a slightly non-constant rate of radioactive decay where that rate changes with distance from the sun. And no one has a clue how gravity behaves at quantum scale distance. Mysteries abound. We don’t have all the answers. Not even close. We have working hypothesis that, for most practical purposes, allow us to design devices that work well enough in our local region of space and time. We have approximations of reality but theory is still lacking. We put a man on the moon and safely returned him home without any reliance on general relativity – classical Newtonian physics was accurate enough in that case. On the other hand the Global Positioning System wouldn’t work worth a fig without taking effects of general relativity into account. And on yet another hand general relativity wasn’t good enough to predict where the Voyager satellites would be right now.
Bob Tisdale says:
July 5, 2011 at 6:08 am
“What’s the process or mechanism through which the “PDO forcing” could be responsible for the rises and falls? It’s a simple question. Describing the process or mchanism should be just as easy.”
It is indeed easy. The sun heats the ocean and the ocean heats the atmosphere. If the ocean surface is warmer the atmosphere will follow like a dog on a leash.
What no one can explain is why the PDO has the period that it does, why its period varies to some degree, and why some peaks and troughs in some PDO cycles are greater or lesser than peaks and troughs in different PDO cycles.
We know the climatology which is more like what actuaries do than what experimental scientists do. We don’t have a theory of climatology which the scientists are supposed to give to us. Instead the climate boffins give us computer models based on climate hypotheses and expect us to just take it for granted (have faith) that the underlying hypothesis yield the precision and accuracy needed to make grandiose public policy decisions. Uncertainty is rampant and only possibly exceeded in rampantness by the denials of any significant level uncertainty. I weep for what this exercise in academic fraud has done to the general reputation of science.
In reply to Sigurdur,
“William:
I would be nice if you would post some links to the papers you mentioned. I don’t have them handy at the moment.
What you indicated has as much or more validity as AGW.
Thank you.”
Hi Sigurdur,
I have posted links to the GCR, electroscavenging, and cloud papers a couple of times. If the mechanisms are correct the planet will cool, as it did in the past during a deep solar minimum. (There are cycles of warming and cooling in the paleoclimatic record that correlate with cosmogenic isotope changes.) I will submit a separate thread that summarizes the GCR/electroscavening science if there is significant observation evidence to support and clarify the mechanisms. I believe I understand what is causing the delay in cooling. GCR has increased therefore if the mechanism is correct the planet should cool due to increasing cloud cover (it has started to cooling) or there must be some mechanism that is removing ions from the atmosphere.
I believe the delay in cooling and the temporary less sever cooling is due to the lag time as the earth equalizes to the new solar potential. There are a suite of anomalous observations that correlate with solar minimums. A significant increase in volcanic activity (magnitude and number of volcanic eruptions) and falling sea level where the fall in sea level is more than twice what would be expected based on cooling of the ocean and thermal contraction. (There are papers written that discuss the anomalous falling and rising ocean level in the pale record and the peculiar sudden increase in volcanic activity in regions that are geographical and geologically separated.) As I have pointed out there are also papers that note there is an abrupt change in the geomagnetic field (archeomagnetic jerks – periodicity roughly 400 years and excursions periodicity roughly 12000 years, last excursion correlates in time with the Younger Dryas) that follow the abrupt solar minimums. The archeomagnetic jerks (geomagnetic field orientation changes by 10 to 15 degrees and the geomagnetic excursion (non-dipole component on the field becomes stronger causing the geomagnetic field intensity to drop by a factor of 3 to 5) appear to be caused by the restart of the solar magnetic cycle after being interrupted. The effects of the solar restart are dependent on the orbital parameters which by change also affect solar insolation at 60 degrees north. (Tilt of planet, seasonal timing of perihelion and so forth.)
Solar cycle 24 is a change from the highest solar activity in 10,000 years to a Maunder minimum. From a physics standpoint the solar mechanism that causes the potential difference is greatest when there is an abrupt change in the number of sunspots. There is also a suite of unexplained astrophysical anomalies that are related to what is causing the potential difference.
William says:
July 5, 2011 at 11:43 am
Solar cycle 24 is a change from the highest solar activity in 10,000 years to a Maunder minimum.
The ‘highest solar activity in 10,000 years’ is a myth:
http://www.leif.org/research/History%20and%20Calibration%20of%20Sunspot%20Numbers.pdf
Exactly.
Dave Springer, (Dave Springer says: July 5, 2011 at 11:12 am), I grant that wrong is gradational, but Ptolemaic astronomy requires the earth to not rotate, so at the very least it is wrong about the shape of the earth.
Dave Springer says: “It is indeed easy. The sun heats the ocean and the ocean heats the atmosphere. If the ocean surface is warmer the atmosphere will follow like a dog on a leash”
Since the PDO does not represent the Sea Surface Temperature of the North Pacific, your explanation doesn’t work.
Regards
M.A.Vukcevic: Regarding your July 5, 2011 at 6:13 am reply, thanks for the confirmation.
NASA Says Global Warming Unabated
This article was posted on Mar 23 2010
Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies have been updating their analysis of global surface temperatures, for years. And the latest is available here (see under “Latest News” a link to the .pdf of a draft journal article; one author is the renowned climate scientist, James Hansen).
They’ve found that despite anecdotal observations or unscientific theories, the earth is continuing to warm, based on the evidence:
“We conclude that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20°C/decade (~ .3 F/decade) that began in the late 1970s.”
=================================================================
You guys are actually going to post a video of Michelle Bachmann as part of your defense?
That’s the woman that doesn’t know the difference between John Wayne Gacy and John Wayne the actor, right? Got it.
Most of the people that don’t believe Global Warming are republicans. Gee, I wonder why that is? The Republican party says that people should eat, drink and be merry!
Most of the republican congressmen are invested in oil. Of course they all want you to continue with business as usual. Sadly, a lot of people buy whatever they’re told.
Hilarious!! – “Warming was prevented by China burning a whole lot of coal” – you can imagine the outcry if this was suggested by a denier, as it contradicts everything the warmists have been saying for the last 10 years!
So, one country in the world burning some extra coal (which according to the Green zealots is about the worst thing you can burn because it evolves so much ‘greenhouse gas’) can offset the global temperature rise due to its own extra coal burning CO2 emissions AND the extra CO2 emissions of the rest of the world.
Get this: coal burning is a work of supererogation: not only does it counteract the effect of its own CO2 emissions, but it has surplus negative forcing to counteract the rise in carbon emissions from other sources the world over. Every tonne of coal burned more than offsets its CO2 forcing, so its effective carbon footprint is negative, and it should be attracting huge feed-in tariffs and subsidies. It pumps vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere which helps crops grow to feed the world whilst actually cooling the world.
So the answer to global warming and greenhouse gas forcing is simple: burn more coal. If we all convert to coal burning, who knows, the negative forcing will be so great that we will be able to get temperatures down to where they were 60 years ago.
The Green zealots can’t have their cake and eat it: if one country’s coal burning really is suppressing the GLOBAL temperature rise, then coal burning has to be good, doesn’t it? Good ol’ King Coal!
No doubt they have anticipated this answer and knew that this paper was coming out, which explains the flurry of activity about ‘ocean acidification’ last month. Coal is off the hook with regard to global warming, but it’s the villain of the piece for the next scam. You can just see it can’t you? – CO2 dissolves more readily in cold water than warm water, so as coal burning reduces the global temperature rise it will contribute to greater dissolution of CO2 in the oceans. Believe me – that’s the next nonsense you’ll hear!
Here is a radical thought regarding aerosols. Could the impact of aerosols and cosmic rays be greater in an atmosphere with more water vapor in it? There would be more water to condense, hence more effect, right? Or is that a crazy thought?
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 5, 2011 at 12:33 pm
The ‘highest solar activity in 10,000 years’ is a myth:
http://www.leif.org/research/History%20and%20Calibration%20of%20Sunspot%20Numbers.pdf
That link doesn’t cover 10,000 years, Leif. Did I miss something?
It’s amazing that this blog continues actively to misinform and disinform the public about man-made climate change. You even take a paper that supports the scientific consensus that CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions are unequivocally warming the planet and try to falsely paint it as a rebuttal to the very science it supports. The senior author Kaufmann has had to correct the denialist industry lobby’s incorrect reporting once again:
“If anything the paper suggests that reductions in carbon emissions will be more important as China installs scrubbers [on its coal-fired power stations], which reduce sulphur emissions. This, and solar insolation increasing as part of the normal solar cycle, [will mean] temperature is likely to increase faster.”
David Falkner says:
July 6, 2011 at 2:30 am
That link doesn’t cover 10,000 years, Leif. Did I miss something?
Yes. The link shows that the last half-century [which is called the ‘Modern Grand Maximum’] is not any ‘grander’ than other periods in the last 300 years.
@Brian says:
July 5, 2011 at 6:02 pm
Ha, ha, thanks for the laugh. At least Michelle knows that there are only 50 states, as opposed to the Heinz 57 varieties ascribed to by Mr. Obama.
You said: “…Most of the people that don’t believe Global Warming are republicans. Gee, I wonder why that is?…” Uh, maybe ‘cuz they’re much smarter than the average person?
ScientistForTruth says:
July 6, 2011 at 1:22 am
Excellent post. For those interested in the philosophy of science, the “aerosols from China over-ride all CO2” meme is what Karl Popper called an “ad hoc hypothesis.” That is, it is a hypothesis invoked to save one’s main set of hypotheses from falsification. In addition, I find it amusing that the first time that Warmista are willing to discuss empirical hypotheses, physical hypotheses, about forcings is out of desperation to save their meme that increasing CO2 causes increasing global temperature.
Maybe the Warmista will discover physical hypotheses about forcings and finally, at this very late date, undertake empirical research on the effects of CO2, aerosols, and other things on the natural processes that make up Earth’s climate. In other words, maybe they will recognize the existence of natural processes other than heat transfer caused by radiation. I know it is too much to ask for, but just maybe they will grow some humility and declare that climate science will be on a firm footing in fifty years.
@jimf says:
July 6, 2011 at 8:17 am
Ha, ha, thanks for the laugh. At least Michelle knows that there are only 50 states, as opposed to the Heinz 57 varieties ascribed to by Mr. Obama.
You said: “…Most of the people that don’t believe Global Warming are republicans. Gee, I wonder why that is?…” Uh, maybe ‘cuz they’re much smarter than the average person?”
She is also religious.
Do you believe in the boogeyman upstairs? You know, the Santa Claus for adults?
You guys gave us George Bush twice in a row and look what happened to this country. It’s in a debt that it probably will never get out of. Obama is a failure, but he had no chance of correctly all the mistakes made before him.
It seems to me that the study actually proves that the climate models most likely are incorrect. I have no statistical education after the age of 20, but this looks obvious even to me.
As mentioned by others he sets as the null hypothesis that the climate models are correct, and tries to prove beyond a 95% confidence that they are not. In other words, he effectively says, “We have made a model, and we cannot be more than 95% certain it is incorrect, hence we will treat it as correct”.
The size of confidence intervals in Fig. 2, bottom left of page 2, corresponds to this 95%. As far as I remember from my stats, the higher your percentage is, the wider those bars sticking out of the green line would be. Correspondingly, the lower your percentage is, the tighter they are.
At several points the black line is almost outside the green confidence interval. I should think that if you instead asked “Is it 60% likely that the climate models are incorrect?” the bars would have been much tighter so the black line would have been outside.
What the study then actually says is that “We can’t be 95% certain we are wrong, but hello everyone, I am happy to announce that we are at least 60% certain we are wrong!”
Is there something I am missing?
I’m not sure Kevin knew just how apt his use of the term “travesty” instead of “tragedy” was to stating his case, a month before his Climategate e-mail was liberated:
http://i.min.us/id10qi.jpg
@Brian says:
July 6, 2011 at 2:23 pm
Brian, you’re so aberrant you’re cute. Now run away, grow up, and never, ever, speak to your betters until you develop cognizance. Ciao, topolino.
JimF says:
July 6, 2011 at 7:44 pm
Jim… If you notice the must uneducated people are on your side. Think about all of those ignorant southerners that are also conservative Republicans.
Really, that should be enough to get you to think your position over.
But you keep on believing the type of people that told us tobacco doesn’t cause cancer. Your kind will be made a fool of once again in the future.