Guest post by Alec Rawls
“Expert review” of the First Order Draft of AR5 closed on the 10th. Here is the first paragraph of my submitted critique:
My training is in economics where we are very familiar with what statisticians call “the omitted variable problem” (or when it is intentional, “omitted variable fraud”). Whenever an explanatory variable is omitted from a statistical analysis, its explanatory power gets misattributed to any correlated variables that are included. This problem is manifest at the very highest level of AR5, and is built into each step of its analysis.
Like everyone else who participated in this review, I agreed not to cite, quote or distribute the draft. The IPCC also made a further request, which reviewers were not required to agree to, that we “not discuss the contents of the FOD in public fora such as blogs.”
Given what I found—systematic fraud—it would not be moral to honor this un-agreed to request, and because my comments are about what is omitted, the fraud is easy enough to expose without quoting the draft. My entire review (4700 words) only contains a half dozen quotes, which can easily be replaced here with descriptions of the quoted material. Cited section numbers are also easy to replace with descriptions of the subjects addressed. And so with Anthony’s permission, here is the rest of my minimally altered review:
Introduction to the “omitted variable fraud” critique, continued
For the 1750-2010 period examined, two variables correlate strongly with the observed warming (and hence with each other). Solar magnetic activity and atmospheric CO2 were both trending upwards over the period, and both stepped up to much higher levels over the second half of the 20th century. These two correlations with temperature change give rise to the two main competing theories of 20th century warming. Was it driven by rapidly increasing human release of CO2, or by the 80 year “grand maximum” of solar activity that began in the early 1920’s? (“Grand minima and maxima of solar activity: new observational constraints,” Usoskin et al. 2007.)
The empirical evidence in favor of the solar explanation is overwhelming. Dozens of peer-reviewed studies have found a very high degree of correlation (.5 to .8) between solar-magnetic activity and global temperature going back many thousands of years (Bond 2001, Neff 2001, Shaviv 2003, Usoskin 2005, and many others listed below). In other words, solar activity “explains,” in the statistical sense, 50 to 80% of past temperature change.
Such a high degree of correlation over such long time periods implies causality, which can only go one way. Global temperature cannot be driving solar activity, so there must be some mechanism by which solar activity is driving or modulating global temperature change. The high degree of correlation also suggests that solar activity is the primary driver of global temperature on every time scale studied (which is pretty much every time scale but the Milankovitch cycle).
In contrast, records of CO2 and temperature reveal no discernable warming effect of CO2. There is a correlation between atmospheric CO2 and temperature, but with CO2 changes following temperature changes by an average of about 800 years (Caillon 2003), indicating that it is temperature change that is driving atmospheric CO2 change (as it should, since warming oceans are able to hold less CO2). This does not rule out the possibility that CO2 also drives temperature, and in theory a doubling of CO2 should cause about a 1 degree increase in temperature before any feedback effects are accounted, but feedbacks could be negative (dampening rather than amplifying temperature forcings), so there no reason, just from what we know about the greenhouse mechanism, that CO2 has to be a significant player. The one thing we can say is that whatever the warming effect of CO2, it is not detectable in the raw CO2 vs. temperature data.
This is in glaring contrast to solar activity, which lights up like a neon sign in the raw data. Literally dozens of studies finding .5 to .8 degrees of correlation with temperature. So how is it that the IPCC’s current generation of general circulation models start with the assumption that CO2 has done 40 times as much to warm the planet as solar activity since 1750? This is the ratio of AR5’s radiative forcing estimates for variation in CO2 and variation in total solar effects between 1750 and 2010, as listed in [the table of RF estimates in the chapter on human and natural temperature forcing factors]. RF for CO2 is entered as ___ W/m^2 while RF for total solar effects is entered as ___ W/m^2. [I’m not going to quote the actual numbers, but yeah, the ratio is an astounding 40 to 1, up from 14 to 1 in AR4, which listed total solar forcing as 0.12 W/m^2, vs. 1.66 for CO2.]
So the 50% driver of global temperature according to mountains of temperature correlation data is assumed to have 1/40th the warming effect of something whose warming effect is not even discernable in the temperature record. This is on the input side of the GCM’s. The models aren’t using gigaflops of computing power to find that CO2 has that much larger a warming effect. The warming ratio is fixed at the outset. Garbage in, garbage out.
The “how” is very simple. The 40 times greater warming effect of CO2 is achieved by blatant omitted variable fraud. As I will fully document, all of the evidence for a strong solar magnetic driver of climate is simply left out of AR5. Of the many careful empirical studies that show a high correlation between solar activity and climate, only three papers are obliquely referenced in a single sentence of the entire First Order Draft. On [page___, line ____ of the chapter on aerosols and clouds] there is a bare reference to three papers that found unspecified correlations to some climate variables, with no mention of the dramatic magnitude of the correlations, or the scope and repetition of the findings. And that’s it. Not a single other mention in the entire report. A person reading AR5 from cover to cover would come away with not even a hint that for more than ten years a veritable flood of studies have been finding solar activity to explain something on the order of half of all past temperature variation. The omission is virtually complete.
As a result, AR5 misattributes virtually all of the explanatory power of solar-magnetic activity to the correlated CO2 variable. This misattribution can be found both in AR5’s analytical discussions and in its statistical estimations and projections, and the error could not be more consequential. If it is solar-magnetic activity that drives climate then the sun’s recent descent into a state of profound quiescence portends imminent global cooling, possibly rapid and severe, and unlike warming, cooling is actually dangerous and really can feed back on itself in runaway fashion.
Nothing could be more perverse in such a circumstance than to unplug the modern world in a misbegotten jihad against CO2. The IPCC’s omitted variable fraud must stop. AR5’s misattribution of 20th century warming to CO2 must stop. The evidence overwhelmingly supports the solar-magnetic warming theory. The only support for the CO2 theory is the fact that models built on it can achieve a reasonable fit to the last couple centuries of temperature history, but that is only because CO2 is roughly correlated with solar activity over this period, while these models themselves are invalidated by their demonstrable omitted variable fraud. If warming is attributed to solar-magnetic effects at all in accordance with the evidence then the warming that is left to attribute to CO2 becomes utterly benign.
With natural temperature variation almost certainly both substantially larger than CO2 effects, and headed in the cooling direction, the expected external value of CO2 is unambiguously positive. If anything, we should subsidizing and promoting increases in atmospheric CO2, exactly the opposite of the draft report’s opening claim that developments since AR4 “… [summary conclusion about scientists supposedly being more sure than ever (thanks to the absence of any 21st century warming?) that the effects of human activity are the primary climate concern].”
As someone who recognizes the scientific errors in this disastrous report, I can at least make sure that the issue is put properly before the authors of AR5. Thus I am documenting as concisely as possible the solar-magnetic omission and the errors it leads to. The discussion is substantial but I have kept it well under the character limit for a single comment. This comment is being submitted as a top-level comment on AR5 as a whole, and it is being submitted unaltered as a comment on three different sub-chapter headings where the omitted solar-magnetic evidence ought to be taken into account: ____, ____, ____ [a subheading in the paleo-data chapter, a subheading in the chapter on clouds and aerosols, and a subheading in the radiative forcing chapter].
A sample of the omitted evidence
Listed below are a few of the most prominent and compelling studies that have found a strong correlations between solar activity and climate, together with a semi-random collection of similar findings, totaling two dozen citations all together. It would be easy to list two dozen more, but the purpose here is just to show a sample of the omitted evidence, in order to document up-front the existence and validity of it. Included are brief descriptions of the findings for about ten of the studies. None of the observed correlations are reported anywhere in AR5. The first four are the ones I mentioned above:
Bond et al. 2001, “Persistent Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate During the Holocene,” Science.
Excerpt from Bond: “Over the last 12,000 years virtually every centennial time scale increase in drift ice documented in our North Atlantic records was tied to a distinct interval of variable and, overall, reduced solar output.”
Neff et al. 2001, “Strong coherence between solar variability and the monsoon in Oman between 9 and 6 kyr ago,” Nature.
Finding from Neff: Correlation coefficients of .55 and .60.
Usoskin et. al. 2005, “Solar Activity Over the Last 1150 years: does it Correlate with Climate?” Proc. 13th Cool Stars Workshop.
Excerpt from Usoskin: “The long term trends in solar data and in northern hemisphere temperatures have a correlation coefficient of about 0.7 — .8 at a 94% — 98% confidence level.”
Shaviv and Veizer, 2003, “Celestial driver of Phanerozoic climate?” GSA Today.
Excerpt from Shaviv: “We find that at least 66% of the variance in the paleotemperature trend could be attributed to CRF [Cosmic Ray Flux] variations likely due to solar system passages through the spiral arms of the galaxy.” [Not strictly due to solar activity, but implicating the GCR, or CRF, that solar activity modulates.]
Plenty of anti-CO2 alarmists know about this stuff. Mike Lockwood and Claus Fröhlich, for instance, in their 2007 paper: “Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature” (Proc. R. Soc. A), began by documenting how “[a] number of studies have indicated that solar variations had an effect on preindustrial climate throughout the Holocene.” In support, they cited 17 papers: the Bond and Neff articles from above, plus:
Davis & Shafer 1992; Jirikowic et al. 1993; Davis 1994; vanGeel et al. 1998; Yu&Ito 1999; Hu et al. 2003; Sarnthein et al. 2003; Christla et al. 2004; Prasad et al. 2004; Wei & Wang 2004; Maasch et al. 2005; Mayewski et al. 2005; Wang et al. 2005a; Bard & Frank 2006; and Polissar et al. 2006.
The correlations in most of these papers are not directly to temperature. They are to temperature proxies, some of which have a complex relationship with temperature, like Neff 2001, which found a correlation between solar activity and rainfall. Even so, the correlations tend to be strong, as if the whole gyre is somehow moving in broad synchrony with solar activity.
Some studies do examine correlations between solar activity proxies and direct temperature proxies, like the ratio of Oxygen18 to Oxygen16 in geologic samples. One such study (highlighted in Kirkby 2007) is Mangini et. al. 2005, “Reconstruction of temperature in the Central Alps during the past 2000 yr from a δ18O stalagmite record.”
Excerpt from Mangini: “… a high correlation between δ18O in SPA 12 and D14C (r =0.61). The maxima of δ18O coincide with solar minima (Dalton, Maunder, Sporer, Wolf, as well as with minima at around AD 700, 500 and 300). This correlation indicates that the variability of δ18O is driven by solar changes, in agreement with previous results on Holocene stalagmites from Oman, and from Central Germany.”
And that’s just old stuff. Here are four random recent papers.
Ogurtsov et al, 2010, “Variations in tree ring stable isotope records from northern Finland and their possible connection to solar activity,” JASTP.
Excerpt from Ogurtsov: “Statistical analysis of the carbon and oxygen stable isotope records reveals variations in the periods around 100, 11 and 3 years. A century scale connection between the 13C/12C record and solar activity is most evident.”
Di Rita, 2011, “A possible solar pacemaker for Holocene fluctuations of a salt-marsh in southern Italy,” Quaternary International.
Excerpt from Di Rita: “The chronological correspondence between the ages of saltmarsh vegetation reductions and the minimum concentration values of 10Be in the GISP2 ice core supports the hypothesis that important fluctuations in the extent of the salt-marsh in the coastal Tavoliere plain are related to variations of solar activity.”
Raspopov et al, 2011, “Variations in climate parameters at time intervals from hundreds to tens of millions of years in the past and its relation to solar activity,” JASTP.
Excerpt from Raspopov: “Our analysis of 200-year climatic oscillations in modern times and also data of other researchers referred to above suggest that these climatic oscillations can be attributed to solar forcing. The results obtained in our study for climatic variations millions of years ago indicate, in our opinion, that the 200- year solar cycle exerted a strong influence on climate parameters at those time intervals as well.”
Tan et al, 2011, “Climate patterns in north central China during the last 1800 yr and their possible driving force,” Clim. Past.
Excerpt from Tan: “Solar activity may be the dominant force that drove the same-phase variations of the temperature and precipitation in north central China.”
Saltmarshes, precipitation, “oscillations.” It’s all so science-fair. How about something just plain scary?
Solheim et al. 2011, “The long sunspot cycle 23 predicts a significant temperature decrease in cycle 24,” submitted astro-ph.
Excerpt from Solheim: “We find that for the Norwegian local stations investigated that 30-90% of the temperature increase in this period may be attributed to the Sun. For the average of 60 European stations we find ≈ 60% and globally (HadCRUT3) ≈ 50%. The same relations predict a temperature decrease of ≈ 0.9°C globally and 1.1−1.7°C for the Norwegian stations investigated from solar cycle 23 to 24.”
First paleo chapter error: omitting all solar variables besides TSI
The paleo-observations chapter is the right place for the evidence for a solar-magnetic climate driver to be introduced because most of this evidence is obtained from the deposition of cosmogenic isotopes in various paleologic strata: ice cores, geologic cores and tree rings. When solar activity is strong, less galactic cosmic radiation (GCR) is able to penetrate the solar wind and reach earth, making variation in cosmogenic isotopes found in time-indexed strata a proxy for solar activity. But when this chapter does get around to looking at cosmogenic records, it only looks at how they can be used to reconstruct total solar irradiance (TSI). It never even hints at the flood of studies that show a high degree of correlation between solar activity and various paleo proxies for climate and temperature!
This takes place [in the addendum that asks whether the sun is a major climate driver]. This addendum mentions the long-period changes in TSI that go with orbital variation (Milankovitch cycles), a factor which hasn’t changed enough since 1750 to account for any significant amount of the warming since that date. Neither can TSI changes from changes in the sun’s output of electromagnetic radiation be responsible for significant recent warming because, as solar activity jumps dramatically up and down over the roughly 11 year solar cycle, solar output is known to remain remarkably stable, varying only .1 to .2%.
Thus, concludes the addendum, the sun cannot be responsible for any significant amount of the warming since 1750. But it is only able to reach this conclusion by completely omitting any consideration those solar variables other than TSI that could be affecting global temperature. Unlike TSI, solar wind speed and pressure vary considerably over the solar cycle and between solar cycles. So do the Ap index and the F10.7cm radio flux progression, while the GCR that the solar wind modulates (measured by neutron counts at Climax, Oulu and other locations) can vary by a full order of magnitude over the solar cycle. In contrast, TSI varies so little that it is called “the solar constant.” If there is a mechanism by which solar variation is driving global temperature, it is most likely to work through those solar variables that actually vary significantly with solar activity. Yet the discussion in the addendum pretends that these other solar variables do not even exist.
So that’s the first error in the paleo-chapter addendum: pretending to have addressed the range of possible solar effects while studiously neglecting to mention that there are a bunch of solar variables that, unlike TSI, vary tremendously over the solar cycle and might affect our climate in ways that we do not yet understand. We in-effect live inside of the sun’s “atmosphere,” the extended corona created by the sun’s magnetic field and the solar wind. AR5 simply assumes that this solar environment has no effect on global climate, and they do it by rank omission of the relevant variables. The omitted variable problems that result are not an accident. They are omitted variable fraud.
Second paleo-chapter error: the highly irrational assumption that temperature would be driven by the trend in solar activity rather than the level
Perhaps in an effort to justify ignoring all solar variables other than TSI, the paleo-chapter addendum ends with what it presents as a general reason to dismiss the possibility that solar variation made any significant contribution to late 20th century warming by ANY mechanism:
[The statement here it the familiar claim that, because solar activity was not rising over the second half of the 20th century, it cannot possibly be responsible for late 20th century warming. I wrote a series of posts last year documenting the number of anti-CO2 alarmists who make this amazing claim, that it is not the level of forcing that creates warming, but the rate of change in the forcing. See for example, “Solar warming and ocean equilibrium Part 3: Solanki and Schuessler respond.”]
TSI peaks at the high point of the solar cycle just as the other solar variables do, so no matter what solar variable is looked at, it can’t have been the cause of recent warming, because none of these variables showed any upward trend over this period, right? Wrong. That’s like saying you can’t heat a pot of water by turning the flame to maximum and leaving it there, that you have to turn up the flame sloooooowly if you want the water to heat. It is incredible to see something so completely unscientific in AR5, passing as highly vetted science.
And the “flame” did stay on maximum. Again, there was an 80 year “grand maximum” of solar activity starting in the early 1920’s (Usoskin 2007).
[WUWT interjection for Leif and others who deny that there was a 20the century grand maximum of solar activity: if 20th century solar activity was merely “high instead of exceptional” (Muscheler 2007), it makes no difference to the argument here, as I explain in a postscript at the bottom.]
By claiming that solar activity would have had to keep rising in order to cause late 20th century warming, AR5 is in-effect assuming that by the late 70’s the oceans had already equilibrated to whatever temperature forcing effect the 20th century’s high level of solar activity might have. Otherwise the continued high level of solar activity would have caused continued warming.
Claims of rapid ocean equilibration have been made (Schwartz 2007), but they don’t stand up to scrutiny. In order to get his result, Schwartz used an energy balance model with the oceans represented by a single heat sink. That is, he assumed that the whole ocean changed temperature at once! Once you move to a 2 heat sink model where it takes time for heat to transfer from one ocean layer to another (Kirk-Davidoff 2009), rapid temperature adjustment of the upper ocean layer tells us next to nothing about how long it takes for the ocean to equilibrate to a long term forcing. [For an in-depth comparison of one heat-sink and the two heat-sink energy balance models see Part 2 of my ocean equilibration series.]
The paleo-temperature record is typified by multi-century warming and cooling phases, suggesting that equilibration can easily take centuries, making it ludicrous to assume that the warming effect of a grand maximum that began in the 1920’s must have been spent by 1970 or 1980 or by any particular date.
So no, there is no way to save the utterly incompetent argument in the paleo-chapter addendum that a solar driver of temperature can only cause warming when it is on the increase. If solar wind pressure or GCR does in some way drive global temperature, there is every reason to believe that it would have continued to warm the planet for as long as solar activity remained at grand maximum levels. There is no excuse for the IPCC to be omitting these variables, which are much more likely than TSI to be responsible for the high observed degree of correlation between solar activity and climate. For the paleo chapter to be tenable, all of the now massive evidence that there is some mechanism by which solar activity is driving most temperature change must be laid out in full.
Technical note: misattribution is assigned manually in AR5, but the concept is the same as for purely statistical omitted variable fraud
If TSI and the other solar variables all move roughly together, won’t omitting the solar variables other than TSI cause their explanatory power to be attributed to TSI rather than CO2, since they are more closely correlated with TSI than with CO2?
In a purely statistical estimation scheme yes, but the IPCC uses a combination of parameterized elements and estimated elements, and amongst the parameterized elements are the radiative forcings of CO2 and TSI, meaning that their relative warming effects are parameterized as well, with CO2 being assigned 40 times the warming effect of TSI over the 1750 to 2010 period.
This parameterization means that the explanatory power of the omitted solar magnetic variables gets attributed forty parts to CO2 for every one part to TSI. This structure forces the misattribution onto CO2. You can think of it as a manual assignment of the misattribution.
The general concept of the omitted variable remains the same. There is only so much attribution for warming to go around (100%). If attribution is given to the solar-magnetic variables in accordance with the evidence from the historic and paleo records, meaning at least 50%, then there less than 50% that can possibly be attributable to other causes.
Which again brings the scientific competence of IPCC into question. If CO2 has 40 times the warming effect of the 50% driver of global temperature (total solar effects), that makes it what? The 2000% driver of global temperature?
The chapter on aerosols and clouds inverts the scientific method, using theory to dismiss evidence
Where the paleo chapter simply pretends that no solar variable other than TSI exists, the chapter on aerosols and clouds doesn’t have that option. It is tasked to address directly the possibility that variables like the solar wind and GCR could be affecting climate. But this chapter still comes up with a way to avoid mentioning any of the massive evidence that there must be some mechanism by which solar activity is driving climate. Just as it starts to touch on the subject, it jumps instead to examining the tenability of particular theories about the mechanism by which solar activity might drive climate.
This happens right at the beginning of [the section that discusses the possible interplay between cosmic radiation, aerosols and clouds]:
[The quote here is the first two sentences under this sub-chapter heading. The first lists three papers as finding non-specific correlations between cosmogenic isotopes and various climate variables. The second sentence executes an immediate transition to a discussion of the evidence for particular mechanisms by which solar activity might drive global temperature.]
The first sentence of this quote is as close as AR5 comes to making any mention of overwhelming evidence that there is SOME mechanism by which solar activity drives global temperature. The citations suggest some correlations between solar activity and climate, but the strength of the correlations and how well established they are is completely obscured, and that’s it. Bare reference to three papers (author and year) with virtually nothing about what they found. The second sentence effects the transition into looking at the evidence for particular theories of possible mechanisms by which solar activity might effect climate. A short discussion later the evidence for these particular mechanisms is asserted (quite tendentiously) to be “[not strong enough]” for the mechanisms to “[have a significant effect on climate]” (page __, line __). This proclaimed weakness in turn becomes the rationale for omitting the proposed mechanisms from the IPCC’s general circulation models, and hence from the projections that are made with those models.
What do the AR5 draft authors do with the overwhelming evidence that there is SOME mechanism at work that makes solar magnetic the primary driver of global temperature? They don’t like the particular theories offered, but they have to still acknowledge that SOME such mechanism must be at work, don’t they? But readers don’t know about that evidence. It was skipped over via that one sentence of oblique references to a few papers that made unidentified findings, allowing AR5 to continue as if the evidence doesn’t exist. They never mention it again. They never account it in any way. It is GONE from AR5. The authors declare their dissatisfaction with the available theories for how solar activity might drive climate, and use this as an excuse to completely ignore the massive evidence that there is some such mechanism at work.
This is an exact inversion of the scientific method, which says that evidence always trumps theory. The IPCC is throwing away the evidence for a solar-magnetic driver of climate because it isn’t satisfied with the theories that have been proposed to account for it. This is the definition of anti-science: putting theory (or ideology, or anything) over evidence. Evidence has to be the trump card, or its not science. The IPCC is engaged in pure, definitional, anti-science, precisely inverting the scientific method.
It is as if a pre-Newtonian “scientist” were to predict that a rock released into the air will waft away on the breeze because we understand the force that the breeze imparts on the rock but we have no good theory of the mechanism by which heavy objects are pulled to the ground. We should therefore ignore the overwhelming evidence that there is some mechanism that pulls heavy objects to the ground, and until such time as we can identify the mechanism, proceed as if no such mechanism exists. This is what the IPCC is actually doing with the solar-climate evidence. Y’all aren’t scientists. You are actual, definitional, anti-scientists.
More anti-science: the aerosols and clouds chapter repeats the second paleo-chapter error
You know what I’m talking about: that bit about thinking that a climate driver can only cause continued warming if its own level continues to increase. The clouds and aerosols chapter says again that just leaving a proposed climate driver on maximum can’t possibly cause warming (page___, lines ___):
“_____ _____ _____ _____ ____”
And that’s the end of the section, AR5’s punctuation mark on why solar activity and GCR should be dismissed as an explanation for late 20th century warming.
This is anti-scientific in its own way. Scientists are supposed to be smart. They aren’t supposed to think that you have to slowly turn up the flame under a pot of water in order to heat it. You could collect every imbecile in the world together and not a one of them would ever come up with the idea that they have to turn the heat up slowly. It’s beyond stupid. It’s like, insanely stupid. And multiple chapter-writing teams are proclaiming the same nonsense? Fruitcakes.
Okay, I guess that means I’m ready to wrap up. Y’all have taken all these tens of billions in research money and used it perpetrate a fraud. As I have documented above, you have perpetrated the grandest and most blatant example of omitted variable fraud in history, but so far only the skeptic half the world knows it. You still have a shot, before global cooling is an established fact, to make a rapid turn around and save some shred of your reputations. But if AR5 comes out insisting that CO2 is a dominant warming influence just as global cooling is proving that the dominant climate driver is our now-quiet sun, then you all are finished on the spot. You’ll still have your filthy lucre, but the tap is going to turn off, and your reputations will be destroyed forever.
Can you imagine a worse juxtaposition? Still waging war on CO2 as the sun is already proving that CO2 is entirely beneficial? And this is what the evidence says is going to happen, all of that evidence that you have been so studiously omitting. I’m eager for your embarrassment, but I would much rather see you save yourselves, so that the needed policy reversals can some that much sooner. The anti-CO2 policies that your fraudulent “science” has supported are right now destroying the world economy. You idiots are killing our future. Please wake up and try to save your own reputations before your lunatic anti-science ruins us all.
End of review
“Omitted variable fraud” is the more fundamental critique
It is common for those who are swayed by the evidence for solar-climate driver to frame their protest against the IPCC’s dismissal of the evidence by protesting the short shrift the IPCC gives to the theories of how those effects might work. Here, for instance, is Tim Ball’s 2008 critique of AR4:
…they studiously avoided any discussion of the clear relationship between sunspot activity and temperature. They claimed there was no mechanism to explain the correlation so it could not be included, but that is incorrect. A very valid mechanism known as the Cosmic Theory (Svensmark and Calder, “The Chilling Stars”) has been in the literature with increasing detail since 1991. The date is important because IPCC claimed it was excluded because it was not published in time to meet their cut off date for consideration.
In other words, AR4 did exactly the same thing that AR5 is doing. They used the supposed lack of a sufficient theory for how a solar magnetic driver worked as an excuse not to present the overwhelming evidence that some such mechanism is a potent driver of global climate (a ruse that I documented in submitted comments on the Second Order draft of AR4, and TAR pulled the same trick as well.)
Ball’s response—that there actually is a pretty good theory—is perfectly correct, but it skips past the deeper point: that there can never be any excuse for “studiously [avoiding] any discussion of the clear relationship between sunspot activity and temperature.” The “omitted variable fraud” critique directly exposes and attacks this excuse making. Empirical evidence, the raw data, is supposed to be the ultimate arbiter. If any excuse is used to shunt the evidence aside, it’s no longer science.
We also know the consequences of this fraudulent anti-science. Omission of any variable with known explanatory power (regardless of whether the mechanism is understood) creates misattribution of the same magnitude. It’s a first order mistake.
In contrast, giving short shrift to the GCR-cloud theory is a lesser problem. So long as the IPCC’s predictive scheme attributes recent warming to solar activity in accordance with past patterns it isn’t a big deal whether a particular solar-temperature mechanism is modeled or not. At least the known explanatory variables are not being omitted and we are down to second order errors instead of first order errors.
Note that it is not necessary to invoke any theory. Predictions of future solar activity, for instance, are not based on physical models, but are purely a projection of past patterns, and this is sufficient to avoid first order error. Avoid the omitted variable fraud, account the known explanatory power of the solar-magnetic variables in any reasonable way, and big mistakes are avoided.
For the fraudsters, big mistakes are the whole point. Only with big mistakes can our eco-leftist “scientists” wage their war against industrial capitalism. Only big mistakes can give mainstream-left politicians the vast energy taxes that they eye as a treasure trove and allow them to channel hundreds of billions of dollars in wind and solar subsidies to their friends and backers.
But it’s an easy fraud to expose. Pretty much everyone who has ever taken a first course in statistics is familiar with the omitted variable problem. That is every undergraduate economics major, every business major, every science major, and most other social science majors. Right now, most of these people believe it when they are told that they can’t check the facts for themselves, that they just have to trust (or not trust) the credentialed climate scientists. But it is not true. Not only can they check the facts for themselves, but it is trivially easy.
All they need to do is scan a selection of the many empirical findings that solar-magnetic activity “explains” in the statistical sense something like half of past temperature change, then observe that all solar magnetic variables are in fact omitted from the IPCC models. It’s right there the RF table for each area report, where total solar effects are parameterized as having some tiny fraction of the warming effect of CO2. Then bingo. They know that powerful solar-warming effects are being misattributed to the coincidentally correlated CO2. They have checked the facts for themselves, at which point the voices of authority insisting that they cannot check the facts for themselves instantly become the Wizard of Oz, ordering them to ignore the man behind the curtain. Not even trusting little Dorothy fell for that.
Fundamental and accessible. That’s why I have trying to push the “omitted variable fraud” critique for many years. Anthony has a bigger bullhorn than I have had access to in the past, so maybe it will get out there this time!
If Leif is right that sunspot counts since 1945 should be reduced 20%, it does not alter the above analysis in any significant way
My review cites Usoskin’s claim that solar activity was at “grand maximum” levels from about 1920-2000. Frequent WUWT contributor Leif Svalsgaard denies that the recent peak in solar activity was a “grand maximum,” arguing that Max Waldmeier’s post-1945 sunspot counting scheme yields numbers that are about 20% too high.
If solar activity from 1945 to 2000 was merely “high instead of exceptional” (Muscheler 2007, whose cosmogenic proxies for solar activity extend through 2001), the narrative here is not significantly altered. As my review reiterates, you don’t have to keep turning the flame up under a pot of water to cause warming. Coming out of the Maunder Minimum/ Little Ice Age, if what the paleo-data says is the primary driver of global temperature remained at a high setting for most of a couple of centuries, that should cause continued warming. To actually argue that solar forcing has to continue rising in order to cause continued warming (the IPCC just asserts it) you’d have to argue that oceans had already equilibrated to the forcing, but there is no evidence for that, while the history of planetary temperature suggests that equilibration can take several centuries.
It is true that some of the strongest correlations between solar activity and temperature have short lags, on the order of ten years, but rapid responses to short term changes in solar-magnetic activity do not militate against longer term responses to longer term forcings. On the contrary, short term responsiveness implies longer term responsiveness, just as the rapid response of daytime temperatures to the rising sun implies that the longer term increase in insolation as the seasons change towards summer should cause seasonal temperature change (which of course it does).
For present purposes, it doesn’t matter whether solar activity quickly jumped up to high levels after Maunder and stayed mostly at those levels until the end of the 20th century (with the notable exceptions of the Dalton Minimum and the turn of the 19th century lull), or whether solar activity over the second half of the 20th century really did ascend to the highest levels seen since 9000 BC (Usoskin). As far as we know, either scenario could easily account for the modest amount of warming in question.
That’s an unexceptional .7° C from 1600 to the 1961-90 average according to Moberg 2005 , or .5° between 1750 to 1961-90. That 1961-90 temperature average is the HadCRUT3 zero point. HadCRUT3 reached a peak of .548 in 1998 and has fallen a couple of tenths since, so altogether there was a peak of about a 1° increase over the IPCC’s 260 year study period (now down to about .8°) which is nothing unusual in the ups and downs of global temperature.
There is no reason to think that the sun could only be responsible for this unexceptional temperature increase if there had been 50 years of the highest solar activity since 9000 BC. Of course the IPCC thinks that any steady level of solar activity over the second half of the 20th century rules out a solar explanation for the small amount of warming over that period on grounds that the level of solar activity didn’t keep going up to even more extreme levels, but they’re just a bunch of fruitcake anti-scientists.
Submitted review contains one inaccuracy that is corrected in the review posted above
My submitted review claimed that the only reference in the First Order Draft to the vast evidence for a solar-climate driver comes in a single sentence that makes an oblique reference to a single research paper. In the corrected review above, that becomes a single sentence making oblique reference to three research papers.
Two of the papers only look at solar-climate correlations over the second half of the 20th century and hence are inherently unable to draw strong conclusions. I guess I was thinking that the only “real” citation was to the survey paper that actually addresses the paleo-data. But those details are irrelevant to the point I was trying to make—that a reader of AR5 is given no hint of what is in any these papers—and no clue that numerous studies point to solar activity as the primary driver of global temperature. The submitted review quotes the full sentence, so it isn’t hiding anything, but it isn’t fully accurate.
So that’s the price of procrastination. It was just before the submission deadline and I had a reunion dinner to rush off to so I was not able to vet as thoroughly as I would have liked. Still, this is the only actual screw-up in my submitted review: it isn’t one oblique reference to a single paper, but one sentence obliquely referencing three papers. With the draft report unavailable to WUWT readers I don’t want to put forward any mischaracterizations, so I made the correction and am footnoting it here.
The posting here also fixes some typos, adds links to some of the cited papers, adds some formatting that was unavailable on our Excel submission form, and touches up the presentation in a few spots.
Wow,. This’ll take some time to re-read thoroughly.
IF this is accurate it would explain a lot and could actually remove any last trace of scientific credibility the theory Has.
If it’s wrong, i think you’ll find yourself in hot water.
I fear for all of us if the depth and weight of this outline is, in fact, what AR5 will be hiding.
There are in all likelihood multiple omitted variables, or mis-attributed variables. I’d include both stratospheric aerosols and tropospheric aerosols in that category.
Otherwise, I agree. To argue that because measured warming (or other climate effect) isn’t caused by A, B or C, it is therefore caused by D (GHGs) is a logical fallacy that pervades scientific papers and GW discussions.
Where is the direct evidence that GHGs cause the observed warming. In truth there is very little direct evidence.
In short: while the 11 year sun spot cycles may not have an influence over centennial climate evolution, the wider “grand maximum – grand minimum” has a long lasting influence on the Earth magnetic field that shields more or less cosmic rays.
Cloud formation is directly influenced by cosmic rays, although a quantitative relationship remains to be established (does somebody knows if one is available?).
A simple model calculation shows that for each % increase of cloudiness (the ratio of Earth surface covered by clouds) the surface temperature will increase by approx. 0.5 °C, quite a high positive sensitivity.
But cloudiness is one on the least precisely measured climate variables. It impacts not only on temperature but also on rainfalls, another interesting topic.
More research is needed…
A good example of stealth by design. The IPCC and their followers on the gravy train use TSI as a blocking device that would be employed by any supporting sophist enlisted in the fallacy of AGW.
This topic will be the Achilles heal that eventually wears down the rhetoric of man made warming Armageddon. Alec mentions several times the solar/magnetic variables, which of course includes the massive UV variations of 30-100% that have major consequences on atmospheric teleconnections, which cannot be dismissed.
Yes there is the Waldmeier factor that needs to be realized when looking at SSN, but there is no doubt solar activity has been on the upward slope since 1900, this is part of the normal powerwave or Gleissberg cycle that occurs on a regular basis, but importantly this cycle is tempered by solar grand minima of differing strength. To ignore this wave is ludicrous.
http://tinyurl.com/2dg9u22/images/powerwave3.png
This is going to be great. Enlightenment is not far away for the climate science community. The good white ants are getting active.
How many more hits can AGW take before it is deceased?
I guess your new to this as they will simple ignore you I’m sorry to say.
I am reminded of the Press Complaints Code of Conduct for editors where public defense for publishing material is given as:
1. The public interest includes, but is not confined to:
i) Detecting or exposing crime or serious impropriety.
ii) Protecting public health and safety.
iii) Preventing the public from being misled by an action or statement of an individual or organisation.
1. Is there serious impropriety … clearly yes
2. Does it affect public health and safety. 2.3million people in the UK will die over the next century due to winter cold. Estimates suggest a quarter of Scotland’s population died in the 1690s during the last Maunder minimum. 2.3million is as close to a holocaust. If the denial of solar causality of climate leads to even a fraction of these deaths, those involved will be responsible for some of the biggest man-slaughters in history.
3. The public are clearly being misled by the statements from the IPCC.
In science, you cannot pick and choose the evidence you consider. You may explain why you reject certain evidence or certain interpretations, but you must give the reader the information to be able to follow that logic themselves … because in science, anyone can be wrong. Except the f[snip] IPCC.
The IPCC 5th report is going to repeat the same shenanigans we saw in AR4. The IPCC cannot justify ignoring the sun based on that they don’t understand the amplification mechanism, but at the same time claim that CO2 has massive positive feedbacks without having a clue how it does.
My knowledge is zero on this, so my opinion is meaningless. However, I do find it uncomfortable that the IPCC etc say the suns influencew is so small. Taking it as gospel that we have had a strong solar maximum through the end of the 20th century, and the fact that the sun is weakening and temps have leveled off, is it wise to dismiss it?
“It is as if a pre-Newtonian “scientist” were to predict that a rock released into the air will waft away on the breeze because we understand the force that the breeze imparts on the rock but we have no good theory of the mechanism by which heavy objects are pulled to the ground. We should therefore ignore the overwhelming evidence that there is some mechanism that pulls heavy objects to the ground, and until such time as we can identify the mechanism, proceed as if no such mechanism exists. This is what the IPCC is actually doing with the solar-climate evidence. Y’all aren’t scientists. You are actual, definitional, anti-scientists.”
An excellent review, but that bit is priceless.
Thanks for these clear words and the clear reasoning. I have no illusion as to whether the IPCC will react, but hopefully the IPCC as a whole, and its lackays at the PIK, CRU, GISS and NCAR can be isolated and neutralized so that its Hexenhammer 5.0 will fail to damage the world’s economies further.
Spectacular article.
This is more important than the whole AR5 report.
How nice to see some attempt at discussing science. But, there is a lot wrong here.
> These two correlations with temperature change give rise to the two main competing theories
No. That seems to be a common misconception, but the theories start with the physical processes, not with the correlations.
> “grand maximum” of solar activity that began in the early 1920′s? (“Grand minima and maxima of solar activity: new observational constraints,” Usoskin et al. 2007.)
Usoskin says nothing about climate, and presents no figures that allow you to see what has happened in the 20th C – the scale shown is too large. And for our purposes there is nothing new there, because the 20th C measurements were known before.
Which brings in the second obvious point: although you’ve ref’ed a few new papers, there isn’t actually anything new here. All you’ve written could have been – and I suspect, has been – written about IPCC AR4. So while the AR5 FOD might be an exciting “newsy” peg to hang this story on, it would have been better written in the context of AR4, which is conveniently publically available.
And since you haven’t actually addressed any of the attribution arguments for 20th C change they gave there, all this is besides the point.
> prominent and compelling studies that have found a strong correlations between solar activity and climate… Bond et al. 2001, “Persistent Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate During the Holocene,
Day is warmer than night. Winter is colder than summer. The ice age cycles are locked to astronomical forcing. No-one doubts that solar forcing affects climate, in general. So listing any number of studies that agree with this gets you nowhere. You need to actually address *recent* change.
It is hard enough facing the bitter dawn, when it involves facing the fact your fiancee is a fraud. It is all the harder after the marriage, and Europe is definately in bed with bozos.
If I understand you correctly, you are claiming that even if solar activity [sunspots, TSI, magnetic activity, comic rays] has been constant since 1700, the rise in temperature since the Little Ice Age would still be the result of this constant solar activity. You may wish to consult the paper by Schrijver et al http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL046658.pdf “[22] Therefore, we argue that the best estimate of the magnetic flux threading the solar surface during the deepest Maunder Minimum phases appears to be provided by direct measurement in 2008–2009.”
The fact that models have been more or less correct for the past 200 years is that they were made to fit that time so prove AGW. The mind set of scientists who do this show what a dream world they live in. The warming since 1750 is due to recovery from the LIA which was completely natural.
The Temperature/CO2 causation is certainly driven by temperature but there can be no intermediate feedbacks from CO2 to increase temperature, unless you believe in time travel. CO2 is the innocent bystander leapt on by the climate police because its there.
Good critique but I wonder why an economist was asked to review a climate chapter. It only goes to show that ‘The Delinquent Teenager…….’ book is correct with its reporting, and well worth a read.
“You need to actually address *recent* change.”
That is the point – there is none. We are at the ‘Peak’ From here it is all down
That is excellent advice to the IPCC. Even so there is a lot more to the sun/climate relationship.
The main thing is that to understand how the Sun regulates the Earth’s climate dynamics, it is necessary to (1) examine all of the ways: electromagnetic radiation; matter; electromagnetic field; gravitational field; the shape of the Sun; and the topological structure of the heiosphere; (2) the interaction effects between these and between how they affect climate dynamics; and (3) use methods of quantitative analysis that are appropriate for non-linear dynamics.
I analysed a lot of papers about relationships between the Sun and climate dynamics. This can be found in:
Mackey, R., (2009). “The Sun’s role in regulating the earth’s climate dynamics”, Energy and Environment Vol 20 No. 1, 2009; pps 25 to 73.
ABSTRACT
This paper introduces this thesis:
The Sun-Earth system is electromagnetically, magneto-hydrodynamically and
gravitationally coupled, dominated by significant non-linear, non-stationary
interactions, which vary over time and throughout the three-dimensional structure
of the Earth, its atmosphere and oceans. The essential elements of the Sun-Earth
system are the solar dynamo, the heliosphere, the lunisolar tides, the Earth’s inner
and outer cores, mantle, crust, magnetosphere, oceans and atmosphere. The Sun-
Earth system is non-ergodic (i.e. characterised by continuous change, complexity,
disorder, improbability, spontaneity, connectivity and the unexpected). Climate
dynamics, therefore, are non-ergodic, with highly variable climatological features
at any one time. A theoretical framework for considering the role of the Sun in
relation to the Earth’s climate dynamics is outlined and ways in which the Sun
affects climate reviewed. The forcing sources (independent variables) that
influence climate processes (dependent variables) are analysed. This theoretical
framework shows clearly the interaction effects between and amongst the two
classes of variables. These seem to have the greatest effect on climate dynamics.
Climate processes are interconnected and oscillating, yielding variable
periodicities. Solar processes, especially when interacting, amplify or dampen
these periodicities producing distinctive climatic cycles. As solar and climate
processes are non-linear, non-stationary and non-ergodic, appropriate analytic
methodologies are necessary to reveal satisfactorily solar/climate relationships.
The email address I gave in that paper is no more.
If any one wants the paper, please email me at lemniscatexyz@gmail.com
“You need to actually address *recent* change.” Sounds to me as if Mr. Connolly is reverting back to the “Hockey Stick” as the obvious answer is “What about the medieval warm period”? That period cannot easily be categorised at “recent”.
I am not able to evaluate Alex Rawls’ response to AR5 draft, but I have a suspicion that considering the persons involved in drafting the document, this is essentially an application for the extension of financial support for climate research. Think of what would happen if suddenly the sun was considered a major climate determinant? The funding would dry up. That would be untenable for a lot of climate researchers. They would have to think of something else to do.
William M. Connolley says:
February 22, 2012 at 2:13 am
“No-one doubts that solar forcing affects climate, in general.”
Try to understand the term solar-magnetic.
“So listing any number of studies that agree with this gets you nowhere.”
I think you are expressing the IPCC’s position here very accurately. But it’s an anti-scientific position.
“You need to actually address *recent* change.”
Did the physics change recently?
A good and interesting article, but I guess few will be surprised by the approach adopted by the IPCC given its political nature. If the IPCC was more scientific, given the ever increasing evidence and suspicions that there may be little if any further rise in temperatures for the next 20 to 30 years, one would have expected it to be more circumspect and to suggest that other natural drivers may have some role to play. Adopting the political stance ‘that it is CO2 stupid’ may hasten its downfall since it may look very foolish in just 6 to 10 years time. .
I have been pointing out for a long time that it is one of the greatest PR victories that Joe Public has the impression that the temperature record shows over whelming correlation with the levels of CO2 when in fact there is no correlation whether in the recent past during the instrument record, or on a geological time scale. I am pleased to see someone of note make that point.
The basic physics of CO2 as a GHG provides that there must always be an increase in temperature when concentrations of CO2 increase. Likewise, if CO2 levels fall, then temperature must always fall. This is the basic properties of CO2 as a GHG.
Yet look at the instrument record. See for example
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:2011
In broad terms, one notes the following:-
(i) a steady rise in temps until about 1880 in circumstances where there was no discernable increase in CO2.
(ii) Then there was a fall in temps until about 1918 in circumstances where there was no discernable decrease in CO2.
(iii) Between 1919 and 1942, there was an increase in temperatures in circumstances where there was no discernable increase in CO2.
(iv) Between 1942 and 1980, there was a fall in temperatures in circumstances where there was increase in CO2. THIS IS ANTI CORRELATION. Between 1981 and 1998, there was an increase in temperatures in circumstances where there was an increase in CO2, however, it is noteworthy that the rise in temperatures during this period when CO2 is said to be a driver is no greater than the period between 1919 and 1942 when there was no CO2 driven temperature rise. Between 1999 and 2011, there has been no increase in temperature whilst CO2 levels have increased.
Looking at this record, no reasonable person looking at the instrument record would conclude that there is a correlation between CO2 and temperature, still less that CO2 drives temperatures. If nothing else, the anti correlation between 1942 and 1980 when temperatures fell despite a rise in CO2 levels coupled with the fact that the rate of temperature increase between 1981 and 1999 when CO2 levels were increasing is no greater than the rate of temperature increase between 1919 and 1942 when there was no significant rise in CO2 levels runs counter to the claimed premise that CO2 drives temperature.
The author suggests that models do a reasonable job at hindcasting over the last couple of centuries. This is not so. They only do so because of the introduction of fudge factors the appropriateness for which is highly moot.
Again, if one considers the geological record, again there is no correlations. There are periods when temperatures remain broadly static not withstanding fluctuations in CO2 levels. More significantly there are periods of anti correlation when temperatures are seen to rise and yet CO2 levels are falling, and also periods when temperatures are seen to be falling whilst CO2 levels a re rising. If this anti correlation were not problem enough to the extent that there is broad similarities between temperature and CO2, it appears that CO2 lags temperature and is therefore not a driver but rather a response.
Against such background, it is incredible that there is so much traction for the simple correlation in the real world that CO2 drives temperatures.
In my opinion, this all got off the ground because some bright spark though it appropriate to fit a straight linear trend line through the instrument period temperature record. In my opinion, no mathematician would have thought it appropriate to fit a straight line through that record and this error has hidden what appears to be natural cycular temperature variations.
Because of the simple physics of CO2 as a GHG, every year when there is a rise in CO2 and no corresponding rise in temperature an explanation is required. If the explanation is temperature rises in fits and starts then that is a concession that natural variation dominates over CO2 as the primary driver of temperature.
Whilst I would be very surprised if the sun does not have a significant role in temperature fluctuations, presently, I have seen no convincing evidence supporting its role still less explaining it. In my opinion, we have still a lot to be learnt and understood.
William M. Connolley says:
February 22, 2012 at 2:13 am
No. That seems to be a common misconception, but the theories start with the physical processes, not with the correlations.”
I didn’t read past that William to know the rest of your comment was rhetoric. While you are here wanting to talk about the science, how about you put your monika on the ‘backradiation’ theory here and now, so we can discuss it.
Response from the review editor..
“Talk to the hand.”
Alec Rawls post is seriously important because of the implications for policy already implemented on the basis of “fraudulent” scientific evidence. The fraud is already perpetrated in earlier reports and these should be carefully analysed to attribute the crime to those involved. The magnitude of the financial implications let alone the misery caused to the poor by Emissions Trading Schemes and Cap and Trade are mind boggling. The perpetrators must be held to account. The IPCC must be defunded immediately and the UNFCCC closed down.
It is not as if the perpetrators both political and scientific are unintelligent, they are both politically and academically astute. However they have been caught out again in mixing ideology with the fraudulent use of science. The shame of this on scientists goes further than Peter Gliecks mind explosion this is akin to Justice Mahon’s description of the Air New Zealand management evidence in the Erebus disaster enquiry “an orchestrated litany of lies”. Perhaps an “orchestrated litany of omission” is an updated version more apt in this circumstance.
Governments must now step in and bring those responsible to account, there is adequate legislation in most of the western world to put a stop to this fraud. They must also bring down the UN generated bureaucracy that continues to fuel the IPCC UNFCCC and Kyoto etc.
Governments must re think every policy implementation based on the fraud of CO2 induced global warming, climate change call it what you will. The reason is clear a government policy based on a fraud is a fraud against the people governed.
It’s a big week in climate science!!!!!!!!!!
“You need to actually address *recent* change.”
Not if the *recen*t changES are nothing unusual – which I suggest is the case – you disprove it.
Somebody said
Quote
“You need to actually address *recent* change.”
Unquote
Bangs head against wall and states, sorry (snip)
I have to agree with William M. Connolley . The important question is what caused the 1970 to 2000 measured warming.
An analysis that focused on this period would make a more compelling argument.
The GCR theory is plausible, although I favour tropospheric aerosol reductions as the main cause of the 1970-2000 warming. But then GCRs and aerosols seed clouds in similar ways. So what seems to evidence for one may be evidence for the other.
Pierre Gosselin has reported that Professor Arthur Rorsch has also made some comments critical of AR5.
http://notrickszone.com/2012/02/21/dutch-scientist-says-5th-report-draft-exemplifies-worst-features-of-science-calls-for-a-critical-review/#comments
Dismissing Solar Activity as a Climate Driver because TSI didn’t increase constantly over the late 20th C is just plain daft & unscientific. I use the central heating analogy (forgive me if I have said this before), but when you come home to a cold house at night with no heating on, you go & turn it on to get warm. It may be -1°C outside & only say 1-2°C inside, depending upon the thermal efficiency of the house constructions & insulation, the efficiency of the boiler, etc it could take anything up to an hour before the house temp reaches a comfortable temperature let alone an optimum 20°C. So a fairly constant heat output takes time to raise temperature, it isn’t instant which is what the IPCC seem to want to fall back on which is illogical!
There is actually no correlation between CO2 and temperature except the latest warm AMO cycle, onto which are the models fitted, failing both before and after. CO2 and GISP2 core data as a good proxy for NH does not fit at all. We saw just a limited natural variation, nothing more.
To do science properly it is required, if possible to identify direct evidence from verifiable data, and when such evidence is found then it should be extended to the more distant past by using various proxies.
I have looked into data since 1880 to 2011, and there is no evidence that the sunspot periodicity affects global temperature (NASA-GISS, HadCRU & NOAA average) to any significant degree.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SpecComp.htm
It is important to make a point that sunspot cycle as expressed by the SSN is not comprehensive metric for the total of the solar output, hence there appear to be strong indication that temperature changes and the solar activity are in a certain degree of synchronisation, but the mechanism is still eluding the mainstream science, while some of us on the fringes have (or think to have) a pretty good idea what that mechanism may be.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NVa.htm
You need to address recent change, else it must be CO2!
The IPCC needs to:
– Consider the evidence for the influence of solar variables, all of them.
– Incorporate above into the theory they run with.
This posting suggests some powerful evidence contradicts the “mainstream” AGW view, as reported by an expert reviewer, i.e., an insider. It also touches on recently-reported scandals about gross data misrepresentation, ommission, and cherry-picking (something which both warmists and skeptics regularly accuse the opposite camp of doing).
The essence of this post should be presented to major newspapers and blogs, then robustly debated on its scientific merits (by scientists, but for the general public to view). The matter is too important to sweep under the rug. It matters not that the author of the post is not a ‘climate scientist’ per se, but rather an expert in statistics – he refers to studies by climate scientists.
Please, no head counts. Nobody cares how many oppose his points: the only important thing is whether he is right or wrong, whether the arguments are backed by data and logic.
Kurt in Switzerland
Leif want’s to calibrate sunspotnumber, but how to calbrate it? How to calibrate solarwind from times when we did not measure it. The only right way to do it is calibtate it with solar proxydata. Because sunspotnumbers wont tell everything. We have proxy of cosmic rays and other ways to find real solar activity so it’s better to make them to correlate with each other.
Otherwise my opinion is that climate sensitivity to CO2 is zero, null, none = 0
Alec says
Such a high degree of correlation over such long time periods implies causality, which can only go one way. Global temperature cannot be driving solar activity, so there must be some mechanism by which solar activity is driving or modulating global temperature change
————
This is a logic fail. If two separate things are trending together it’s does not follow that one causes the other.
Example: let’s say yellow shoes become fashionable and the number of people wearing yellow shoes trends up. But it’s also the start of summer so temperatures are also trending up. Does this mean wearing yellow shoes makes the air warmer?
If you answer yes go and sit in the corner.
Another grumble I have is the use of term “solar activity”. This is potentially misleading due to its vagueness and I have the suspicion deliberately so.
Nice try.
Sorry, I am a realist. The feedback from politicians’ desire to tax the very air we breath via the funding of predetermined science that supports their agenda overwhelms any forcing from rational argument, whether weak or, as in this case, strong.
A really excellent article from Alex Rawls. It is a pleasure to read, now written properly, some of the critique I tried to persuade Nigel Calder to make when the AR4 was written.
However, I have one major criticism to level at this review, and I hope Alex reads this. I find the foillowing in this paper.
“and in theory a doubling of CO2 should cause about a 1 degree increase in temperature before any feedback effects are accounted.”
This mistake is made over and over again. There is a belief that this “no-feedback” climate sensitivity of CO2, yielding a 1 C rise in surface temperature, is based on sound science. It is not. No-feedback climate sensitivity is a hypothetical, meaningless number, and the way it is estimated assumes that the “structure of the atmosphere remains unaltered”, or in other words, the estimation can be made by only looking at radiation effects. This assumption has never been justified, and is, I believe, just plain wrong. The lapse rate changes under the effects of GHGs.
Lazy Teen says:
“This is a logic fail. If two separate things are trending together it’s does not follow that one causes the other.”
Applies perfectly to the coincidental rise in temperature over the past century and a half followed by the rise in CO2.
Magnificent posting, Mr. Rawls.
The possibility remains that, regardless of the demolition of the IPCC’s pseudoscience, the watermelons in charge of public policy will carry on regardless. Do we have any way of judging whether government scientific advisors – in the ministries – are open to scientific argument?
I’ll send a hard copy of this post to the UK’s ‘finest’ in the hope that they’ll react with a loud, “Holy mackerel! It’s the sun, not CO2! And it’s getting colder. Stop the windmill programme!” If they’re members of the Hockey Team, they’ll chuckle darkly and mutter, “Science, schmience, we’ll carry on decarbonising the economy come what may.”
> You need to actually address *recent* change
Seems to have been a fair amount of misunderstanding of that. The change you need to explain is this; the last 100 years or so. Pretending that isn’t real consigns you to la-la land, where nothing you say will have any impact on science, because you’re too far off base.
> The basic physics of CO2 as a GHG provides that there must always be an increase in temperature when concentrations of CO2 increase
Shows an acceptance of basic GHE physics which puts you above 50% (at least) of the people here, but wrong. The basic physics shows that increasing CO2 increases the radiative forcing. That doesn’t translate into a monotonic temperature increase in the real world, because of natural variability – we expect the day-to-day and year-to-year temperature to exhibit fluctuations on top of the forced trend (err, as do this who want to attribute the trend to solar forcing).
> Between 1919 and 1942, there was an increase in temperatures in circumstances where there was no discernable increase in CO2.
That is just weird. You’re not allowed to make up your own facts (see e.g. http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/siple-gr.gif).
> Between 1942 and 1980, there was a fall in temperatures in circumstances where there was increase in CO2. THIS IS ANTI CORRELATION
Um, yes. How clever of you to notice. I wonder if the IPCC noticed? Well, yes of course they did. You need to actually read what they have written and argue against it, not just write your stuff in a vacuum.
Incidentally, the idea that the IPCC ignores solar forcing is trivially disprovable by just reading the reports.
An excellent piece. It perfectly illustrates the depths these non-scientists are willing to go to in order to defend their AGW religion.
It is bad enough to see science debased in this way but, as the author mentioned, this fraud threatens the future wellbeing of humanity. Here in the UK, aged pensioners who cannot pay inflated electricity bills have died due to the freezing temperatures. Fortunately there’s a good chance that Chris Huhne will end up behind bars. But it won’t be for his real crimes.
I think that any politician that does not practice due diligence (as Steve McIntyre often says) in the field of climate change/energy policy is guilty of criminal neglect. And that includes you, David Cameron.
Chris
Olavi says:
February 22, 2012 at 4:03 am
Otherwise my opinion is that climate sensitivity to CO2 is zero, null, none = 0″
Insofar it is limited to it’s change to the density of atmospheric volume.
Interesting commentary and it seems quite convincing but I am just an engineer and it was a lot to digest. Mr Rawls seem to think the IPCC is a scientific body – it is not. It is an international panel on climate change that was created on the assumption that CO2 is causing global warming. That was its starting point – it was not created to prove that climate change is occurring as a result of burning fossil fuels. So all of its publications are going to be presented to support the notion that CO2 causes global warming otherwise the panel has no reason to exist. The nasty thing about all this is that the general public and politicians still think the IPCC is a scientific body carefully trying to prove if CO2 is mankind’s enemy when in fact it assumes that it is. That is why any offer to IPCC hanger-ons to debate or seriously discuss the science is never accepted. I do not know of any high profile SCIENTIFIC organisation that has been given the task of independently establishing if adding CO2 to the atmosphere is net good or net bad for the planet and humankind. The only work being done in this regard is by people on the gravy train, who have no option but to reach certain conclusions, and by other sturdy individuals using whatever means that they can muster to just find some truth. AR5 must be audited and challenged by challenging the IPCC to demonstate its independent scientific standing, which it cannot do of course because it is not a scientific institution. Mr Rawl’s efforts are to be applauded. It is a very important point that the IPCC is totally confused on the basic calculus regarding things that are rate dependent and things that have no time component. i.e. it takes time to heat the water (and, scarily, it takes time to cool) but the expansion is instantaneous with respect to temperature change.
Re the variables, there are so many at play yet IPCC have historically given weight to just one for the obvious reason that the only reason they exist is because a few scientists suggested CO2 would cause catastrophic destruction to the world and they wanted the glory of saving it.
William Connolley Slapped Down:
Why are all the dishonest folks on the alarmist side? Schneider, Mann, Connolley, Jones, Gleick, the list goes on and on. The answer seems to be, at least in part, that the planet is not cooperating with their scare stories. Nothing unusual is occurring. None of their predictions of disaster have happened. To the contrary, more CO2 is verifiably greening the planet. It seems these dishonest people have to deceive the public in order to keep their baseless scare alive, rather than admitting the truth: they were simply wrong.
The extremely good correlation between temperature patterns and solar/astronomical patterns has been extensively proven in my numerous papers. At least 40-70% of the warming observed since 1900 can be associated to solar activity in one way or in another.
The empirical models and harmonic models based on solar/astronomical cycles explain climate variability far better than any CO2 based IPCC model : see the references below and here. Actually, in my papers it is expensively proven that the IPCC GCM models (such as the GIS modelE, for example and all the others) do not get any of the patterns that can be identified in the data. Those models just produce some noise around an upward trend driven by anthropogenic emissions.
If the IPCC has ignored the relevant literature pointing toward the existence of a major solar/astronomical driver of climate change they have committed “omitted variable fraud” and severely misinterpreted the available scientific literature. It is evident that simply dismissing the empirical evidences on the basis that clear physical mechanisms are not understood yet nor included in the models is a very weak argument based on extreme scientific reductionism.
See the references below and here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/scafettas-solar-lunar-cycle-forecast-vs-global-temperature/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/09/scaffeta-on-his-latest-paper-harmonic-climate-model-versus-the-ipcc-general-circulation-climate-models/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/25/loehle-and-scafetta-calculate-0-66%c2%b0ccentury-for-agw/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/04/new-scafetta-paper-his-celestial-model-outperforms-giss/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/14/dr-nicolas-scaffeta-summarizes-why-the-anthropogenic-theory-proposed-by-the-ipcc-should-be-questioned/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/18/scafetta-on-tsi-and-surface-temperature/
[1] Nicola Scafetta, “Testing an astronomically based decadal-scale empirical harmonic climate model versus the IPCC (2007) general circulation climate models.” Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, (2012). DOI: 10.1016/j.jastp.2011.12.005
[2] Adriano Mazzarella and Nicola Scafetta, “Evidences for a quasi 60-year North Atlantic Oscillation since 1700 and its meaning for global climate change.” Theor. Appl. Climatol. (2011). DOI: 10.1007/s00704-011-0499-4
[3] Craig Loehle and Nicola Scafetta, “Climate Change Attribution Using Empirical Decomposition of Climatic Data.” The Open Atmospheric Science Journal 5, 74-86 (2011). DOI: 10.2174/1874282301105010074
[4] Nicola Scafetta, “A shared frequency set between the historical mid-latitude aurora records and the global surface temperature.” Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 74, 145-163 (2012). DOI: 10.1016/j.jastp.2011.10.013
[5] Nicola Scafetta, “Empirical evidence for a celestial origin of the climate oscillations and its implications.” Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 72, 951–970 (2010). DOI: 10.1016/j.jastp.2010.04.015
[6]Nicola Scafetta, “Empirical analysis of the solar contribution to global mean air surface temperature change”. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics (2009),
doi:10.1016/j.jastp.2009.07.007
[7] Nicola Scafetta, and Bruce J. West, “Phenomenological reconstructions of the solar signature in the NH surface temperature records since 1600.” J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S03, doi:10.1029/2007JD008437 (2007).
Nice post by Alec supporting the general position made here:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1396&linkbox=true&position=1
“The Death Blow To Anthropogenic Global Warming.”
from June 2008.
Philip Bradley says: February 22, 2012 at 3:23 am
” I have to agree with William M. Connolley . The important question is what caused the 1970 to 2000 measured warming.”
As proven in my papers exensively (see above), from 1970 to 2000 most of the warming was aused by a warming phase of a 60-year natural cycle. And the steady warming observed since 2000 is due to the same cycle which entered in its cooling phase since 2000.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/scafettas-solar-lunar-cycle-forecast-vs-global-temperature/
This pattern agrees well with a reconstruction of solar activity, that is ACRIM composite.
And the issue is extensively discussed here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/18/scafetta-on-tsi-and-surface-temperature/
And in my more recent papersthat focus on the harmonics of the climate system.
Of course they omit natural phenomenona, they do so because they’re not charged with taking natural into account.
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 to assess the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of human induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for mitigation and adaptation.”
The fundamental construction of the UNIPCC didn’t not include to take into account and report on natural change nor positive results from any type of climate change.
As per usual any UN body, it seems, omitts reality to fit their hypothesis to their needs. It is evident in UNIPCC as well as the current debate of whether or not UN should control this here internet as Russia and China wants to happen.
Markus Fitzhenry says: February 22, 2012 at 3:06 am
…. how about you put your monika on the ‘backradiation’ theory here and now, so we can discuss it.
==============
OK how do you explain these 2 measurements of back radiation at night (and day)
IR great plains measured here: SGP Central Facility, Ponca City, OK36° 36′ 18.0″ N, 97° 29′ 6.0″ W Altitude: 320 meters
http://www.patarnott.com/atms749/pdf/LongWaveIrradianceMeas.pdf
daytime 320 to 460w/sqm
night time 260 to 380 w/sqm
North of arctic circle:
http://www.slf.ch/ueber/mitarbeiter/homepages/marty/publications/Marty2003_IPASRCII_JGR.pdf
night 120 to 230 w/sqm
day 130 to 210 w/sqm
O2 and N2 do not radiate IR in significant power so where does this radiation come from at night where the background is at Ultra long wave (7K)
Good!
AMO seems to be driven by solar cycle frequency variability.
Figure 1 here:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1202.1954v1.pdf
compare to:
http://www.climate4you.com/images/AMO%20GlobalAnnualIndexSince1856%20With11yearRunningAverage.gif
If AMO cools in the next years as dramatically as the reduction in solar frequency suggests, it will get very hard to deny the correlation.
I would like to throw a spanner in the works here. I believe climate is probably controlled by gravity, solar influence and water ….period. I actually am beginning even to doubt Pielkes Sr land use land effects on TC. The fact is land or rock is probably “perceived” as the same as far as the atmosphere is concerned affected only by major geographical disturbances such as mountain ranges which affect wind direction etc. Basically if you covered all land as it is currently with concrete there would be theoretically no change in global mean temperatures over time, as it is 100% controlled by tthree variables cited above BTW sea (ie water covers most of earths surface etc…) hope you get it LOL
Re forgot to mention anyway, previous in fact land is nearly all covered with “natural concrete” anyway that is sand, mountains rock probably terra erath etc as well? etc.
Let me see if I have this straight. The same people who are telling us that the reason we haven’t seen as much heat from CO2 as their models suggest is because it takes the oceans decades to warm. Are telling us that the sun can’t be playing a role because there is no thermal lag in the oceans???
Ow…it’s too bright….so hot….it hurts my eyes and burns my skin….ow!
William M. Connolley says:
February 22, 2012 at 2:13 am
“How nice to see some attempt at discussing science. But, there is a lot wrong here.”
> These two correlations with temperature change give rise to the two main competing theories
“No. That seems to be a common misconception, but the theories start with the physical processes, not with the correlations.”
Without the “global warming” part, you’d have nothing. And the global warming part is what is correlated to co2 increases. Take your rhetoric elsewhere, Connolley, you can’t control the content here. The physical processes are not fully known or understood. The explanations (theories) may begin with limited understanding of Earth’s complex physical processes, but the correlations are what “gave rise” to them.
William M. Connolley said::
“No-one doubts that solar forcing affects climate, in general. So listing any number of studies that agree with this gets you nowhere. You need to actually address *recent* change.”
Oh. Recent change such as that starting “mid 20th century”, to go with a claim that “we can’t think of anything else, so it must be CO2 doing it. ”
Much better.
Many thanks, William.
Philip Bradley says:
February 22, 2012 at 3:23 am
The important question is what caused the 1970 to 2000 measured warming.
—
For the most part, it was caused by the PDO flipping to the warm side.
@LazyTeenager, we’re permitted to use common sense. The sun influences the earth, the earth doesn’t influence the sun. I suspect that known fact is the basis for the author’s reasoning.
William Connelley says CO2 did rise between 1920 and 1940. Yep his chart shows it rose, about 8ppm from 300. That’s a 2.7 % rise. IF sensitivity is 4C that will account for 0.1C. The rise over that period was close to 4C. What about the other 3C?
The IPCC is wrong, as always:
http://thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/5024-no-panic-scientists-reply-to-critics.html
Hey, William M. Connelley, or you the same William M. Connelley that used to be a Wiki administrator until Wiki management stripped you of that authority on the grounds that you repeatedly abused your administrator position at Wikipedia to bias climate change-related articles to reflect your global warming activism?
Hey Anthony,
Don’t let William Connelley become a moderator!
(See Smokey’s post above – February 22, 2012 at 4:46 am”
LazyTeenager says:
February 22, 2012 at 4:19 am
Gleick, set, match.
Alex notes the IPCC rule “not discuss the contents of the FOD in public fora such as blogs.”
For the AR6 it will be reduced to “not discuss the FOD in public fora such as blogs” so they can block discussion of what’s not in the draft. 🙂
> Of course they omitt [sic] natural phenomenons [sic]
I’ve already given you a link showing that they do indeed consider natural forcing; http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-4-1-5.html, since you missed it. Or, indeed, there is a whole section on 9.3 Understanding Pre-Industrial Climate Change.
How can you people hope to say anything intelligent about IPCC, when you are so completely ignorant of what it says?
> The physical processes are not fully known or understood
But you shouldn’t measure the lack of knowledge by your own. Most of the processes are indeed well known and understood. Some important ones (clouds, or contrails) aren’t so well. The response to that isn’t to throw your hands up in the air and say “oh! we know nothing”.
> “we can’t think of anything else, so it must be CO2 doing it. ”
Again, this is just ignorance. Contrary to what the post author has asserted, IPCC does indeed exhaustively consider other possible forcings. If you actually looked at the report, you’d know that.
> on the grounds that you repeatedly abused your administrator position at Wikipedia to bias climate change-related articles to reflect your global warming activism
No.
Thanks, this pretty much has become my conclusion as well in wanting to pinpoint the epistemic structure of an AGW fallacy. I’d add that perhaps the century-scale climate response could be described by just the magnitude of the fairly regular grand minima, including the weak one around 1900? I also wonder which peer-reviewed article comes closest to laying _this_ out. Around 2009 Scafetta called for modelers to prescribe the solar forcing, here: http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/wpi.nsf/2efc4c5acad95f918525669800666fd7/7a5516152467a30b85257562006c89a6/$FILE/scafetta-epa-2009.pdf
@Brent Hargreaves says: February 22, 2012 at 4:34 am
“Science, schmience, we’ll carry on decarbonising the economy come what may.”
This is so close to a response I had from John Prescott at a ‘symposium’ about 18 months ago that I wonder if you were in the same audience!
Alex Rawls will just be given the flick by the Thermageddonists, as an obvious shill for BigSol. But little chip by little chip, the edifice of the IPCC will topple over.
“I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is R. Pachauri, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
(with apologies to Percy Bysshe Shelley)
Excellent piece.
Pity it won’t have the slightest effect; AR5 will continue the junk of AR4 except it will be an even greater doom merchant in order to keep the CAGW flag flying.
As I (and Henry G, above) keep saying, everything our side does misses the point so we need another methodolgy. I don’t have the answer but am sure it lies in first getting at the hearts & minds of legislators directly, those who use CAGW and “carbon” taxes to further their big state ambitions. Only then might the reality start to dawn on those who are CAGW lead and govern us thusly.
Canada has some answers.
Philip Bradley says:
February 22, 2012 at 3:23 am
Why? what caused the MWP?, what is causing the current non-increases in temps? There is no logic to concentrate on any small scale period when we (i.e. the IPCC) are wanting to predict future long term temps!! That’s like doing a long journey with many miles in a traffic jam, and many miles at motorway speeds, and then assuming an average speed for the journey. Not only is it plain wrong, but predicting the next journey will be meaningless because the various factors will likely be very different when you do that journey.
About the only benefit of short term analysis is if it can be seen that definate factors caused definate changes – but projecting them to the future, without knowledge of the underlying natural changes – is pointless.
I despise the fact that the primary warmist arguments are based on the ‘recent’ measurements – it doesn’t matter – if the (likely) palaeohistory of the climate shows significant variation, the Primary objective is to separate our so called AGW signal from the natural one(including its variations). This can only be done over long timescales – and currently, I do not see that as being at all possible with a measly few decades of decent data. (I won’t bother to mention the lack of understanding of all the variables, as that should be a ‘given’ with the climate system!)
Ah, neglected to include sources underlying my above inquiry re: William M. Connelley, my bad:
Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate change/Proposed decision
http://tinyurl.com/26ass4b
Financial Post: Global Warming Propagandist Slapped Down (link previously posted in this thread)
http://tinyurl.com/35ajlkr
PaulC says:
February 22, 2012 at 2:32 am
That’s the intriguing thing about http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/07/in-china-there-are-no-hockey-sticks/ – it addresses recent change without needing a CO2 assist. It doesn’t explain the change, and it it needs serious review as does any tree ring study, but at least it includes the Little Ice Age.
And it’s only down to 2068. 20 years later people might start arguing about CO2 again. 🙂
As I said,
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
why don’t they do some stats?
So far, after evaluating thye daily results of 22 weather stations the score on my pool table for global warming is as follows:
MAXIMA: rising at a speed of 0.0382 degrees C per annum
MEANS : increasing at a speed of 0.0137 degrees C per annum
MINIMA: creeping up at 0.0056 degrees C per annum
HUMIDITY: decreasing at a rate of -0.02% RH per annum
The latest tables show that, over the past 4 decades, the rates of increase of temperatures on earth i.e. maxima, means (=average temperatures) and minima have risen at a ratio of about 7:3:1. Remember: these are the summaries of actual measured results from a number of weather stations all around the world….No junk science. No hypothesis. Every black figure on the tables is coming from a separate file of figures. Obviously I am able to provide these files of every black figure on the table.
As all the balls now lie on my table, surely, anyone must be able to understand that it was the rise of maximum temperatures (that occur during the day) that caused the average temperature and minima on earth to rise? This implies clearly that the observed warming over past 4 decades was largely due to natural causes. Either the sun shone a bit brighter or there were less clouds. There are different theories on that. Looking at the differences between the results from the northern hemisphere(NH) and the southern hemisphere (SH), what we see is happening from my dataset is that more (solar) heat went into the SH oceans and is taken away by water currents and/or weather systems to the NH. That is why the NH is warming and that is why the SH does not warm.
Another interesting aspect is that a correlation can be picked up if you compare the results in my tables with that of the leaf area index shown in the world chart here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-is-booming-data-suggests-that-co2-is-the-cause-part-2/
In the red areas, where we find earth is blooming, and more greening, you will note from the results in the tables that some of the extra heat coming in (the increase in maxima) is picked up and trapped by the increasing vegetation. In the blue areas, where substantial de-forestation has been going on, you will find mean temperatures and minima declining or staying unchanged, even though maxima are rising. So, it seems if you want the earth to be greener, the natural consequence is that it will also get a bit warmer
Fundamental and accessible. That’s why I have trying to push the “omitted variable fraud” critique for many years.
Needs the word “been” That’s why I have been trying to push …
In response to:
> “we can’t think of anything else, so it must be CO2 doing it.”,
Connolley says:
“Again, this is just ignorance.”
Yes, it is ignorance. But the ignorance is entirely Connolley’s. It is the Argumentum ad Ignorantium fallacy: “Since I can’t think of any other cause for rising temperatures, then it must be due to CO2.”
That kind of ignorance presupposes that we know all there is to know about what drives global temperatures. But of course, we do not know it all. The planet has warmed along exatly the same trend line since the 1600’s, whether CO2 was low or high. That shows conclusively that CO2 has little if any effect on temperature.
Connolley can bask in his ignorant fallacies, but here at the internet’s Best Science site, the great majority of us know better.
William M. Connolley says:
February 22, 2012 at 4:34 am
> You need to actually address *recent* change
Seems to have been a fair amount of misunderstanding of that. The change you need to explain is this; the last 100 years or so. Pretending that isn’t real consigns you to la-la land, where nothing you say will have any impact on science, because you’re too far off base.
—
Folks… The “this” he refers to above is a wikipedia plot of the infamous NASA GISS temperature “anomaly” plot (heh)!! GISS – where they can’t even document their GCMs!
Here’s a puzzle for everyone…please list in detail all of the steps required to get the plot referred to above. How much raw data is manipulated? Infilled? Guessed? And also pleased read the Hansen paper from which the “algorithm” was purportedly derived…it’s the one where they smear global temperature anomalies by permitting influences up to 1000 km away (heh).
Wonderful diversionary tactic from Connolley. As Steve McIntyre has it, “always keep your eyes on what their hands are doing”.
The point that Rawls was making — which Connolley chose to ignore — is that there has been an increasing number of papers, which the IPCC has, apparently deliberately, neglected to give any weight to, that attribute much of the recent warming to aspects of solar influence other than TSI. I’m not qualified to say whether he’s right or wrong but I think I am qualified to say that if the IPCC is omitting valid research (and valid does not mean “something the IPCC agrees with”) then they are being, in Rawls’ words, “anti-scientific”.
Rawls also appears to say that one effect of their behaviour is to assume that CO2 has 40 times the influence of the sun on earth’s climate (which would appear to an ignoramus like me to be counter-intuitive — and that’s putting it mildly) and program their models accordingly.
Even I know that if you program a computer to say the sun rises in the west then it will tell you that the sun rises in the west.
I’m not dead keen on the “leftist conspiracy” theory he posits but the more one reads on the whole subject of climate change the more one is driven into that particular corner!
Great post Alex. Can it be taken a little further, though? If a large part of the temp increase can be attributed to solar variables but their impact has been, effectively, lumped onto CO2, then what would the models say if CO2 forcing were reduced by an appropriate amount? I’d imagine your idea would be pretty irresistable if the models then predicted, sorry, projected, the temperature anomaly with a much greater degree of accuracy.
Note the results for Grootfontein (Namibia) where it got greener
Note the results for Tandil (Argentinia) where they hacked some trees….
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/de-forestation-causes-cooling
> Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate change/Proposed decision http://tinyurl.com/26ass4b
Same answer: No. Why not actually try reading the content of your links, rather than just hoping it might say what you want?
> Financial Post: http://tinyurl.com/35ajlkr
Better, but still wrong: Solomon hasn’t a clue how wiki works, e.g. here.
> “Since I can’t think of any other cause for rising temperatures, then it must be due to CO2.”
That the IPCC addresses other causes is obvious to anyone who bothers to even skim it, e.g. FAQ 9.2 Can the Warming of the 20th Century be Explained by Natural Variability?. But you’re proud of your ignorance and not prepared to read anything that might disturb it.
Once again Mr. William “Bojangles” Connolley takes out his dancing shoes and attempts to distract us from the real science behind global changes in climate. Dancing around the offal used as input to the MAGIC COMPUTE MACHINES! Cleanup on aisle 4!!!!
Alan the Brit says:
February 22, 2012 at 3:40 am
I use the central heating analogy (forgive me if I have said this before), but when you come home to a cold house at night with no heating on, you go & turn it on to get warm.
Alan – A better analogy would be your swimming pool. How long does it take to heat a swimming pool 10 degrees?
William M. Connolley says:
February 22, 2012 at 5:44 am
Hmm, one thing a little odd there:
It seems to me either 1995 or 1999 is a typo.
The response from the iPCC is correct based on their mission statement. The IPCC only investigates the risks of climate change caused by human activity only, not solar causes or any thing else.
Wikipedia says “Its mission is to provide comprehensive scientific assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the risk of climate change caused by human activity, its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences, and possible options for adapting to these consequences or mitigating the effects.”
Ric Werme> http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-4-1-5.html … the solar reconstruction of Lean et al. (1995) concluded that the near-surface temperature response to solar forcing over 1960 to 1999
Hey! Someone is reading this stuff, excellent. Its a little clearer with a fuller quote: “In addition, a combined analysis of the response at the surface and through the depth of the atmosphere using HadCM3 and the solar reconstruction of Lean et al. (1995) …” This is describing a GCM study, based on the Lean ’95 reconstruction, that will (I’m guessing) have been extended to 1999. So it is likely that both dates are correctly written.
Jones is “Jones, G.S., S.F.B. Tett, and P.A. Stott, 2003: Causes of atmospheric temperature change 1960-2000: A combined attribution analysis. Geophys. Res. Lett., 30, 1228.” but you’d need to dig a bit deeper to find out exactly what forcing was used.
William M. Connolley says:
February 22, 2012 at 5:44 am
> on the grounds that you repeatedly abused your administrator position at Wikipedia to bias climate change-related articles to reflect your global warming activism
No. [Billy’s response]
Well then Billy, why were you removed? Please do tell. Feel free to pull a Gleick and just make it up.
Alec Rawls, this is a very interesting post, thank you. Also some of the comments posted in response.
The design of incremental policy also explains the use of ‘omitted variables’. The recent focus on ‘evidence-based’ policy in most spheres of government to develop and report, and the competition between party policies makes use of the omission approach.
The problem has been that evidence-based policy does not equate with fact-based.
Testing one variable or several, and omitting the obvious is used by some researchers. In my observation of some decades, some researchers omitted variables so as to establish a controlling expertise in the field, control publishing and reference sources, and to directly inform policy and expenditure.
I had experience in Indigenous health, education and employment under incremental policies. The Children, over several generations, led horrific lives. Much of this was directly due to the poor data and reporting that informed and sustained the architecture of incremental policy in health service, education delivery and criminal justice.
Results for these children are still appalling if not gross. The evidence was controlled by a cabal of researchers, data methodologies were not transparent and reporting was aggregated. Upon disaggregating the data, it was found, in cases to be poorly collected, poorly designed, biased and also at times outright distortion. In one case I found the data had been made up and reported.
William M. Connolley (February 22, 2012 at 4:34 am) wrote:
“Incidentally, the idea that the IPCC ignores solar forcing is trivially disprovable by just reading the reports.”
Neither mainstream nor eccentric conception of solar-terrestrial-climate relations is presently consistent with seminal, robust, empirical findings:
1. Le Mouël, J.-L.; Blanter, E.; Shnirman, M.; & Courtillot, V. (2010). Solar forcing of the semi-annual variation of length-of-day. Geophysical Research Letters 37, L15307. doi:10.1029/2010GL043185.
2. ftp://ftp.iers.org/products/eop/long-term/c04_08/iau2000/eopc04_08_IAU2000.62-now
3. ftp://ftp.iers.org/products/geofluids/atmosphere/aam/GGFC2010/AER/
4. http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/vaughn_lod_fig1b.png
5. http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/image10.png
The mainstream’s “uniform 0.1K” solar-terrestrial-climate narrative is strictly inadmissibility under the data.
This is not going away. This is a seminal, fundamental finding that forces not only conceptual correction but whole paradigm shift (since no one’s conception of solar-terrestrial-climate relations was correct).
Attempts to maintain the current “uniform 0.1K” solar-terrestrial-climate narrative will turn out to be futile (the functional numeracy deficiencies &/or deception of any proponents can be made nakedly clear by capable parties with sufficient time & resources on the basis of absolute logic), so if deviant forces are looking for a way around this, I can suggest the easiest avenue: Remove the pattern from LOD & AAM data. That could be done in a few minutes (by someone who intuitively understands the complex cross-scale morphology of the data). Then it would just be a matter of defending the changes administratively (e.g. via stone wall). Defense will be more sustainable in the long run if the functional numeracy of the general population is watered down by further sabotage of mathematics education.
I strongly suggest that everyone regularly save copies of AAM & EOP data so that data manipulation can be tracked rigorously.
Regards.
William M. Connolley says:
February 22, 2012 at 5:44 am
> The physical processes are not fully known or understood
“But you shouldn’t measure the lack of knowledge by your own. Most of the processes are indeed well known and understood. Some important ones (clouds, or contrails) aren’t so well. The response to that isn’t to throw your hands up in the air and say “oh! we know nothing”.”
Your response seems to be that you know that most of the processes are well known and understood. Still, without a temperature increase correlation, you have nothing. What you claim is bunk, empty and useless rhetoric.
JJThoms says:
February 22, 2012 at 5:00 am
O2 and N2 do not radiate IR in significant power so where does this radiation come from at night where the background is at Ultra long wave (7K)”
a. Clouds. Score: 100%
But lets not get lost amongst the trees of greenhouse. Disprove this.
The uniformed distribution of heat is the force of pressure caused by gravity and the enhancement of the atmosphere is set by it. Moreover, dynamism controls the uniform distribution of temperature not a ‘backradiation’ greenhouse effect, whatever is the dynamic state of a planets particles.
There is no sensible average temperature enhancements associated with actual increases in actual power emitted from a planets surface, which necessarily require a atmospheric radiative effect, from average temperature enhancements without any change in actual power emitted.
Dynamism maintains the uniform temperature distribution of a planets heat where gravity does not allow differences in temperature distribution.
klem says:
February 22, 2012 at 6:24 am
exactly! the IPCC looks for and reports what its trying to report!
> The IPCC only investigates the risks of climate change caused by human activity only, not solar causes or any thing else
You’re wrong, as I’ve pointed out before. Figure 2.23 is yet another counter example.
You can’t say anything interesting about something you know nothing about.
> Rawls was making — which Connolley chose to ignore — is that there has been an increasing number of papers, which the IPCC has, apparently deliberately, neglected to give any weight to, that attribute much of the recent warming to aspects of solar influence other than TSI
Not as far as I can see. Rawls says very little about the recent warming – a point that I didn’t ignore, it was one I specifically raised as a flaw in Rawls analysis. His “recent papers” don’t either (only the last one, which hasn’t been published. If there are really so many good papers supporting his viewpoint, why does he need to include an unpublished paper in the list?).
I’m sorry…
But seeing William M. Connolley posting here, talking down to regular posters, saying they are in la la land and ignorant…
…..is making my skin crawl
W Connoly!
Well now we are just waiting truthfully and reliable unbiased comments from P Gleick J salinger M Mann and G Smith as well. You know the guys who handles the “truth” and “intergity” of climate scince. I wonder what way you should relate the “guilt by association” between science and these guys? No option turns out in benefit of either science or these guys!
William M. Connolley says:
February 22, 2012 at 6:10 am
“Solomon hasn’t a clue how wiki works”
You sure do. And many of us has more than a clue as to the bias of the language, choice of references and so on in some of the articles.
Why did you bother?
I don’t think the IPCC is interested in the facts of the matter.
Connolley says:
“That the IPCC addresses other causes is obvious to anyone who bothers to even skim it”
Typically, Connolley sidesteps the fact that blaming CO2 for [non-existent] climate disruption is the argumentum ad ignorantium fallacy. The IPCC uses a fake veneer of ‘science’ to promote its agenda of wealth redistribution from the savings of Americans and Western taxpayers, to dictatorships endemic to the UN in order to buy their votes.
Connolley’s deceptive narrative, pretending that any of this is a sincere attempt to advance science, is directly contradicted by the IPCC’s Ottmar Edenhofer: “One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore”.
So who should we believe? Connolley, who was slapped down for his dishonest propaganda? Or the frank admission of the IPCC Co-Chair, stating that the phony demonization of “carbon” is simply a ploy to get the UN’s money grubbing fingers into the wallets of Western taxpayers?
There appears to be no difference between the broken moral compass of Gleick and Connolley. They both employ dishonesty to advance their totalitarian agenda.
Ric Werme says:
February 22, 2012 at 6:15 am
William M. Connolley says:
February 22, 2012 at 5:44 am
I’ve already given you a link showing that they do indeed consider natural forcing; http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-4-1-5.html,
Hmm, one thing a little odd there:
… the solar reconstruction of Lean et al. (1995) concluded that the near-surface temperature response to solar forcing over 1960 to 1999 is much smaller than the response to greenhouse gases (Jones et al., 2003).
It seems to me either 1995 or 1999 is a typo.
*******************************************************************
You’ve misquoted. That helps no one.
“In addition, a combined analysis of the response at the surface and through the depth of the atmosphere using HadCM3 and the solar reconstruction of Lean et al. (1995) concluded that the near-surface temperature response to solar forcing over 1960 to 1999 is much smaller than the response to greenhouse gases (Jones et al., 2003).”
Smokey says 4:46 pm
Well, after that info I think everyone should from now on ignore W Connolley as he has been shown to be unworthy of attention.
How remarkable that there should be two vocal AGW activists with the name William M. Connolley, one sanctioned by the Wikipedia arbitration board and stripped of his admin privileges because of misconduct, and the other, apparently posting here today, who claims he is not that same person.
klem says:
February 22, 2012 at 6:24 am
The response from the iPCC is correct based on their mission statement. The IPCC only investigates the risks of climate change caused by human activity only, not solar causes or any thing else.
Wikipedia says “Its mission is to provide comprehensive scientific assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the risk of climate change caused by human activity, its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences, and possible options for adapting to these consequences or mitigating the effects.”
——————————————————————————
Well spotted, Klem. The whole premise of the IPCC is a tautology. It is perfectly legitimate for them to exclude things like solar from their deliberations.
It is hard to believe how a body which provides the answer before even framing the question can be regarded as having anything to do with science.
> You sure do. And many of us has more than a clue as to the bias of the language, choice of references and so on in some of the articles.
I doubt it. I’ve asked several times for examples of such (in other threads) and people always back off (though I wouldn’t want to derail this thread with more wiki stuff).
> Your response seems to be that you know that most of the processes are well known and understood. Still, without a temperature increase correlation, you have nothing
You really really don’t understand, do you? It isn’t based on correlation, it is based on the underlying physical processes. If you want to understand how the attribution analysis is done, you’ll need to actually read it.
“Not as far as I can see. Rawls says very little about the recent warming – a point that I didn’t ignore, it was one I specifically raised as a flaw in Rawls analysis”
Mr William Connolly, surprise surprise, it’s not the first time the climate of Earths atmosphere has changed with changes of solar isolation and geomagnetic winds.
Is that a part of your argument? One thing that is undeniable, CO2 increases lags temperature increases, recent warming ain’t going to change that number.
Strange indeed. When I looked up the reference of Lean et al (1995), it led me to here (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1995/95GL03093.shtml), which had the abstract as follows:
“…Solar total and ultraviolet (UV) irradiances are reconstructed annually from 1610 to the present. This epoch includes the Maunder Minimum of anomalously low solar activity (circa 1645–1715) and the subsequent increase to the high levels of the present Modern Maximum. In this reconstruction, the Schwabe (11‐year) irradiance cycle and a longer term variability component are determined separately, based on contemporary solar and stellar monitoring. The correlation of reconstructed solar irradiance and Northern Hemisphere (NH) surface temperature is 0.86 in the pre‐industrial period from 1610 to 1800, implying a predominant solar influence. Extending this correlation to the present suggests that solar forcing may have contributed about half of the observed 0.55°C surface warming since 1860 and one third of the warming since 1970…”
Isn’t this period (since 1860) the same period that Connolley wants us to use for the “recent” warming?
William M. Connolley says:
February 22, 2012 at 6:26 am
……..
The IPCC authors do not understand natural variability !
The IPCC report: Relationship between the NAO and the AMO is non–stationary, i.e. during the negative phase of the AMO, the North Atlantic SST is strongly correlated with the NAO index. In contrast, the NAO index is only weakly correlated with the North Atlantic SST during the AMO positive phase.
You can see here that there is a high degree of correlation between the NAO and the AMO through the period of the data availability, as shown here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/theAMO-NAO.htm
or see the full analysis of the relationship here:
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/64/12/35/PDF/NorthAtlanticOscillations-I.pdf
This is a logic fail. If two separate things are trending together it’s does not follow that one causes the other.
If the trend (correlation) persists over a sufficiently long period with a sufficiently high correlation then it does indeed mean there is a causal relationship between whatever there is a correlation between.
Paul Vaughan> Attempts to maintain the current “uniform 0.1K” solar-terrestrial-climate narrative…
Aha, well at least one person clearly doesn’t believe the IPCC-ignores-solar-forcing nonsense.
> Courtillot…
has a poor name, but the abstract says nothing terribly interesting, let alone seminal. Perhaps there is something mroe exciting hidden inside?
boston12gs> How remarkable
You’re just not very good at reading comprehension, even when the plain text is in front of you.
Apparently, AR5 fails the Rörsch Test.
Science? We don’t need no stinkin’ Science.
it’s that gas that is actually added to greenhouses to promote growth.
William Connely says
…”Not as far as I can see. Rawls says very little about the recent warming – a point that I didn’t ignore, it was one I specifically raised as a flaw in Rawls analysis. His “recent papers” don’t either (only the last one, which hasn’t been published. If there are really so many good papers supporting his viewpoint, why does he need to include an unpublished paper in the list?)”
=========================================
A curious comment, lets turn the coin over. If the IPCC is so convinced about the case for CAGW, then why does it include so much information from non peer reviewed and non journal published advocacy sources like “Green peace” and the “WWF”?
Regarding the recent history there is several logical thoughts for you to consider. Place a large pot of water on a stove. Turn on a gas burner. Every 30 sec, turn the burner up and down. Now notice how the water continues to warm, regardless of the burner being turned down. Why? Clearly the water in the pot has not yet reached equalibrium with the heat being produced below it.
Now consider that although solar activity peaked some years ago, it stayed at a very high level until recently. Further recognise that the oceans are a very large pot, and some of the linked papers demonstrate that the ocean can take many many decades of increased TSI to reach equalibrium. The ocean is a very large pot.
Now further consider the changes in the earths albedo, which over the period of high solar activity (albeit just a little below the peak) actualy decreased. This means that more sunshine reached the surface. For the last decade this trend has began to reverse, and albedo is starting to rise and the atmosphere as a whole is beginning to cool.
We have mechanism and we have observation, all within the scientific literature, all ignored by your poltical organization, the IPCC.
William M. Connolley says:
“You need to actually address *recent* change.”
The correlation between solar activity and global precipitation and between CET -vs- METO is good until they all start loosing correlation in 1980.
Obviously that probably flies over your head, so I will try to explain. Global precipitation is a proxy for climate. That is because much of the heat at the surface is lost through evaporation. That means that we expect changes in global precipitation to be matched by changes in global temperature. Likewise we expect temperature series to see matched rises and falls, and we certainly do not expect to see an equivalent increasing lack of correlation from a fixed point in time (1980s).
Now, as is your nature, you will immediately assume “it’s yet further proof of global warming”. However what we see in the rainfall climate proxy is no change. This proxy is showing that there is no global increase. In contrast, the temperature measurements show a global increase.
Now, you probably won’t have a clue what I’m talking about when I say that it is easier to measure rainfall accurately than temperature, but I’m an expert of temperature measurement so I know what I’m talking about. And the fact that three separate series (solar activity, global rainfall and different temperature series) all show a growing lack of correlation with temperature, strongly suggests that the problem is with one temperature series and not with three other independent variables (all of which happen to diverge at the same time?)
In other words, something very odd has happened to a number of climate measurements/proxies around 1980 … and to suggest that a lack of correlation after than time proves that it never was correlated is to my mind fraudulent if you know the facts or blatant incompetence if it is your job to know the facts
Kev-in-Uk says:
February 22, 2012 at 5:56 am
Kevin, how science works in a nutshell is,
Theory => Prediction => Evidence
The core prediction of the AGW crowd is CO2 (or more vaguely GHGs) caused the 1970-2000 measured warming. Ignoring that this wasn’t a prediction in large part because it occured after the fact.
Therefore, explaining or not some warming or cooling prior to this period is of no relevance to a critique of the IPCC’s position of GHGs caused the post 1970s warming.
Kudos to William Connely for coming here and suffering the predictable flack. He is focusing us on the real issues.
I am going to offer a completely non-scientific theory as to why solar activity is deemphasized. Since the sun’s activity is beyond the control of humans, it is scary and avoided. Plus i think that most of the people in this field are secularists and thus have no faith or believe that there is a God who controls all things. That makes them even more uncomfortable. I am a retired engineer who has worked 40+ years on many complex avionics systems so i am closely associated with science. But when we talk about the cosmos, i think we are biased in our thinking. Just my humble opinion.
Smokey says:
February 22, 2012 at 4:46 am
William Connolley Slapped Down:
William Connolley… for years kept dissenting views on global warming out of Wikipedia, allowing only those that promoted the view that global warming represented a threat to mankind. As a result, Wikipedia became a leading source of global warming propaganda, with Connolley its chief propagandist.
His career as a global warming propagandist has now been stopped, following a unanimous verdict that came down today through an arbitration proceeding conducted by Wikipedia. In the decision, a slap-down for the once-powerful Connolley by his peers, he has been barred from participating in any article, discussion or forum dealing with global warming. In addition, because he rewrote biographies of scientists and others he disagreed with, to either belittle their accomplishments or make them appear to be frauds, Wikipedia barred him — again unanimously — from editing biographies of those in the climate change field.
[source][/source]
———————————–
If this is true and I see that name has posted earlier on this thread, he should be barred from here. Anyone with this persona has nothing to add to our discussions here at WUWT. I’d like to see someone from the ‘AGW delusion sect’ bat here for them but not this guy. Not someone whose been barred from Wiki for the reasons cited. We booted Emmanuel for life for being boring and repetitive bringing up his Iron Sun idea. Connolley actions are far more serious.
Being wrong is one thing. Being Connelly is both: that and something else. It’s the latter that qualifies him for the Boot. Boot Connelly for life from here!!!! …………………………………….. Please.
All those in favour say Ey
William M. Connolley says:
February 22, 2012 at 2:13 am
William, the basic problem is that current models all assume that 1 W/m2 change in CO2 capturing of IR has the same effect as 1 W/m2 change of the sun’s TSI. Except for some wiggle in “efficacy” (+/- 10%). There are several reasons why that is wrong. The main reason is the difference in effect: CO2 has it largest effect in the lower troposphere and heats the upper ocean layer with only a fraction of a mm. Solar has its main effects partly in the lower stratosphere, where it influences ozone formation/depletion, temperature and poleward flows, including the jet stream positions and therefore clouds and rain patterns. And it heats the upper ocean layer much deeper.
Thus instead of
dT/dt = dF(W1 + W2 + W3 +…)/dt,
the real influence of the different actors is:
dT/dt = dF1(W1)/dt + dF2(W2)/dt + dF3(W3)/dt +…
That solar may have a larger influence than currently implemented was tested in the HadCM3 model by Stott e.a.:
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/StottEtAl.pdf
within the constraints of the model (like a fixed influence of tropospheric aerosols).
The influence of human aerosols is another point: in my opinion largely overestimated in the models and doesn’t explain the current standstill: while aerosol (SO2) emissions increased until 1970-1980, a lot of measures were taken in the Western world, which shows huge reductions, at the same time that SE Asia increased its output. Since 2000, there is no global increase in SO2 emissions anymore, while CO2 increases at record levels, but temperature doesn’t. Thus the aerosols as scapegoat for the lack of temperature increase, lacks some physical base…
There is only one word —- WOW
Why, oh why, do you otherwise intelligent posters feed the troll????
Connolley’s deceptive narrative, pretending that any of this is a sincere attempt to advance science, is directly contradicted by the IPCC’s Ottmar Edenhofer: “One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore”.
So who should we believe? Connolley, who was slapped down for his dishonest propaganda? Or the frank admission of the IPCC Co-Chair, stating that the phony demonization of “carbon” is simply a ploy to get the UN’s money grubbing fingers into the wallets of Western taxpayers?
———————————————————-
International Climate Policy Vs. (International) Environmental Policy.
What are these two different animals? Why the difference?
mooseotto, I agree. Strong believers in AGW are in denial and are projecting.
> current models all assume that 1 W/m2 change in CO2 capturing of IR has the same effect as 1 W/m2 change of the sun’s TSI. Except for some wiggle in “efficacy” (+/- 10%). There are several reasons why that is wrong. The main reason is the difference in effect: CO2 has it largest effect in the lower troposphere and heats the upper ocean layer with only a fraction of a mm. Solar has its main effects partly in the lower stratosphere
No, not really. The models include radiative physics. Changes in solar, in the model, changes the TOA solar, and exactly where it get absorbed is calculated, not assumed. Again, exactly where the CO2 causes radiative forcing is calculated, not assumed.
You cite Stott et al., but their proposal is that “Here a new attribution method is applied that does not have a systematic bias against weak signals.” – as I read it, that is a statistical property or weak signals; but I haven’t read it carefully, please feel free to quote some more to support your argument.
I note that you, too, are implicitly dismissing the post author’s argument that IPCC has ignored solar forcing; the Stott paper is (as you’d expect) referenced by IPCC.
The post author states: “Of the many careful empirical studies that show a high correlation between solar activity and climate, only three papers are obliquely referenced in a single sentence of the entire First Order Draft. ” I haven’t read the FOD, but do you agree that this description couldn’t possibly be applied to AR4, which deals extensively with solar forcing? If so, how do you explain the author’s apparent ignorance of the AR4?
The fact that Connelly has been reduced to bringing his fallacious arguments here is as good an indication as anything that he and his ilk are desperate scrambling now. People no longer look to the places where he used to have sway as they have become aware of the lies, and are increasingly looking to places such as this for the truth — a place where he has no influence and can only flail about pitifully — alone and isolated.
Oh, how the once mighty have fallen…
William Connolley Slapped Down:
William Connolley… for years kept dissenting views on global warming out of Wikipedia, allowing only those that promoted the view that global warming represented a threat to mankind. As a result, Wikipedia became a leading source of global warming propaganda, with Connolley its chief propagandist.
His career as a global warming propagandist has now been stopped, following a unanimous verdict that came down today through an arbitration proceeding conducted by Wikipedia. In the decision, a slap-down for the once-powerful Connolley by his peers, he has been barred from participating in any article, discussion or forum dealing with global warming. In addition, because he rewrote biographies of scientists and others he disagreed with, to either belittle their accomplishments or make them appear to be frauds, Wikipedia barred him — again unanimously — from editing biographies of those in the climate change field.
[source][/source]
——————————————————————————————
Boot Connelly off here for life. His actions go before him. If this is the same twit from Wiki: boot him off! It’s good that someone, or anyone, bats for the AGW here but not Connelly.
We booted Emmanuel so and so off here for life for being repetitive and boring about his Iron Sun. Connelly’s actions at Wiki, if true, are far more aggregious.
Boot Connelly off here for life.
All those in favour say ey
Excellent article, couldn’t be clearer, except for those of the One True Church of CO2.
[snip – pointless snark – don’t read the articles here then if you don’t like them, but do refrain from commenting on them when you have nothing to add – Anthony]
This is just too rich;
“Connolley and Schneider say that if the public had looked directly at the peer-reviewed scientific papers, and not at the popular media coverage, they would not have found any basis for a global-cooling scare.”
Oh the ironing! (sic)
Now the question becomes; can Connolley bring himself to replace just that one word?
You know Bill, try replacing the word ‘cooling’ with ‘warming’ and see if that sentence makes just as much sense.
I’ll give you a hint; There are many real scientists who say it makes more sense than your original. Those scientists are frequent subjects of scorn these days by the members of ‘the team’. Let me know and I’ll provide you a list.
This is the very same ‘team’ that colluded to make the impression to the main stream media that ‘we know with certainty that there is significant warming, it is caused by human activity, it is going to be catastrophic, there something we need to do about it, right now and here’s the plan . . .’ (further hint; Try to guess which parts of that sentence have nothing to do with science.) That same team rose to prominence, fame and fortune based not on scientific pronouncements, but in effect by crying ‘the sky is falling’. They pilloried any who disagreed and used their posts and offices as fiefdoms. They decided who would succeed in academia, who’s career needed to be ended, what projects should get funding, what data was acceptable, how to use their posts as a source of largess and to profit personally all under the guise of science.
Bill; it’s becoming disturbing to a lot of people on the outside that those on the inside of this clique cannot see that. The excuses and tortured logic are no longer fooling people, even with the help of the media.
Prepare to be shipwrecked, Bill, along with Mann, Jones, Hansen, et. al. You want to go down with the ship? Fine. You were told.
Because of the teams efforts (they had accomplices), we’ve spent that last decades preparing for a problem that doesn’t exist as advertised in a way that has left us ill suited to the actual problems at hand. We need more energy, not less. Energy could allow us to adapt, either way. Maybe if we’d studied the climate, rather than practicing politics, pronouncing our control over it while condemning those who dared to question the assertions, just maybe we’d have seen this coming. Maybe. The Eddy minimum is very likely to be the shoal upon which your ship will be broken, Bill. It’s here. Too bad we spent our time studying trace elements and redacting data instead of looking at what the data was actually saying.
During the last minimum there were less than a billion people on earth, most of them living an agrarian existence. Today there are 7 billion people on earth, most living in cities with no means to support themselves if agriculture fails. Given knowledge, time and proper prioritization, perhaps we could have been prepared. Instead we have windmills, carbon credits and coal powered cars. Oh, and a UN body masquerading as a scientific body. Thanks, Bill, for being part of that team.
Yours is a false church Bill, not science. Galileo would recognize your dogma and indulgences in an instant.
William M. Connolley @ February 22, 2012 at 7:21 am
You’re just not very good at spelling, even when you have a computer in front of you.
Do they get outback radiation in Australia?
mooseotto says:
February 22, 2012 at 7:35 am
I am going to offer a completely non-scientific theory as to why solar activity is deemphasized. Since the sun’s activity is beyond the control of humans, it is scary and avoided. Plus i think that most of the people in this field are secularists and thus have no faith or believe that there is a God who controls all –things. That makes them even more uncomfortable. I am a retired engineer who has worked 40+ years on many complex avionics systems so i am closely associated with science. But when we talk about the cosmos, i think we are biased in our thinking. Just my humble opinion.
——————————————————–
Solar threads appear regularly. Go back into the Archives, if you are interested, and read them. The solar debate is in a ‘mystery force x’ standoff where a prominent expert on all things solar maintains the Sun is just on and is constant and that pertubations on earth in temperature, etc. are affected by something else irregardless of the Sun. Others disagree, and so, they agree to disagree, hence, ‘mystery force x’. Nicola Scarfetta agrees to disagree and Leif Svaalgard disagrees entirely with Nicola. It makes fascinating reading. Thats my take on it anyway.
Philip Bradley says:
February 22, 2012 at 7:35 am
“The core prediction of the AGW crowd is CO2 (or more vaguely GHGs) caused the 1970-2000 measured warming. Ignoring that this wasn’t a prediction in large part because it occured after the fact.”
Well, except they don’t call it a prediction, as they are keen to point out that they cannot make predictions with their computers, only projections. See IPCC AR4 where this is written down.
The warming from 1910-1940 had the same slope as the warming from 1970-2000. (*)
“Therefore, explaining or not some warming or cooling prior to this period is of no relevance to a critique of the IPCC’s position of GHGs caused the post 1970s warming.”
So what you are saying is that the explanations and models and assumed physics of the IPCC are only valid after 1970. That’s what I thought as well. That’s why I asked “Did the physics change”.
If temperature and solar magnetic / cosmic ray reconstructions UP TO 1970 (before the laws of physics were magically changed, as we have recognized) indicate a high correlation of solar-magnetic activity and temperature, we can take that as a strong hint that a causation exists, and that this causation is still existing, as there is no obvious reason to assume that a rising CO2 level does anything to it.
And that is the omitted variable.
(*) James Hansen, of course, does his best to distort this well-known fact with ongoing, unjustifiable adjustments. But I digress.
Jessie: …evidence-based policy does not equate with fact-based.
Those of us in education have to suffer with an even lower standard: research-based. Teaching so simple a subject as elementary reading to a typical classroom population has so many uncontrolled variables that this much ballyhooed requirement should be a source of amusement. Yet people take it seriously. Science is fun, but teaching remains an art.
@Ken Harvey says:
“It is as if a pre-Newtonian “scientist” were to predict that a rock released into the air will waft away on the breeze because we understand the force that the breeze imparts on the rock but we have no good theory of the mechanism by which heavy objects are pulled to the ground.” ….”An excellent review, but that bit is priceless.”
That’s actually very similar to Aristotle’s theory of motion. The Greeks understood that the ‘natural’ state of an object was to remain at rest, and that things move if a force is applied, but they had no concept of the Newtonian ‘or keep moving at a uniform speed’ addition. So they had difficulty explaining why an arrow, or a rock, should keep moving along for a while after leaving a bow (or a hand).
Aristotle suggested that the object in motion pushes air out of the way, which then swings back behind the object, giving it a push as it does so. Not a bad conjecture for an age before the Conservation of Energy law. And since the Greeks were not interested in experimental confirmation (that had to wait until Roger Bacon) that was the way dynamics were taught in university up to the 1600s…
Philip Bradley says:
February 22, 2012 at 7:14 am
“If the trend (correlation) persists over a sufficiently long period with a sufficiently high correlation then it does indeed mean there is a causal relationship between whatever there is a correlation between.”
Ha, ha, so this is what passes for “science” among AGW extremists. 🙂
Philip Bradley @ February 22, 2012 at 7:35 am
It’s like inviting an unrepentant serial paedophile into a school board meeting to discuss child safety. Are you completely unaware of the man’s history sir? It’s akin to saying that perhaps we were too hard on Dr Mengele as he just might have been onto something. Good heavens. There comes a point where it matters not what he is saying, when the totality of his crimes are taken into account. He still denies that he did anything wrong while propagandist in chief at Wikipedia. That alone disqualifies him from taking any credit for the arguments of those he still maliciously seeks to destroy.
William M. Connolley: Were you not just banned from editing at wiki? It seems to be the only effective method of limiting your disinformation campaign. If you are stymied at wiki, WUWT is a good location for your rehabilitation, but you test our patience. A little reduction in your hubris will go a long way in ensuring a productive time here. Otherwise, I would suggest, you find out where Peter Gleick is hanging out, these days, and join your counterpart there. You are both cut from the same cloth, and demonstrate, the same “end justifies the means” rational. Such psychopaths represent a clear and present danger to society, and always have. Gleick will soon be behind bars… What about you? GK
Call me a realist. But it will probably be the solar research group trying to get money from the GHG group that will eventually undermine the GHG narrative. Right now many solar scientists are happy to work in their small group of scientists….but there will be some who desire the rock-star life that climate scientists have enjoyed and they will try to build a new scare and money will shift and GHG will slowly fade away. No admissions of being wrong, just longer periods with no mention.
William Connely and all warmists use GISS and GISS TSI reconstructions which contain many uncertainties as pointed out by Tallbloke below…
“GISS TSI is compromised by the statistical techniques employed by Benestad and Schmidt. These were addressed by Nicola Scafetta in his rebuttal paper. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/08/03/nicola-scafetta-comments-on-solar-trends-and-global-warming-by-benestad-and-schmidt/
http://climateaudit.org/2009/08/07/bs09-and-mannian-smoothing/
2) The data GISS TSI is based on is in dispute between the PMOD team headed up by Claus Frohlich and the ACRIM team headed up by its P.I. Richard WIlson. See this letter: http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/acrim.jpg
3) The TSI curve doesn’t account for the oceanic response to increased insolation caused by cloud albedo reduction. The decrease in tropical cloud cover (where insolation is most effective in warming the ocean) measured by the ISCCP from 1979-1998 could account for much of the additional warming if Roy Spencer’s estimates are near the mark. Although this is counted into the ‘amplification factor’ in the analysis, again, possible non-linearity isn’t considered and greater variation in U.V. with its possible effects on Ozone, marine biota and thus cloud nucleation are not considered.”
BTW Connely, my previous post David says: February 22, 2012 at 7:28 am, said nothing not said better (just less succintly) in the main article above by Alec Rawls where he directly pre- answered your questions about recent climate changes post the 20th C solar high. Apparently you, like Gleick, do not read something before you condem it. So please read the post before commenting on it so you look less like a Gleick parrot. After reading the part about recent T, including the links to several papers, then comment on the flaws you see within those peer reviewed assertions.
Paul Vaughan> Attempts to maintain the current “uniform 0.1K” solar-terrestrial-climate narrative…
———-
Given such exceptional correlation between temperatures and cosmic rays in the past requires causation.
Past temperature variations of 1-3 degrees locally and synchronism at multiple locations all over the globe prove the IPCC narrative of only 0.1 degree global variation wrong by at least an order of magnitude.
> If the IPCC is so convinced about the case for CAGW
It isn’t. You won’t find the phrase used at all. You just made it up.
> why does it include so much information from non peer reviewed and non journal published advocacy sources like “Green peace” and the “WWF”?
I’m reading, and quoting, WGI. I don’t find any of that stuff in there. Do you? I so, please provide some evidence.
> Global precipitation is a proxy for climate
No, precip is a component of climate. Did you mean “proxy for temperature”? Its not a very good one, since it is usually much noisier than the temperature signal, and harder to measure.
In Re; klem February 22, 2012 at 6:24 am
Hey Klem; Perhaps you should read what the IPCC says it’s mission is;
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change. It was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts. The UN General Assembly endorsed the action by WMO and UNEP in jointly establishing the IPCC.
The IPCC is a scientific body. It reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change. It does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters. . . . .
. . . Because of its scientific and intergovernmental nature, the IPCC embodies a unique opportunity to provide rigorous and balanced scientific information to decision makers. By endorsing the IPCC reports, governments acknowledge the authority of their scientific content. The work of the organization is therefore policy-relevant and yet policy-neutral, never policy-prescriptive. ”
That’s from; http://ipcc.ch/organization/organization.shtml
I think they’d know. They don’t say anything about only studying Anthropogenic warming. They claim to study the science around climate and climate change. Of course they also claim that they don’t make policy endorsements. Pachuri should read that.
In the mean time, you should look for sources other than Wikipedia. Especially on climate issues it is remarkably inaccurate and unreliable.
Philip Bradley:
>> If the trend (correlation) persists over a sufficiently long period with a
>> sufficiently high correlation then it does indeed mean there is a causal
>> relationship between whatever there is a correlation between.
Not if there is a third factor influencing both the other observables.
(And I am not claiming that is the case here.)
Anthony, why so hostile? I congratulated the author on an amazing discovery. Perhaps you should add the sun to your list of things which affect climate.
Re; William M. Connolley February 22, 2012 at 8:21 am
William, how on earth can you make the claim that the IPCC isn’t convinced of CAGW?
This;
“# Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
# Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely (>90%) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations.
# Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized, although the likely amount of temperature and sea level rise varies greatly depending on the fossil intensity of human activity during the next century (pages 13 and 18).[46]”
is from a wikipedia article you yourself edited as recently as January 28, 2012. The source cited is the IPCC summary for policy makers. I think you are familiar with it.
What are you doing, apart from insulting people and pretending facts aren’t facts? Do you understand the difference between true and false anymore?
William M. Connolley says:
February 22, 2012 at 2:13 am
Connolley
How nice to see some attempt at discussing science. But, there is a lot wrong here.
> These two correlations with temperature change give rise to the two main competing theories
No. That seems to be a common misconception, but the theories start with the physical processes, not with the correlations.
Astley:
I would be interested in your or your cohorts’ answers to these questions.
Those promoting the extreme AGW paradigm appear to selectively ignore and filter research and data. It is necessary to have a logical/scientific explanation for all observations. The logical process and fundamental rules is similar to criminal scene investigation. What does the evidence show? It is not appropriate or logical to ignore observations or filter observations to promote a specific hypothesis.
This graph shows past Dansgaard-Oesgher or Bond cycles. Note there are cycles in the paleoclimatic record of warming followed by cooling of high latitude Northern regions (Gerald Bond has able to track 23 of these cycles through the Holocene interglacial and into the last glacial cycle). In the 20th century there was also warming of high latitude Northern regions. The past warming and cooling cycles all correlate with cosmogenic isotope changes. There is no correlation with atmospheric CO2 changes. There is no correlation to changes in the North Atlantic drift current and these cycles. Correlation and/or the lack of correlation is a fundamental issue that must be explained by the hypothesis.
What is your or the Realclimate or the AR4 explanation of the past warming and cooling cycles? What caused the warming followed by cooling? Magic wand? Why is there again and again correlation of the warming and cooling cycles with large changes in cosmogenic isotopes? (Changes in cosmogenic isotopes are caused by changes in the solar heliosphere or changes in the geomagnetic field.)
There appears to some sort of spooky filtering mechanism that distorts and blocks the research related to solar modulation of planetary clouds by electroscavenging (Solar wind bursts. There is more than one mechanism by which solar changes modulate planetary cloud cover.) from reaching the IPCC produced documents or the Realclimate threads on solar modulation of planetary clouds.
Based on the below graph that shows cycles of warming followed by cooling some of which are abrupt cooling periods (there is another mechanism that is also solar driven that is causing the abrupt cooling cycles such as the Younger Dryas or the past interglacial terminations) and the fact that currently the magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots is decaying linearly and the sun will soon no longer be capable of producing sunspots what do you think will happen next? What is the lesson of the past telling us?
http://www.climate4you.com/
(See figure 3 from Richard Alley’s paper that is copied in the above link. Excerpt from the above link.)
Fig.3. The upper panel shows the air temperature at the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet, reconstructed by Alley (2000) from GISP2 ice core data. The time scale shows years before modern time, which is shown at the right hand side of the diagram. The rapid temperature rise to the left indicate the final part of the even more pronounced temperature increase following the last ice age. The temperature scale at the right hand side of the upper panel suggests a very approximate comparison with the global average temperature (see comment below). The GISP2 record ends around 1855, and the red dotted line indicate the approximate temperature increase since then. The small reddish bar in the lower right indicate the extension of the longest global temperature record (since 1850), based on meteorological observations (HadCRUT3). The lower panel shows the past atmospheric CO2 content, as found from the EPICA Dome C Ice Core in the Antarctic (Monnin et al. 2004). The Dome C atmospheric CO2 record ends in the year 1777.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
A) Correlation of planetary temperature and solar wind modulation of geomagnetic field index.
Paper by Georgieva, Bianchi, & Kirov “Once again about global warming and solar activity”
http://sait.oat.ts.astro.it/MSAIt760405/PDF/2005MmSAI..76..969G.pdf
In Figure 6 the long-term variations in global temperature are compared to the long-term variations in geomagnetic activity as expressed by the ak-index (Nevanlinna and Kataja 2003). The correlation between the two quantities is 0.85 with p<0.01 for the whole period studied. It could therefore be concluded that both the decreasing correlation between sunspot number and geomagnetic activity, and the deviation of the global temperature long-term trend from solar activity as expressed by sunspot index are due to the increased number of high-speed streams of solar wind on the declining phase and in the minimum of sunspot cycle in the last decades.
B) Two mechanisms by which solar winds (electroscavenging) and changes to the solar heliosphere modulate (ion mediated nucleation) planetary clouds (see paper for details this excerpt describes concerning electroscavenging which is not discussed at Real Climate as it is “off message”,)
http://www.albany.edu/~yfq/papers/Yu_CR_CN_Cloud_Climate_JGR02.pdf
The solar wind affects the galactic cosmic ray flux, the precipitation of relativistic electrons, and the ionospheric potential distribution in the polar cap, and each of these modulates the ionosphere-earth current density. On the basis of the current density-cloud hypothesis the variations in the current density change the charge status of aerosols that affect the ice production rate and hence the cloud microphysics and climate [e.g., Tinsley and Dean, 1991; Tinsley, 2000]. The underlying mechanism is that charged aerosols are more effective than neutral aerosols as ice nuclei (i.e., electrofreezing) and that the enhanced collections of charged evaporation nuclei by supercooled droplets enhance the production of ice by contact ice nucleation (i.e., electroscavenging). Both electrofreezing and electroscavenging
involve an increase in ice production with increasing current density [e.g, Tinsley and Dean, 1991; Tinsley, 2000]. The current density-cloud hypothesis appears to explain solar cycle effects on winter storm dynamics as well as the dayto-day changes of Wilcox and Roberts Effects [e.g., Tinsley, 2000]. Kniveton and Todd [2001] found evidence of a statistically strong relationship between cosmic ray flux, precipitation and precipitation efficiency over ocean surfaces at midlatitudes to high latitudes, and they pointed out that their results are broadly consistent with the current density-cloud hypothesis.
C) Satellite measurement of planetary cloud cover that confirms planetary cloud cover is modulated by GCR and solar wind bursts
Mechanism where Changes in Solar Activity Affects Planetary Cloud Cover
1) Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR)
Increases in the suns large scale magnetic field and increased solar wind reduces the magnitude of GCR that strike the earth’s atmosphere. Satellite data shows that there is 99.5% correlation of GCR level and low level cloud cover 1974 to 1993.
2) Increase in the Global Electric Circuit
Starting around 1993, GCR and low level cloud cover no longer correlate. (There is a linear reduction in cloud cover.) The linear reduction in cloud cover does correlate with an increase in high latitude solar coronal holes, particularly at the end of to the solar cycle, which cause high speed solar winds. The high speed solar winds cause a potential difference between earth and the ionosphere. The increase in potential difference removes cloud forming ions from the atmosphere through the process “electro scavenging”. Satellite data (See attached link to Palle’s paper) that confirms that there has been a reduction in cloud cover over the oceans (There is a lack of cloud forming ions over the oceans. There are more ions over the continents due to natural radioactivity of the continental crust that is not shielded from the atmosphere by water.)
As evidence for a cloud—cosmic ray connection has emerged, interest has risen in the various physical mechanisms whereby ionization by cosmic rays could influence cloud formation. In parallel with the analysis of observational data by Svensmark and Friis-Christensen (1997), Marsh and Svensmark (2000) and Palle´and Butler (2000), others, including Tinsley (1996), Yu (2002) and Bazilevskaya et al. (2000), have developed the physical understanding of how ionization by cosmic rays may influence the formation of clouds. Two processes that have recently received attention by Tinsley and Yu (2003) are the IMN process and the electroscavenging process.
http://solar.njit.edu/preprints/palle1264.pdf
Comments: William:
1. There is also evidence that GCR changes modulate high altitude cirrus clouds. The affect is opposite to that of low level clouds. i.e. High levels of GCR and resulting ionization result in an increase in low level clouds and reduction in high altitude cirrus clouds. Cirrus clouds warm high latitude regions particularly in the winter due to the greenhouse affect of their ice particles.
2. There is a different solar mechanism that is responsible for the 10 to 12 year delay in the onset of cooling that is observed in the past when there is change from a series of short solar cycles to a long solar cycle or to an interruption of the solar magnetic cycle.
watch this and consider all the evidence before jumping to wild conclusions
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Sf_UIQYc20&feature=player_embedded#! ]
[Moderator’s Note: the screen-name “JJ” is already used by a WUWT regular. It would be an act of graciousness if you would use a different variation. Thank you. -REP]
No climate scientist has any idea why
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETjun.htm ?
Let’s hear what William M. Connolley has to say.
Why is everybody wondering about the insistence of IPCC that the observed 1980-1998 global warming is caused by humans? It is exactly what they are supposed to do!
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was founded in 1998 by two United Nations organizations, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO, an intergovernmental organization) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP; many suborganizations). The principles governing the IPCC work are outlined in a document that was approved in 1988 and amended in 2003 an on April 26-28, 2006 (www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles.pdf):
“1. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shall concentrate its activities on the tasks allotted to it by the relevant WMO … and UNEP … resolutions and decisions as well as on actions in support of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change process.
2. The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive … basis … the information relevant to … human-induced climate change …”
The 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) document says:
“The Parties to this Convention …, Concerned that human activities … will result … in an additional warming of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere …”
and in Article 1, Definitions:
“ 2. “Climate Change” means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to the natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.”
It follows that the IPCC
1. is an intergovernmental organization (hence subject to politics),
2. is subject to instructions (unheard of in pure science), and
3. has to support the hypothesis of human-induced climate change.
“Certified emission reductions” (of carbon dioxide) etc. are then used (via the Kyoto Protocol, e.g., Articles 10 and 11) to transfer money from “sinning” nations to developing nations. This has been said most clearly by Dr. Ottmar Edenhofer (co-chair of WR3, AR4 (2007) of the IPCC) in an interview (in German) published by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ am Sonntag, 24 November 2010; online (www.nzz.ch, 7 December 2010):
“Basically, industrialized countries have expropriated in a way the atmosphere of the global society. It has to be said clearly: we redistribute de facto global wealth by climate politics. … One should abandon the illusion that international climate politics is environmental politics. Basically, climate politics has practically nothing to do with environmental politics anymore, for example forest deaths or the ozone hole.”
Re; G. Karst February 22, 2012 at 8:17 am
G., I believed as you did, that Connolley was banned, but he is apparently able to edit once again. He edited the wiki article on the IPCC within the last 30 days.
I wonder how that happened?
Smokey,
Thanks for fighting fire with fire. Reason and evidence don’t seem to work with the warmists, who are selective in their understanding of skeptical arguments. They cherry-pick their quotations from the whole cloth of skeptical discourse to set up distracting straw-man arguments. Much better to remind readers of who they are and what they have done, than to engage in futile circular debates with them. And you use a reputable secondary source (which for some reason is the gold-standard of evidence in Wikipedia articles, as opposed to primary documents, the bread-and-butter for true historians and encyclopedists).
Discussions of William M. Connolley’s status at Wikipedia are largely a distraction from the more interesting discussion of Rawls post.
However, if I can put some items to rest:
Connolley was an administrator, is not currently an administrator, but the change of status was not a stripping by management. The position of administrator is conferred and removed by community consensus. Furthermore, it is simplistic and inaccurate to attribute the removal of administrator status to his editing of global warming articles.
Connolley was barred from editing articles about climate change, but that prohibition has ended. He is very knowledgeable about many aspects of the subject, and the summary dismissal of his points, simply because he isn’t a skeptic, is unwise. Disagree with him when and if he is wrong, conceded his points when he is right, and we will slowly advance toward understanding. Neither blind acceptance nor blind rejection will be helpful.
Connolley is providing relevant links in the discussion of Rawls points – I hope we can return to a discussion of those points.
“Such a high degree of correlation over such long time periods implies causality, which can only go one way. Global temperature cannot be driving solar activity, so there must be some mechanism by which solar activity is driving or modulating global temperature change
————
This is a logic fail. If two separate things are trending together it’s does not follow that one causes the other.”
Second part is LazyTeenager.
So, Lazy, you don’t believe increased energy output by the sun can warm the Earth? While your statement is generally true, there’s a clear and obvious method by which solar activity can warm the planet. The physical processes are understood quite well, and as Alec pointed out, the correlation is quite strong.
Are you a solar denier?
Looks like Billy has way too much time on his hands. Must be waiting for the latest batch of confiscated taxpayer grant money.
Funny how he hasn’t answered the wiki issue yet. Come on Billy – why did you get booted?
Maybe everyone could just reply to his posts asking the wiki question – bet he moves on quickly.
Johnnythelowery says:
“Boot Connelly for life from here!!!! …………………………………….. Please.
All those in favour say Ey”
NAY!
He can’t edit here, let him spout where he can be refuted for all to see.
“Of course they omit natural phenomenona, they do so because they’re not charged with taking natural into account.”
I’ve noticed the sun’s been up for longer periods each day the last few months. Should the IPCC — as they’re “not charged with taking natural[sic] into account” — conclude from that that in about a year, we’ll have continuous day light?
Simply amazingly anti-science position: “we’re looking at a natural system, but we’ll ignore natural drivers of the system”. It’s as if I asserted that the source of all the water in the Ohio river are the waste-water treatment facilities along its course.
William M Connolley says:
“This is describing a GCM study, based on the Lean ’95 reconstruction, ”
Alex Rawls claims that the models assume that CO2 is 40 times as effective as solar (TSI) in terms of climate change. You quote Lean ’95 as reconstructing TSI and UV. This implies that relying on this Lean ’95 paper will not do a proper job of analyzing whether solar wind / magnetic effects are important. Since you quote the IPCC as relying, at least in part, on Lean -95 as justifying the opinion that solar effects are not of great importance in climate change, it appears you haven’t really responded to Alex’s complaint about the IPCC position.
“The response from the iPCC is correct based on their mission statement. The IPCC only investigates the risks of climate change caused by human activity only, not solar causes or any thing else.”
How do they isolate what is “caused by human activity” if they do not consider natural causes?
William M. Connolley says:
February 22, 2012 at 7:58 am
I note that you, too, are implicitly dismissing the post author’s argument that IPCC has ignored solar forcing; the Stott paper is (as you’d expect)
Indeed the work of Stott e.a. is referenced, but with some caveats::
In addition, a combined analysis of the response at the surface and through the depth of the atmosphere using HadCM3 and the solar reconstruction of Lean et al. (1995) concluded that the near-surface temperature response to solar forcing over 1960 to 1999 is much smaller than the response to greenhouse gases (Jones et al., 2003). This conclusion is also supported by the vertical pattern of climate change, which is more consistent with the response to greenhouse gas than to solar forcing (Figure 9.1).
Stott used the HadCM3 model with 10x solar, according to Lean e.a. and Hoyt and Schatten, not mentioned in the IPCC report, to check a possible better attribution of its weak TSI variability. They found that solar statistically might be underestimated by a factor of about 2 at the cost of the influence of CO2 (20% less). But again, within the constraints of the model. If one sets no minimum border on the influence of aerosols (-1.5 W/m2 in the model), it might be as well 5 times (that means no influence of CO2 at all…). Thus the attribution problem still is far from solved, if you don’t let the constraint of aerosol influence interfere with the statistics.
Further, the “vertical pattern of climate change” is not consistent with a response to greenhouse gases at all, as Figure 9.1 in this case shows the “hot spot” in the upper troposphere in the tropics, which doesn’t exist…
And last but not least (we have had that discussion already a long time ago in the better days of RC, before over half my comments were deleted), the influence of CO2 must be halved, if human aerosols have a much lower influence than implemented in the models:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/oxford.html
The old discussion at RC about my doubts of the aerosol connection is here (at #14):
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/07/climate-sensitivity-and-aerosol-forcings/
“I am going to offer a completely non-scientific theory as to why solar activity is deemphasized. Since the sun’s activity is beyond the control of humans, it is scary and avoided.”
I respectfully disagree. Solar activity is omitted because it doesn’t give anyone an excuse to impoverish the world.
Well done, generally. I’ve been arguing the same way ever since I discovered the climate problem a decade plus ago. Simply looking at the last 100 years of the reasonably reliable climate record, while both CO_2 and Solar Activity in general increased and/or remained high, only solar activity correlates well with the VARIATIONS in the upward trending data. Yes, there are a ton of other possibly confounding variables (in particular the effect of decadal oscillations) but if one was simply fitting the data with two parameters, solar activity and CO_2, there is obvious covariance sufficient to permit a decent fit to be made with an entire range of attribution of warming to CO_2 and solar activity. However, a CO_2 only model fails to explain the deviations from monotonic increase in temperature, where solar activity can, in a reasonable theory, provide an explanation.
The evidence for the importance of solar forcing is indeed being strengthened by the year as the current solar cycle advances, arguably the lowest in at least a century. First, there is a levelling (at least) of global temperatures. Second, this levelling is accompanied by secular changes in important climate parameters, e.g. H_2O levels in the stratosphere. Third, it is accompanied by a measured increase in the Earth’s bond albedo via the proxy of reflected Earthlight from the visible dark face of the moon. Solar forcing is directly tied to bond albedo in every viable theory of global climate; at the Earth’s mean temperature it has an effect on the theoretical greybody temperature of the planet (the baseline from which the GHE proceeds) of roughly 1K per 0.01 in bond albedo. An increase from 0.30 to 0.31, in other words, would decrease global temperatures by roughly 1K completely independent of everything else — an amount sufficient to cancel at least 2/3 of the total observed warming of the last century to century and a half.
Taken together, these observations both place increasingly severe limits on the hypothesized positive additional forcing that is required beyond what the CO_2 portion of the GHE is supposed to produce, and damn skippy, is a clear case of omitted variable fraud.
It would be very interesting to build a completely unbiased parametric predictive model of the global climate, one with good forecast and hindcast capabilities when prepared with only selected portions of the climate record. In particular, it would be interesting to build a neural network based predictive model — more or less my speciality. It is for all practical purposes impossible to force a neural network (whose inputs are just tables of “neurified” numbers for trainging purposes where one doesn’t even have to label the variables, the ultimate in double blind fitting) to choose one variable over another when the two are covariant, and unlike traditional model NNs don’t require one to worry about covariance when preparing the model data — as long as you avoid including the “answer” in proxy form, they will simply optimize the contributions from two or more partially correlated variables.
It is similarly difficult to interpret the result — a NN might have several thousand weights that are all mutually optimized to produce a good predictive model (one that is neither overfit nor underfit and that was robust against random retrainings with different partitionings of training and trial data) and one cannot point to the 1027th of them and say “this one represents the contribution of CO_2”. But this is their strength in this case. Neither can one go in and preset the 1027th weight to force it to make CO_2 the primary driver. One has to infer the NN’s eventual decomposition by performing various projections of input data to determine what it has decided the sensitivity is to single variable forcings with all other variables fixed.
I do have one criticism of the top article, though. It is easy to let anger slip through into postings on WUWT, but in a scientific critique they have little to no place. Such a critique should be written in a dispassionate way. I hope and assume that the actual AR5 report was written in this way, however much anger slipped through into the top article.
We would all do well to remember that while some participants in the CAGW scare (if not scam) may well be dishonest and deceptive — quite possibly dishonest first of all to themselves, making it far easier to justify fooling others — I would expect that most of them are not. Some of them, as we have very recently seen, are willing to walk away and publicly repudiate the entire process when they perceive of the scientific process being corrupted to political ends.
The proper thing to do in the case of AR5 is present, as the top author had done, a detailed critique of omitted science and publications, and I even think under the circumstances that it is fair to directly address omitted variable fraud in the discussion, to put them on their guard. It is then up to the IPCC to take this criticism seriously, or open themselves up to immediate rebuttal if they fail to modify the report. Documenting the omissions and clearly laying out the reasons that this is not good science makes them all the more vulnerable to the mounting criticism of overt bias if they fail to directly address them in the final document.
The stakes are high. The climate is going to do what the climate is going to do, and it is not doing what the CO_2-only model predicts that it should be doing right now. More and more real scientists, including climate scientists contributing work to AR5 and the IPCC, are being forced to confront this by the only thing that ultimately matters — the actual data.
If the IPCC fails — for the fifth time — to address the scientific weaknesses in the CAGW scenario, after they have been fairly and objectively pointed out in the very critical reports that they have solicited in an admirably open process — then I rather suspect that they will be marginalized and blasted apart, as there at this point a number of government watchdogs in the large granting agencies who are responsive to allegations of confirmation bias and the politicization of the scientific process, whether or not the IPCC is.
rgb
If I had done what William M. Connolley did at Wiki, I would have too much shame to come here and draw attention to myself.
Johnnythelowery says:
February 22, 2012 at 7:59 am
“Boot Connelly off here for life. His actions go before him. If this is the same twit from Wiki: boot him off! It’s good that someone, or anyone, bats for the AGW here but not Connelly.
We booted Emmanuel so and so off here for life for being repetitive and boring about his Iron Sun. Connelly’s actions at Wiki, if true, are far more eggregious.
Boot Connelly off here for life.
All those in favour say ey”
Nay.
Banning comments is a standard totalitarian tactic used at AGW advocacy sites such are Real Climate, SkepticalScience, and others.
If Connelly is prepared to debate the science here, then he should certainly be allowed to do so.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
AGW_Skeptic> the wiki issue
The answer is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ARBCC. You could try reading it, but that would probably be too much like hard work, so you’ll rely on someone else’s inaccurate and slanted paraphrase.
> Connolley… edited the wiki article on the IPCC within the last 30 days.
Smart detective work. See-also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/William_M._Connolley.
> I wonder how that happened?
See here.
Phil>
Ta. Good advice, too. I shall try to take it, for my part. It would be more interesting to talk about the science. Speaking of which…
> No climate scientist has any idea why http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETjun.htm ? Let’s hear what William M. Connolley has to say.
Errm, that is a plot of the CET. You must have a point, though I confess I can’t see what that point is.
> past Dansgaard-Oesgher or Bond cycles…
Yep, with you so far, all part of the std.picture.
> The past warming and cooling cycles all correlate with cosmogenic isotope changes. There is no correlation with atmospheric CO2 changes
For the Bond cycles, that sounds plausible. Obviously its wrong for the iceage cycles.
> What is your or the Realclimate or the AR4 explanation of the past warming and cooling cycles?
From context, I assume you mean the Bond cycles stuff. I don’t think they are fully understood; indeed, people argue about whether they are periodic or not (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansgaard%E2%80%93Oeschger_event). Rahmstorf is RC; you can find a ref to his work there.
> The past warming and cooling cycles all correlate with cosmogenic isotope changes
Could be. But you present no refs, so I can’t judge. Please do so.
Bob Kutz> how on earth can you make the claim that the IPCC isn’t convinced of CAGW? This; “# Warming of the climate system is unequivocal. # Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely (>90%) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations. # Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries due to the times…
I can sense your outrage as I read the words as they are actually written, rather than the meaning you want them to have. “# Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” Certainly it is. But “unequivocal” just means cannot-be-reasonably-disagreed-with, not “catastrophic”. And similarly for your other points. Why can you not even read the material that you quote?
Reblogged this on TrueNorthist and commented:
A thoroughly fascinating read that is well worth the time.
jj says:
watch this and consider all the evidence before jumping to wild conclusions
I’d like it understoood that this post was not made by me, and would request that this poster identify himself differently to avoid confusion.
Re; William Connolley, February 22, 2012 at 8:21 am
“> If the IPCC is so convinced about the case for CAGW
It isn’t. You won’t find the phrase used at all. You just made it up.”
Saying the phrase is not used at all is a far cry from making something up. On this point you are cornered. David did not use quotation marks and the IPCC firmly indicates an endorsement of the notion that current warming is caused by anthropogenic emissions of CO2 and that it is catastrophic.
Given your rebuke of poor David, how do you explain this;
“The IPCC WGI Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC,2007) came to a more confident assessment of the causes of global temperature change than previous reports and concluded that “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”. It also concluded that “discernible human influences now extend to other aspects of climate, including ocean warming, continentalaverage temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patterns. Since then, warming over Antarctica has also been attributed to human influence, and further evidence has accumulated attributing a wider range of climate changes to human activities. Such changes are broadly consistent with theoretical understanding, and climate model simulations,of how the planet is expected to respond.”
That’s taken from the IPCC websites pdf version of the meeting report from the “IPCC Expert Meeting on Detection and Attribution Related to Anthropogenic Climate Change” held by the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, Switzerland 14–16 September 2009. It directly sites AR4’s claim that “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”.
Given that WGIII (TAR4) concerns itself with mitigation strategies including carbon taxes and investment in renewable (though it doesn’t mention non-carbon based, curiously) energy, and restrictions on motor vehicle production and usage and “land use regulation and enforcement”, it would be hard to justify the notion at they (IPCC) don’t view this change as catastrophic. They certainly describe it as such.
If that isn’t the IPCC supporting the CAGW dogma in your opinion, then your opinion is no longer relevant to any conversations of logic and science.
Bill, it is time to repent.
I see little danger that this wonderful post will be found wrong, but not from the solar influence point of view. First, it turns out that all 4 main atmospheric gases, N2, O2, water vapor, and CO2 have IR absorption capabilities. The IR absorption spectrum of air clearly shows the strong influence from N2 and O2. It also turns out that CO2 absorbance abilities are rather limited compared to the other three gases. In light of being a truly minor player regarding IR absorption/emission, CO2 simply does not have a detectable influence.
Second, direct chemical bottle CO2 data, gathered together by Ernst Beck, clearly shows that CO2 has been much higher than now during three periods of the last 200 years, showing lag times and great variability relative to temperature.
Third, according to Jaworowski, an authority on ice cores, ice cores are severely traumatized during extraction and, besides some in situ chemistry that decreases detectable CO2 from the samples, extensive microfracturing occurs. Thus, he considers that ice cores lose 30–50% of their CO2 before assay. If you take the published ice core CO2 values and back calculate these losses, the values are equal to or greater than the atmospheric CO2 today.
To assume that ice cores show absolute CO2 values of old atmosphere is just plain stupid. For the IPCC to allow and support ice core data to be merged with Mauna Loa volcano CO2 data is intellectual and scientific dishonesty, amounting to fraud and, taking into account the policy decisions involved, criminal intent.
A preview of AR5 and the aftermath. Sounds like if you squint and stare really hard right in one place long enough, you’ll see it until you look somewhere else. Stop looking somewhere else, because it’s really, really important to the world that you don’t look somewhere else. A whole lot of forcing and not much falling into place. No action required. Or will they scale the catastrophe higher this time round after scaling it lower to appear at least a little credible last time?
You may not be able to prove that their rejection of the variable(s) is intentionally fraudulent without evidence that they know or should know that their rejection is false (tempting to conclude but hard to prove intent). Or is this IPCC project subject to various nations’ FOIA law? If FOI is important for any issue, it’s this effort to establish the behind the curtain edict as global authority for everything from science to how we live and breathe.
But cheer up, the LA times is promoting every agnostic from holocaust denier to Adolf Eichmann.
I have to agree with William M. Connolley . The important question is what caused the 1970 to 2000 measured warming.
An analysis that focused on this period would make a more compelling argument.
The GCR theory is plausible, although I favour tropospheric aerosol reductions as the main cause of the 1970-2000 warming. But then GCRs and aerosols seed clouds in similar ways. So what seems to evidence for one may be evidence for the other.
Any good reason not to include the 2000-2012 period in there?
Oh, wait, perhaps it is because there was no measured warming at all, so that the entire period confounds the CO_2-only hypothesis, with last month’s lower troposphere 33-year mean anomaly negative once again.
Actually, the most compelling arguments are the ones with the longest time base, not the shortest. To discuss the causes of any local warming or cooling trend, it helps to know the long timescale natural variability of the system. It then helps to regulate your explanations of the local trend with the possible causes of the observed natural variability.
When this is done on a scale longer than 100 years, what is revealed is that natural variability can account for 100% of the local warming. We aren’t even out there at a 2 sigma event over the last 12,000 years, and the initial baseline of the thermometric era was not only a 2 sigma event, it was a three or four sigma event on the low side. Global temperatures are not geologically “unprecedented” — that is blatent fraud in and of itself as a glance at the non-CAGW-reconstructed paleoclimatological record clearly reveals.
So no, looking at a 30 year baseline is not “the important question”, at least not if you want to have a chance of finding the right answer. Before you can analyze a signal, you first have to correctly identify the range of the noise and its natural variability, and then systematically obtain the predictors of that variability. CO_2 cannot be ascertained to be the primary driver of the variations observed now without fully accounting for the natural variations over centuries and millennia where it was not a relevant (variable) driver at all.
rgb
You still have a shot, before global cooling is an established fact, to make a rapid turn around and save some shred of your reputations.
They should not wait too long. See the two slopes for surface sea level temperatures. There has been no change for 15 years and the slope for the last 10 years is -0.00962834 per year. If they are waiting for 17 years of no positive slope, they will really have egg on their faces. (Also the latest UAH value for AQUA ch05 is now 0.35 C below the previous lowest value since 2002!)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1980/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.08/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002.08/trend
It’s nice to see this fellow participating… whoever he may be
William M. Connolley says:
February 22, 2012 at 9:05 am
AGW_Skeptic> the wiki issue
The answer is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ARBCC. You could try reading it, but that would probably be too much like hard work, so you’ll rely on someone else’s inaccurate and slanted paraphrase.
But why do the moderators allow him to derail the discussion from the point of the post? Why is this type of thread-jacking allowed? I can’t believe that anyone would quote WikiPedia as an authoritative source — for example…
Bob Kutz says:
February 22, 2012 at 8:31 am
“William, how on earth can you make the claim that the IPCC isn’t convinced of CAGW?
This; […]
is from a wikipedia article you yourself edited as recently as January 28, 2012. The source cited is the IPCC summary for policy makers. I think you are familiar with it.”
You can’t argue with William M. Connolley by citing the wikipedia. William M. Connolley would in that case do one of two things:
-Tell you that wikipedia, according to wikipedia, is not a reliable source
-Change the article you’re citing to say what he wants.
John West says:
February 22, 2012 at 8:46 am
Johnnythelowery says:
“Boot Connelly for life from here!!!! …………………………………….. Please.
All those in favour say Ey”
NAY!
He can’t edit here, let him spout where he can be refuted for all to see.
—————————————–
You can’t trust him. You can’t trust that he believes what he is saying is true; because in the past said things were true when he knew damn well they wern’t. See the difference between a person with countervailing ideas (see Leif V Scarfetta) and a liar.
1. He might be saying it because he believes it to be true (and is qualified to hold the opinion)
2. He might be saying it because it serves a purpose
3. He might be saying it to wind us up, muddy the waters, waste our time
4. He might saying it because it frustrates those who search for truth
I say get rid of him.
Dave Dardinger> Alex Rawls claims that the models assume that CO2 is 40 times as effective as solar (TSI) in terms of climate change.
Yes, but he just made it up. It isn’t true. You’ll notice he provides no evidence for the claim.
FE>
well, as you say, we’ve disagreed before, and there is little hope of having a proper discussion here – too much noise, too low a level of understanding. Plus, you evaded my question.
Bob Kutz> the IPCC firmly indicates an endorsement of the notion that current warming is … catastrophic
No it doesn’t, you’re just making things up.
> Such changes are broadly consistent with theoretical understanding, and climate model simulations,of how the planet is expected to respond
Yeees, notice the absence of the C-word in there, though.
> Any good reason not to include the 2000-2012 period in there?
Nope, feel free to include that too.
> all 4 main atmospheric gases, N2, O2, water vapor, and CO2 have IR absorption capabilities
No. N2 and O2 are diatomic.
> Ernst Beck, clearly shows that CO2 has been much higher than now during three periods of the last 200 years
Not that lunacy again. Come on, that belongs off in the wild fringes… oh, wait…
Coach Springer, “You may not be able to prove that their rejection of the variable(s) is intentionally fraudulent without evidence that they know or should know that their rejection is false ”
The IPCC has already stated that they believe that all natural factors and cycles have been overwhelmed by CO2. We’re done—intentionally fraudulent it is. Too many people have pointed out that this is wrong for them not to be intentionally continuing to ignore natural factors.
Ignoring important natural cycles entirely fits their needs for a political agenda centered around demonizing CO2 as the controller of our climate and accusing humans of messing with the controller.
Bottom line: the IPCC cannot afford to EVER admit to being wrong, goal-oriented, or dishonest, as they would then fail their political propaganda mission. This has nothing to do with science and all to do with political expediency.
I am disappointed that the moderators have left an apparently (self-snip) Wikipedia-banned propagandist like Connolley post oven a dozen times and derail what could have been an interesting scientific discussion. This is a waste.
Rawls: “[U]nlike warming, cooling is actually dangerous and really can feed back on itself in runaway fashion.”
I’m not questioning that on balance cooling from present levels is less friendly to humans than warming. But there may be others here who like me are unfamiliar with the rationale for that passage’s runaway-feedback comment. Further explanation would be welcome.
Philip Bradley: I have to agree with William M. Connolley . The important question is what caused the 1970 to 2000 measured warming.
Even if that were the only important question, the answer to that question requires the answers to many other questions, such as:”Is there any evidence that the 1970-200 warming had a different cause from previous warmings?” and “Has the 1970-2000 warming ended?”
William M. Connolley says:
February 22, 2012 at 6:59 am
> You sure do. And many of us has more than a clue as to the bias of the language, choice of references and so on in some of the articles.
“I doubt it. I’ve asked several times for examples of such (in other threads) and people always back off (though I wouldn’t want to derail this thread with more wiki stuff).”
That “people always back off” is very unlikely, even if their perceptions were wrong. Who are you trying to fool, yourself?
> Your response seems to be that you know that most of the processes are well known and understood. Still, without a temperature increase correlation, you have nothing
“You really really don’t understand, do you? It isn’t based on correlation, it is based on the underlying physical processes. If you want to understand how the attribution analysis is done, you’ll need to actually read it.”
**********************************************
Yes, I understand you have avoided actually responding to my original claim, and now just repeat your own without support, while misrepresenting what I said, and adding some juicy innuendo for flavor.
I don’t need to understand some “attribution analysis” to know that it isn’t possible to know what is not known or that “most” is known and understood. That is a statement of faith, not of science.
And I didn’t say theory was based on correlation:
February 22, 2012 at 5:13 am “The explanations (theories) may begin with limited understanding of Earth’s complex physical processes, but the correlations are what “gave rise” to them.”
The observation that the earth is warming is explained by certain processes, William. Not the other way around. Without observations of warming, explanations of warming are rather moot, don’t you think? And observations of cooling or no warming, in the absence of good reasons, would falsify AGW.
William M. Connolley previously sanctioned and desysopped8.1) In the Abd-William M. Connolley arbitration case (July–September 2009), William M. Connolley was found to have misused his admin tools while involved. As a result, he lost administrator permissions, and was admonished and prohibited from interacting with User:Abd. Prior to that, he was sanctioned in Requests for arbitration/Climate change dispute (2005, revert parole – which was later overturned by the Committee here) and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Geogre-William M. Connolley (2008, restricted from administrative actions relating to Giano II). He was also the subject of RFC’s regarding his conduct: RfC 1 (2005) and RfC 2 (2008). The 2008 RFC was closed as improperly certified.
Passed 6 to 0 with 2 abstentions, 14:10, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
William M. Connolley has been uncivil and antagonistic8.2) William M. Connolley has been uncivil and antagonistic to editors within the topic area, and toward administrators enforcing the community probation. (Selection of representative examples:[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] [17][18][19] [20] )
This uncivil and antagonistic behaviour has included refactoring of talk page comments by other users,(examples:[21][22][23] ) to the point that he was formally prohibited from doing so. In the notice advising him that a consensus of 7 administrators had prohibited his refactoring of talk page posts, he inserted commentary within the post of the administrator leaving the notice on his talk page.[24]] For this action, he was blocked for 48 hours; had the block extended to 4 days with talk page editing disabled due to continuing insertions into the posts of other users on his talk page; had his block reset to the original conditions; then was blocked indefinitely with talk page editing disabled when he again inserted comments into the posts of others on his talk page.[25] After extensive discussion at Administrator noticeboard/Incidents, the interpretation of consensus was that the Climate Change general sanctions did not extend to the actions of editors on their own talk pages, and the block was lifted.
Passed 8 to 0, 14:10, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
William M. Connolley’s edits to biographies of living persons8.5) William M. Connolley has focused a substantial portion of his editing in the Climate change topic area on biographical articles about living persons who hold views opposed to his own with respect to the reality and significance of anthropogenic global warming, in a fashion suggesting that he does not always approach such articles with an appropriately neutral and disinterested point of view.
Passed 7 to 1, 14:10, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
I notice that William M.Connolley has not explained how a correlation that existed up to 1970 can be of no more importance after 1970. Did the laws of physics change, William M. Connolley? Please give us a quote from IPCC AR4 about that.
Also:
William M. Connolley says:
February 22, 2012 at 5:44 am
“> The physical processes are not fully known or understood
But you shouldn’t measure the lack of knowledge by your own. Most of the processes are indeed well known and understood. Some important ones (clouds, or contrails) aren’t so well. ”
The problem with that, William M. Connolley, is of course, as you must know, that an iterative model will necessarily deviate with each timestep more and more from reality; especially in light of your admission that some important processes aren’t so well understood. (I don’t even have to mention chaos here; it would even be true for a non-chaotic system)
How can you for these obviously erroneous models maintain the notion that running them over a 100 virtual years will tell us ANYTHING about the reality in 100 years? I can’t believe that you are ignorant to not understand the futility of such attempts.
We can, even though we don’t know all the processes exactly, forecast the weather for a maximum of 5 days. After that, the deviation becomes too large to give meaningful forecasts.
The IPCC argues that they don’t make forecasts (another word for forecast is PREDICTION) but only sample the possible solution space in a 100 years from now (calling that PROJECTION).
But any fool can see that that state space is for all practical considerations practically infinite. How can an ensemble run that runs some models, say, a thousand times inform us in any way about the likelihood of certain outcomes? Calling this “undersampling” would be ridiculous, “nearly not sampling at all” is more appropriate.
This is all trivial and must be known to the IPCC’s climate modelers yet they continue to pretend that their models have some imaginary value for telling us about the future in 100 years. This can only be described as professional misconduct, and charges should be brought; I’d like to hear what they’d say in their defence when sued for misappropriation of funds.
Again; Re; William Connolley
“I can sense your outrage as I read the words as they are actually written, rather than the meaning you want them to have. “# Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” Certainly it is. But “unequivocal” just means cannot-be-reasonably-disagreed-with, not “catastrophic”. And similarly for your other points. Why can you not even read the material that you quote?”
William, your condescending attitude is truly pathetic, and the last refuge of climate alarmists. I took the notion of catastrophic as a given in the argument. I full well understand the definition of the word unequivocal. Perhaps you should look up the meaning of the word obtuse.
If they (IPCC) don’t believe AGW is catastrophic why are they advocating economically damaging policy to prevent it? Why is there such heated debate, if they believe there is no threat involved. Why would our leaders be trying to tax carbon, if the effects were believed to be either neutral or beneficial?
Simple; they do believe (or claim to believe) it’s catastrophic. The IPCC is built on the notion that it’s catastrophic. That’s why it exists. If they came out with a report that said; ‘it’s global, humans are the cause, but we are all going to be fine really, enjoy the sunshine’, there’d be no cause for their further existence. You of all people should be aware of the notion that people don’t willingly point out their uselessness.
Their (IPCC) prognostications include; “hundreds of millions of people exposed to increased water stress” TAR, WGIII, Summary for policy makers, magnitudes of impact.
“significant extinctions around the globe’, ibid
“increased damage from floods and storms”, ibid’
“millions more people could experience flooding each year”, ibid
“increased burden from malnutrition, diarrhoeal, cardio-respiratory, and infectious disease”,ibid
“increased mortality from heat waves, floods and droughts”,ibid
“substantial burden on health services”,ibid
further on they characterize as ‘likely’ the chances that the AGW will result in “Increased risk of food and water shortage; increased risk of malnutrition; increased risk of water- and food-borne diseases”, ibid
I’ve done the reading William, have you?
Are you really trying to stand on the notion that IPCC does not support the notion that AGW is catastrophic? Really?
Perhaps it’s not I who’s reading skills require remedial attention. Perhaps a course in elementary logic would also do you well.
William M. Connolley says:
February 22, 2012 at 9:05 am
MAVukcevic> No climate scientist has any idea why http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETjun.htm ? Let’s hear what William M. Connolley has to say.
William M. Connolley says:
Errm, that is a plot of the CET. You must have a point, though I confess I can’t see what that point is.
Graph speaks louder than 100s of the CO2 AGW papers.
Point is very clear : 350 years no temperature rise!
And why not?
I added the frequency spectrum, note strongest component is not the TSI’s period but the Hale cycle.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETjun.htm
In my initial post I said:
there appear to be strong indication that temperature changes and the solar activity are in a certain degree of synchronisation, but the mechanism is still eluding the mainstream science, while some of us on the fringes have (or think to have) a pretty good idea what that mechanism may be.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NVa.htm
Johnnie the lowery says
“In the decision, a slap-down for the once-powerful Connolley by his peers, he has been barred from participating in any article, discussion or forum dealing with global warming. In addition, because he rewrote biographies of scientists and others he disagreed with, to either belittle their accomplishments or make them appear to be frauds, Wikipedia barred him — again unanimously — from editing biographies of those in the climate change field.”
Henry@all here
I must tell you that when I started my investigations on whether or not more CO2 is good or bad for us, I came across a definition of the GHG effect in Wikipedia that you can still find at the beginning of this post here:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
When I frequently referred to it, mostly that the increase in CO2 compares to next-to-nothing if you look at all the water vapor and clouds in the atmosphere, and the actual mechanism of the GHG effect, which would imply that it must be minimum temps pushing up average temperatures (which I did not see happening, globally….).
I found later somebody had changed the definition to make it more in line with AGW thinking…
For example, currently
the contribution of the GH Gases to the GH effect in Wikipedia is totally mis- stated
water 30-70%
CO2 9-26%
Surely anybody can understand if average water vapor alone is 0.5% (excluding clouds) and CO2 is 0.04% that those figures in Wikipedia cannot be right. So who planted them there?
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
And lest someone say, “but the build-up of heat in the oceans due to the “energy imbalance”; it is obvious that there must be warming”: My answer would be : if the climate system worked in such a simplistic way, WHY USE SUPERCOMPUTERS AT ALL if that is so easy? Again, a grossly expensive and illogical enterprise!
Of course it’s not that easy, as fluctuations in water vapour, surface temperature etc. lead to ever-changing radiation, moving energy into space.
But the climate models used to simulate that are for the simple reasons I mentioned above nothing but computer games without any practical worth. They can’t tell us what the Earth climate system will do the next week. Let alone in 100 years.
I am a AGW skeptic (not that changes CO2 cannot have an effect on the climate system, but more of the certainty, based on my studies of past climate when I was a geology major), but I also appreciate Dr Connolley stopping by. I agree with the comment that it’s silly to focus on the trivial Wiki removal, as WC has shown it’s not for the reasons many say it is. We should stick to the science and the disagreements therein.
In Re; William Connolley,
“Bob Kutz> the IPCC firmly indicates an endorsement of the notion that current warming is … catastrophic
No it doesn’t, you’re just making things up.”
William, read what I have posted. I cite the sources at the IPCC’s own website. You can look this stuff up. see comment above; Bob Kutz February 22, 2012 at 9:41 am. The source document is TAR, WGIII, Summary for Policy Makers, Magnitude of Impacts. I have provided the quotes.
If you are unwilling to refute the source material I have sited, you have confirmed for everyone here that you’ve no credentials.
The only one making stuff up is you.
You are a troll. There is a special place in hell for trolls, Bill.
Repent.
I am battling again trying to get a subscription…
and again….
There must be something wrong on the side of WUWT?
(the notify me of follow-up comments does not work)
> I took the notion of catastrophic as a given in the argument.
Ah, progress. You’ve now admitted that the C-word is yours, and not the IPCC’s.
> If they (IPCC) don’t believe AGW is catastrophic why are they advocating economically damaging policy to prevent it?
Firstly, I’m reading the WGI report, which doesn’t make any policy recommendations. WGII and III are more policy-focussed, but even then I’m not sure you’re right.
Secondly, you seem to think in rather all-or-nothing terms: in your world, either GW is catastrophic, and we do stuff, or it is non-catastrophic, and we do nothing. That is clearly unrealistic.
> Why is there such heated debate, if they believe there is no threat involved
Because there is a threat; but it might not be “catastrophic”, depending of course on what that ill-defined word might mean to you.
> For example, currently the contribution of the GH Gases to the GH effect in Wikipedia is totally mis- stated water 30-70% CO2 9-26% Surely anybody can understand if average water vapor alone is 0.5% (excluding clouds) and CO2 is 0.04% that those figures in Wikipedia cannot be right
You seem to be relying on proof-by-incredulity, which is invalid. The figures are approximate, but reasonable.
@Alec Rawls: Thank you for devoting so much energy to this issue. I fear you are indeed correct in your assessment; these people – the IPCC and its supporters like Connelley – are either charlatans or children.
Your response to them does in fact contain a falsifiable prediction – substantial global cooling is on its way – soon. I fear this too; the turmoil in this old world is going to skyrocket and many – probably billions – of people are going to suffer. Perhaps it too will allow us to do what we need to change the paradigm of science funding and other things so that zealots and cheats can no longer hold such sway. Maybe we can send a few of them to jail.
Again, thanks for your efforts.
I’M Ok now. One hit got through. You can wipe previous comments.
I see it mentioned a few times above, but only a few. And never in the AR reports!
This is that atmospheric CO2 is beneficial, too! (I should not add that “too” to this
sentence.). Forests and crops are growing faster than they were seventy years ago.
And this is totally beneficial to nearly all the species…! Including Homo sapiens.
There is a great deal of literature on this – the ARs should include analysis of this.
I noticed that some time ago.
I wonder if the elders of wikipedia know that he comes here to derail threads.
Glenn says:
February 22, 2012 at 6:46 am
Ric Werme says:
February 22, 2012 at 6:15 am
>> It seems to me either 1995 or 1999 is a typo.
> *******************************************************************
> You’ve misquoted. That helps no one.
I agree. I guess I need one cup of coffee per clause in the morning.
Connolley, wrong as usual, says:
“WGII and III are more policy-focussed (sic)…”
Wrong. WG3 is entirely policy focused. IPCC Co-Chair Ottmar Edenhofer stated that “one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore”.
The IPCC is a totally political hyena with a thin veneer of [generally wrong] science for camoflage. Edenhofer candidly admits to its agenda. UN kleptocrats intend to steal what they never earned under the guise of “environmental policy”. Edenhofer makes clear that environmental policy is a smokescreen for international theft.
Connolley says that “there is a threat; but it might not be ‘catastrophic’, depending of course on what that ill-defined word might mean to you.”
Nonsense. There is no indication of any approaching disaster. As a matter of fact, the rise in CO2 is greening the planet. CO2 is a harmless and beneficial trace gas. As the IPCC’s Edenhofer makes clear, the demonization of “carbon” is only a cover story for an immense tax grab to redistribute the wealth of Western taxpayers through the totally corrupt UN [which as always will take its hefty cut], which will then end up in the pockets of despots. And the world’s poor will be just as poor as ever.
As someone reprimanded and disciplined for disseminating false propaganda, Connolley surely knows this. He is just putting his usual spin on the UN’s greedy intentions. The question is, what is Connolley getting out of posting his misrepresentations here?
William M. Connolley said @ February 22, 2012 at 6:33 am
If there were so many good papers supporting the IPCC view, why was Wahl & Amman’s unpublished “Jesus Paper” included in AR4? See. Steve McIntyre was threatened with dismissal from the position of expert reviewer for requesting access to the data that unpublished paper was based on.
The Git supports allowing Connolley being allowed to post here where we can all see his disingenuousness. He also makes the important point that many here are commenting on something they haven’t read. Isn’t that what we detested Gleik for in relation to Donna Laframboise’s Delinquent Teenager?
I think that the evidence that this critique is fundementally sound is that William Connelly is so present on this thread. Obviously you have no interest in debating the underlying science, as this is a regular topic of conversation here. Certainly I’ve never seen you responding to any of Willis’ posts. Why are you here now? Could it be that the rapid response team have seen a serious and real threat that must be discredited as quickly as possible?
If you want people to take you seriously, come by more often. As you can see, all of your posts are being published. Something that would not happen to Anthony at Realclimate. Otherwise, you leave it open to assume that you are “on the job”, just as you were at Wikipedia. You were sanctioned for that William. Here is just one of those sanctions. Seems that you are more able to express your opinions here than Wikipedia. How close minded of us.
William M. Connolley (talk · contribs) is prohibited from editing comments made by other editors about climate change or that appear on discussion pages related to climate change (broadly interpreted), for a duration of two months.
Dave Dardinger> Alex Rawls claims that the models assume that CO2 is 40 times as effective as solar (TSI) in terms of climate change.
William Connolley said:
Yes, but he just made it up. It isn’t true. You’ll notice he provides no evidence for the claim.
Alex said:
[I’m not going to quote the actual numbers, but yeah, the ratio is an astounding 40 to 1, up from 14 to 1 in AR4, which listed total solar forcing as 0.12 W/m^2, vs. 1.66 for CO2.]
Admittedly Alex didn’t quote the numbers from AR5 in an attempt to stay within the secrecy requirements imposed on the reviewers, but he does list the AR4 numbers. Do you say these are made up? Please note that the point isn’t that the numbers given can’t be derived from particular sets of data, but that (assuming the statistical values Alex gives are reasonably correct), they don’t match with reality. That is, if the proxies for solar values explain on the close order of half of the temperature variations for a very long period of time, there must be a mechanism for producing this correlation. And since solar wind reducing cosmic ray flux is a reasonable mechanism, it needs to be described in detail in AR5, and how this will (would) effect the attribution of temperature changes from CO2 must be presented. The same would be true for other reasonable mechanisms.
Let me put it another way as well. The “total solar forcing” value of .12 W/m^2 is really just a proxy for what might be called the “total solar influence”. The forcing value comes from the difference in all radiation hitting the earth (probably divided by 4, but I’m not going to go look that up as it’s not of particular importance). But just as a small energy difference on an electronic sensor can result in a large door being opened at great energy expenditure, so a relatively small change in total solar energy reaching the earth can be an indicator of a much larger difference in the solar energy reaching the earth’s surface by means of an indirect means such as change in albedo from change in cloud cover from cosmic ray influence.
Smokey says:
February 22, 2012 at 10:27 am
“The question is, what is Connolley getting out of posting his misrepresentations here?”
Material for his own blog to quote. He didn’t try once to refute what I said. He actually never answers me. I guess I’m talking over his head.
higley7 says:
February 22, 2012 at 9:12 am
Higley, O2 and N2 have no absorption in the IR band, none at all. They do absorb (and emit) at much higher frequencies.
Late Beck’s interpretation of the data was wrong: most of the wet chemical data were from samples taken over land, in towns, fields and forests. These are worthless for any knowledge of what the real CO2 levels were in that period. Then, like now, the best available data were obtained over the oceans, on ships and coastal with wind from the seaside. These data are all around the ice core data. See further:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html
firmly discussed here at WUWT:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/24/engelbeen-on-why-he-thinks-the-co2-increase-is-man-made-part-4/
Something similar for the knowledge of late Jaworowski on ice cores, which ended around 1992. Most of his objections were already rejected by the work of Etheridge e.a. of 1996 on three Law Dome ice cores.
His objections against the merging of ice core data and Mauna Loa data by Neftel is based on his own error: he assumes that the gas age is similar to the age of the ice layers, which is proven wrong. At closing depth, the gas age is in average much younger (30 years in the case of Law Dome) than the surrounding ice. This was calculated by Neftel for the Siple Dome ice core and confirmed by Etheridge for Law Dome by measuring both the CO2 levels in the still open pores in firn top down to closing depth and in already closed bubbles in the ice. See further:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/jaworowski.html
heavily discussed at WUWT:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/20/engelbeen-on-why-he-thinks-the-co2-increase-is-man-made-part-2/
If one is asking for facts that there strong geometric correlations between solar functions and the global climate proxies, here are two.
The first one is the fact that the reconstructed temperature variations have a correlation with the variation of the frequency of the sun spots:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/sun_shift_buent.gif
Because of this correlation there must be a mechanism on the Sun which drives the global temperature variation on Earth.
A more detailed correlation can be seen between solar tide functions and the measured global temperature; spring tides of the couple of Mercury/Earth corresponds with a warm global Earth phase, and nip tides of the couple of Mercury/Earth corresponds with a cold global Earth phase. Because it is already argued that it is out of question that the Earth temperature controls the motion of the two planets there must be a (unknown) mechanism in the Sun, which effects in the global temperature function.
But this correlation is not the only one; because the oscillations of the global sea level probably are can be measured more precise than the global temperatures, there is an other fact that the oscillations of the sea level correlate strong with the solar tide function of the couple of Mercury/Earth.
This is excellent shown in two graphs with different time intervals:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/sealevel_vs_xyzo1.gif
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/sealevel_vs_xyzo.gif
As an extra a simple (A. Einstein would like it) calculation can explain that the coupling of global temperature and sea level (oscillation) is not only fulfilled for high frequencies of month but also on a century.
This is the simple calculation taking the area of the world oceans:
1. The increasing quotient a of the global temperature (hadcrut3) from 1900 AD to 2002 AD is (0.6757° Cel. / 102) a = 0.006625° Cel. per year.
2. The relevant world sea water volume increase for about 1000 m deepness is ~23 mm per 0.1 ° Cel. (@ 19° Cel.) from the property of water.
3. The increase of the sea level h in 102 years is (0.006625° Cel. * 102 y * 23 mm / 0.1° Cel.) = 155.4 mm.
Check: Mean sea level increasing (1900-2002) from San Francisco is 1.47 mm per year or 149.9 mm for the whole time interval.
If this calculation is correct, it means that the sea level rise in the last century is still a physical slave effect because of the property of water.
There are more comparisons available, showing that all planets with relevant density form a solar tide profile, which correspond to the global temperature. Summing up eleven tide functions there is a strong correlation with the measured global (hadcrut3) temperature:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/ghi_had_1960_3.gif
Remember the task of simulating the global climate, this connection can worked out in a tool to forecast the global climate for the next 1000 years.
But I fear people have more fun with noisy political climate war than simple science work.
V.
Johnnythelowery says:
February 22, 2012 at 7:41 am
I pass. This is Anthony’s blog, it is not a democracy. Anthony has been consistent in letting those with opposing views post here until it’s clear they’re pushing their own agenda or start disagreeing disagreeably.
In Connelley’s case, many people here remember reports of updates to Wikipedia pages reverted by Connelley within minutes, I think this is a good opportunity to study the beast in an environment he can’t edit. With luck, Connelley will learn something about how he sullied Wikipedia as a reference tool. By the way William, see the reference pages up at the top nav bar? I think you deserve some of the credit for them.
Or it could be that he’s here because he can’t reach us at Wikipedia any more.
higley7 > The IR absorption spectrum of air clearly shows the strong influence from N2 and O2.
William M. Connolley> No. N2 and O2 are diatomic.
WMC appears to be correct, although I confess I did not know why, based upon the cryptic answer. However, while recognizing the shortcomings of Wikipedia as a source, recall that many articles contain references which are solid, so if the quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_spectroscopy doesn’t persuade you, feel free to check out the references at the end of the article:
“A molecule can vibrate in many ways, and each way is called a vibrational mode. For molecules with N atoms in them, linear molecules have 3N – 5 degrees of vibrational modes, whereas nonlinear molecules have 3N – 6 degrees of vibrational modes (also called vibrational degrees of freedom). As an example H2O, a non-linear molecule, will have 3 × 3 – 6 = 3 degrees of vibrational freedom, or modes.
Simple diatomic molecules have only one bond and only one vibrational band. If the molecule is symmetrical, e.g. N2, the band is not observed in the IR spectrum, but only in the Raman spectrum. Asymmetrical diatomic molecules, e.g. CO, absorb in the IR spectrum.”
WilliamMC says
You seem to be relying on proof-by-incredulity, which is invalid. The figures are approximate, but reasonable.
Henry@William Howard
William, we are not doing that here, name calling. Here you have to come with actual results.
If the actual average water vapor content in the air is about 0.5% (it varies around this figure) and CO2 is not more that o.04% then the contribution of CO2 to the GHG effect cannot be more than ca. 8%.
If we are then still going to add clouds (which is acknowledged in Wikipedia as a factor below these figures) then water vapor and clouds will probably be like 99% and CO2 <1%
Agreed?
The next thing for you to do would be to look a bit deeper and try to understand that the spectrum of CO2 does not only cause warming (by re-radiating earth light) but that it also causes cooling (by re-radiating sunlight).
So, how much is it cooling and how much is it warming, exactly?
If you want to learn, you should start here,
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-Aug-2011
and perhaps do some work, trying to prove me wrong
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
and in the process become a wiser person.
I spent several years developing computer models of nuclear power plants for the analysis of the required Nuclear Regulatory Commission accidents and the analysis of several significant accents. The models I developed required the consideration of more than 100 factors. Often, it would take a year or more to “prove” a slightly modified model was a “good” (they were never perfect) through numerous “sensitivity” runs. Followed by weeks of looking at more than a six foot high pile of 11X17 computer paper with 20 to 30 columns of numbers. Find a problem, fix the problem and do it again. But I had a real live nuclear power plant to mimic and real live, actual, data to verify the expected model output with. The AGW modelers have not done this in any fashion whatsoever. Their reverse forecasts do not match, and their predictions do not match reality. Worse yet, and this is where I lose all respect for their so called models, is that they do not include the effects of the Sun or Cosmic radiation, as pointed out in this article.
I am under the impression that the sun radiates the entire Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS). Well, the EMS is over 20 decades wide. The models they use assume that the levels for their particular band of interest (visible and infrared) remain constant, look at any one of the AGW left-wing-nuts that berate this article or their “factual” links. Their models consider less than 10% of the spectrum – in decades! The majority of their “proof” is to claim “The change in solar radiation is insignificant!” Thus my first questions: what about the radio wave heating effect, what about microwave heating effect, and then the X-ray and Gama ray wavelength and their heating effect. RF Heating is just as effective as IR heating, I have seen both in action, and have been told RF heating is more efficient. Measure change in RF radiation from the sun with a photographic light meter or an IR meter, they are right, it does not change. Measure the change in magnetic flux with a Light meter or IR meter, they are right it does not change. Have I convinced you probably not. So go to an expensive appliance outlet, one that has an induction range. Measure the change in visible light with a light meter with the induction coil of and on. No change. So, since there is no energy coming from the coil with it on, take off your wrist watch and place it on the induction coil. (you may have to defeat the safety interlock by placing a small pan on the coil.) Let me know how long it takes to destroy your watch.
Now throw in these same forms of radiation from the rest of the Universe. What effect do they have? How are they accounted for in the model? As an Amateur Radio Operator I have witnessed firsthand the effects of radio wave radiation. My ~50 ft dipole antenna occasionally picks up over 50 millivolts (into a 50 ohm load) of “noise” from Jupiter. That is 2.5 miliwatts of power, just on a few square milimeters of the Earth’s area. (Before you slam me, Normally it is only around a few microvolts.) I have built and used a transistor radio that got all of its power from it’s short, 24 inch antenna – no batteries at all. Use the power equation, P = I X E, for all of the other radiation ignored in their “models,” add them up and get a guesstimate as to what is missing. Keep in mind we are talking trillions of individual wavelengths (from 10 to the 2nd to ten to the 20th), like trillions of radio stations impacting trillions of square meters of the earth’s surface. In my “feeble” mind, even if the percent absorption for these various wave lengths is low in the atmosphere/ground/water/etc., there is still a rather significant number times this very? small absorption factor, which when I took math is greater than Zero. And, then they all need to be added together and/or some subtracted (e.g., see next paragraph). Yet they ignore it! They just claim “They are constant.” If that is the case, they should correct all of the data concerning the Aurora’s (Northern/Southern lights), And I guess we alaso don’t need to worry about the Coronal Mass Ejections that they warn us about and the ones that others “claim” caused catastrophic damage to the earth about a few thousand years ago
For some other unknown reason the ignore the radiation absorbed by the ocean. Again they obfuscate the issue by claiming the radiation is reflected by the ocean. How can any good scientist make that claim? Look at any radar display of an area near water. The land is gray, mountains and hills are lighter, and many manmade objects are lighter still. However the water is BLACK. Why is the water black? Because it does not reflect the radar waves. The radar waves are absorbed, just like most of the other radio waves. What are these radio waves doing to the ocean? They are heating it up. I have seen a small RF heating unit melt a piece of steel. What are all of the other forms of electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun doing to the ocean? I have not studied this, but it would be absurd to do as the AGW left-wing-nuts have and assume the only thing heating the earth is visible light waves.
The next question is about CO2. Take a field trip to any one of those energy saving window outlets you see advertized on TV. Ask them to demonstrate one of their IR blocking windows. Note how they can have a Infrared heating element on one side of the window and you feel no heat at all on your side. Now, move the heating element around to the other side. Shazam, there is no heat on that side either. It works both ways. Why do the AGW left-wing-nuts ignore this? Are they ignoring the IR energy given off by the SUN? If the CO2 blocks the IR from leaving the earth doesn’t it block the IR energy from reaching the earth? EVERY graph, chart, pictorial representation I see shows NO IR energy striking the earth. WHY? Please explain.
Then you have the fact that they deny the peer reviewed study by CERN (which they tried to prevent) and the one by Ulrik Ingerslev Uggerhøj, Physics and Astronomy (http://science.au.dk/en/news-and-events/news-article/artikel/forskere-fra-au-og-dtu-viser-at-partikler-fra-rummet-skaber-skydaekke/ ) and the ones by several others to numerous to cite here (Google them) showing that particles from space affect cloud cover. In fact the AGW left-wing-nuts crowd call the findings ridiculous and un-verifiable. Well, why did it work in my science fair project way back in 1956 when I showed the traces given off by a radioactive source?. Have the laws of physic changed? Again, I am no expert, but from my reading the various studies, the number of these particles striking the earth has a direct, verifiable, correlation to the solar magnetic activity. This article does a good job of explaining why the AGW left-wing-nuts ignore this correlation.
Next we need to consider the heating effects of the spinning magnet inside earth. If you are not familiar with the heating effect of a motor or generator, than, take a magnet that has a hole in the center, place a shaft in this hole and put it in the chuck of a drill. Spin this magnet within the field of another magnet. The magnet will get warm. Now, how much heat is being added to the earth/ground/soil/ocean (the ocean is conductive and will be affected by rotating/oscillating magnetic flux.) There could even be some effect upon the atmosphere. Where is the consideration for this effect? How is it affected by the Moon, Sun, other planets, and the galaxy we are in? How much heat is added by the flux lines cutting through the Earth and the fluctuation/perturbation of these lines caused by other bodies in space? Is anyone even looking at it?
So I ask, how can the science be settled? Why do the AGW left-wing-nuts crowd get to quell any report, study or talk that is counter to their opinion? Where is the free, scientific discussion? Consider all of the questions rhetorical, no response required.
HenryP says:
February 22, 2012 at 9:56 am
> There must be something wrong on the side of WUWT?
> (the notify me of follow-up comments does not work)
My guess is that the Email doesn’t go out until a moderator approves the message.
Personally, I think you’re nuts to want notification of every comment in an active thread, but I suppose it could be an easy way to have a program maintain current statistics about who’s commenting in a thread.
William M. Connolley, just as a matter of interest, why are you so snide with people? What do you think it achieves?
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
February 22, 2012 at 10:39 am
higley7 says:
February 22, 2012 at 9:12 am
Late Beck’s interpretation of the data was wrong: most of the wet chemical data were from samples taken over land, in towns, fields and forests. These are worthless for any knowledge of what the real CO2 levels were in that period. Then, like now, the best available data were obtained over the oceans, on ships and coastal with wind from the seaside. These data are all around the ice core data.
Do you know anything about carbon dioxide?
DirkH says:
February 22, 2012 at 10:37 am
Smokey says:
February 22, 2012 at 10:27 am
“The question is, what is Connolley getting out of posting his misrepresentations here?”
Material for his own blog to quote. He didn’t try once to refute what I said. He actually never answers me. I guess I’m talking over his head.
Dirk:
Don’t underestimate William’s intelligence, or his strong grasp of the facts. Instead, follow Steve McIntyre’s advice and watch the pea. Pay particular attention to his misdirections. When he tries to drag the conversation in one direction, look to where he is moving the conversation away from. Note that the entire original post was about what the climate models do. Rather than addressing this by saying “NO climate models DO look at solar variability” he states that the IPCC report mentioned solar variability. Two very different things. At no time does he try to question the assertion of the 0.5 to 0.8 coefficient of correlation, hence he misdirects from the underlying premise. He asserts that the last 100 years belie this. Yet he doesn’t provide a link relating temperature to solar variability, such as sunspots. A quick check of google scholar shows a number of papers discussing this. Don’t take my word for it, but it is known that the surface temperature reacts faster to increases in sunspots than decreases. As such, we are just now beginning to see the effects of the reduced solar activity. One piece of evidence is the pause in the increase in sea level. Another is the bloody cold weather. But that’s only weather.
Cheers
JE
Reading the comments, I would caution many to not miss the main point of Mr. Rawls paper. The statistical relevence of omission of an important variable in any analysis. If logic tells us there is even a probable causal relationship we must take a look at that variable. If there is a correlation, then it must be included. The old “hem lines vs stock market levels” test is a good one for the logic part of the argument.
William Connelly, how does AR-4 explain the 23 cycles of warming followed by cooling that have been found in the paleoclimatic record? Why is there cosmogenic isotope changes at each of the past warming and cooling phases? The following is an excerpt from my comment that has links to papers.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/22/omitted-variable-fraud-vast-evidence-for-solar-climate-driver-rates-one-oblique-sentence-in-ar5/#comment-900486
Astley:
William Connelly would be interested in your or your cohorts’ answers to these questions.
Those promoting the extreme AGW paradigm appear to selectively ignore and filter research and data. It is necessary to have a logical/scientific explanation for all observations. The logical process and fundamental rules is similar to criminal scene investigation. What does the evidence show? It is not appropriate or logical to ignore observations or filter observations to promote a specific hypothesis.
This graph shows past Dansgaard-Oesgher or Bond cycles. Note there are cycles in the paleoclimatic record of warming followed by cooling of high latitude Northern regions (Gerald Bond has able to track 23 of these cycles through the Holocene interglacial and into the last glacial cycle). In the 20th century there was also warming of high latitude Northern regions. The past warming and cooling cycles all correlate with cosmogenic isotope changes. There is no correlation with atmospheric CO2 changes. There is no correlation to changes in the North Atlantic drift current and these cycles. Correlation and/or the lack of correlation is a fundamental issue that must be explained by the hypothesis.
What is your or the Realclimate or the AR4 explanation of the past warming and cooling cycles? What caused the warming followed by cooling? Magic wand? Why is there again and again correlation of the warming and cooling cycles with large changes in cosmogenic isotopes? (Changes in cosmogenic isotopes are caused by changes in the solar heliosphere or changes in the geomagnetic field.)
There appears to some sort of spooky filtering mechanism that distorts and blocks the research related to solar modulation of planetary clouds by electroscavenging (Solar wind bursts. There is more than one mechanism by which solar changes modulate planetary cloud cover.) from reaching the IPCC produced documents or the Realclimate threads on solar modulation of planetary clouds.
Based on the below graph that shows cycles of warming followed by cooling some of which are abrupt cooling periods (there is another mechanism that is also solar driven that is causing the abrupt cooling cycles such as the Younger Dryas or the past interglacial terminations) and the fact that currently the magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots is decaying linearly and the sun will soon no longer be capable of producing sunspots what do you think will happen next? What is the lesson of the past telling us?
http://www.climate4you.com/
(See figure 3 from Richard Alley’s paper that is copied in the above link. Excerpt from the above link.)
Fig.3. The upper panel shows the air temperature at the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet, reconstructed by Alley (2000) from GISP2 ice core data. The time scale shows years before modern time, which is shown at the right hand side of the diagram. The rapid temperature rise to the left indicate the final part of the even more pronounced temperature increase following the last ice age. The temperature scale at the right hand side of the upper panel suggests a very approximate comparison with the global average temperature (see comment below). The GISP2 record ends around 1855, and the red dotted line indicate the approximate temperature increase since then. The small reddish bar in the lower right indicate the extension of the longest global temperature record (since 1850), based on meteorological observations (HadCRUT3). The lower panel shows the past atmospheric CO2 content, as found from the EPICA Dome C Ice Core in the Antarctic (Monnin et al. 2004). The Dome C atmospheric CO2 record ends in the year 1777.
DirkH says:
February 22, 2012 at 9:47 am
“And lest someone say, “but the build-up of heat in the oceans due to the “energy imbalance”; it is obvious that there must be warming”: My answer would be : if the climate system worked in such a simplistic way, WHY USE SUPERCOMPUTERS AT ALL if that is so easy? Again, a grossly expensive and illogical enterprise!”
DirkH – I agree with you about GCMs and modeling. Many topics could be discussed (i.e. governing equations, stability of the numerical schemes, well-posedness, BCs, ICs, source terms…). Unfortunately, if anyone brings up anything remotely technical about numerical modeling, supposedly well-informed visitors like Mr. Connolley head for the hills. I always try though, but it usually ends with something like “our climate models are great, look how accurate they are, we need more money for supercomputers…”. [Sigh]
P.S. I’m STILL waiting for someone to point me to a document where all of the equations used in NASA GISS Model E are written down. Just the governing equations for all of the physics. Forget the numerical methods for the time being (which are even more important). Sadly, no one has taken me up on that…not even at NASA (Gavin has to blog, you know).
I finally get a chance to check the comments on my post and find… a William Connolley acting very much like the William Connolley of Wikipedia infamy.
My first question is, did this guy actually read my AR5 review, which charges the IPCC with neglecting all solar variables other than Total Solar Insolation (TSI)?
Connolley cites a bunch of AR4 sections that supposedly rebut my charge, but as anyone who has examined AR4 already knows, the only solar effect given any weight in AR4 is TSI.
Connolley cites the AR4 section on pre-industrial climate change, where the language is perfectly clear. It refers to “changes in solar radiation.” That is TSI, the sun’s output of electromagnetic radiation.
He also cites AR4 section 9.4.1.5, which refers to “solar forcing” such as ” the solar forcing reconstruction by Hoyt and Schatten (1993).” Sounds a bit more propitious, like it COULD refer to forcings beyond TSI, but no. Hoyt and Schatten (1993) is a TSI reconstruction, as are all the other solar forcings considered in this section.
Another connolley comment cites AR4’s FAQ9.2: “Can the Warming of the 20th Century be Explained by Natural Variability?”
The only solar variable considered here is “solar output,” or TSI. Could it be that Mr. Connolley is getting confused by the fact that this section does refer to the solar cycle, making it seem that they must be accounting the possible effects of the solar magnetic variation that occurs over this cycle?
But “solar output” is very specific. It refers only to Total Solar Insolation. That is, electromagnetic radiation only. So its pretty clear that Connolley knows he is citing a bunch of references to TSI effects only.
He even quotes a sentence referring to a particular solar reconstruction:
Surely he is aware that this is a TSI reconstruction.
In short, he is engaging in the exact same omitted variable fraud that my review documents in AR5. He is simply citing AR4’s pretense to have fully considered solar effects when it only considered TSI effects. To put the cherry on top, after citing a bunch of TSI only references to rebut the claim that the IPCC only looking at TSI, Connolley asks: “how do you explain the author’s apparent ignorance of the AR4?”
Poor Wikipedia, again afflicted by this Vesuvius of disinformation.
Connolley also claims that my post fails to address recent warming. Again, did he actually read the review? It contains an extended discussion of the IPCC’s lunatic claims that recent warming (by which they mean from the late 70’s to the late 90’s) cannot be attributed to high 20th century solar activity because the level of this activity remained steady (at very high levels) over the second half of the century.
And he says that he wants to see “recent” papers on the recent warming. Is he aware that there has been no warming since the late 90’s for anyone to write about? The MOST recent temperature trend is flat. But more fundamentally, he seems to be claiming that we should only look at NEW research that has come out since AR4, presumably on the grounds that AR4 was authoritative on all the research up to 2007. But as noted in the first post-script, AR4 perpetrated the exact same omitted variable fraud that AR5 is perpetrating (something I documented at the time in submitted comments on the AR4 draft).
Connolley even calls me a liar for saying that the AR5 draft specifies that the warming effect of CO2 is 40 times stronger than the warming effect of solar variation over the 1750-2010 period: “Yes, but he just made it up. It isn’t true. You’ll notice he provides no evidence for the claim.”
I agreed not to quote the AR5 draft, but I did provide a link to the equally ludicrous ratio of 14 to 1 used in AR4. (The exact number is 13.833.) Does Connolley want to call that a lie too? The raw evidence (solar climate correlations vs. CO2 climate correlations) says that the sun is the much stronger driver, yet the IPCC assumes that CO2 has many times the warming effect of solar variation. In for a penny in for a pound apparently. The exact AR5 FOD ratio is 39.857. And I’ve actually looked at it.