New global water vapor findings contradict second draft of IPCC Assessment Report 5 (AR5)
Guest post by Forrest M. Mims III
I was an “expert reviewer” for the first and second order drafts of the 2013 Intergovernmental Report on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report 5 (AR5). The names and reviews of all the reviewers will be posted online when the final report is released. Meanwhile, reviewers are required to not publish the draft report. However, the entire second draft report was leaked on December 13, 2012, without IPCC permission and has subsequently received wide publicity.
My review mainly concerns the role of water vapor, a key component of global climate models. A special concern is that a new paper on a major global water vapor study (NVAP-M) needs to be cited in the final draft of AR5.
This study shows no up or down trend in global water vapor, a finding of major significance that differs with studies cited in AR5. Climate modelers assume that water vapor, the principle greenhouse gas, will increase with carbon dioxide, but the NVAP-M study shows this has not occurred. Carbon dioxide has continued to increase, but global water vapor has not. Today (December 14, 2012) I asked a prominent climate scientist if I should release my review early in view of the release of the entire second draft report.
He suggested that I do so, and links to the official IPCC spreadsheet version and a Word version of my review are now posted near the top of my homepage at www.forrestmims.org.
The official IPCC spreadsheet version of my review is here. A Word version is here.
A PDF version (prepared by Anthony from the Word version) is here: Mims_IPCC_AR5_SOD_Review
A relevant passage from the AR5 review by Mimms (added by Anthony):
The obvious concern to this reviewer, who has measured total column water vapor for 22.5 years, is the absence of any mention of the 2012 NVAP-M paper. This paper concludes,
“Therefore, at this time, we can neither prove nor disprove a robust trend in the global water vapor data.”
Non-specialist readers must be made aware of this finding and that it is at odds with some earlier papers. Many cited papers in AR5 have yet to be published, but the first NVAP-M paper was published earlier this year (after the FOD reviews) and is definitely worthy of citation: Thomas H. Vonder Haar, Janice L. Bytheway and John M. Forsythe. Weather and climate analyses using improved global water vapor observations. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L15802, 6 PP., 2012. doi:10.1029/2012GL052094.
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Dear Werner Brozek, this is a part where I am not knowledgeable, but as I private citizen, I agree with you that carbon capture is likely much too expensive and will likely never be applied in large scale. This technology is mainly hyped to make it politically easier to build new coal power plants by suggesting that later a carbon capture facility will be build.
But let’s see. Human ingenuity is almost unlimited. Being able to make money with reducing greenhouse gas emissions will unleash a lot of creativity.
Victor Venema says:
December 20, 2012 at 12:21 pm
“Being able to make money with reducing greenhouse gas emissions will unleash a lot of creativity.”
Ouch, The money being made is all going to be a large incremental cost to every man, woman and child on the planet, and a deadly cost to the poorest in the world, for zero additional value, well other than for making already rich people richer.
And to put this comment into perspective, I would probably be called a raging capitalist (capitalistic pig??) by about 3/4 the planet.
Victor Venema says: December 20, 2012 at 12:21 pm
But let’s see. Human ingenuity is almost unlimited. Being able to make money with reducing greenhouse gas emissions will unleash a lot of creativity.
=====================
Yes, indeed. It started years ago.
Victor Venema says:
December 20, 2012 at 12:21 pm
Dear Werner Brozek, this is a part where I am not knowledgeable, but as I private citizen, I agree with you that carbon capture is likely much too expensive and will likely never be applied in large scale.
See: http://ukipscotland.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/longannet-carbon-capture-scheme-scrapped/
“Environment Canada wants to spend $6 billion to reduce the atmospheric concentration of a trace molecule by 0.01 ppmv, and assuming there is any advantage in doing so, supposedly cutting global temps by 0.0007°C.”
When an oil company in our province asked for input for their carbon capture plan, I wrote about the huge costs for little gain. They thanked me for my input but it made no difference.
@Victor Venema:
A couple of things.
I never said I do not believe CO2 is increasing. It seems to be on an ever increasing slope upwards. It seems that man’s burning of fossil fuels is contributing… but also as well, it seems that the warm up since the LIA has contributed to some of the release.
I am saying there is no evidence that CO2 is a driver of climate. The models that the IPCC creates (that you say does not technically count as research) are not evidence of CO2 driving climate.
Rather than be verbose, please point to something concrete that shows CO2 drives our climate. Substantiate the claim that the warming up through 1998, was caused with at least 90% confidence, by increases in man made CO2.
The IPCC claims Catastrophic not me, so why would I need to define it? But I will humor you and say that the costs implemented to try to control climate are catastrophic. People are suffering and many deaths can be blamed on policies created as a result of the IPCC. Would you like proof of that? Do you feel any amount of shame for helping promote death?
Victor Venema wrote:
“If you would like to make the sun a credible alternative hypothesis, you will have to find a physically possible amplification mechanism (the direct influence of the solar radiation is much too small).”
+++++
Nice try by stating that a small change in solar irradiance is all that is claimed in many studies which show the sun has more of an effect on climate than simply is TSI. You must be aware of these studies. Your only point can be that you want other people to ignore the science that is so inconvenient to your IPCC brethren. There is much more evidence that is backed up by observation (which you confuse with correlation). Consider several theories which bare out that the sun’s solar winds affect our magnetic flux, which in turn affects cosmic rays… where there is credible evidence that cloud formation follows these changes. That the sun provides energy which affects whether patterns leading to conditions described by ENSO. People have made predictions based on these conditions… and unlike your IPCC, they have not been invalidated by observation. People predicted that the warming would stop and it did. IPCC predicted it would increase and it did not.
I purposely am not putting forth the effort to provide detail since there’s a plethora of good science which is completely ignored because it’s not funded by tax payer money and is inconvenient to your singular fantasy to prove a hypothesis with wildly dangerous claims. Please spare me with your (and IPCC’s) claim that only TSI should be considered as the sun’s contribution to our climate.
@ur momisugly Victor Venema: Surely you has looked into Bob Tisdale’s work regarding ENSO and cloud formation and the energy budget being directly affected by cloud changes. The sun has an inconvenient way of interacting with our planet such that there are feedback mechanisms that you must have looked into. That you ignore them, doesn’t mean they do not exist. That you can only consider CO2 as a driver of climate is silly given the track record and tax payer money spent to the detriment of mankind’s right to prosper. If your CAGW theory and models had any value, they’d have some sort of track record beyond the correlation.
Main publications Victor Venema: http://www2.meteo.uni-bonn.de/mitarbeiter/venema/articles/
Werner Brozek says: December 20, 2012 at 5:55 pm
================================
Here Werner Brozek touches on how the oil companies have moved to capitalize on the global warming panic. This aspect is buried deeply in the story at the link he provides. CO2 is a most useful and valuable commodity in oil production, used in secondary recovery efforts after initial production has depleted reservoir pressures. The depleted field can be re-pressurized by injecting CO2 into the reservoir, and this very efficiently flushes out residual oil. For a large field, this can mean billions in additional profits from the field. But the “capture and storage” of the necessary CO2 is costly, and the oil companies are trying to hook some public funding to pay for this. BP is a leader in such schemes, and actually abets the global warmers in their efforts to mobilize public opinion behind their AGW agenda, and other big oil companies do likewise. The public cost of enhancing oil company profits are shuffled off on a gullible public. So, when you hear a global warmer screeching about “shills for the oil industry” you know he speaks the truth, for he is one. Ironic, is it not?
MiCro: “Ouch, The money being made is all going to be a large incremental cost to every man, woman and child on the planet, and a deadly cost to the poorest in the world, for zero additional value, well other than for making already rich people richer.”
We’ll see how expensive it will be. That depends on human ingenuity. And it also depends a lot on whether we start soon. It would have, for example, been good if all the houses we have build since 1990 would have had good isolation. That would have saved a lot of money as isolating an existing building is much more expensive. The faster the adaptation will have to be organized, the more it will cost. Thus, ironically, with your successful delay tactics, you guys are responsible for much of the costs.
In Germany energy is more expensive per Joule, but families do not pay more for energy as in the US. They use less, live in better isolated houses and drive in smaller cars, etc.
I am not sure whether the consequences of climate change would be catastrophic, but as a citizen I do expect that additional weather related damage and averting danger will very costly. If you say that there is “zero additional value”, does that mean that you are denying even the climate change that has already happened?
Who will pay for the costs (the poor or the rich) is a political decision. Given the political position of most climate “skeptics”, it sounds very, very weird, that you act as if you cared about larger changes in wealth.
Whether mitigating climate change is expensive does not change the facts about the climate. Let’s first try to agree up on that.
Victor Venema says:
December 22, 2012 at 12:28 pm
“It would have, for example, been good if all the houses we have build since 1990 would have had good isolation. That would have saved a lot of money as isolating an existing building is much more expensive. ”
While in general I don’t disagree, adding extra insulation during construction increases the cost of the home, and every time you create new regulations such as this, it increases costs, and forces reductions someplace else.
“In Germany energy is more expensive per Joule, but families do not pay more for energy as in the US. They use less, live in better isolated houses and drive in smaller cars, etc.”
This touches on something that really makes me mad. I like high performance cars, I also take long trips, sometimes with a SUV full of people, while towing a trailer. And as above high gasoline prices is a big impact on my ability to afford doing this. As you note, Europeans who are not rich, drive very small cars, if they have a car at all. While many of the people responsible for your gas tax are rich, and drive large Merc’s, BMW’s, etc,etc. The cost of gas doesn’t impact them, it impacts “average” people who drive Smart cars, and Mini’s. Now, that might be okay in Europe, but it is not acceptable to me (nor it appears most Americans).
“I am not sure whether the consequences of climate change would be catastrophic, but as a citizen I do expect that additional weather related damage and averting danger will very costly. If you say that there is “zero additional value”, does that mean that you are denying even the climate change that has already happened?”
Climate change has happened, though I’m not sure how much after how much the actual station data is tortured to get a rising trend, but the question is how much is from CO2, which I believe is maybe 0.2 degrees. To put that into perspective, there are location on the planet that can see a 60F Rise/Fall in the same day, and where I live can see 110F swing from the lowest temps in winter, to the highest temps in summer. There is no reason this fraction of a degree should be the cause of the concern it’s been elevated to.
It also seems to me that all of the temp change we’ve measured could be just a small increase in the area between the northern and southern jet streams, which would allow tropical air to cover a bit more area. There’s also no evidence IMO, that makes this warming trend unusual or unique.
“Who will pay for the costs (the poor or the rich) is a political decision. Given the political position of most climate “skeptics”, it sounds very, very weird, that you act as if you cared about larger changes in wealth.”
Why should anyone have to pay for it?
I noticed your post on the physics of CO2 warming, I’ve also spent time examining this, my conclusion is that the 10u-14u absorption bands of CO2 are trivial. First to radiate out the same number of joules that one hour of Sunlight provides at .5u will take 20 hours at 10u, and there’s no evidence in the daily Rise/Fall data that this exists.
But here’s an experiment, I live in Ohio, ~ 41North Lat, being in Germany it’s probably cold there, so you can maybe try this. It’s 30F outside today, and I have a single pane of glass in a storm door. Your hand is pretty sensitive to temps, go outside and without touching the glass see how close you have to get your hand to feel any warmth from the IR that’s radiating through the glass. With 70F inside, and 30F outside, I couldn’t feel any warmth, can you?
The amount of IR present should be far larger than any DLR from CO2.
The premiss that this IR is causing catastrophic warming is absurd.
Mario Lento: “I am saying there is no evidence that CO2 is a driver of climate. The models that the IPCC creates (that you say does not technically count as research) are not evidence of CO2 driving climate.”
And the IPCC also does not develop any climate models. They are developed by a number of weather services, research institutes and universities. The IPCC does coordinate some of the simulations that are performed with these models, so that these simulations can be easily compared to each other. If you’d like you could see that as coordinating a small part of science.
Mario Lento: “Rather than be verbose, please point to something concrete that shows CO2 drives our climate. Substantiate the claim that the warming up through 1998, was caused with at least 90% confidence, by increases in man made CO2.”
What would you see a concrete evidence that an apple falls down due to gravity? Are you sure it is not due to electrical forces between the apple and the Earth or due to cosmic rays from outer space bombarding the apple down?
To me the measurement of the absorption spectrum of CO2 and all the other greenhouse gasses in the laboratory and in experiments clearly show that these greenhouse gasses absorb sufficient radiation. We also understand physically why these absorption spectra look like the way they do. If we put these absorption spectra into an radiative transfer model, we get warming at the surface. These radiative transfer models are used in many sciences and many implementations of them have been compared to each other.
That is about as direct as any scientific phenomenon gets. Which step do you not find convincing? The difficult part are the feedbacks in the climate system. For example the cloud feedback, which you mention, as well as feedback via changes in the land surface. I have worked on both topics, not on the feedback directly, but in trying to understand the physics better and to measure cloud properties more accurately.
The existence of a feedback does not mean that it will be a negative feedback, it may also be a positive one or it may be weak. Global models do not model clouds and the land surface very well. Thus in this aspect they may well contain errors. Especially as experiments are not possible in climatology. Still, I feel it would be highly immoral to simply assume that there exists a strong negative feedback without any proof.
Mario Lento: “Do you feel any amount of shame for helping promote death?”
I could ask the same, but let’s not go down to this level. I am surprised that this comment was not deleted. Are trolls not removed if they fight science?
Mario Lento: “where there is credible evidence that cloud formation follows these changes.”
Could you cite that study? As far as I know, physicists (maybe I should stress here that they are not climatologists) did experiments as found that cosmic rays cannot create a significant amount of clouds. You are the one who only has correlations.
Mario Lento: “That the sun provides energy which affects whether patterns leading to conditions described by ENSO.”
The sun provides the energy for any climatic phenomenon, including climate change.
Mario Lento: “I purposely am not putting forth the effort to provide detail since there’s a plethora of good science which is completely ignored because it’s not funded by tax payer money and is inconvenient to your singular fantasy to prove a hypothesis with wildly dangerous claims.”
It is a pity that you are not referring to that work, that would make your argument stronger. I am sure that some scientists did look at these arguments and found them unconvincing.
That not more people are listening to you and your fellow climate ostriches is because you have such a tradition of misinformation. Every post at WUWT on a topic where I am knowledgeable contained serious mistakes or missed information that the reader needed to understand the post. Consequently, this blog has build a reputation that it does not pay scientifically to follow up its stories.
This guest post is a good example of this. And no one here complained about being misinformed. No one said, I do not believe in climate change, but Forest Mims misinformed me and that is wrong. I do not like being misinformed and I feel that this gives our community a bad reputation. Please, Mr Watts never ever have a guest post by Mr Mims again.
The same goes for a similar misquotation by Alec Rawls, who got a guest post at WUWT after that. And now also Matt Ridley misrepresent a cited paper in the Wall Street Journal. Anthony, when will Ridley do a guest post?
Happy Christmas to everyone.
MiCro says:
Life’s rough. I like certain things too, like sushi. That doesn’t mean that society should subsidize my purchase of these things, whether that subsidy is direct or is indirect (because I am not paying the environmental costs for the product).
Frankly, what you believe interests me much less than what the scientists in the field believe.
I hit “submit” prematurely on my lost post.
To put it in another perspective, 15000 years ago, the global climate was somewhere around 5 to 7 C cooler and my current location in Rochester was covered by a mile or two of glacial ice. And, sea levels were more than 100 meters lower than they are today.
Again, while I am happy you have done your examinations, others have done much more sophisticated calculations. And, while the effect of CO2 may not be huge in percentage terms, it is big enough. Look, during the last ice age, temperatures were only about 2% cooler on an absolute temperature scale. Nonetheless, that was enough to make a considerable difference in our climate and sea levels.
joelShore said
“others have done much more sophisticated calculations.”
Of course they have, that’s how they got the exact value for climate sensitivity, oh wait…
And 0.2C is less than 1/1000 the absolute temp, that’s why i suggested an experiment to show how insignificant the warming from the ir actually is.
joeldshore: “To put it in another perspective, 15000 years ago, the global climate was somewhere around 5 to 7 C cooler and my current location in Rochester was covered by a mile or two of glacial ice. And, sea levels were more than 100 meters lower than they are today.”
If I were part of this world-wide conspiracy of climatologists, I would at least have voted to say that the temperature is going down. That scares people much more than global warming. Still any change in climate is costly as the infrastructure has been build based on the current climate. And indeed the current sea level, I would add as Dutch citizen.
MiCro, keep on driving and reading WUWT to relieve the cognitive dissonance.
Victor, I don’t have any “cognitive dissonance” from driving, I have it from observations of nightly cooling, and a lack of any measurable warming for all this co2.
It’s sad that warmists ignore
the salient points, and goes after the irrelevant.
MiCro, Another method of judging climate given the Hansen meddling
Koppen Climate Classification based on native plants.
GRAPH: decadal Koppen boundaries through the 20th C.
GRAPH: Length of Arctic Ice Melt (Indicative of shortening of the summer season)
GRAPH: Northern Hemisphere Snow Fall (Indicative of the early onset of cold days in the fall)
MiCro, my apologies for my stupid dissonant comment. I am running a slight fever and forgot my manners.
However, do you really think that the existence of variability is an argument against a trend in the mean?
Do you think we did not have any economic growth the last 23 years *because* of the large differences in income and wealth? Do you think Americans are not getting bigger, both in height and weight, because there is such a huge variability in height and weight? Do you think there is no difference in the precipitation amount between the US and the tropics (he, some days it doesn’t rain at all)?
A simple yes or no would be great and not another detour into another topic.
Except maybe that I am curious what you think of being misinformed by Forest Mims, Alec Rawls and Matt Ridley. Why doesn’t anybody respond to that here? Don’t you mind?
I’m not saying there isn’t a change in the mean, just that It’s insignificant, and that only a small part is due to co2.
I base that on no evidence of a loss of cooling, and that cooling is well regulated by water vapor, not co2. There’s evidence that the natural daily variability of temps without water vapor to be a multiple of the variability with water vapor.
I’ve also suggested simple examinations any one can do to show that any heat reflected by co2 isn’t causing warming.
And while it will be a while before I have time to work on your data, you have it as well, and I think if you looked at cooling as I did (follow the link in my name on earlier posts) the evidence is clear, whatever is warming the planet, it is mostly no co2.
Victor Venema says:
December 24, 2012 at 9:29 am
….However, do you really think that the existence of variability is an argument against a trend in the mean?….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Which Trend?
Graph
Graph
Graph
Graph
Graph
Graph
Graph
Graph
Graph
Oh, I’m not sure if there are errors in those posts or not, if there are i think its inportant to point them out, so it doesn’t negatively effect our cause.
but I’ve come to my own conclusions about the topic, and their errors are not being forced on me by the government .
MiCro, it is not too difficult to compare the one sentence quoted by Anthony Watts from the article with the paragraph in which is was written. That would be sufficient to see that the suggestion that there is no trend is wrong, but that the authors wrote that they did not compute a trend.
Gail Combs, I am no expert for paleo climate. However, after the above mentioned three misquotes in one week and after having found serious problems in every single post on WUWT on topics where I am knowledgeable, e.g. two posts on homogenization of climate data.
http://variable-variability.blogspot.com/2012/07/blog-review-of-watts-et-al-2012.html
http://variable-variability.blogspot.com/2012/07/investigation-of-methods-for.html
After all this misinformation, you can probably guess what I expect to find, if I would invest my precious life time to investigate the truth behind your list of graphs.
[Mrs] Combs, what do you think of the misquotation by Anthony Watts in this guest post?
Victor Venema says:
December 24, 2012 at 3:30 pm
“[Mrs] Combs, what do you think of the misquotation by Anthony Watts in this guest post?”
That Anthony didn’t misquote anyone. Victor, examine the first words vewy vewy closely:
“Another IPCC AR5 reviewer speaks out: no trend in global water vapor
Posted on December 14, 2012 by Guest Blogger
New global water vapor findings contradict second draft of IPCC Assessment Report 5 (AR5)
Guest post by Forrest M. Mims III”
Victor Venema says:
December 20, 2012 at 12:21 pm
“Being able to make money with reducing greenhouse gas emissions will unleash a lot of creativity.”
Yep. From the German renewables subsidies sprang forth the mightiest lobbyist organisation the world has ever seen. They understood that their future lies in
a) improving their product
or
b) lobbying for more subsidies.
Guess what they did? Duh, the easier one of the two!
@victor venema” You wrote “Do I understand you right, that you are even doubting that the CO2 concentration is increasing?”
If you read what I wrote, I did not say, or imply that. But it’s evident that YOU believe anyone who does not think CO2 drives climate must also believe CO2 is not increasing. You have failed to give one single piece of evidence that CO2 drives climate. Only correlation… which ended 15 to 17 years ago.
@Victor Venema:
YOU tried to answer this:
Mario Lento: “Rather than be verbose, please point to something concrete that shows CO2 drives our climate. Substantiate the claim that the warming up through 1998, was caused with at least 90% confidence, by increases in man made CO2.”
with this:
What would you see a concrete evidence that an apple falls down due to gravity? Are you sure it is not due to electrical forces between the apple and the Earth or due to cosmic rays from outer space bombarding the apple down?
To me the measurement of the absorption spectrum of CO2 and all the other greenhouse gasses in the laboratory and in experiments clearly show that these greenhouse gasses absorb sufficient radiation. We also understand physically why these absorption spectra look like the way they do. If we put these absorption spectra into an radiative transfer model, we get warming at the surface. These radiative transfer models are used in many sciences and many implementations of them have been compared to each other.
That is about as direct as any scientific phenomenon gets. Which step do you not find convincing? The difficult part are the feedbacks in the climate system. For example the cloud feedback, which you mention, as well as feedback via changes in the land surface. I have worked on both topics, not on the feedback directly, but in trying to understand the physics better and to measure cloud properties more accurately.
The existence of a feedback does not mean that it will be a negative feedback, it may also be a positive one or it may be weak. Global models do not model clouds and the land surface very well. Thus in this aspect they may well contain errors. Especially as experiments are not possible in climatology. Still, I feel it would be highly immoral to simply assume that there exists a strong negative feedback without any proof.
+++++
I asked for evidence and you gave me the apple and gravity question… and then were verbose but never gave an answer with evidence. Just hypothesis and ideology. But you used correlation as the obvious answer. I would say that if the apple sometimes fell up…. and sometimes fell down, gravity would only be a hypothesis.