Take a look at Figure 1.4 from the AR5 draft (shown below). The gray bars in Fig 1.4 are irrelevant (because they flubbed the definition of them), the colored bands are the ones that matter because they provide bounds for all current and previous IPCC model forecasts, FAR, SAR, TAR, AR4.
Look for the surprise in the graph.
Here is the caption for this figure from the AR5 draft:
Estimated changes in the observed globally and annually averaged surface temperature (in °C) since 1990 compared with the range of projections from the previous IPCC assessments. Values are aligned to match the average observed value at 1990. Observed global annual temperature change, relative to 1961–1990, is shown as black squares (NASA (updated from Hansen et al., 2010; data available at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/); NOAA (updated from Smith et al., 2008; data available at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cmb-faq/anomalies.html#grid); and the UK Hadley Centre (Morice et al., 2012; data available at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/) reanalyses). Whiskers indicate the 90% uncertainty range of the Morice et al. (2012) dataset from measurement and sampling, bias and coverage (see Appendix for methods). The coloured shading shows the projected range of global annual mean near surface temperature change from 1990 to 2015 for models used in FAR (Scenario D and business-as-usual), SAR (IS92c/1.5 and IS92e/4.5), TAR (full range of TAR Figure 9.13(b) based on the GFDL_R15_a and DOE PCM parameter settings), and AR4 (A1B and A1T). The 90% uncertainty estimate due to observational uncertainty and internal variability based on the HadCRUT4 temperature data for 1951-1980 is depicted by the grey shading. Moreover, the publication years of the assessment reports and the scenario design are shown.
So let’s see how readers see this figure – remember ignore the gray bands as they aren’t part of the model scenarios.
I’ll have a follow up with the results later, plus an essay on what else was found in the IPCC AR5 draft report related to this.
IPCC model forecasts, FAR, SAR, TAR, AR4
And the upcoming forecast, FUBAR.
I am amazed that ipcc have included this. But of course it is only in the draft. There is plenty of time for them to “adjust” the data and have a more “model friendly” graph in the final submission.
What?
Cynical?
Me?
Anthony:
The “committed warming” which was predicted by the AR4 is apparent on the graph. /sarc off
Richard
It appears they now have to be HONEST? Oh the horror.. I wonder how many billions they scoffed down to give us this conclusion? They can’t hide anymore.
when you see experimental data error bars larger than the error bars in the models, you should know that something it is really, really wrong.
Observations don’t match any of the IPCC model forecasts !! Plus the graph shows no observed warming for the last 15 years.
Will this graph be in the summary for policy makers?
No noble hockey-sticks?
What I find surprising it that from 2000 to 2012, the Observed temperature trend is negative, where the models all predict a positive trend.
Even more surprising is that the latest temperature from 2012 is below all of the model forecasts.
If you look carefully you will find the curve from 1990 first going up an then down. We will continue to fall. Global cooling is here7
How does the to date 2012 data compare? The two blips appear to represent the 2011 data without the error bar range added. The same error bar range added to the 2011 data would throw the top of the bar to just within the bottom of the model range. but if 2012 is lower still, then a further cooling trend might be indicated
Seems SAR is about the only report even bothering to care about.
FAR is a joke its margins are massive.
TAR and 4th both have huge margins and of course at best the data is at the very very bottom of the huge margin.
Wasn’t SAR the report where they walked back a good bit from FAR and put alot more natural effects into the argument?
I really don’t see how they can post this in the final draft… it completely destroys 3 of the 4 reports and makes the “new” research look worse then the “old” research.
If you look carefully you will find the curve from 1992 first going up an then down. We will continue to fall. Global cooling is here.
With the benefit of hindsight, 5 years ago (AR4) and 10 years of flat trend at 0.4, they are projecting a rise to from 0.6 to 0.95! by 2015. Since 2007 to 2012, they essentially have remained flat and below the projected “red”. The observed looks like there has been no statistical warming since 1995 and this despite the Hansen temperature record step-up “forcing” done to break the 1930s temp records. No wonder there is so much gnashing of teeth, loss of sleep and nastiness among the warmaratti.
16 votes (compared to 196) see “In the middle of the model scenario ranges” or above??? Looks like the warmunists don’t like what they see.
Not one of the warmunists see what I can see? Admittedly I am not a scientist, and I am sure I must be missing something that must be obvious to these people. Please tell me what I am missing.
But they quote the IPCC incessantly, and now they are going to have to cope with this bombshell. My guess is they will be over here in their droves getting paid 10c a pop to vote on the poll. And maybe 20c to post their scientific explanation as to why my eyes are wrong.
PS I did not get paid my 20c from “Big Oil” for posting this comment.
Since the question is what do the readers think of this, I’ll give my interpretation — pointing out the obvious maybe.
I guess the observed is the global temperature derived from the surface temperature record. I’m not certain of the term “whiskers”, but I think it refers to confidence interval “bars” on the observations. The caption uses the term “range” and I think that means any observed value that falls outside of the colored bands cannot be accounted for by a particular model. Based on this, the graph says that all models are severely overpredicting the observed, and that many of the observed represent “impossible” values for the models.
Those conclusions are counter to the entire premise of the IPCC, so there must be something I’m not getting.
First post for a long time reader. Great web site.
kwik says:
December 14, 2012 at 12:25 pm
No noble hockey-sticks?
——————–
I see a hockey stick but it is not going up… the handle us going flat on the right…
So the actual temps have been far lower that the model projections…..
Sounds to me like Hansen, Mann, Gore, et al, haven’t added enough “adjustment” yet???
Or perhaps the lack of NHL hockey this year has caused a dramatic drop in the hockey stick????
;>P
But…But…2012 is the hottest year EVAH!…
*whisper* in the U.S. (well some states anyway…)
I’ll have Burt Rutan have a look at it (LOL)
It doesn’t take a genius to see at a glance that most of the observations are either within the lower grey band or within the lower model estimates.
So WTF were eleven voters (at the time of this comment) actually seeing when they voted for “Above the model scenario ranges?” Duh? Any one of the eleven care to comment?
It is a good thing that Rawls shared the report. The graph above would never have made it into that report. Consensus, anyone?
R. de Haan says:
December 14, 2012 at 12:44 pm
“I’ll have Burt Rutan have a look at it (LOL)”
Let Gjaever, Moerner and the rest of the realists have a look too! (Double LOL!!!)
Imagine the cognitive dissonance this graph must create in the Warmist mind. They will have “explanations” for it of course: “Aerosols from increased industry in China, for example, are increasing planetary albedo, and the deep oceans are concealing some of the warmth”, is what they may claim. “This lull in the warming is only temporary”, they’ll assure themselves. Then, they will go full-bore into their favorite litany of “ice caps melting, storms getting more severe, more floods, droughts, fires, and the piece de resistance, the mother of all “proofs” we are now suffering the catastrophic effects of manmade warming, Sandy.
The relationship had between infringements upon the natural water vapor cycle (supported by Tsunami debris affect upon Arctic Sea Ice changes) and near surface temperature feedbacks has clearly not been adequately investigated (Atmospheric Drying/ Ocean surface energy displacement >700meters). …Atmospheric Rivers increase ice sheets and their storage process rates for heavier atmospheric gases….. Are the idiots bullying the rest with a system wide micro-economic leach that requires ignoring actual causality? …All I have is a kite, but my answer is Yes they are.
Ocean originating ash fall disruption of water vapor cycle during Ice Age events would explain rapid desertification……
IPCC working group vote in January 2013 – “Be it recommended that this graph not be shown and a whole bunch of other made-up ones with a line going up be shown in its place” – 11 vote Yes; 1 Abstention and 2 votes No – therefore IPCC working group votes 110% in favor.
10 of the 22 years have observed temps lower than any/all of the models. huh.
1) Temperature plateau
IPCC shows NO warming for 15 years from 1997 to 2012.
2) “ANNUAL temperature change” of ~ 0.35 C/YEAR = 3.5C/decade!!!
IPCC states as “Observed global annual temperature change, relative to 1961–1990, is shown as black squares “.
i.e. a ROFLOL editing error only 1700% too high. It should probably read “temperature difference averaged annually.”
3) Global cooling
IPCC shows a massive cooling of ~ -0.18 C from 1990 to 1992 or -0.9 Deg C/decade for the SAR scenario design. i.e. > -450% BELOW the IPCC’s mean of model trends of +0.2 C/decade.
4) Ignoring climate persistence
The conventional standard deviation of uncertainties shown (gray) is probably only half of the total Hurst – Kolmogorov Standard Deviation measured in the ice cores. See
Markonis, Y., and D. Koutsoyiannis, Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics in paleoclimate reconstructions, European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2010, Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 12, Vienna, EGU2010-14816, European Geosciences Union, 2010. Presentation slide 10.
The IPCC models are failing to reproduce the temperature (despte the 2-sigma error bars) because are severely failing to reproduce the large natural multidecadal oscillations that are likely astronomically induced. As shown in my paper.
The astronomical based model I propose agrees far better with the temperature:
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model_1
And properly reconstructs the temperature before 2000!
Because my paper is published and peer reviewed, and the IPCC is supposed to take into account all scientific literature, not just the AGW literature, may somebody write them and ask them to add a figure with my model just in case it may work better that their GCMs?
Far, a long long way to run,
Tar, a needle pulling thread,
Sar, a
damn, can’t make it work
This is definitely an inconvenient chart which will be omitted from the final homogenised version, as it clearly demonstrates the pointlessness of the IPCC.
Oh the weather outside is frightful,
But the fire is so delightful,
And since we’ve no place to go,
Let It Rain! Let It Rain! Let It Rain!
with apologies to Sammy Cahn & Jule Styne 1945
5) Actual 2008 & 2011 temperatures BELOW/OUTSIDE the uncertainty ranges of AR4.
I.e. the AR4 model projections are trending way too hot relative to actual global temperature evidence. This very likely shows large unaccounted for Type B standard uncertainty.
Compare Nicola Scafetta’s 2012 model which is now predicting far better temperature trends from 2000 than IPCC AR4. At the bottom of the page see Scafetta’s expanded graph since 2000 showing IPCC’s rapidly rising global warming vs Scafetta’s harmonic projection compared to actual temperatures updated monthly.
With this alignment, all they need to do is to tone the prediction down a bit to about values of SAR – and they’re good again for about next five years unless we get really significant cooling.
Obviously the observed anomolies need severely beaten with a hockey stick to make them conform to the wack job models. My apologies to other wack jobs out there, but and a very big but, you are not in the same league as these so called “scientists”. Thankyou all for my little rant. I for one have had enough of these rentseekers.
The problem with them not now showing the graph in the final report is that they will need to have a semi-plausible scientific reason for doing so. Enough people have seen the draft to make a big noise about it.
It is not obvious what that the reason they could advance might be.
Regardless of what the actual trend line for observed temperatures might indicate upon casual examination of this graph, as long as the upper values of the measurement error bars generally fall within the lower boundary of the aggregated four-model prediction zone — i.e., the zone defined within the colored areas of the graph, ignoring the portion which is gray — the claim will be made that “the climate model predictions have been verified in all major respects.”
It appears the error bars on the “measured” temperatures are larger than the range of modelled results.
Oddly the models seem to predict a greater rise in temperature just at the time the temperature actually stopped rising and started gradually dropping. Nostradamus was better.
Well, as I see it, there’s a flat line in the observed global trends from 2000 on – like in “flatline”.
May we call the IPCC-members Flatliners now? Please!
Hmmmm, If the colors are for model forecasts, what did they put in the AR4 model that caused the 1992 dip, when SAR and TAR DONT have that (obviously FAR couldn’t, because it was prior to 1992).
Looks to me like Mt. Pinatubo cooling. So then that wouldn’t be MODEL FORECAST, that would be OBSERVED DATA. And why then wouldn’t the AR4 band dip, or at least, stay level, from about 2000 to 2007, to coincide with the OBSERVED data?
Is there an estimate, model or otherwise, for future temps, in AR5? Shouldn’t there be . . ?
David, UK says:
December 14, 2012 at 12:55 pm
David, there’s nothing a reasonable amount of mind-altering substances can’t fix.
Like the Irish say: “Reality is a misperception caused by lack of alcohol!”
Air do shlàinte!
6) The 2011 data is missing the “whisker” error bounds.
7) The term “bias” for Type B standard uncertainty is NOT standard terminology and is recommended against by NIST
And that chart is with ADJUSTED data. They are cheating and still losing. I wonder how that makes them feel.
Of course the money keeps rolling in, that must be comforting for them.
“Barry L. says:
December 14, 2012 at 12:26 pm
What I find surprising it that from 2000 to 2012, the Observed temperature trend is negative, where the models all predict a positive trend.
Even more surprising is that the latest temperature from 2012 is below all of the model forecasts.”
More importantly, the latest temperature is even below the 2 sigma error bands of all the model forecasts.
It’s worse than we thought!!!!!!
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
We are cooling, folks; for how long neither kim nor the IPCC knows.
=================
Steven Goddard has many posts demonstrating that James Hansen has changed the temperature data in recent publications from the ones he published before 2000.
The “revised” versions eliminate the previous record years of the 1930s US – the dust bowl years – in favour of the current period.
“What’s happening to our climate? Was the heat wave and drought in the Eastern United States in 1999 a sign of global warming?
Empirical evidence does not lend much support to the notion that climate is headed precipitately toward more extreme heat and drought.”
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/
Factor that, plus an urban heat island effect into the above graph and the models are even further out compared to “real” data before adjustment which reduces the past and increases the present.
I also wonder how many “cool” monitoring stations simply ceased supplying data when the Soviet Union collapsed and if that had any impact on global averages.
They still have a long way to go before honesty prevails.
Imagine if those beyond reproach media outlets put this graph on their front pages and lead stories. Rioting in the streets perhaps? More likely discussion by “experts” (read warmist robots) explaining it’s only the draft prepared by a low ranking junior who has now been counselled.
Play time is over.
The world economy has tanked.
Nobody can afford the “green” vision anymore.
Give it up, history might be kinder.
let me get this straight. somebody wants me to look at draft chart that has an error in it
ignore the error and focus on a different part of the chart that may or may not be accurate.
As Urederra says “when you see experimental data error bars larger than the error bars in the models” you know you’re in trouble.
If the error bars are 0.2 C per year, then how in the hell can they make these “high confidence” statements? It seems the only time they use large error bars on the data is when they want to show that they “really do fall in the 67% C.I.” or some such nonsense. The rest of the time the average temp./anomaly of the entire planet is quite accurate I’m sure.
There’s one other thing that I see. No warming since around 1997.
Peter Miller says:
December 14, 2012 at 1:13 pm
—
Are you saying that what we have here is … An inconvenient Truth?
I hope the next version of the chart includes the dots for 2012. They should be available in a couple of months.
I assume 2013 will be (thanks to ENSO) a cool year, relative to the 21st century average. At that point, a few months after the release of AR5, the chart will start looking REALLY embarrassing.
I doubt that this chart will be allowed to go through as is. especially as it’s now been highlighted here. The presentation will change so as to be on message.
Regardless of how futile a gesture Mosher believes it to be the AR5 needs to be scrutinised so as to make sure the information within is getting to as wide an audience as possible but also explained in a manner that people may understand.
No doubt this could be spun in a way that the IPCC are happy with. they will no doubt say “look, the observations all fall within the area of one of the models therefore all our models are performing as expected”.
These things need to be explained in simple terms for the simple man and got out in media that the simple man reads. The fact that error margins so wide as to outdo the tales of old fishermen (it was THIS big, honest ) are introduced so that the displays are more convenient to the message needs to be explained.
I was having a conversation with my friend and oft business partner about the anthropogenic issue as I drove back from racing at the weekend. It’s never come up before but he looked at me as though I was mental as I tried with difficulty to explain that what he believes is not what is happening. All he could keep saying was “why would they do this” and “but everyone agrees, I read it all the time”
These are the people that need to have the facts explained to them but it needs to be done in in a manner that they can comprehend.
Having this AR5 draft on from WG1 where all the science that will be relied on is laid out is a good thing because now people with the skill set can plan ahead how they will counter the summary for policy makers when it arrives and falls down on the science it will claim supports it.
Urederra says:
December 14, 2012 at 12:22 pm
I disagree. This is the result that is to be expected when somebody tries to predict the behaviour of a chaotic system over long timescales using a wrongly initialized, limited precision simulation (that is not even capable of simulating the relevant processes correctly, but that’s not a necessary condition).
The mathematical definition of chaos tells us that such an endeavour MUST fail. I am satisfied to see the expected failure. The math is right.
Considering the graph of AR4 predictions and the observed temperature wiskers post AR4:
http://www.despair.com/consistency.html
“Consistency: Its only a Virture, If….. ”
Click the link to see the punchline and visual.
Steven Mosher says:
December 14, 2012 at 1:59 pm
let me get this straight. somebody wants me to look at draft chart that has an error in it
ignore the error and focus on a different part of the chart that may or may not be accurate.
================
Nicely sums up the “warmist” methodology 🙂
the poll, I had a brain explosion and voted for above model we all know the right answer its below. I hang my head in shame i should enter politics
I bet the IPCC won’t put THIS chart on the cover of its AR5 report!
(As it did for the hockey stick in its TAR).
It’ll be fun to see the final-draft version, which presumably will have the AR5-scenario included.
Are we sure the graph isn’t Mannian (ie: upside down)?
I have my own version of this chart which I keep up-to-date and post up every now and again (monthly numbers rather than obscure dots and bulloney ranges).
Hadcrut4, Hadcrut3 to October 2012, the average of RSS/UAH to November 2012 versus all these IPCC/Hansen forecasts.
Its not that the forecasts are wrong, the theory must be instead.
http://s12.postimage.org/kbtrs0oul/IPPC_vs_Obs_Nov_12.png
Mosher will have to wait for the final “sanitized” report, since he’s now gone from lukewarmer to warmer positions on many things.
It behooves one to check axes. This was normalized to 1990. But the reported anomaly in 1990 was greater than 0.3C shown here, in all IPCC reports. Read the climate change chapter in The Arts of Truth. Even though this chart ‘admits’ less warming than model predictions, it is still lipstick on a pig. The true divergence from past IPCC statements is substantially greater.
Not that points like experimental error bars are greater than model error (illogical unless only models reflect ‘reality’) and the estimated experimental temps are biased high by homogenization and UHI from station siting problems, are not also zingers. Put it all together correctly and one has a rather resounding refutation of the IPCC. Good that this got out in the leaked draft, because IMO would not have made final cut otherwise. Still might not.
From the abstract of Frame and Stone 2012:
The FAR prediction is the pale orange region on the graph.
@Steven Mosher,
What error? Be specific. Show your work.
Like page 1 of the Daily Mail!
@Bill Illis,
You should put Hanson’s best case scenario (I forget if that would be A or C) on the chart. I believe that the current observations would be below even that.
@Steven Mosher:
I have not read much from you lately. Could you provide some balance here? I would like to have your take on what’s happening. Could you give us a summary? As I say, I learn more from being wrong than being right. Please please give us some insight!
PS: I meant by the Daily Mail reprinting the chart above the fold on page 1 tomorrow–and periodically thereafter. (It should insert “estimated” dots for 2012.)
Here’s the caption: “Worth a million of the IPCC’s words”
The “actual” figures are provided by Hansen’s NASA GISS, where reality is adjusted constantly. It probably more than coincidence that the adjustments bring the reality into line with for forecasts. In what other area would somebody be allowed, unchallenged, to provide the analysis that verifies their own theory?
Businesses auditing (and deciding the accounting standards for) their own accounts perhaps? Pharmaceutical companies evaluating the efficacy of their own products, with test standards they themselves determine? Within business, people deciding the criteria for expense claims, and signing off (unchecked) their expense claims? In every case there are strong conflicts of interest. We should recognize this in climatology as well.
HADCRUT will probably come in at about 0.45 for 2012. (Last year was 0.40C).
beng says:
December 14, 2012 at 12:11 pm
IPCC model forecasts, FAR, SAR, TAR, AR4
And the upcoming forecast, FUBAR.
==============================================================================
Or, regarding what the models predicted and what was actually observed: SNAFU.
(Or maybe it should be: SNMAFU?)
(“M” for Models.)
I have an evolving sense that some of the major non western UN nations have let it be known that they think this AGW alarmism is utter crap and that the IPCC had better get itself back to reality with AR5. Hence the figure on global tempetrature, the recognition of solar influences via incoming ionizing radiation etc and the virtual dismissal of the link to extreme climate events.
It will be interesting to see a list of the contributors to AR5 and see whether there are as many eco rent seekers involved as distinct from actual scientists as has been the case in the past.
I hope that in five years the chart might deserve the sarcastic caption, “Hockeystick!”–with the blade pointing downwards.
Anthony
The graph would look great on a sweat shirt ( much too cold for a t shirt) and provide a great present whilst acting as a useful reminder of what the graph looked like prior to being amended in the final version of AR5
Tonyb
This looks to be very interesting. However, I have noted that there are some questions about whether the issue of solar forcing has been correctly interpreted:
http://motls.blogspot.co.nz/2012/12/ipcc-ar5-not-acknowledging.html
In light of this, I hope that commentary on AR5 will proceed cautiously, and within the context of the overall presentation in the report. However, I look forward to the essay, Anthony.
http://newzealandclimatechange.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/the-ipcc-ar5-leak-why-do-the-ipcc-object/
The global temp graph looks like HadCru, not GisTemp? Hansen is at odds with the IPCC?
I definitely see the 11-year solar cycles being reflected in the observed temps: 1992-2003 (consistent rise) 2001-2012 (flat-line) and 2010+ (beginning of drop).
Where have I seen that graph before? Hmm…
Oh yes, Spring skiing at Whistler will be a thing of the past!
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/kevster1346/wolframalpha-20120118164548020.jpg
What we are seeing is the defeat of a religion. Observations trump theory every time.
They are now at the corner of the room they painted. It should be over soon, again. 🙂
Re Bill Illis says @ December 14, 2012 at 1:01 pm
Surely that should be fervor? No uncertainty there.
O dear Mr Watts, I do trust you are not going to descend into exploring the many shades of grey previously explored by the elite?
Another caption for the chart: “Onward and Oopward”
This graph reminds me that
“Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
I don’t have to vote, since I depend on folks who are a lot smarter than I to determine what to think.
For example, these guys…
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/have-climate-change-projections-come-true
Obviously, the brilliant climate scientists are spon-on, here and always.
You guys just have to account for the proper “adjustments”.
You know, science advances and is self-correcting…as in, when myself is wrong, I corrects myself and then I claims myself was right all along.
tango says:
December 14, 2012 at 2:21 pm
the poll, I had a brain explosion and voted for above model we all know the right answer its below. I hang my head in shame i should enter politics
————
No way. You already failed the number one test……….
Never admit a mistake! Lie. Lie. Lie
cn
From the chart, it is now obvious why the super storm that hit the east coast this year was so devastating and out of the norm. We should feel lucky that we have not had one of those each of the last 15 years.
I posted a modified version of Fig. 1.4 that removes the gray bars and removes the “hindcasts” so that all bands start at their publication date to show the actual IPCC predictions:
http://www.sustainableoregon.com/ipcc_predicts.html
Thanks
JK
The original caption is too long, and yet at the same time fails to convey enough information. I suggest a caption contest. My entries are:
“You Want To Spend Six Trillion On What?”
and
“Consensus of Dunces”
2012 in Perspective so far on Six Data Sets which was not shown.
This is followed by the 2011 value which is slightly lower in all cases.
Note the bolded numbers for each data set where the lower bolded number is the highest anomaly recorded so far in 2012 and the higher one is the all time record so far. There is no comparison.
With the UAH anomaly for November at 0.281, the average for the first eleven months of the year is (-0.134 -0.135 + 0.051 + 0.232 + 0.179 + 0.235 + 0.130 + 0.208 + 0.339 + 0.333 + 0.281)/11 = 0.156. This would rank 9th if it stayed this way. 1998 was the warmest at 0.42. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in April of 1998 when it reached 0.66. The anomaly in 2011 was 0.132.
With the GISS anomaly for November at 0.68, the average for the first eleven months of the year is (0.32 + 0.37 + 0.45 + 0.54 + 0.67 + 0.56 + 0.46 + 0.58 + 0.62 + 0.68 + 0.68)/11 = 0.54. This would rank 9th if it stayed this way. 2010 was the warmest at 0.63. The highest ever monthly anomalies were in March of 2002 and January of 2007 when it reached 0.89. The anomaly in 2011 was 0.514.
With the Hadcrut3 anomaly for October at 0.486, the average for the first ten months of the year is (0.217 + 0.193 + 0.305 + 0.481 + 0.475 + 0.477 + 0.448 + 0.512+ 0.515 + 0.486)/10 = 0.411. This would rank 9th if it stayed this way. 1998 was the warmest at 0.548. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in February of 1998 when it reached 0.756. One has to back to the 1940s to find the previous time that a Hadcrut3 record was not beaten in 10 years or less. The anomaly in 2011 was 0.340.
With the sea surface anomaly for October at 0.428, the average for the first ten months of the year is (0.203 + 0.230 + 0.241 + 0.292 + 0.339 + 0.351 + 0.385 + 0.440 + 0.449 + 0.428)/10 = 0.336. This would rank 9th if it stayed this way. 1998 was the warmest at 0.451. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in August of 1998 when it reached 0.555. The anomaly in 2011 was 0.273.
With the RSS anomaly for November at 0.195, the average for the first eleven months of the year is (-0.060 -0.123 + 0.071 + 0.330 + 0.231 + 0.337 + 0.290 + 0.255 + 0.383 + 0.294 + 0.195)/11 = 0.200. This would rank 11th if it stayed this way. 1998 was the warmest at 0.55. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in April of 1998 when it reached 0.857. The anomaly in 2011 was 0.147.
With the Hadcrut4 anomaly for October at 0.518, the average for the first ten months of the year is (0.288 + 0.209 + 0.339 + 0.526 + 0.531 + 0.501 + 0.469 + 0.529 + 0.516 + 0.518)/10 = 0.443. This would rank 9th if it stayed this way. 2010 was the warmest at 0.54. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in January of 2007 when it reached 0.818. The anomaly in 2011 was 0.399.
On all six of the above data sets, a record is out of reach, but 2012 will be slightly warmer than 2011.
I learn as much from what is not said by the warmists as I do from the skeptics at these times. And this time is a doozy
Further to my last comment about the solar forcing question, this is from New Scientist:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23005-leaked-ipcc-report-reaffirms-dangerous-climate-change.html
“Climate scientists are lining up to debunk this claim, and to explain that the bloggers have simply got it wrong. “They’re misunderstanding, either deliberately or otherwise, what that sentence is meant to say,” says solar expert Joanna Haigh of Imperial College London.
Haigh says that if Rawls had read a bit further, he would have realised that the report goes on to largely dismiss the evidence that cosmic rays have a significant effect. “They conclude there’s very little evidence that it has any effect,” she says.
In fact, the report summary reaffirms that humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions are the main reason for rising temperatures. It goes on to detail the many harmful effects, from more frequent heatwaves to rising sea levels.”
I suggest an urgent review of this question, as it is potentially a distraction from your ‘bombshell’ and the ‘dirty weather’ question:
http://newzealandclimatechange.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/the-ipcc-ar5-leak-why-do-the-ipcc-object/#comments
A lot of people say things like – the IPCC models are failing to reproduce the temperature – and ascribe various reasons for this.
Perhaps some one should tell them the Sun doesn’t actually shine 24 hours a day at one quarter power.
Perhaps some one should tell them that the temperature response of that part of the Earth in actual sunlight at four times the averaged “insolation” is significantly more than minus 18 C.
Perhaps some one should tell them that they can only exclude the Sun’s insolation if they accurately calculate the maximum “blackbody” temperature response of that part of the Earth which is actually receiving insolation – which of course they haven’t because they believe the Sun shines 24 hours a day at one quarter power.
Perhaps some one should tell them that the data from the Moon indicates the Sun CAN heat to more than minus 18 C and that it takes a long time for temperatures to decrease when radiating to space is the only cooling method.
Perhaps some one should tell them that their science is BS!!
By “them” I meant the IPCC – may not be clear in above post.
Jolly hockey sticks chaps! It’s worse than we thought. Temperatures are as flat as a pancake.
How much did we spend based on those forecasts? Oops.
These people are profoundly insane.
No fraud button in the poll. So why vote? I sure couldn’t bring myself to vote for anything ‘in relation’ to IPCC falsehoods.
The divergence between the predicted and observed curves will become even more pronounced as the observed curve starts to dip and head to 0.2C BY 2030. If IPCC does not acknowledge that they have made a serious error both in science and temperature forecast, the validity of their entire report will be suspect with such a glaring error. The sooner they acknowledge their mistake the sooner meaningful dialogue and research can star which involves the sun in a major way
I think it’s worth asking the question:
Reuters report on the draft release…
“LONDON (Reuters) – International climate scientists are more certain than ever that humans are responsible for global warming, rising sea levels and extreme weather events, according to a leaked draft report by an influential panel of experts.”
Sorry, no chance of winning this in the media. Glaciers in NY are needed.
Fifteen years (soon sixteen) without warming has left pie on the face of the climate modelers. They hope desperately for a resumption of warming but it will not happen for a decade or more, if at all. It is now getting comical. The true believers are starting to spit and snarl about “stolen documents” and “interfering with science”. Makes great music.
We need this fixed, fixed now!!! It MUST be MORE EMPHATIC and HOTTER!!!!
Thus will be the Hysteric Annual Report… and the Definitely Excessive extension to it and then the HOTTER Annual report… thus leading to the….
HAR DE HAR HAR!!!
How noble to cherry-pick the start date to show the predictions in the poorest possible light. They should align the bands at 1992-and-a-half so the observations sit more nicely within the coloured stripes.
clipe says:
December 14, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Where have I seen that graph before? Hmm…
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/17840119-post4.html
I find it hard to choose one of those 3. I would say generally at the lower end of the model ranges.
Enter the
LandscheidtEddy [sorry, it has already been decided by the solar astronomy community -mod] Minimum and two newly cold decadal cycles in play by 2020; It should be interesting to see how that plays out.Computer models on climate? anyone recall the true saying GI =GO Garbage in garbage out.
Mosh is seemingly getting worse with these drive by unsubstantiated remarks. Come on Steve,what are you really trying to say? Maybe you want to be more warmist in your attitude – but at least retain some scientific integrity! Your comment is nothing more than handwaving snark IMHO……
Anthony says, ” Mosher will have to wait for the final “sanitized” report, since he’s now gone from lukewarmer to warmer positions on many things.” Yes, he folded like a cheap camera. Notice his transition from cowardly lukewarmer status to full blown warmista ever since the election. He’s looking for something.
Go Home says:
December 14, 2012 at 5:06 pm
“Sorry, no chance of winning this in the media. Glaciers in NY are needed.”
Couldn’t agree more. When so many Homo sapiens fail such a simple intelligence test as this most obviously is, then you start to question the sagacity of giving ourselves the name “wise one”. I shake my head at the temerity of all the “parrots”, those that can repeat a thing without ever understanding it.
It is what has hardened me into being in this for the genus now. Not the species.
To get to this place you need but ponder:
“An examination of the fossil record indicates that the key junctures in hominin evolution reported nowadays at 2.6, 1.8 and 1 Ma coincide with 400 kyr eccentricity maxima, which suggests that periods with enhanced speciation and extinction events coincided with periods of maximum climate variability on high moisture levels.
state Trauth, et al (2009) in Quaternary Science Reviews (28 (2009) 399–411).
In terms of “being in it for the genus”, one does tend to wonder if letting such zealots have their way might actually be the correct thing to do……
You do see all the irony’s here, don’t you?
Yeah, go ahead, strip all the climate security blanket you want from the half-precession cycle (1/2P) old late Holocene atmosphere. It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature. Would you really want to be guilty of impeding the onset of the next ~90ky ice age? Five of the last six interglacials have each lasted about 1/2P……..
By so doing, those that the obvious eludes may find themselves committed to sustainability, their own…..
Not that the heathen devil gas would be to blame. It takes thousands of years for CO2 levels to begin dropping during and after a LEAP into a glacial.
So be ever thoughtful of both facts and predictions before leaping to a conclusion. It was in fact a LEAP that terminated the last interglacial, the cold Late Eemian Aridity Pulse which lasted 468 years and ended with a precipitous drop into the Wisconsin ice age. And yes, we were indeed there. We had been on the stage as our stone-age selves about the same length of time during that interglacial that our civilizations have been during this one.
Sirocko, et al, 2005, A late Eemian aridity pulse in central Europe during the last glacial inception, nature, vol. 436, 11 August 2005, doi:10.1038/nature03905, pp 833-836:
“The onset of the LEAP occurred within less than two decades, demonstrating the existence of a sharp threshold, which must be near 416 Wm2, which is the 65oN July insolation for 118 kyr BP (ref. 9). This value is only slightly below today’s value of 428 Wm2. Insolation will remain at this level slightly above the inception for the next 4,000 years before it then increases again.”
There just isn’t anything like having such a natural fly land in your climate change soup.
Thanks Alec!
Come on Kev-in-UK… I really want to hear what he has to say. Not that I disagree with any of your posts – I like them! But we need to be welcoming to the people who disagree so we can learn what their arguments are. I love sitting in front of a liberal crowd of people who argue that we must do something about “Global Warming”. The more I hear and understand, the more powerful my rebuttals will be. It’s fun even though my wife, who agrees with me, squirms a bit when I preach from fact and truth.
Mosher is absolutely predictable. When things aren’t going his way he gets increasingly snarky, and increasingly cryptic.
Skeptic says:
December 14, 2012 at 4:16 pm
“They conclude there’s very little evidence that it has any effect,” she says.
In fact, the report summary reaffirms that humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions are the main reason for rising temperatures.
Had you stopped after the first sentence, one may have been inclined to verify what you said. Of course, even if it was verified that what you said was true, and it certainly could be the case, then it does not necessarily follow that their conclusions were accurate.
But the second sentence seems way off! Temperatures have not risen for 16 years (at least on RSS), so why should we pay any attention to greenhouse gas emissions? Perhaps the sun is more important than their conclusion indicates.
Yes but, you didn’t think a little thing like a wet blanket would slow them down did you.
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/storm_watch_stories3&stormfile=Study__Climate_change_predictions_from_1990_have_come_true_13_12_2012?ref=ccbox_weather_category3
The chart’s mushy. I think it says observations have now breached the 95%CI. Tell me that’s so. I want an early xmas present!
“My God. Do you know what this means? It means that this damn thing doesn’t work at all!”
Doc Brown [Back to the Future]
Ah yes, but its all going into the deep oceans, where they have 1 measurement per squillion square kms, which will be adjusted upwards, flattened out, and whatever else is necassary.
@ richard
Far, a long long way to run,
Tar, a needle pulling thread,
Sar, a model that is dead…
does that work?
@ Robert M: And that chart is with ADJUSTED data. They are cheating and still losing. I wonder how that makes them feel.
That’s what I want to shout out–why aren’t all these references to each of the Tar Sar and Far–Giss, Met and so on, charts and temps all shown with a disclaimer? Disclaimer: this chart uses “adjusted” temps. Note: this chart uses raw data. We need a disclaimer on each posting.
Yes Rosco, we KNOW this is happening: Steven Goddard has many posts demonstrating that James Hansen has changed the temperature data in recent publications from the ones he published before 2000.
The “revised” versions eliminate the previous record years of the 1930s US – the dust bowl years – in favour of the current period.
We should refer to it often in the post–not only in the comments…just my frustrated opinion.
Let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that facts matter or that the Administration, Lisa Jackson.the MSM. the Academies, etc will back off their goal of reducing carbon emissions in any way whatsoever.
There are already numerous examples of many irrational and delusional practices in the the organations lised above. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to be reminded of the attitude toward the $16 +trillion (and quickly growing) debt which has been amassed in the US in addition to debt in other institutions such as California and other Countries in Europe.
I seriously doubt these facts will affecr the agenda for renewable fuels, carbon tax, electric cars,etc. Facts don’t seem to matter anymore about very much.
Hey, it’s their chart!
http://news.yahoo.com/ap-gfk-poll-science-doubters-world-warming-080143113.html
“Thomas Coffey, 77, of Houston, said you can’t help but notice it.
“We use to have mild temperatures in the fall going into winter months. Now, we have summer temperatures going into winter,” Coffey said. “The whole Earth is getting warmer and when it gets warmer, the ice cap is going to melt and the ocean is going to rise.”
He also said that’s what he thinks is causing recent extreme weather.
“That’s why you see New York and New Jersey,” he said, referring to Superstorm Sandy and its devastation in late October. “When you have a flood like that, flooding tunnels like that. And look at how long the tunnel has been there.”
Paraphrasing Frasier: “Good Night Mosher, Science has left the building!”
Catcracking says:
December 14, 2012 at 8:51 pm
“Facts don’t seem to matter anymore about very much.”
The really sad part of that is it really does state the case! The very fly that landed in the climate change soup……
Lord Monkton and I agree. The best way to deal with climate change … if any, is to adapt after the fact. It’s much cheaper than trying to control the work of the sun and the ocean currents etc.
MUCH CHEAPER and far more effective since we would be dealing with a known quantity.
Essentially, it is not looking good for how reliable the consensus “97% agreement” argument stands up.
At the same time, the main claim of humans being the cause isn’t covered by this. Unless we recognize – and point out in the strongest terms – this as showing that there is no causal connection between the rising CO2 and the temps.
Steve Garcia
Henry@werner
Thks for ur post. Hadcrut 4 looks a bit out. 2007 is too high? – u must admit that you can see my parabolic curve now from 1992 going up reaching max 1998 and now curving down. Earth energy store empty now. We will drop 0.3 from now until 2020 and it will not stop cooling until at least 2035…..
@daybyday
Perhaps:
Far, a hockey stick is born
Tar, the sands are full of dread
Sar, a model that is dead.
And that brings us back to Doh! Doh! Doh! Doh!
I find it depressing but not surprising that a significant part of the audience here believes that since this chart shows that (not a polling option) most of the recent data lies in the lower part of the predicted envelope (and most of the early data lies below the envelope primarily due to Mt. Pinatubo), this information shows that the IPCC has been wrong, and they further believe that the IPCC will delete (or would have deleted if not leaked) this data from the final report.
Unlike the vast majority of the posters here, the IPCC WGI authors are scientists, and do in fact think that facts matter. The projections are a matter of record, and the observed temperatures are also published. Putting them together is the obvious thing to do and – OMG – that’s what they ACTUALLY DID. In a draft that was published for review by anyone able to type a URL and download a PDF (and sign a non-disclosure agreement, whether or not they intended to abide by it).
One might also be worried that, even though the temperature has risen less than projected, impacts, like melting artic ice, have arrived faster.
And yet the warmists still maintain that the models correctly predicted the climate! A rather difficult position to maintain now, but they’ll continue trying with all the same lame excuses. Just watch.
All major data sets including my own see the negative trend now, i.e cooling from 2002
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2012/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2012/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2012/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2012/trend/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2012/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2012/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2012/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2012/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2012/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2012/trend
For the next 8 years we will be cooling at the maximum rate:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
We will continue cooling until ca. 2038/
Amazing. I wonder how long you all and the ipcc will finally pick up on the fact that they have always been looking at the wrong parameter…..
HenryP says:
December 14, 2012 at 12:32 pm
If you look carefully you will find the curve from 1990 first going up an then down. We will continue to fall. Global cooling is here7
It’s looking good for your theory!
Well, we’ll, well.
Me wonders what science EPAwill cite now?
Please look this eye opening graph:
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/down3.gif
Since CO2 has increased from ~370 ppm to ~395 ppm the average global temperature has decreased ~0.05 centigrade.
V.
Anthony,
You say ignore the grey bands, yet the lower grey band shows the best predicitive outcome of all the data on the graph.
Jimbo says Dec 14 “Will this graph be in the Summary for Policy Makers?”
Not quite clear. the SPM is at http://www.stopgreensuicide.com/SummaryForPolicymakers_WG1AR5-SPM_FOD_Final.pdf,
but with placeholders for figures. Apologies if you’ve already found this. Time differences a half a world away.
paulbaer:
Your post at December 14, 2012 at 11:20 pm indicates that you ‘Need to go to Specsavers’ (i.e. your eyesight is faulty).
It says in total
The graph shows that all (yes, ALL) previous ‘projections’ of global warming were exaggerated.
If you can’t see that then you really do need new spectacles.
Those of us who have been involved in the production of previous IPCC reports know it is likely that the IPCC would delete the graph from the final report. If you don’t know that then – for example – I suggest you look-up the infamous ‘Chapter 8’ scandal.
Many who frequent WUWT are scientists. But it does not require a “scientist” to understand the graph.
The IPCC is a political and NOT a scientific organisation. To give you a clue about this, read its title: it is the InterGOVERNMENTal Panel on Climate change. Each statement in each IPCC Report is approved by representatives of governments. The IPCC Summaries for Policymakers (SPMs) are approved and published first and the IPCC so-called scientific reports are then amended to not-refute the SPMs prior to their publication.
Personally, I would not have leaked the AR5 after peer review but before political amendment. However. on the basis of previous behaviour of the IPCC, I can and do understand how others could think the leak was a moral imperative. Sometimes science is more important than politics.
And there is no reason to worry about “melting arctic ice”. Arctic ice is reducing but Antarctic ice is increasing. There is no reason of any kind to think AGW has anything to do with either of these phenomena.
Richard
Henry@Kelvin & Volker
thanks. It is good that we measure temps. in Kelvin….
I note from Volker’s graph that even though, according to my (own) measurements of maxima (energy-in), global warming started around 1950 (as seen from the top of the atmosphere), the cooling from the 1900-1950 period carried on until into the early seventies. Generally speaking, it seems there is a 2 decade lag on the difference in what is happening/changing on top of the atmosphere compared to what is happening/changing at our front door (energy-out).
paulbaer says
Unlike the vast majority of the posters here, the IPCC WGI authors are scientists, and do in fact think that facts matter.
henry says
you are insinuating here that we are not scientists and that we are misrepresenting the facts. please do elaborate? which ones?
What is undeniably true is that the “green” industry has become one of the biggest in the world. Even my pension money is in it. And it is all a waste. There is no global warming. We are cooling. and we will continue to cool for a long time to come.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
The scientists involved with the GH scare have for years enjoyed the privileges of flying around the whole world and seeing exotic places for their conferences and write rubbish scare reports on melting ice and endangered species due to “global warming” when in fact the world follows natural warming and cooling cycles.
they will not give up those privileges for as long as they can.
But I think that the truth will overtake them soon. Global cooling is happening now and as time goes on, it will accelerate, as means will catch up with maxima that have been falling since 1995
So does the leak mean the IPCC won’t be able ter hide the decline?
As pointed out earlier about the observed temperatures being adjusted or not, if they are adjusted (incorrectly, and upwards), then it’s worse than we thought. Divergence from the model projections invalidates the models even more.
paulbaer says:
December 14, 2012 at 11:20 pm
“Unlike the vast majority of the posters here, the IPCC WGI authors are scientists, and do in fact think that facts matter. ”
But they surely don’t think the rules of statistics matter to what they call their science. Otherwise they wouldn’t ignore them all of the time.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/do-temperatures-have-a-mean/
Galvanize says:
December 15, 2012 at 2:24 am
“Anthony,
You say ignore the grey bands, yet the lower grey band shows the best predicitive outcome of all the data on the graph.”
Okay, Galvanize, what’s the definition of the grey band?
TomRude says:
December 14, 2012 at 9:16 pm
““Thomas Coffey, 77, of Houston, said you can’t help but notice it.
“We use to have mild temperatures in the fall going into winter months. Now, we have summer temperatures going into winter,” Coffey said. “The whole Earth is getting warmer and when it gets warmer, the ice cap is going to melt and the ocean is going to rise.””
Ok, Coffey is 77 and argues with his own anecdotal evidence, so I will counter that with my own anecdotal evidence: Here in Germany we used to have freaking cold winters with a lot of snow in the 70ies, and balmy snowless winters in the 80ies and 90ies. Now we’re back to the freaking cold ones. (for four winters in a row now; seemingly worsening (earlier starts)).
Coffey is thereby refuted; having erroneously assumed that “the whole Earth” is doing what he observes in his neighbourhood.
Skeptic says:
December 14, 2012 at 4:16 pm
“Further to my last comment about the solar forcing question, this is from New Scientist:”
“Skeptic”, even the New Scientist can’t make it warm. Climate scientists meet reality; reality does what it always does with a bunch of superstitious believers.
It occurs to me that here we have a graph stating Oficially what the longest “decline” or “pause” in temps. needs to be before falsifying the AGW speculation. Since from individuals this has consistently changed to suit the agenda thus creating needed confusion, this might be useful. The above is apparently a synthesis of all learned positions so presumably incorporates the position of even those whose visionary insights might be considered extreme by most within the priestly class.
With no actual numbers it is not possible to be exact but it looks, for example, that taking 1990 as Observed Reality, that it cannot be the case that the temperature will decline by about 0.15 degrees over 5 years to 1995 since the Models Will Not Allow It. Similarly, it cannot decline by more than about .05 over 10 years. This somewhat awkward since 1998 to 2008 shows that amount of decline, so the Collective Knowledge teeters on the edge of Oblivion.
Since these parameters incorporate “internal variability” there is no way out from this: this reflects the full comprehension of climate possessed by the Initiates.
This cannot be right, surely. The 97% of all scientists agreeing with the cAGW position, and that the science is settled, cannot possibly be wrong. I think the doom-monger species of climate scientist is going to start dying out very rapidly. Those that switch position will become the true deniers as they desperately try to rewrite their past.
paulbaer says:
“Unlike the vast majority of the posters here, the IPCC WGI authors are scientists, and do in fact think that facts matter.”
You don’t have to be a “scientist” to recognize BS. I am an accountant, a practicing CPA at one time, now semi-retired. When performing audits on nationwide government programs, I had to be very knowledgeable of statistics – especially how they could be manipulated and how they could be based on erroneous data (States receiving Federal grants and aid did their best to ensure their error rates stayed below the thresholds for sanctions). Anyway, I learned a thing or two about reading graphs and their underlying data. You can believe what you want about the integrity of the so-called scientists who advocate AGW, but I’ve seen enough examples of their work here at Watts Up With That and elsewhere to conclude they have no integrity, wouldn’t know a “fact” if it bit them on their a$$, and for the most part are not scientists.
Galvanize says:
December 15, 2012 at 2:24 am
..You say ignore the grey bands, yet the lower grey band shows the best predicitive outcome of all the data on the graph….
what a load of tosh – the grey band is the 90% uncertainty and internal variabilty error range based on Hadcrut4 dataset (which itself is different to Hadcrut3!)
It is quite clear to anyone with half a brain, that the observed temps are mostly been in the lower end of any predicted ranges, and currently well, well below reasonable predicted ranges!
Werner Brozek: thanks for posting your chosen 6 datasets, as it allows us to compare HadCRUT4 with 3.
All: please note that HadCRUT4 is 0.03K higher than HadCRUT3 in 2012 so far. The CRU have managed to adjust things upwards a bit with the recent introduction of ‘4’, supposedly by including the polar regions. Personally I don’t believe they can measure those well enough to be worth the paper printed on, and in any case if I am given a global anomaly for the latitudes in which people actually live, then I am happy.
So personally, I intend never to use HadCRUT4, as it is just playing in to the warmists’ increasingly desperate hands.
Rich.
@ Skeptic
It’s typical misdirection from the alarmists. The point is they don’t admit the various ways the energy from the Sun varies and minimize any solar effect usually by pointing at TSI. Just the admission that solar activity isn’t just TSI is a victory for us, albeit a small one. Personally, I think the UV variance has a higher likelihood of explaining most of the “global average temperature” variation.
OT @ John West
Hey John West, this is John West. How many of us could there be? I may start adding “in NC” if you’re not in NC.
currently – 96% have voted that the graph shows below prediction. with over 2700 votes.
Now, If we could just get that to 97%, and a few more votes, we’d be on a par with the oft quoted 97% figure quoted by alarmists!
Why is “voodoo science” Rajendra K. Pachauri still presiding o’er the IPCC? Better yet, why is there still an IPCC? And again– who needs this grotesque gang of thuggeries jovially referred to as “UN”? By the inexorable Rule of 36, we project that by c. 2018+ this miserable farce will have joined its hangdog predecessor, and good riddance to ’em both.
John West says
Personally, I think the UV variance has a higher likelihood of explaining most of the “global average temperature” variation.
Henry says
You got that right. it follows as a result of seeing the development of the maximum temperatures,
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
To explain weather cycles, before they started with the carbon dioxide nonsense they did look in the direction of the planets, rightly or wrongly.See here.
http://www.cyclesresearchinstitute.org/cycles-astronomy/arnold_theory_order.pdf
To quote from the above paper:
A Weather Cycle as observed in the Nile Flood cycle, Max rain followed by Min rain, appears discernible with maximums at 1750, 1860, 1950 and minimums at 1670, 1800, 1900 and a minimum at 1990 predicted.
(The 1990 turned out to be 1995 when cooling started!)
Please note: indeed one would expect more condensation (bigger flooding) at the end of a cooling period and minimum flooding at the end of a warm period. This is because when water vapor cools (more) it condensates (more) to water (i.e. more rain).
Now put my sine wave next to those dates?
1900- minimum flooding : end of warming
1950 – maximum flooding: end of cooling
1995 – minimum flooding: end of warming
So far, I do not exclude a gravitational or electromagnetic swing/switch that changes the UV coming into earth. In turn this seems to change the chemical reactions of certain chemicals reacting to the UV lying on top of the atmosphere. This change in concentration of chemicals lying on top of us, i.e. O3, HxOx and NxOx, in turn causes more back radiation (when there is more), hence we are now cooling whilst ozone & others are increasing.
Hope this helps a few people.
[Wait] until The Team “adjusts” the data and rewrites the draft. I bet will this all disappear.
its all within the boundaries of expectation;
please refer to the nature and science publications on the BBC climateprediction.net project;
see this link to my webpage (in english):
http://www.zeeburgnieuws.nl/kv_media_buitenland.html#climateprediction
regards
martin van etten http://www.zeeburgnieuws.nl
MattS says:
December 14, 2012 at 2:38 pm
I think he’s referring to the 2nd sentence of the post, The gray bars in Fig 1.4 are irrelevant (because they flubbed the definition of them)….
He doesn’t have to show his work – it’s a drive-by comment with snark.
Attention!
The Elvis Observations have left the Projections Building.
Elvis warming has deceased.
Yet for years alarmists will continue claiming they have seen the Elvis warming reappear in various locations.
The preserved collection of alarmist claims will go down in history has the largest misrepresentation in human history.
It’s been so wide, so deep, so delusional, so deliberate and so dishonest that nothing can or will ever excuse or forgive the offenders.
When I think about the accompanying attitude displayed at RealClimate and ClimateProgress by their principal persuaders, punishment can be the only response.
Every model shows a consistent increase in temperature except the latest, AR4, which seems to have been rigged to match the temperature declines from 1990 to 1992. Is this what the model really predicted? If so, they must have done some strange twisting of the model parameters to get that unlikely output.
paulbaer says: December 14, 2012 at 11:20 pm: “Unlike the vast majority of the posters here, the IPCC WGI authors are scientists, and do in fact think that facts matter.”
Well, now, do these would-be scientists really believe that “facts matter”? I disagree. I believe that they are trying hard to ignore the “fact” that their global-warming models have been falsified by the temperature record of the previous fifteen years.
paulbaer, many who visit and comment here are better scientists than what the IPCC can offer, and better informed about climate matters, as well. Most of the IPCC scientists have the handicap of trying to make faith substitute for science, and their work reflects that.
During the last 5 centuries there have been at least 4 major past climate periods where reduced global air temperatures , reduced ocean SST and reduced solar activity[ three or more consecutive low solar cycles in a row] have happened concurrently, namely 1650-1710, 1790-1830, 1880-1910 and our current period 2000-2012. There were other periods even earlier, but the records become poorer the further back one goes.
The first three periods were well before the industrial era so CO2 was not a factor. Only during the 2000-2012 period was there increased man made greenhouse gases. Yet even here the global temperatures are dropping while greenhouse gas levels are rising. So co2 levels cannot account for the temperature changes. The common element with all four cases is the interaction between reduced solar cycle, the ocean cycles and the atmosphere. Any new IPCC report that does not acknowledge that there is an obvious correlation between the sun, the oceans and atmosphere, the mechanism of which is not fully yet understood is out of date and does not even begin to properly address the issue of climate change. It has also become clear that the Enso cycle plays a significant role in the climate cycles of our planet. During the cooler periods there is only one strong or global climate altering El Nino per decade. During the warmer period like 1970-2000’s there were two. To say that the sun plays a minor climate forcing role is like saying; the brain plays a minor role in controlling the body. How the climate scientists of IPCC allow this scientific nonsense to go on during their watch should be the subject of a public enquiry.
1.
Martin van Etten says
http://www.zeeburgnieuws.nl/
henry says
volgens my begryp(en) jy (jullie) er nog helemaal niks van:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/14/the-real-ipcc-ar5-draft-bombshell-plus-a-poll/#comment-1173832
Re: James says:
December 14, 2012 at 11:11 pm
Applause
Beth Cooper says:
December 15, 2012 at 3:50 am
Henry@Beth
loved the song. very funny
If you look at the model ensemble for SRES A1B used in AR4, you will find that the observations lie within the 95% credible region of the ensemble, and hence there is no model-data inconsistency. There is a plot of this ar realclimate here
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/02/2011-updates-to-model-data-comparisons/
If there is any doubt that this is correct, you can do what I did, which was to download the model runs and the observations (the links are given in the RealCLimate article), and you should be able to reproduce the plot, as I did, without any difficulty.
It is therefore rather a surprise that the draft AR5 report should contain a graph that implies that the observations are inconsistent with the AR4 model projections when that clearly isn’t the case.
It seems to me there are two possibilities:
(i) The IPCC don’t understand their own AR4 projections
(ii) The interpretation of the graph given in this blog post is incorrect.
I know which I think is more likely. I’ll wait to see the final document when it becomes available, I rather suspect that the text for the relevant chapter will make it clear (my guess would be that the uncertainty relates to the uncertainty in only the forced climate change, as there have been similar misunderstandings about this sort of thing from figures in the AR4 report).
henry@dikranmarsupial
i think we crossed swords before at the SS site (which is heavily censored.)\
Here you are again on my site…,
Can I just point out to you here and now that all major data sets including my own (from 2000) see the negative trend now, i.e cooling from 2002
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2012/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2012/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2012/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2012/trend/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2012/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2012/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2012/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2012/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2012/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2012/trend
For the next 8 years we will be cooling at the maximum rate:
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
We will continue cooling until ca. 2038/
Amazing. I wonder how long you all and the ipcc will finally pick up on the fact that they have always been looking at the wrong parameter…..
Unofficially decided by a xenophobic and US solar community that no one has ever heard of. The world is larger than the just the USA.
Landscheidt ( a German) predicted the minimum in 1983.
Eddy (an American) concluded the sun is a variable star, he did not predict the forthcoming minimum.
Landscheidt predicted the minimum in the 1980s.
Eddy’s name can be used another day for something else.
The minimum should not be named after random deserving people. The finest scientist the US has ever produced, Richard Feynman, a man who was deservedly respected Worldwide would be a fine candidate to have something named after him. But he didn’t predict this minimum.
Since Landscheidt predicted the minimum and was the only person to do so, it should rightly be named after him.
I shall continue to use the name Landscheidt as I am sure many others will.
REPLY: Jack Eddy, discoverer of the Maunder Minimum is a “random [un]deserving people”? Wow, are you out of the loop. Use it all you want, but you still don’t get to make the call on the name of the next minimum, the professional solar science community does that. I and the mods will continue to correct use of Landscheidt here where appropriate. – Anthony
re: Mpainter says:
“Well, now, do these would-be scientists really believe that “facts matter”? I disagree. I believe that they are trying hard to ignore the “fact” that their global-warming models have been falsified by the temperature record of the previous fifteen years.”
No, actually they’ve been trying quite hard to understand why the system has been behaving as it does. Skeptics seem to want to believe that since the temperature trend has not matched the CO2 trend, that CO2 can’t be responsible for the warming that we have seen. Mainstream climate scientists, whose models include well-documented physical characteristics of CO2 and other GHGs (recall that the existence of the greenhouse effect is not in question here), have to ask the questions, what has been the energy balance during that period, and what should we expect in the future as CO2 continues to rise? Furthermore, the fact that measured temperatures are in general on the low side of what has been predicted does not “falsify” the models, although it does suggest that they are far from perfect. If temperatures were uniformly outside the predicted range, which they are not, that would suggest that they are very wrong. But that’s not even what this graph shows.
“paulbaer, many who visit and comment here are better scientists than what the IPCC can offer, and better informed about climate matters, as well. Most of the IPCC scientists have the handicap of trying to make faith substitute for science, and their work reflects that.”
This, I doubt, at least as far as WGI goes (I agree that there are experts involved in WGs II and III who are not necessarily that knowledegable about the climate system itself). I’d be interested in (1) a count of all practicing scientists who post here (in total and on average), (2) what kind of science they practice, and (3) any evidence that these scientists are “better informed about climate matters).
If there are such scientists posting here, I would be interested in having them join in an effort to point out which of the non-scientist postings about climate science are blatant nonsense, which is many if not most.
–Paul Baer
dikranmarsupial says:
December 15, 2012 at 11:40 am
If you look at the model ensemble for SRES A1B used in AR4, you will find that the observations lie within the 95% credible region of the ensemble
It seems to me there are two possibilities:
(i) The IPCC don’t understand their own AR4 projections
(ii) The interpretation of the graph given in this blog post is incorrect.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Or, there could be a third possibility, which is that you don’t understand what RC published. From the caption above the graph:
“Everything has been baselined to 1980-1999 (as in the 2007 IPCC report) and the envelope in grey encloses 95% of the model runs.”
Enclosing 95% of the model runs and being within the 95% credible region are two rather different things. But I like the RC graph. It implies that the error range of the models is so large that the serve no practical purpose at all. Thanks for pointing that out.
Note that in the corresponding figure from AR4 (Figure TS.26.), several of the observations lie outside the coloured wedges for the FAR, SAR and TAR projections as well.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/fig/figure-ts-26.jpeg
Which further suggests that this blog article has merely misinterpreted the figure from the AR5 figure, and it actually isn’t much a bombshell afterall.
REPLY: Let’s see, we have a poll with thousands of people that seem to agree with the premise of observations being lower, and a handful dissenters like yourself. Just wait till part two, then your anonymous opinion will be worth even less once you read that part. Now run along to the Sekrit SkS clubhouse and tell everyone to watch for the next post. – Anthony
dikranmarsupial:
In your post at December 15, 2012 at 11:40 am you say
Actually, you have omitted the obvious reality; i.e.
you are deluded when you imagine the graph shows anything other than the models exaggerate warming.
It seems likely that your delusion is induced by spending too much time on the climate porn blog which you linked.
Richard
dikranmarsupial:
Tell it to Gerghis et al.
The poll is nonsense, it has to do with an obvious fact. It’s rhetorical. Exactly the type of poll one could expect to find at WUWT.
dikranmarsupial,
Thanks for your post and link to realclimate.
“It seems to me there are two possibilities:
(i) The IPCC don’t understand their own AR4 projections
(ii) The interpretation of the graph given in this blog post is incorrect.”
Could there not be another explanation,
(iii) Real climate graphs are wrong?
Using the 95% range from their graph is a whole lot of wiggle room. You could flat line the temperatures from 1980- 2010, showing zero warming and still fall within that 95% range.
I will agree with this…”The IPCC don’t understand”
If a person treats the colored bands as control limits for a process, and the black squares as observations meant to monitor the process, then the trend we see in the black squares is either unbelievably unlikely or the assumptions underlying the creation of the colored bands (climate modeling) is faulty. Period.
Quick! Somebody tell the Arctic to stop melting!
RustyIron:
Please explain why anybody would want the Arctic to stop melting.
Richard
Figure 1.4 above is not in the Draft. Also note that the draft correctly stated “In summary, the globally-averaged surface temperatures are well within the uncertainty range of all previous IPCC projections, and generally are in the middle of the scenario ranges.” That is what the actual data show— the opposite of what Rev. Watts stated it states.
REPLY: Sorry, you’re dead wrong, either because you can’t research properly, or because you are being purposely mendacious. Given the “Rev.” label you applied, let’s go with mendacity.
It is in fact in chapter 1 on page 39 of 55 pages in the PDF document, which you can see for yourself here.
http://climatefailfiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/ch1-introduction_wg1ar5_sod_ch01_all_final.pdf
And I made no statement, I gave readers a choice to vote on what they thought about it. Again, your assertions fail, but with no damage to you, since like many, you hide behind the veil of anonymity, too timid to put up your name to your words.
– Anthony
Troll,
Kudos for picking a perfect screen name.
.
Desertphile,
The IPCC says:
Estimated changes in the observed globally and annually averaged surface temperature…”
See anything wrong with that statement? They speak of the “averaged surface temperature” and observed global temperatures in the same sentence. They are not the same thing. Therefore, the Draft did not “correctly” state anything.
If the IPCC’s models were right, the debate would have been over long ago. It is because the IPCC’s models are wrong that the debate continues. The IPCC/alarmist crowd [same-same] can not accept the fact that the planet is deconstructing their wrong-headed belief system.
Sixteen years and counting…
Er, how at this time are there 71 people who think the temp is ABOVE the predictions. Can we get their names and make sure they never have to make any real decisions? They clearly would have trouble telling night from day.
Desertphile
“Figure 1.4 above is not in the Draft. ”
I see, so you do not want it to be in draft because it is quite devastating to your understanding of global warming. But if it were, you would owe Mr. Watts an apology and you will have to reconcile your AGW views going forward
Well I found it in the introduction which I just downloaded. So I am sure Anthony is awaiting for your apology, or will you just disappear.
Go Home
Is there somewhere a specification for those models? Some data and software that I can download and run on my PC?
Hmmm….
HadCRUT4 in 2011 was 0.40. In 2012, it will be about 0.45. So when the 2012 square is added later, the top square will be touching the lowest colored green line.
Just a few random comments:
– Lucia discussed whether current temperature fell within the CMIP3 models used for AR4 error bounds here when addressing whether temperatures were rising faster than predicted. http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/trends-relative-to-models/. Here is the entire CMIP3 spaghetti chart which shows some model runs below current temperatures. http://www.climateviews.com/Climate_Views/Download_Articles_files/poster2.pdf.
– Here is one projection graph from AR4 http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-10-4.html. It has +- 1 standard deviation error bounds that look like they overlap current temperature. This has the individual model runs: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-10-5.html.
– Lucia also discusses the AR5 data here: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/new-projections/. Interestingly, it looks like fewer runs are below current temperature trend than for AR4.
I’ll close by saying that a distressing number of posters are using broad brush terms to challenge the integrity of the many many scientists participating in the IPCC process. This is just wrong. Remember that the politicians have the final say in the contents of the final report.
Rusty Iron says
Quick! Somebody tell the Arctic to stop melting!
Richard says
Please explain why anybody would want the Arctic to stop melting.
Henry Rusty Iron & Richard
After analyzing all results from 47 weather stations (randomly chosen but balanced by latitude and 70/30 @sea and inland) , when I look at the maximum temperatures, I find a beautiful relationship of the speed in warming /annum against time like as if somebody threw me a ball. From those results I was able to compile a best fit (this is not the same as a model!)
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
If you can read graphs you will see that within perhaps a number of solar cycles we are also most prominently on a 88 year solar cycle, looking at energy-in, i.e. that what is coming through the top of the atmosphere. In 1995 we started with the cooling part of that cycle.
From that graph it also follows that the end of the previous warming period was around 1900 but it seems that looking at energy out (means) there is a ca. 2 decade delay.
see also my comment here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/14/the-real-ipcc-ar5-draft-bombshell-plus-a-poll/#comment-1173871
So basically, to answer your question, the arctic ice is now as it was in 2012-88 = ca. 1924.
Now look at the story making headlines back then?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/16/you-ask-i-provide-november-2nd-1922-arctic-ocean-getting-warm-seals-vanish-and-icebergs-melt/
read the actual newspaper article from Nov. 1922.. Sounds familiar? We are now almost 17 years from when it started cooling (as evident from energy-in, i.e. maximum temps.)
So I have to tell Richard that the north west passage opening up is not going to happen. From 1922 to 1945 all the ice that was reported melted in 1922 came back again. For me, it is sure that in the next two decades all arctic ice will come back.
I would not invest in oil or gas drilling there now….
He that has ears listens…..
RobertInAz;
I’ll close by saying that a distressing number of posters are using broad brush terms to challenge the integrity of the many many scientists participating in the IPCC process. This is just wrong. Remember that the politicians have the final say in the contents of the final report.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If science is being over ruled by politics, it is the duty of the scientist to resign and publicly state their reasons for doing so, as many scientists have already done. Failure to do so is to be complicit in a crime. If your conjecture is correct, then the brush should paint them twice, heavily, with tar.
It looks like a new consensus is being formed. 95% of people looking at the models versus reality graph agree that models exaggerate the trend…
Let me paraphrase Neil Armstrong from the alleged faked moon landing:
A small poll for a blog, a giant leap for mankind in understanding current climate change models and the faulty predictions derived.
Regardless of the absolute temperatures measured since they can be off for numerous reasons, the slope of the actual temperatures is not significantly different than zero (assume any errors in measurements are random). Ignore the magnitude of the actual data and where it falls in the figure in comparison to the models at any particular point. Ever climate model predicts a slope greater than zero over the same period even for their “minimum predicted slope.”
All the models fail because they do not predict a range of slopes with a slope of zero. This does not mean that there is no AGW since there could be a confounding variable either not considered in the models or not given enough strength in the models. We can assume that an AGW influence exists, but its influence can be negated by other factors. Regardless of the reason for not predicting a slope of zero in any of the models, the models fail and need revisions to uncover the missing variable(s).
Paulbauer: December 15, 2012 at 1:02 pm
====================================
Your comment well reflects the basic problem. The faithful try every way to make CO2 the evil villain of climate change and are utterly incapable of considering the possibility that their cherished AGW theory is fundamentally wrong.
“they’ve been trying quite hard to understand why the system has been behaving as it does.”
And they have had no success in this effort. They are trying to patch up a fundamental failure. I say “would-be scientists” because they fail the first test of science: the ability to adjust theory to accommodate observations.
This is the problem of science by faith, when science is made to serve ideology.
RobertInAz says:
December 15, 2012 at 9:36 pm
I’ll close by saying that a distressing number of posters are using broad brush terms to challenge the integrity of the many many scientists participating in the IPCC process. This is just wrong. Remember that the politicians have the final say in the contents of the final report.
================================================================
There can be no question that the IPCC is under the control of those whose motivations are none too nice. To be a part of this reflects on the individual scientist, whose participation imparts a legitimacy to a corrupt purpose. And don’t forget that many, many IPCC scientists are in league with those of corrupt purpose as a matter of ideological expedience.
mpainter says:
December 16, 2012 at 8:25 am
IMHO, the reality behind the process is more complex. (1) Non-skeptic scientists may not be aware of the many problems with the IPCC process. If you read some of their CVs, many certainly don’t appear to have the time to hang out here at WUWT. (2) Even if they have concerns about the IPCC process, their particular specialty may be uncontroversial. (3) And even if they disagree with the final result, their review comments will be published by the IPCC and they may feel an intellectual obligation to participate in the process to the bitter end rather than bail. I read about a study long ago examining how people who resigned were perceived compared to those who soldiered on working for change within. Both our legitimate approaches. It would be arrogant for any of us to presume our choice is appropriate for all.
mpainter says:
December 16, 2012 at 8:25 am
I strenuously disagree with the characterization of “…many, many IPCC scientists are in league with those of corrupt purpose as a matter of ideological expedience.” Even the worst possible characterization of the climategate emails limits the bad actors to a small number. There is simply no evidence that many, many scientists are in league with the corrupt IPCC. There may still be policy advocates as IPCC authors, but I would not characterize them as scientists. Finally the term “IPCC scientists” is a little misleading. There are a large number of AR5 authors, most of whom are scientists – the authors are not paid by the IPCC to include their travel expenses to attend the review sessions.
Ooops – the first
mpainter says:
December 16, 2012 at 8:25 am should be
davidmhoffer says:
December 16, 2012 at 3:32 am
”
I think he’s referring to the 2nd sentence of the post, The gray bars in Fig 1.4 are irrelevant (because they flubbed the definition of them)….
He doesn’t have to show his work – it’s a drive-by comment with snark.”
The point is rather simple. This post is a disaster. It’s titled the real bombshell. Then the author tells us to ignore part of the chart because it is “flubbed” But directs us to pay attention to another part of the chart. Seriously. Use your heads people. If I told you that I had a chart from a draft of anthony’s next paper and I show you that chart and ask you to ignore a part of that chart because its been flubbed, but to pay attention to another part of that chart what would you say?
Im betting you’d say it was only a draft and wasnt important
Beth Cooper says:
December 15, 2012 at 3:50 am
Thanks for that. This is, indeed, cheering news. There’s no hiding it this time, tree ringers.
Mosh: It seems to this less-than-fully-informed observer, that the point of the post is to show that the projections of the climate models used by the IPCC largely over-estimated the actual warming that occurred and that they are outside the error bounds. Do you disagree with that?
It also suggest that much policy and its implementation was based on the projections and that it may have wasted a lot of money as a result.
I’m sure you will correct me if I’m wrong. hehehehe
Steven Mosher says
Im betting you’d say it was only a draft and wasnt important
Henry says
the point that is being made (by the skeptics) here is similar to that of David’s:
“it is the duty of the scientist to resign and publicly state their reasons for doing so, as many scientists have already done. Failure to do so is to be complicit in a crime.”
How can this be a crime, you ask?
we have the example of the farmers in Anchorage who all had crop failures this year because of the increasing cold. According to my records of two weather stations there temps. dropped by more than 1K since 2000. However, as far as I know, nobody has told those poor farmers it will not get any better. So, they are planting again for next year, wasting their money…They really should be told (by now) to head south.
You can see from the graph at the beginning of this post that we are on a parabolic curve that went up from 1992 to 1998 and that we are now curving down.
There is no disaster in this post. Watts makes a valid point. Although I haven’t looked at reasons for the gray (90%) uncertainty bounds being “flubbed” as Watts says, I am going to assume the IPCC contributors knew what they were doing when they set those limits. That being so, we can look at the gray regions as being control limits on a Statistical Process Control (SPC) chart. The colored regions are also control limits, but they are more difficult to decipher as such, and we could view them as a target region that the climate process is supposed to achieve assuming that the models are worth their salt.
A limit of 90% means that observations should by chance land outside these bounds one time in every ten. However, a consistent pattern of change within control limits is also very unlikely on such a chart and here we see a consistent drift of observation across the control region toward the lower 90% limit. In industry we’d stop the process to investigate at this point, because the process as modeled is what sets the control limits. In science the analogous decision is to perhaps scrutinize the modeling process at this point because it appears to be wrong.
I think the point made by Watts is perfectly reasonable and clear.
@ Mosher: The gray bars show with 90% certainty that the temperature will NOT be in that zone. You understand that this information from the IPCC is being put together for policy makers (dumb ass politicians) to run our lives with. Basically, using those bars to show that the IPCC is right is intellectually dishonest. You know this, right?
When your kid comes home from school and argues that he got 90% of the answers wrong on the test, does that prove he/she was somewhat aware of the subject matter? Are you suggesting that the 10% has a significant positive value that should be considered?
Thanks Mr. Kilty,
It might interest Mr. Mosher to know that part of the post was written by an expert IPCC reviewer with a PhD in a relevant discipline with many published climate papers, a person that he knows, and one that wanted to draw attention to the issue without compromising his ability to continue to work as a reviewer since there would be blowback. The “flubbed” sentence is actually his, not mine, but I agree with it and thus elevated the email comment sent to me to a full post with his blessings (he reviewed it).
The bottom line is that the models are running too hot, and in another portion of the AR5 draft, this is actually admitted, which will be the topic of the follow up post.
I have a post in moderation, posed as a question to Mosh, which basically covers the same ground as the post by Kevin Kilty, although without the obvious expertise he possesses. Perhaps the mod is protecting me from embarrassing myself. LOL. If so, he can delete the post. Regardless, I’m interested in my old comrade Mosh’s (starting at ClimateAudit in 07) response to Kevin.
RobertInAz says: December 16, 2012 at 8:54 am
You have mistakenly attributed to me the first quote, which is another’s comment.
Concerning your response to my own quote:
mpainter: “ many, many IPCC scientists are in league with those of corrupt purpose as a matter of ideological expedience.”
And others besides those IPCC authors. In general, there are many scientists whose first interest is to feed a propaganda mill for the purpose of generating a general world-wide panic. Their motivation is primarily ideological and political. Your comment seems to limit such motivation to the notorious circle of the Climategate episode. I do not, but rather I include all who are in sympathy with the aims of those discredited by Climategate, as I feel they share the same purpose. They are many, and they have joined with the corrupt IPCC controllers in generating a dubious science for propaganda purposes.
For those who wish to disassociate themselves from such tar, it is easily accomplished. Simply form an association of themselves and publicly repudiate the more discreditable aspects of IPCC. They have not done so. I wonder why.
michael hart says:
December 14, 2012 at 4:51 pm
I think it’s worth asking the question:
“What sort of Journal would publish a paper parading such predictions with these kind of confidence-limits, based on this data?”
Simple, Mike. Nature and Science would compete for the honour!
Cathy
I used to look forward to finding a Mosher comment with eager anticipation of learning something. Since he became equipment manager-mascot for Muller’s BEST team, it seems he just wants to kick sand in the faces of his old homies. What has happened to that boy? On one thread he is bashing Willis and on another Anthony. Will he turn on Lucia and Steve Mc. next? Stay tuned.
I think a more important question, is how do they find these so called scientists that,ignore all other scientific disciplines, only to take an obvious complex system like the earths climate, and narrow it down to the least likely smallest least influential component (co2), take a few decades of temperature readings and claim the sky is falling. The geologic record is clear,its readable, and precise. It show no influence by co2 on temperature increases, quite the contrary 286 – 360 million years ago Average global temperatures in the Early Carboniferous Period were hot- approximately 20° C (68° F). However, cooling during the Middle Carboniferous reduced average global temperatures to about 12° C (54° F),.this is comparable to the average global temperature on Earth today! Similarly, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Early Carboniferous Period were approximately 1500 ppm (parts per million), but by the Middle Carboniferous had declined to about 350 ppm — comparable to average CO2 concentrations today! Earth’s atmosphere today contains about 380 ppm CO2 (0.038%). Compared to former geologic times, our present atmosphere, like the Late Carboniferous atmosphere, is CO2- impoverished! In the last 600 million years of Earth’s history only the Carboniferous Period and our present age, the Quaternary Period, have witnessed CO2 levels less than 400 ppm, To the consternation of global warming proponents, the Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age while at the same time CO2 concentrations then were nearly 12 times higher than today– 4400 ppm, This is a completely opposite effect and shows co2 decreasing as the period warmed. Ice core samples, also indicate co2 follows heat increase not precedes it. Every physical science professional knows the difference in trying to cherry pick minimal time frames to geologic time, and how important it is to truly see cause and effect,. Although cycles of glaciation are believed to occur in response to solar input variations like the Milankovich Cycle and Precession of the Equinoxes (changes in the earths orbit due to preccession , another important factor is the rearrangement of continental landmasses over geologic time by the processes of continental drift. So when you look at all the data, chart the ice ages and warming trends, it shows an obvious uniform pattern every 100,000 years we have an ice age, followed by 10 to 20 thousand year warming trends, every single record shows the same thing, interestingly enough Milakovitch, and his then theory mathematically proved this only later to find the ice core samples conferred. Earth’s climate is complicated and influenced by long term and shorter term events. some are major influences and some are minor. and there are so many that have a much greater impact than GHG (green house gases) Water vapor is by far the most abundant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95 percent of Earth’s greenhouse effect, and man’s contribution to it is insignificant. Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions are responsible for only about 0.117 percent. Now if what geologists say is true, that we are always coming in and out of an ice age with only short warming intervals of 20,000 years, and its been 18,000 since the last ice age, if co2 were shown to cause heat and temperature increases we should be pumping as much as we should into the atmosphere, we will not survive another ice age.
It seems that the IPCC is becoming more and more moderate, while the alarmist blogosphere is becoming ever more radical. Look for the alarmists to dump the IPCC in the near future.
I have a couple of points that haven’t been made:
9 of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000. There may not have been a warming trend over the last 10 years but the decade is consistently warmer than those before it.
Everyone is quick to point out 2012 and 2009 is particularly cool but 1998 was particularly warm. If 1998 wasn’t there then your arguments would have less weight. Of course, 1998 is there but it was also a record El Nino year and El Nino has a warming effect on global temperature.
Chris Shuker:
Your post at December 17, 2012 at 12:20 am says in total
“Haven’t been made”? Warmunists make those silly – and meaningless – talking points at every opportunity. It is their attempt ‘to clutch at straws’ now global warming has stopped for 16 years.
Firstly, look at the above graph. Delete 1998 data and it makes no difference to the fact that there has been 16-years (and counting) of no discernible change in global temperature (at 95% confidence)
Secondly, the most recent temperatures being among the highest is meaningless. The Earth has been warming from the Little Ice Age (LIA) for centuries and since long before the industrial revolution.
A person walking up a hill is at his highest when walking across its top. Similarly, the global temperature is not rising as it was, but it is still higher than it was.
The natural rise from the LIA was not continuous: it included periods of no discernible rise. The present period of no discernible change in global temperature (at 95% confidence) will end. Then, either the global temperature will continue to rise towards the temperature of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) or fall towards the temperature of the LIA.
But the present period of no global temperature change is important in terms of assessing the climate models. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported in 2008
The present 16-year (and counting) period of no discernible change in global temperature (at 95% confidence) shows the climate models are wrong.
Richard
[snip – Geoff, I’ve banned you before for your over the top remarks, and let you back in against my better judgment – this time, with this ugly comment it is permanent, beat it, zealot. – Anthony]
Richar S Courtnay wrote: “there has been 16-years (and counting) of no discernible change in global temperature (at 95% confidence)”
However, there is no discernable change in the rate of warming (at “95% confidence”) either, as the confidence interval on the observed trend includes both zero AND the long term trend. Thus on the basis of the observations alone, there is little *statistical* reason to conclude that there has been a change in the rate of warming.
Statistical hypothesis tests are not summetrical; the lack of a statistcally significant OLS trend does not mean that it is safe to conclude that the underlying trend actually is flat. The assymetry in the test is to introduce an element of self-skepticism, so if your hypothesis is that there has been warming, you start off will a null hypothesis that the trend is flat (i.e. the thing you don’t want to be true), and only procede to make a claim ON THE BASIS OF THOSE OBSERVATIONS ALONE iff the null hypothesis can be rejected. If you want to claim that there has been a pause in the warming (and that the apparent hiatus is not just an artefact of the noise), then you need to start with a null hypothesis that you don’t want to be true (e.g. that the trend is actually the same as the long term trend) and see if that null hypothesis can be rejected.
“The present 16-year (and counting) period of no discernible change in global temperature (at 95% confidence) shows the climate models are wrong”
This is not correct, because (a) the statistical test has too little statistical power for the lack of a rejection of the null hypothesis to be surprising and (b) because the climate models predict that such occasional periods of little or no warming will occurr every now and again and (c) the observations lie within the spread of the model predictions for SRES A1B and hence there is no statistically significant discrepancy between the models and the observations.
dikranmarsupial:
Your post at December 17, 2012 at 5:12 am is such a mish-mash of logical errors that it would require a book to correct it all. I will address its main errors.
You say,
I will ignore your multiple mis-spellings of my name and address the fallacious guff which I assume you are copying from some propaganda blog such as RC or SkS.
A difference to the discernible rate of change has occurred and the “long term trend” is not relevant to consideration of it. I spell this out for you as follows.
Take 16-year periods and consider the confidence with which one can assess their rate of change. The three most recent 16-year periods show no trend discernibly different from zero at 95% confidence. And the recent 16-year period shows no discernible change at 90% confidence, but the previous two 16-year periods do show a positive trend at 90% confidence.
Clearly, the global warming discernible at 90% confidence stopped 16-years ago.
Which, of course is not evidence that there has been no global warming over the last 16 years, but it IS evidence that the warming has changed in such a manner that the ability to discern it has reduced. This could be because the variabilty of the data has increased (it has not) or the rate of warming has reduced.
So, the rate of warming has reduced and there is no discernible warming at 95% confidence over the last 16 years.
And your guff about lack of statistical certainty concerning the models is plain wrong.
As the quotation I provided states, in 2008 NOAA said the models RULE OUT a period of 15 years with no discernible warming at 95% confidence. The most recent 16 years provides a period longer than 15 years with no discernible warming at 95% confidence.
That shows the models are wrong according to the modellers own criteria. Live with it.
You clearly do not understand the Null Hypothesis and you attempt Trenberth’s trick of reversing it. To avoid others being misled by your misrepresentation, I again explain the matter.
The Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed a system has not experienced a change unless there is evidence of a change.
The Null Hypothesis is a fundamental scientific principle and forms the basis of all scientific understanding, investigation and interpretation. Indeed, it is the basic principle of experimental procedure where an input to a system is altered to discern a change: if the system is not observed to respond to the alteration then it has to be assumed the system did not respond to the alteration.
In the case of climate science there is a hypothesis that increased greenhouse gases (GHGs, notably CO2) in the air will increase global temperature. There are good reasons to suppose this hypothesis may be true, but the Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed the GHG changes have no effect unless and until increased GHGs are observed to increase global temperature. That is what the scientific method decrees. It does not matter how certain some people may be that the hypothesis is right because observation of reality (i.e. empiricism) trumps all opinions.
Please note that the Null Hypothesis is a hypothesis which exists to be refuted by empirical observation. It is a rejection of the scientific method to assert that one can “choose” any subjective Null Hypothesis one likes. There is only one Null Hypothesis: i.e. it has to be assumed a system has not changed unless it is observed that the system has changed.
In the case of global climate no unprecedented climate behaviours are observed so the Null Hypothesis decrees that the climate system has not changed.
Importantly, an effect may be real but not overcome the Null Hypothesis because it is too trivial for the effect to be observable. Human activities have some effect on global temperature for several reasons. An example of an anthropogenic effect on global temperature is the urban heat island (UHI). Cities are warmer than the land around them, so cities cause some warming. But the temperature rise from cities is too small to be detected when averaged over the entire surface of the planet, although this global warming from cities can be estimated by measuring the warming of all cities and their areas.
Clearly, the Null Hypothesis decrees that UHI is not affecting global temperature although there are good reasons to think UHI has some effect. Similarly, it is very probable that AGW from GHG emissions are too trivial to have observable effects.
The feedbacks in the climate system are negative and, therefore, any effect of increased CO2 will be probably too small to discern because natural climate sensitivity is much, much larger. This concurs with the empirically determined values of low climate sensitivity.
Empirical – n.b. not model-derived – determinations indicate climate sensitivity is less than 1.0deg.C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 equivalent. This is indicated by the studies of Idso from surface measurements
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/Idso_CR_1998.pdf
and Lindzen & Choi from ERBE satelite data
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
and Gregory from balloon radiosonde data
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/OLR&NGF_June2011.pdf
Indeed, because climate sensitivity is less than 1 .0deg.C for a doubling of CO2 equivalent, it is physically impossible for the man-made global warming to be large enough to be detected (just as the global warming from UHI is too small to be detected). If something exists but is too small to be detected then it only has an abstract existence; it does not have a discernible existence that has effects (observation of the effects would be its detection).
To date there are no discernible effects of AGW. Hence, the Null Hypothesis decrees that AGW does not affect global climate to a discernible degree. That is the ONLY scientific conclusion possible at present.
Richard
Richard writes:
“It is a rejection of the scientific method to assert that one can “choose” any subjective Null Hypothesis one likes. There is only one Null Hypothesis: i.e. it has to be assumed a system has not changed unless it is observed that the system has changed.”
I’m afraid you have not got the story right here Richard. There is no statistical reason why a null hypothesis has to be restricted to a no-change baseline. The null hypothesis tells you the base case that you consider random samples as being drawn from. In this case we are interested in the slope coefficient of a regression of temperature anomaly on year number. Repeated drawing random samples of size 16 from an uncorrelated (zero slope) population generates a sampling distribution of slope coefficients and the position of the sample data within that distribution gives you the probability of a value exceeding the observed slope (assuming a one-tailed test). The test proceeds from there. Of course for a standard case like this the results are tabulated so no need to conduct the random number experiment yourself.
However there is no reason why a non-zero correlation (remembering the almost equivalence between the correlation and the slope coefficients) should not be postulated and set up as a null hypothesis – Fisher’s z-transformation serves for the simple case. So if one had a strong expectation based on external evidence that the slope coefficient ought to be .01K/yr, then it is possible to set this up as the null hypothesis and construct a test accordingly. A study of UHI might be a climatological contextfor performing such a test, another might be if you had a prior expectation based on solar radiation. No statistician would rule the test invalid if that’s what you did, nor any peer reviewer tell you you were breaking the rules of the scientific method. A no-change baseline is already implicitly rejected in a way if you choose to perform a one-tail test implying you have already ruled out the possibility of one of the signs of the change.
Of course there is a confusing factor here, that the “y” variable has its own correlation structure but this can in most cases and to adequate accuracy be accommodated by adjusting downward the value of n used in the test.
dikranmarsupial
scientific gobbledegook will get you nowhere on this blog. You are speaking nonsense and you are about to discover why marsupials are extinct on every continent except Australia. It has to do with their intelligence.
Sorry mpainter, I am happy to engage in a rational discussion of science (something that I find very interesting), but I am not in the least interested in an exchange of rhetoric or insults; there is too much of that sort of behaviour on climate blogs and it gets nobody anywhere.
REPLY: Oh please. Dude, we can read what you write at other blogs, so kindly, stop making a hypocritical fool of your with such faux moralistic protestations – Anthony
henry@dikranmarsupial
(earlier on in the thread)
Amazing. I wonder how long you all and the ipcc will finally pick up on the fact that they have always been looking at the wrong parameter…..
dikranmarsupial says
“because the climate models predict that such occasional periods of little or no warming will occurr every now and again (sic)”:
henry said
(earlier on the thread)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/14/the-real-ipcc-ar5-draft-bombshell-plus-a-poll/#comment-1174204
your name must be
dik..ranmarsupial
not being able to read graphs
Henry says
please do continue to ignore the obvious
we will be cooling,
and all the old arctic ice will be back in 2 decades
mark my words.
\
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/14/the-real-ipcc-ar5-draft-bombshell-plus-a-poll/#comment-1174568
[snip – Geoff, I’ve banned you before for your over the top remarks, and let you back in against my better judgment – this time, with this ugly comment it is permanent, beat it, zealot. – Anthony]
A bridge too far Anthony….expect a backlash.
REPLY: Oh, nice….threats. How mature. All because you and your friends insist on calling a long term solar minimum that hasn’t been called yet and name that hasn’t been approved by the solar science community. I don’t call it “the Eddy Minimum” in day to day comments because it is premature. You however call it the “Landschiedt minimum” at every opportunity you get to the the point of being annoying. I point out when you and your friends call it the “Landscheidt minimum” is wrong when:
A. It hasn’t happened for certain yet, (one solar cycle does not a grand minimum make).
B. It hasn’t been officially named yet.
C. The solar science community has taken up the idea to name it for Jack Eddy, discoverer of the Maunder Minimum.
Do you listen to yourselves? This is zealotry. – Anthony
dikranmarsupial
Come, come, you are too obvious. You will find no marsupials on this blog to swallow the obsfuscations which you try to pass off as science. You do not seem as a sincere type who wishes to engage the issues, and your pretenses fool no one here. Go back to Skeptical Science. That’s where you feel comfortable and it’s where you belong.
This scientist who is used to interpreting such graphs sees 19 data points and experimental error bars within the model bands and three outside the bands. There are no error bars given for 2012 but unless they are unusually small 2012 will fall inside the bands. Climate models do not forecast unpredictable (and short term) effects such as volcanic eruptions and el nino /la nina events. Points below the band are 1996, and 2000, each corresponding to la nina years, as are 1999 and 2008 which are just inside the band. The point above the band is the 1998 el nino year.
Chris Shuker says:
December 17, 2012 at 12:20 am
I have a couple of points that haven’t been made:
9 of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000. There may not have been a warming trend over the last 10 years but the decade is consistently warmer than those before it….
________________________________
Only if you use ‘Adjusted’ data.
The length of the arctic Melt season link
The fall (October) Northern Hemisphere snow cover link
For the USA
The 1990 -2000 decade is close to the average for the 20th C but the 1970’s are way colder link 1 and link 2
The number of daily US temperature readings over 40C, recorded at all 595 HCN stations continuously active since 1900 shows the above climate boundry graph is not ‘off’ link
So does the US Heat Wave Index link
All the ‘corrections’ to the actual temperature data are UP for recent data and DOWN for past data. link 1 and link 2 and link 3
Philip Shehan says
Climate models do not forecast unpredictable (and short term) effects such as volcanic eruptions and el nino /la nina events. Points below the band are 1996, and 2000, each corresponding to la nina years, as are 1999 and 2008 which are just inside the band. The point above the band is the 1998 el nino
Henry @Philip
Philip, if you look carefully at that graph you will be able to see a parabolic curve developing from 1992 up until 1998. After reaching the top in 1998 it has started to curve down.
All major data sets see a cooling trend developing from 2002.
see here:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2012/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2012/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2012/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2012/trend/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2012/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2012/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2012/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2012/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2012/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2012/trend
My own data set also showed these parabolic curves, all three, for maxima, means and minima,
with very high correlation coefficients, (but also very high current cooling rates)
therefore, in the end I settled for an a-c curve
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
So everything that you see happening is natural and predictable. We will continue to cool at the highest rate for the next 8 years and temperatures will continue to fall until ca. 2038.
Sorry pal.
Shame they didn’t show the whole period back to WWII, because then it would be clear that for the last 25% of the time when CO2 has been pumped into the atmosphere in significant quantities the tempereature has not been rising, despite the fact that this last 25% of the period is when 30% of all the CO2 increase occurred.
With a failure to correlate of that magnitude most scientists would have the good grace to admit that their theory was fatally flawed.
Since when has the Null Hypothesis had anything to do with the IPCC?
That humans are mucking up the climate is taken as the given and the IPCC goes on from that ‘Law” There is no room for any testing of a Null Hypothesis because human induced climate change is reality to them and therefore there is no reason for a Null Hypothesis. This has been the ongoing fight from day one.
This is why the citing of the IPCC as an ‘Authority’ would be a ROTFLMAO laugh if they did not have so much power and the consequences were not so devastating for mankind. The Sheeple believe we have spent billions studying the climate and investigating the various factors that could drive the climate when no such action has occurred.
Only the money and the number of people in positions of power that are involved has kept CAGW from becoming a bigger scandal than Bernie Maddoff or Enron.
richardscourtney, firstly I apologise for having mispelled your name.
Your write “The three most recent 16-year periods show no trend discernibly different from zero at 95% confidence.” I agree, however, my point is that those same trends are not discernablly different from the long term trend either at the 95% level of significance. Thus the statistical analysis is equivocal, it doesn’t rule out the possibility that the trend is really flat, but it doesn’t rule out the possibility that there has been no change in the underlying rate of warming either. Thus, if the only evidence for a hiatus were the observed trend, it would go against normal scientific practice to claim the existence of a hiatus without statistically significant evidence.
“The Null Hypothesis says it must be assumed a system has not experienced a change unless there is evidence of a change. ”
Well quite, if we apply that to the *rate* at which the system has been warming, then the null hypothesis should be that the *rate* has not changed. The choice of null hypothesis depends on the claim you wish to test in performing a significance test. It should essentially be the opposite of what you wish to claim.
The null hypothesis should be the hypothesis that goes against our experimental hypothesis; if you want to assert that there has been a hiatus (i.e. the rate of warming has declined) then the null hypothesis should be that the rate of warming is unchanged. That is how statistical tests are used in science, to enforce self-skepticism, only allowing a claim to be made if you can demonstrate that the alternative is not supportable (i.e. the null hypothesis can be rejected).
Essentially, the observations are quite noisy, and a 16 year window is not long enough to be able to distinguish with any great confidence whether there has been no warming (or even some cooling), or whether the warming has contunued at the same rate, or (less likely) even above the long term rate. This is clearly demonstrated by the confidence interval on the estimated trend.
maxberan:
Thankyou for your post at December 17, 2012 at 8:30 am. It begins
Sorry, but I have “got the story right”.
The misunderstanding is explicit in your statement that says
Indeed, there is such a “reason”: otherwise, there could not be a Null Hypothesis.
The “no change” applies to the system behaviour.
And all of your examples agree with my expression of the Null Hypothesis.
Some systems behave randomly. The appearance of, for example, a cyclical behaviour within the randomness would be a change.
Other systems exhibit cyclical behaviour, and loss of that cyclicity would be a change.
Gain or loss of correlation between parameters of a system is a change.
Indeed, you describe such a case when you say
Etc.
All your examples demonstrate the difficulty of statistical determination of a change in some systems. They do not dispute my statement of the Null Hypothesis in any way.
Richard
Say you wanted to see if your town followed some rule that you had read based on a large scale study of the link between UHI-induced slope (of temperature v time) and population. Based on the study you had a baseline expectation for what the slope ought to be if it followed the rule – say it was .001K/yr – and you had a 50 year time-series temperature data for your town from which you could calculate its slope, say it was .002K/yr.
The null hypothesis in that case would be the .001K/yr prior expectation and this would form the basis for the test. You would construct the sampling distribution of slopes obtained by random drawings of size 50 from a population whose slope was 0.001 and from the probability beyond the .002 point judge whether it was in accord with the rule or not. No statistical regulation disobeyed, no scientific method principle breached, a fully kosher procedure.
And the null hypothesis was not a no-change case, it postulated a change or a non-zero slope (or equivalently, correlation coefficient). This was precisely what you said was disallowed with your point about “no subjectivity” and “no change” and, because it is allowed, why I said you had got it wrong.
Did you look up Fisher’s z- transformation – it is about testing whether an observed correlation coefficient could derive from a population of arbitrary (not necessarily zero) correlation so bang on what you said couldn’t be done? It’s especially relevant as the slope coefficient of a regression is a simple linear multiple of the correlation coefficient so what goes for the one goes for the other.
The above example is a lot simpler than the current case where we are testing whether the models could derive from a population based on the observations. Also we have additional information about the uncertainty in the observations which we would also wish to build in. We also have a distribution of models so the test would be looking at the overlap between the distribution of the models and the null-hypothesis distribution based on the observations. But the basic principle remains and the simple truth applies – a null hypothesis is not limited to a null change case.
Philip Shehan
Let me put it to you like this: Do you agree that there the record shows no warming these past sixteen years?
Perhaps you would explain for us why the data points require experimental error bars. What experiment? These appear as a device to fuzz over the fact that the models are refuted by observations, and thus give an opening for someone to say:
“This scientist who is used to interpreting such graphs sees 19 data points and experimental error bars within the model bands and three outside the bands. There are no error bars given for 2012 but unless they are unusually small 2012 will fall inside the bands. Climate models do not forecast unpredictable (and short term) effects such as volcanic eruptions and el nino /la nina events. Points below the band are 1996, and 2000, each corresponding to la nina years, as are 1999 and 2008 which are just inside the band. The point above the band is the 1998 el nino year.”
Now, please point out the model that has forecast sixteen years without warming. Also, please tell us what you think of all the panic talk about future climate disaster, “tipping points”, and suchlike propaganda which is based on the extreme warming forecast by these models, and whether such models show any reliability.
Also, please tell us what CO2 mitigation steps should now be undertaken, and whether the vast expenses involved in these models were justified, and whether a carbon tax is justified.
Thanking you in advance for your contribution here.
dikranmarsupial:
I am replying to your post addressed to me at December 17, 2012 at 9:16 am.
I will restrict my discussion of the Null Hypothesis to interaction with Max Beran. He has often disagreed with me over many years and I respect him, his arguments and his opinions whether or not I agree with them. Also, his great mathematical knowledge and ability are known to me.
Your post ignores the importance of the 16-year period of no global warming discernible at 95% confidence. I again repeat that the climate modellers said their emulations “rule out” periods of 15 or more years of no global warming discernible at 95% confidence. This is a falsification of the models according to the criterion specified by the modelers.
The models are wrong. Live with it.
Richard
dikranmarsupial,
I agree with most of your comment. However, the climate Null Hypothesis is not as you have explained it. The Null Hypothesis states that nothing unusual or unprecedented is now occurring. All current climate parameters have been exceeded during the Holocene, when CO2 levels were much lower.
The Alternative Hypothesis — that rising CO2 is causing an unprecedented acceleration in global warming — is wrong. Not only is there no acceleration in global warming, but as you acknowledge, the warming has stopped for the past sixteen years.
The Null Hypothesis has never been falsified. Nothing unusual or unprecedented is occurring. The planet is recovering from the LIA along the same long term rising trend line, and within the same long term parameters, with no acceleration in global warming. Conclusion: rising CO2 has no measurable effect.
richardscourtney, it is unfortunate that you are unwilling to participate with me in a discussion of this issue as it could have been very productive. I would be interested to read the NOAA report you mention, can you give me a full reference so I can look it up?
However, the point I was making has nothing to do with whether the models are correct or not, but on whether there is statistically significant evidence for a change in the rate of warming. It is easy to demonstrate that there isn’t becuase the confidence interval for the trend includes both zero and long term rate. Thus it is an error to claim that there has been a reduction in the rate of warming, just as it was an error to claim that there had been an increase in the rate of warming in say 1998. Those that want to claim there is statistically significant evidence of a reduction in the rate of warming need to wait until the confidence interval on the trend no longer includes the long term rate.
D Böehm The hypotheses discussed in my post have nothing to do with AGW, just about what we can infer about the rate of warming from the observations we have for the last 16 years, and this is entirely independent of what is causing any warming that may or may not be happening.
dikranmarsupial:
Your post at December 17, 2012 at 9:47 am asks me
The statement is in NOAA’s ‘State of the Climate Report’ for 2008.
It can be read at
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/climate-assessment-2008-lo-rez.pdf
The statement under discussion is in a box on page 23.
It says
Richard
dikranmarsupial;
Those that want to claim there is statistically significant evidence of a reduction in the rate of warming need to wait until the confidence interval on the trend no longer includes the long term rate.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You are changing the basis of the argument. This isn’t the point. The point is that the official literature as endorsed by the IPCC maintained that the warming effects of CO2 plus feedbacks were so pronounced that it would be impossible for them to not be easily distinguished from natural variability over a 15 year period. Well, here we are at 16 years, you can argue all you want that the data is insufficient to show a reduction in warming trend (or vice versa) but what you CANNOT argue is that the effects of CO2 are strong enough to stand out from natural variability.
So arguing that warming has or hasn’t stopped isn’t the point. The point is that CO2’s direct and feedback effects are insufficient to differentiate them from natural variability, and as a consequence, we may assume that the order of magnitude of these effects has been grossly over estimated.
Richard, thank you for the link, it will be interesting to see how it differs from Easterling and Wehner, which apparently comes to the opposite conclusion.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL037810.shtml
diketc says
Those that want to claim there is statistically significant evidence of a reduction in the rate of warming need to wait until the confidence interval on the trend no longer includes the long term rate.
Henry says
I looked at all the data from a random sample of 47 weather stations, from all over, balanced by latitude and 70/30 @sea and inland. (longitude does not really matter since earth makes its regular daily and yearly circles and we are looking at all results averaged for the years)
The plot for the acceleration / deceleration of warming/cooling (in degrees K/ t² ) appears to be natural looking, symmetrical, like the curve of a thrown object.
For those that did not read the relevant part of my report, I quote it here for you:
Method
The (black) figures you are looking at in the tables below (allow some time to load up), represent the average change in degrees Celsius (or Kelvin) per annum, from the average temperatures measured during the period indicated. These are the slopes of the least square fit equations or “ linear trend-lines” for the periods indicated, as calculated, i.e. the value before the x.
The average temperature data from the stations were obtained from http://www.tutiempo.net.
I tried to avoid stations with many missing data. Nevertheless, it is very difficult finding weather stations that have no missing data at all. If a month’s data was found missing or if I found that the average for a month was based on less than 15 days of that month’s data, I looked at the average temperatures of that month of the preceding- and following year, averaged these, and in this way estimated the temperatures of that particular month’s missing data.
Results
We note from my 3 tables below that Maxima, Means and Minima have all turned negative (from warming to cooling) between 12 and 22 years ago. The change in signal is best observed in that of the Maxima where we can see a gradual decline of the maximum temperatures from +0.036 degrees C per annum (over the last 38 years) to -0.016 (when taken over the last 12 years).
If we plot the global measurements for the change in Maxima, Means and Minima against the relevant time periods, it can be shown that the best fit for each of the curves is given by a polynomial of the 2nd order (parabolic fit).
Namely, for maxima it is
y= -0.00006 X2+ 0.00480X -0.06393
r²= 0.997
Update
I have added a few more stations, (including Washington DC) which gave me r²= 0.998
The speed of warming/cooling for maxima now is 0.036 from 1974 (38 yrs), 0.029 from 1980 (32 yrs), 0.014 from 1990 (22 years) and -0.016 from 2000 (12 years).
For means, it is
y= -0.0001 X2 +0.0064X – 0.0778
r²= 0.959
For minima, it is
y= -0.00008 X2 + 0.00408X – 0.04178
r²= 0.985
Using the maxima plot, we note that at 0 (zero) when there was a turning point, i.e. no warming or cooling, we find x=17 years. From this sample of weather stations I can therefore estimate with high accuracy that earth received its maximum energy input from the sun via the atmosphere during 2012-17=1995.
(if we are tempted to look at the root of same binomial on the other side, i.e. when global warming started, we find 68, suggesting that the global warming cycle started officially somewhere in 2012-68=1944. UPDATE: I realized this result is speculative, as I do not have any real measurements from 1944-1973 but we are using an approximation from a probable plot. However, I did realize since some time ago that the plot I was looking at is really like an a-c wave. I have subsequently been able to determine that the best sine wave for this plot would be one with a wavelength of 88 years. That would mean that the beginning of warming started somewhere around 1995-44=1951. That means we are now on a cooling curve until ca. 1995+44=2039.)
It can also be shown that the nature of the graph for means is one that lags a bit on the graph for maxima: earth has a store where it keeps its energy and a lot of that energy only comes out a bit later. Although the plot for means with rsquare 0.959 is still impressive, showing there is a definite relationship, I would not use it to determine the roots to give me the actual time when earth reached its maximum energy output (i.e. when it was the “warmest”). However, I would generally agree with the available datasets like RSS, Hadcrut3 and Hadsst2 that that must have been a few years after 1995.
end quote
Now let us look specifically at these data:
The speed of warming/cooling in degrees K/ annum for maxima now is 0.036 from 1974 (38 yrs), 0.029 from 1980 (32 yrs), 0.014 from 1990 (22 years) and -0.016 from 2000 (12 years);
now, do any plot that you like with it, i.e. binomial, linear or natural log or whatever and tell me that the curve fit that you get is not statistically significant?
Finally, I want to say that this exercise of mine is definitely repeatable, don’t you (all) think?
(I am thinking of the lazy buggers and so-called “climate scientists” in the universities who could utilize the people in their classes to do -this very simple- applied practical statistical work)
dikranmarsupial:
Your post at December 17, 2012 at 10:19 am says in total
Pardon?!
That paper’s Abstract says in total
The paper is pay-walled so I have not read it, but the phrase “a decade or two” is ambiguous in the Abstract. It could mean ‘periods of 10 to 20 years duration’ or ‘one or two periods each of 10 years duration’.
Either interpretation does not give confidence in the paper because such ambiguity in the Abstract implies it was approved by ‘pal review’: why not say “multiple periods of up to 10 years” or “periods of up to 20 years”?
Also, the Abstract admits it is ‘damage limitation’ against reports in “websites, blogs and articles in the media” but makes no mention of e.g. the 2008 NOAA statement.
Frankly, I do not intend to pay to read such a paper.
Richard
This question at stats.stackexchange.com (a site for asking questions related to statistics where the answers are voted on by other users, many of which are experienced statisticians) might be of interest:
http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/12461/how-to-specify-the-null-hypothesis-in-hypothesis-testing
The answer with the most votes begins “A rule of the thumb from a good advisor of mine was to set the Null-Hypothesis to the outcome you do not want to be true i.e. the outcome whose direct opposite you want to show.”
Max:
Your post addressed to me at December 17, 2012 at 10:24 am provides an illustration concerning a hypothetical town and says
No!
I thought I had explained this in my previous reply to you.
THAT IS A ‘NO CHANGE CASE’.
The system was said to be experiencing “a non-zero slope” so the system behaviour was that “slope”.
Similarly, an object may be in free fall. The Null Hypothesis says the object will continue to fall under acceleration due to gravity and deceleration due to drag. A change from the Null Hypothesis occurs when the object hits the ground. The fact that the object’s change of height with time (i.e. vertical velocity) had “a non-zero slope” does not prevent the system behaviour being “a no change case” until the object hits the ground.
And you ask me
I am aware of it but I did not refresh my memory by looking it up: If I did then I am certain my understanding would still be bettered by your superior knowledge and understanding.
I agree that it is a good analogy of determination of whether the global temperature change has experienced a significant change. But, again, I fail to see how this example alters the truth of what I said about the Null Hypothesis.
In conclusion, I recognise that we are discussing on a blog for the benefit of others as well as ourselves. Hence, it is important to debate in words so others can understand. However, in this case, I would not object if you wanted to add mathematical expressions to define what you intend by your words because it is possible that may avoid us ‘talking past each other’.
Richard
Richard, having read the paper again (Easterling and Wehner), they do mean a period of a decade or two, but the experimental results are based solely on decadal periods, so that line in the abstract is indeed not well supported. Note that the NOAA report does cite Easterling and Wehner on page 23, so it is clear that NOAA consider the paper to be of good quality and directly relevant to the topic we are discussing.
Having read the relevant pages of the NOAA report, I find the conclusion is based on the analysis of only one model (HADcm3), so while a 15 year period of little or no warming is inconsistent with HADcm3, that does not mean that it is inconsistent with all models, nor of the CMP3 ensemble used in the IPCC AR4 WG1 report. I think it is an overstatement to conclude that all models are invalidated on that basis. It could well be that HADcm3 under-estimates natural variability.
A more recent paper on this topic is Santer et al (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011JD016263.shtml), which IIRC uses the CMIP3 model ensemble and draws the conclusion that 17 years is the required period to expect to be able to identify warming. So I suspect the difference lies in whether you analyse one particular model, or whether you analyse the ensemble that the IPCC actually used. However, regardless of the exact time period, it is pretty clear that the observations are very much at the lower end of what can be considered plausible, given the CMIP3 A1B model projections, so if the planet is not warming then there will soon become a point where there can be no equivocation.
If the aim is simply to falsify the models, then that is very easy, all you have to do is to look at the decline in Arctic sea ice extent, which has been significantly more rapid than any of the models plausibly predict. All models are wrong, but some are useful (GEP Box).
dikranmarsupial
So you link to a paywalled study to support a point. And no, your next link is of no interest. Go back to your marsupials and please stay there.
Henry says
now, do any plot that you like with it, i.e. binomial, linear or natural log or whatever and tell me that the curve fit that you get is not statistically significant?
Henry says
sorry, that should have been
now, do any plot that you like with it, i.e. binomial, linear or natural log or whatever and tell me that the curve fit that you get, i.e. the curve going downwards, showing a cooling trend, is not statistically significant?
BTW, google scholar is quite useful for finding copies of papers that have been made available to download for free (e.g. pre-prints). Easterling and Wehner’s paper can easily be obtained this way.
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&q=Easterling+and+Wehner
dikranmarsupial:
At December 17, 2012 at 11:27 am you say
Agreed!
The models say that accelerated warming – so ice loss – should occur in both polar regions. But
1.
The Arctic shows more ice loss than the models indicate:
partial model fail.
2.
The Antarctic shows ice GAIN:
complete model fail.
Conclusion: the models are useless.
But I have known they are useless – and why they are useless – since 1999.
I have explained this repeatedly on WUWT and it seems I need to copy it again. For example, I wrote the following post on the thread at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/02/aerosol-sat-observations-and-climate-models-differ-by-a-factor-of-three-to-six/#comment-711396
Richard
****************
Richard S Courtney says:
August 2, 2011 at 6:46 am
Friends:
The article quotes Penner saying:
“The satellite estimates are way too small,” said Joyce Penner, the Ralph J. Cicerone Distinguished University Professor of Atmospheric Science. “There are things about the global model that should fit the satellite data but don’t, so I won’t argue that the models necessarily are correct. But we’ve explained why satellite estimates and the models are so different.”
Hmmm. Let us consider what we know about how the models incorporate climate sensitivity and aerosol effects.
None of the models – not one of them – could match the change in mean global temperature over the past century if it did not utilise a unique value of assumed cooling from aerosols. So, inputting actual values of the cooling effect (such as the determination by Penner et al.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/07/25/1018526108.full.pdf?with-ds=yes )
would make every climate model provide a mismatch of the global warming it hindcasts and the observed global warming for the twentieth century.
This mismatch would occur because all the global climate models and energy balance models are known to provide indications which are based on
1.
the assumed degree of forcings resulting from human activity that produce warming
and
2.
the assumed degree of anthropogenic aerosol cooling input to each model as a ‘fiddle factor’ to obtain agreement between past average global temperature and the model’s indications of average global temperature.
More than a decade ago I published a peer-reviewed paper that showed the UK’s Hadley Centre general circulation model (GCM) could not model climate and only obtained agreement between past average global temperature and the model’s indications of average global temperature by forcing the agreement with an input of assumed anthropogenic aerosol cooling.
The input of assumed anthropogenic aerosol cooling is needed because the model ‘ran hot’; i.e. it showed an amount and a rate of global warming which was greater than was observed over the twentieth century. This failure of the model was compensated by the input of assumed anthropogenic aerosol cooling.
And my paper demonstrated that the assumption of aerosol effects being responsible for the model’s failure was incorrect.
(ref. Courtney RS An assessment of validation experiments conducted on computer models of global climate using the general circulation model of the UK’s Hadley Centre Energy & Environment, Volume 10, Number 5, pp. 491-502, September 1999).
More recently, in 2007, Kiehle published a paper that assessed 9 GCMs and two energy balance models.
(ref. Kiehl JT,Twentieth century climate model response and climate sensitivity. GRL vol.. 34, L22710, doi:10.1029/2007GL031383, 2007).
Kiehl found the same as my paper except that each model he assessed used a different aerosol ‘fix’ from every other model. This is because they all ‘run hot’ but they each ‘run hot’ to a different degree.
He says in his paper:
”One curious aspect of this result is that it is also well known [Houghton et al., 2001] that the same models that agree in simulating the anomaly in surface air temperature differ significantly in their predicted climate sensitivity. The cited range in climate sensitivity from a wide collection of models is usually 1.5 to 4.5 deg C for a doubling of CO2, where most global climate models used for climate change studies vary by at least a factor of two in equilibrium sensitivity.
The question is: if climate models differ by a factor of 2 to 3 in their climate sensitivity, how can they all simulate the global temperature record with a reasonable degree of accuracy. Kerr [2007] and S. E. Schwartz et al. (Quantifying climate change–too rosy a picture?, available at http://www.nature.com/reports/climatechange, 2007) recently pointed out the importance of understanding the answer to this question. Indeed, Kerr [2007] referred to the present work and the current paper provides the ‘‘widely circulated analysis’’ referred to by Kerr [2007]. This report investigates the most probable explanation for such an agreement. It uses published results from a wide variety of model simulations to understand this apparent paradox between model climate responses for the 20th century, but diverse climate model sensitivity.”
And, importantly, Kiehl’s paper says:
”These results explain to a large degree why models with such diverse climate sensitivities can all simulate the global anomaly in surface temperature. The magnitude of applied anthropogenic total forcing compensates for the model sensitivity.”
And the “magnitude of applied anthropogenic total forcing” is fixed in each model by the input value of aerosol forcing.
Thanks to Bill Illis, Kiehl’s Figure 2 can be seen at
http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/8167/kiehl2007figure2.png
Please note that the Figure is for 9 GCMs and 2 energy balance models, and its title is:
”Figure 2. Total anthropogenic forcing (Wm2) versus aerosol forcing (Wm2) from nine fully coupled climate models and two energy balance models used to simulate the 20th century.”
It shows that
(a) each model uses a different value for “Total anthropogenic forcing” that is in the range 0.80 W/m^-2 to 2.02 W/m^-2
but
(b) each model is forced to agree with the rate of past warming by using a different value for “Aerosol forcing” that is in the range -1.42 W/m^-2 to -0.60 W/m^-2.
In other words the models use values of “Total anthropogenic forcing” that differ by a factor of more than 2.5 and they are ‘adjusted’ by using values of assumed “Aerosol forcing” that differ by a factor of 2.4.
So, each climate model emulates a different climate system. Hence, at most only one of them emulates the climate system of the real Earth because there is only one Earth. And the fact that they each ‘run hot’ unless fiddled by use of a completely arbitrary ‘aerosol cooling’ strongly suggests that none of them emulates the climate system of the real Earth.
In summation, all the model projections of future climate change are blown out of the water by the findings of Penner at al.
Richard
Does this mean we can remove Hansen and Schmidt from the government payroll and get back to some serious science? Let’s build our Thorium future.
Geoff Sharp says:
December 17, 2012 at 6:43 am
[snip – Geoff, I’ve banned you before for your over the top remarks, and let you back in against my better judgment – this time, with this ugly comment it is permanent, beat it, zealot. – Anthony]
A bridge too far Anthony….expect a backlash.
—————————-
REPLY: Oh, nice….threats. How mature. All because you and your friends insist on calling a long term solar minimum that hasn’t been called yet and name that hasn’t been approved by the solar science community. I don’t call it “the Eddy Minimum” in day to day comments because it is premature. You however call it the “Landschiedt minimum” at every opportunity you get to the the point of being annoying. I point out when you and your friends call it the “Landscheidt minimum” is wrong when:
A. It hasn’t happened for certain yet, (one solar cycle does not a grand minimum make).
B. It hasn’t been officially named yet.
C. The solar science community has taken up the idea to name it for Jack Eddy, discoverer of the Maunder Minimum.
Do you listen to yourselves? This is zealotry. – Anthon
The backlash will be in the form of a campaign against you on this topic of the “Eddy Minimum” that you and Svalgaard are pushing. This website has not agreed with your agenda to take the naming writes away from Landscheidt who is excepted by most to be the person most deserving. There was a lot of opposition to your proposal in your article http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/13/online-petition-the-next-solar-minimum-should-be-called-the-eddy-minimum/ and a previous article on your blog the majority suggested Landscheidt even though you provided no option for his name.
You do not even have support on your own blog, yet you try to whitewash your own views through. You have a cheek calling me the zealot.
If I am banned you will need to remove my sunspot count comparison graph on your solar reference page.
Great graphic on this! http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=47
Those “IPCC model forecasts” are not forecasts (aka predictions) but rather are projections. Though climatologists often conflate projections with predictions, they are different concepts.
@Jane:
Jane R says:
December 17, 2012 at 9:29 pm
Great graphic on this! http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=47
+++++++
Jane that new red line which starts below average at the start and stripes right to the max of today… and still the new red line shows cooling of 0.5C over the past 15 years!
Richard says
In summation, all the model projections of future climate change are blown out of the water by the findings of Penner at al.
Henry says
Myself and others here have clearly established that there is no scientific basis for man made climate change. Hence, we should concentrate on the observation of the natural processes that dominate the weather.
IMHO I think we only need to do a best fit for the actual observed differences in temperatures,
like I have done here :
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
By looking at the curve of Anchorage just below the averaged “global” curve, you can see that each weather station has its own sine wave but the wavelength of 88 years stays the same.
The difference between the heights of the tops and lows of the curves of each weather station depends largely on the make up of the chemicals lying on top of the atmosphere directly above it.
Note that almost all major data sets show an uptrend from about 1925, which, in actual fact, is not in contradiction with my particular sine wave fit. Namely, before 1925 the global temp. record is a bit murky. In those days they had not even realized that thermometers, once manufactured, need to be re-calibrated every now and then…..So, basically, we do not have a reliable (global) base line for global temperature until a few decades after 1925.
In this respect, it is clear that my results show that we are going to cool. My results should be confirmed by others asap. This natural climate change which can thus be predicted from each particular weather station may bring more rain and more cold and snow at certain places and/or less at others. Those farming at the colder high latitudes or risky areas should be warned to take their farming elsewhere….
Now that is what climate science is supposed to be for.
Terry Oldberg:
At December 17, 2012 at 9:37 pm you say
I agree.
A prediction is a scientific term.
It is a forecast (or hindecast) which can be compared to reality to discern if the method which generated it displays forecasting skill. Thus, a prediction can be used to determine faults in the understandings which formulate the method that generated the prediction, and this enables faulty understandings to be amended. Predictions are made by all scientific disciplines; i.e. physics, chemistry, biology, etc..
A projection is a pseudoscientific term.
It is a forecast (or hindecast) which can be used for political purposes. If a projection fails to forecast reality then the projection is amended post hoc as a method to avoid criticism of the political objective. Projections are made by all pseudoscientific disciplines; i.e. astrology, palmistry, ‘climate science’, etc..
Richard
mpainter says:
December 17, 2012 at 9:24 am…
In your response to your questions to me.
What date are you selecting for the start of the 16 year period? If you mean starting from 1996, and look at mean data for the data sets Hadcrut3, Gistemp, UAH and RSS there is warming at the rate of 0.1 C per decade. If you cherry pick the extreme southern summer el nino yers of 1997/98, there is slight but probably not statistically significant warming trend. If you start in 1999, there is again an upward trend of 0.1 C per decade. The highly specific cherry picking of the el nino southern summer years to make a claim of no warming is totally unscientific.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1995/to:2013/plot/wti/from:1996/to:2013/trend/plot/wti/from:1998/to:2013/trend/plot/wti/from:1999/to:2013/trend
On the use of error bars: No measurement is exact. Measurement errors are classified as “systematic” or “random” (I won’t bother here explaining the difference), and if different measurements are combined to give data points, the errors must be summed. The point is that the true number can only be said to lie within a range of values to a certain degree of statistical confidence, not necessarily that quoted as the “headline” value.
In published data, errors are not just given graphically, tables of data must also contain the error range. A manuscript submitted without the conficence limits would be rejected.
Note that even without the error bars, most of the data points lie within the projection bands, albeit at the low end of the range.
By definition, climate models do not specifically project any periods of no warming, low warming, or extreme warming due to unpredictable future occurences such as the 1998 el nino year or la nina years or the mount Pinatubo eruption. Predictable variations such as solar cycles will make upward and downward contibutions superimposed on the long term upward trend due to accumulation of greenhouse gases. The job of the models is to projects long term (ie multidecadel) trends where such short term influences average out. Every climatologist (or other scientist for that matter) knows that there will be variations in the long term trend. It is a statement of the bleeding obvious.
I do not know what specific “tipping points” or “panic talk” you are referring to but they are entirely irrelevant to the question posed by Mr Watts: “So let’s see how readers see this figure”
Ditto your question on CO2 mitigation.
Hm, I wonder what do the 2% who see the observed temperature above the model scenario ranges smoke?
About these models. OK, so there’s no empirical evidence for CO2 being the primary cause of global warming…but in fairness, how can there be? You can’t very well make an experiment where you have two Earths, one control Earth where the CO2 levels are kept the same, and another Earth where CO2 levels are increased, observe the temperatures over time on both, and say “hey presto, there’s your evidence” either way, when you get the results.
So along comes modelling. Well, it actually seems quite logical in principle. You can’t physically have two Earths, so you try to create a computer model to simulate the climate, then run projections of future climate and see if it correlates as time passes. Then if the projections correlate with reality, there’s your empirical evidence. It’s not actually a bad idea, let’s face it.
Two problems/questions with how this has all panned out:
1) Surely the time to alarm and disturb and harangue everyone about cutting CO2 emissions was AFTER the experiment was completed. Once the models with CO2 as the primary driver gave projections that correlated with reality, over a significant enough time period that rules out any “accidental” correlation…i.e. once there was empirical evidence.
2) As far as I understand it there’s a list of forcings that go into the models, in order of their perceived significance (I could well be wrong here so correct me if I am)…why weren’t any models set up with forcings in a different order, just in case they’d got something wrong? i.e. have CO2 as a lower level forcing than it was run at. Then we could be sitting here now looking at various different “projections vs. reality” graphs from the IPCC report. We could say “CO2 didn’t pan out very well as the primary driver, let’s see how this other one turned out”…etc etc.
The complete giveaway is the need to point to anything and everything but the thermometers. Desperate CAGWers scream about the manifest effects of something when they need only flourish the evidence of the instruments in the sceptics faces.