UPDATE: Annan now suggests the IPCC “is in a bit of a pickle”, see below.
UPDATE2: Title has been changed to reflect Annan’s new essay, suggesting lying for political purposes inside the IPCC. Also added some updates about Aldrin et al and other notes for accuracy. See below.
Readers may recall there has been a bit of a hullabaloo at Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth of the New York Times over the press release I first carried at WUWT, saying that I had “seized on it”.
Purveyors of climate doubt have seized on a news release from the Research Council of Norway with this provocative title: “Global warming less extreme than feared?”
I beg to differ with Andy’s characterization, as I simply repeated the press release verbatim without any embellishments. My only contribution was the title: Yet another study shows lower climate sensitivity. It turns out to the surprise of many that the subject of the press release was not peer reviewed, but based on previous cumulative work by the Norwegian Research Council. That revelation set Andy off again, in a good way with this: When Publicity Precedes Peer Review in Climate Science (Part One), and I followed up with this story demonstrating a lack of and a need for standards in climate science press releases by the worlds largest purveyor of Science PR, Eurekalert: Eurekalert’s lack of press release standards – a systemic problem with science and the media
It turns out that all of this discussion was tremendously fortuitous.
Surprisingly, although the press release was not about a new peer reviewed paper (Update: it appears to be a rehash and translation of a release about Aldrin et al from October), it has caused at least one scientist to consider it. Last night I was cc’d an exceptional email from Andrew Revkin forwarding an email (Update: Andy says of a comment from Dot Earth) quoting climate scientist James Annan, who one could call a member of the “hockey team” based on his strong past opinions related to AGW and paleoclimatology.
Andrew Revkin published the email today at the NYT Dot Earth blog as a comment in that thread, so now I am free to reproduce it here where I was not last night.
Below is the comment left by Andy, quoting Annan’s email, bolding added:
The climate scientist James Annan sent these thoughts by email:
‘Well, the press release is a bit strange, because it sounds like it is talking about the Aldrin et al paper which was published some time ago, to no great fanfare. I don’t know if they have a further update to that.
Anyway, there have now been several recent papers showing much the same – numerous factors including: the increase in positive forcing (CO2 and the recent work on black carbon), decrease in estimated negative forcing (aerosols), combined with the stubborn refusal of the planet to warm as had been predicted over the last decade, all makes a high climate sensitivity increasingly untenable. A value (slightly) under 2 is certainly looking a whole lot more plausible than anything above 4.5.’
And this is what many have been saying now and for some time, that the climate sensitivity has been overestimated. Kudos to Annan for realizing the likelihood of a lower climate sensitivity.
The leader of the “hockey team”, Dr. Michael Mann will likely pan it, but that’s “Mikey, he hates everything”. I do wonder though, if he’ll start calling James Annan a “denier” as he has done in other instances where some scientist suggests a lower climate sensitivity?
UPDATE: over at Annans’ blog, now there is this new essay expounding on the issue titled: A sensitive matter, and this paragraph in it caught my eye because it speaks to a recent “leak” done here at WUWT:
But the point stands, that the IPCC’s sensitivity estimate cannot readily be reconciled with forcing estimates and observational data. All the recent literature that approaches the question from this angle comes up with similar answers, including the papers I mentioned above. By failing to meet this problem head-on, the IPCC authors now find themselves in a bit of a pickle. I expect them to brazen it out, on the grounds that they are the experts and are quite capable of squaring the circle before breakfast if need be. But in doing so, they risk being seen as not so much summarising scientific progress, but obstructing it.
Readers may recall this now famous graph from the IPCC leak, animated and annotated by Dr. Ira Glickstein in this essay here:
Yes, the IPCC is “in a bit of a pickle” to say the least, since as Annan said in his comment/email to Revkin:
…combined with the stubborn refusal of the planet to warm as had been predicted over the last decade, all makes a high climate sensitivity increasingly untenable.
UPDATE 2: Annan also speaks about lying as a political motivator within the IPCC, I’ve repeated this extraordinary paragraph in full. Bold mine.
Note for the avoidance of any doubt I am not quoting directly from the unquotable IPCC draft, but only repeating my own comment on it. However, those who have read the second draft of Chapter 12 will realise why I previously said I thought the report was improved 🙂 Of course there is no guarantee as to what will remain in the final report, which for all the talk of extensive reviews, is not even seen by the proletariat, let alone opened to their comments, prior to its final publication. The paper I refer to as a “small private opinion poll” is of course the Zickfeld et al PNAS paper. The list of pollees in the Zickfeld paper are largely the self-same people responsible for the largely bogus analyses that I’ve criticised over recent years, and which even if they were valid then, are certainly outdated now. Interestingly, one of them stated quite openly in a meeting I attended a few years ago that he deliberately lied in these sort of elicitation exercises (i.e. exaggerating the probability of high sensitivity) in order to help motivate political action. Of course, there may be others who lie in the other direction, which is why it seems bizarre that the IPCC appeared to rely so heavily on this paper to justify their choice, rather than relying on published quantitative analyses of observational data. Since the IPCC can no longer defend their old analyses in any meaningful manner, it seems they have to resort to an unsupported “this is what we think, because we asked our pals”. It’s essentially the Lindzen strategy in reverse: having firmly wedded themselves to their politically convenient long tail of high values, their response to new evidence is little more than sticking their fingers in their ears and singing “la la la I can’t hear you”.
Oh dear oh dear oh dear…
joeldshore says:
February 2, 2013 at 9:58 am
….
——————————-
When I started by asking ‘Damage control?’, you could’ve just replied ‘Yes’, you know.
_Jim;
I’m sure you’re aware of “rain fade”, if you’ve ever subscribed to satellite TV (e.g. Dish Network)
>>>>>>>>>>>>
I sure have. Which leaves me knowing precisely what the signal that made it through was, and tells me precisely nothing about what happened to the signal that didn’t, other than it didn’t.
henry@joeldshore
I think we have crossed swords before to which you continually seem to duck and dive,
just like, Steven Mosher,
Again, I would like to hear your opinion as to why we (on earth) are cooling, past 11 years (one solar cycle)
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2013/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2013/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2013/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2013/plot/gistemp/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2013/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2013/trend
as it seems the only logical explanation to me is an 88 years a-c wave
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
showing us that we will continue to cool for a long time to come.
Please enlighten me if you have different proof for warming/cooling in the future?
And while some here are arguing “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin”, the activists are still using ‘CO2 causes climate change’ argument (no matter what influence it has on the climate) as a political weapon.
http://news.yahoo.com/apnewsbreak-feds-warming-imperils-wolverines-134916931.html
Wildlife advocates, who sued to force the government to act on the issue, said the animal’s plight should be used by the Obama administration to leverage tighter restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions.
As with the polar bear, the government is sidestepping that thorny proposition with the wolverine, and said in Friday’s proposal that listing the animal as threatened “will not regulate greenhouse gas emissions.”
Thabault said the agency would be on tenuous scientific grounds if it tried to draw a link between specific emission sources and impacts on wolverines.
Advocates expressed disappointment, with Noah Greenwald from the Center for Biological Diversity saying the administration “should not be exempting greenhouse gas emissions from the Endangered Species Act.”
A Washington, D.C., attorney, John Martin, who represented the energy industry during litigation over polar bears, said he expects no change in the administration’s policy against using endangered wildlife to regulate emissions.
So far I have not seen a compelling argument anywhere that proves, backed up by empirical data, the influence of CO2 on a complex system such as the Earth’s climate.
Where is it?
This whole scientific discussion, while interesting, about the influence of CO2 on the climate is a red herring.
‘CO2 causes climate change’ is the ultimate ‘weapon’ of the ‘watermelon’ activist.
Instead of demanding proof that their theory is correct (The scientific method), we are now compelled to prove them wrong…..
In the meantime the activists will invoke the ‘precautionary principle’ (It’s for the children) to further their agenda of de-industrialisation, re-distribution and political change.
I refuse to play their game.
At this time there is an excellent discussion of the differences among physics, physics in a computer model, and physics constrained by empirical evidence. It seems to me that the best place to tap in is http://joannenova.com.au/2013/02/do-forests-drive-wind-and-bring-rain-is-there-a-major-man-made-climate-driver-the-models-miss/#more-26699.
_Jim says:
February 2, 2013 at 9:39 am
“And, of course, you have been reminded before this is a curve, with those spectral peaks, not discrete points”
You don’t have to remind me. Yet the energy drops off to lower frequencies with a curve that approximates the 4th power of the temperature.
” … also, you would be better off describing these effects in the EM field domain as opposed to ‘photon’; maybe you can otherwise explain how a simple dipole antenna works (as certainly the atoms within say an H2O or C02 molecule respond) with ‘photons’ and coupling and such?”
Picking nits much?
markstoval says:
February 2, 2013 at 7:56 am
That’s funny. Thanks. My guess is that if Marx and Keynes could have met in their respective primes then we would know neither of them today.
Care to take an educated guess on where it may have ended up?
Are you at all familiar with the term: Radio Detection and Ranging and the principle by which it operates (‘backscatter’)?
Have you ever had a ‘lab’ class where your objective was to measure the reflectivity (and transmissivity) of various RF ‘transparent’ mediums (using, say, a network analyzer)? … this can also include the introduction of various gases in the ‘test’ area … commonly this is a known field of spectroscopy for measuring the characteristics of materials …
(To sum it up, I don’t think there are very many (read that as “any”) unknowns regarding ‘what happens’.)
.
@ur momisugly joeldshore.
You’re a professor of physics at a US University ?
I give you a link to an article by a nuclear physicist and you completely duck that and instead take aim at an English lawyer, one of whose hobbies is climate science and who undoubtedly doesn’t describe himself as knowing everything there is to know about physics, though perhaps you do ?
You could instead have followed the example of dear old Leif Svalgaard who does an admirable job in spending a great deal of his time educating and engaging with the hoi polloi including myself. Your time would be better spent helping educate and elucidating your opinions and points of view instead of aggressively attacking those of us who perhaps don’t know everything there is to know about physics.
Go the read the Bryce Johnson post and engage.
Mark Bofill says:
Well, I guess it is a matter of perspective. It seems like you are doing “damage control” to explain why news that is about 7 years old is considered “breaking”…At this rate, in another year or so, WUWT will announce as breaking news what was said in the AR4 IPCC report.
HenryP says:
The short answer is that it is “cooling” for the same reason that you can cherry-pick other similar periods between 1975 and now where the slope of the trend is not positive…And, for the same reason, that one can create artificial data that consists of a constant underlying linear increasing trend plus noise and find periods of time where the trend is negative. This simple concept of how trends work in noisy data tends to fool non-scientists, which is why there is such a divide on this issue between what the “skeptic” community thinks and what the scientific community thinks.
_Jim;
(To sum it up, I don’t think there are very many (read that as “any”) unknowns regarding ‘what happens’.)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I was going to dissect your response line by line, but decided to let this last statement of yours stand on its own merit.
joeldshore;
I have asked this question of Steven Mosher and Zeke Hausfather without response. Perhaps you would like to respond?
With global temperature trend being expressed as an average of temperature anomalies, how do you justify averaging anomalies from very cold regimes with anomalies from very warm regimes given that via Stefan-Boltzman Law these represent completely different energy fluxes?
joeldshore,
On the thinking issue. “It is not what someone thinks”.
Got me some physics, inter. and dif. cal. , some chem. some EE degree, then some grad work back in the 1960’s at UTA then worked applied physics, EE, electronics with U.S. Gov. operation igloo white in Asia, then back to General Dynimics in Ft. Worth getting the terrian following radar to work with humans for the F-111.
What we found on sicience, physics, math, electonics and stuff was it was not what we thought so much as what worked. Worked the same way every time, worked that way because we had the basic physics, math, electronics, wires, circuts 100% correct.
Now when Michael Mann and his merry band of thousands of thinking ones on how it should work get to the point that it works the way they think it should every time and as in the F-111 some one could put his life on the line that the terrian following radar would work the same way ever last time, then Michael Mann etal will be on the other side of their opinion and on the side of real science.
Have a nice day.
Mark Bofill says:
When I started by asking ‘Damage control?’, you could’ve just replied ‘Yes’, you know.
Well, I guess it is a matter of perspective. It seems like you are doing “damage control” to explain why news that is about 7 years old is considered “breaking”
——————————————————————————
Well, I appreciate your relatively straightforward and honest reply. But let me take your words to heart. Let’s not digress, but instead focus on that part of the news that IS fresh and new. You can disabuse me if this was already common knowledge, btw.
So, what’s your take on this statement?
“Interestingly, one of them stated quite openly in a meeting I attended a few years ago that he deliberately lied in these sort of elicitation exercises (i.e. exaggerating the probability of high sensitivity) in order to help motivate political action.”
Are you surprised to hear this? I think this could be a bit of a let down for those who trusted the integrity of climate scientists, but I’d love to hear your thoughts!
joeldshore:
At February 2, 2013 at 11:18 am you say
I am at a loss to comprehend how you could know or understand “what the scientific community thinks” but I will let that pass.
Of course, when the Earth is recovering from the LIA “you can cherry-pick other similar periods between 1975 and now where the slope of the trend is not positive”. But the time from the present back is NOT a “cherry pick”: it is an indication of what is happening now. And the recent halt to global warming indicates that recovery from the LIA has stopped perhaps permanently.
However, your comment that I quote poses an obvious question which I put to you.
The question is
How long does the globe have to experience no discernible warming before you agree that the increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration is not causing global warming?
Please note that using http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php to determine how long it has been that the global temperature trend is not different from zero at 95% confidence one obtains the following values from the different data sets.
RSS
Warming is NOT significant for over the most recent 23 years .
Trend: +0.126 +/-0.136 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1990
UAH
Warming is NOT significant for over the most recent 19 years .
Trend: 0.143 +/- 0.173 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
Hacrut3
Warming is NOT significant for over the most recent 19 years .
Trend: 0.098 +/- 0.113 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
Hacrut4
Warming is NOT significant for over the most recent 18 years .
Trend: 0.095 +/- 0.111 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995
GISS
Warming is NOT significant for over the most recent 17 years .
Trend: 0.116 +/- 0.122 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1996
The times to the nearest month when warming is not significant for each set are:
RSS since September 1989;
UAH since April 1993;
Hadcrut3 since September 1993;
Hadcrut4 since August 1994 and
GISS since October 1995
I await your answer to – but anticipate your evasion of – my question.
Richard
And there I was thinking that Kofi Annan had seen the errors of Pachauri’s ways…….
Still, you write a mean headline, don’t you?!
joeldshore says:
February 2, 2013 at 11:18 am
You have it 100% wrong, joeldshore-You should have written “…which is why there is such a divide on this issue between what the “skeptical scientific” community thinks and what the “climate scientist” community thinks.
You see, true scientists are skeptics, so you automatically preclude any of those who agree with you as being “scientists”. And you can write all sorts of fiction, but temperatures are not controlled by CO2; models do a horrible job of forecasting (they can’t even hindcast); and you have a perfect double fail, joel.
But I’ll lump you in the same group as Steven Mosher–those responsible for the deaths of literally millions of earth’s human inhabitants because you’ve been suckered into the Global Warming cult, which no right-thinking person would ever do, joel.
Consider yourself executioner by design or default–either way it matters a great deal to all of the victims of your vile “climate science”.
(Or are you going to somehow justify “saving humanity” by killing humanity??)
Pathetic.
Give me a break. You can’t detect bias with the sort of experiment.
Steven Mosher: Which comments are “crazy refusals over radiative physics”? Plenty of people write about non-radiative heat transfer processes, and the non-equilibrium, non-steady state, non-stationarity of the overall system than make inferences from simple radiative models suspect. Don’t even lukewarmers have to drop the (crazy ?) refusals to acknowledge these limitations of the science?
…..
We know from first principles, verified by testing, that doubling will get us to 1.2C. Now, you suggest that other less well known and less certain considerations might overturn what is A) tested physics and B) physics that us used to build working devices. I think the recognition of limitations rightly should be pressed upon those who promote the less well know rather than the more well known.
What I meant was the “crazy” insistence that “first principles” based on radiative physics and equilibrium alone are sufficient to tell us what the effect of doubling the atmospheric concentration of CO2 will be. 1.2C change is less than the global average approximation error of the equilibrium model, assuming that the current estimated mean temperature well approximates the current “equilibrium” temperature.
What exactly do you mean by “verified by testing”? Has there been a “test” of the climate warming effect of CO2 doubling and has the effect of 1.2C on the “equilibrium” temperature been confirmed? Model results are generally called “models”, “scenarios” and such rather than predictions, but to date the modeled values overestimate the quantity that matters, namely the increase in mean temperature induced by increased CO2. The disparity may not satisfy the criteria of a “statistically significant” rejection of the models, but they certainly have not be “verified by testing”. What has been verified by testing are a lot of radiative properties of CO2 unrelated to the question facing us now: given the atmosphere and climate as they are now, what will be the effects on climate of doubling the atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Repeating one of your sentences: I think the recognition of limitations rightly should be pressed upon those who promote the less well know rather than the more well known.
I think that the people studying the less well known, perhaps the people promoting them as well, recognize the limitations of the knowledge. I interpret your comment as asserting that the less well-known processes should be ignored outright and they can’t in the aggregate matter. But they should be studied, and they might matter: the most commonly mentioned is the possible increase in albedo resulting from increased cloud cover.
Please tell us how you know that the “first principles” are sufficient for predicting the effects of increased CO2 on the actual, non-equilibrium, climate.
rogerknights says:
February 2, 2013 at 7:18 am
If an individual made the comment as Annan reports then he is completely lacking in integrty.
The second statement is puzzling in that as I have pointed out, this whole thread is based on the puzzling claim by Annan is saying something at odds with the majority of scientists on the sensitivity question.
He isn’t.
At the risk of repeating myself yet again:
A 2008 review of sensitivity by Knutti and Hegerl says:
“Various observations favour a climate sensitivity value of about 3 °C, with a likely range of about 2–4.5 °C.”
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n11/abs/ngeo337.html
Annan offers his opinion that if outside this range, it is likely to be on the lower rather than higher end::
A value (slightly) under 2 is certainly looking a whole lot more plausible than anything above 4.5.’
Crosspatch up thread makes a good point. Too many people have their livelihoods invested in all this unscientific rubbish.
its quite shocking to see this perversoi0n of science.
Philip Shehan says:
February 2, 2013 at 1:48 pm
…this whole thread is based on the puzzling claim by Annan is saying something at odds with the majority of scientists on the sensitivity question.
————————————-
Since JoelDShore has apparently split, maybe you’d field this instead Philip. You don’t think James Annan’s quote is at all worth talking about?
“Interestingly, one of them stated quite openly in a meeting I attended a few years ago that he deliberately lied in these sort of elicitation exercises (i.e. exaggerating the probability of high sensitivity) in order to help motivate political action.”
It’s a concise statement in and of itself, but the discussion surrounding it is every bit as interesting. ‘Since the IPCC can no longer defend their old analyses in any meaningful manner, it seems they have to resort to an unsupported “this is what we think, because we asked our pals”.’, regarding the ‘private opinion poll’ he talks about.
Like I told Joel, this doesn’t particularly surprise me personally, but I think it ought to be news to more mainstream folk who don’t pay close attention to climate science. You don’t think this is worth a thread?
Philip Shehan says:
February 2, 2013 at 1:48 pm
Also from your reference
Looks like Annan just ruled out those higher sensitivities.
Philip Shehan:
Your post at February 2, 2013 at 1:48 pm is as illogical as all your other assertions on WUWT.
If, as you assert, the so-called “consensus” is
“Various observations favour a climate sensitivity value of about 3 °C, with a likely range of about 2–4.5 °C.”
then Annan is breaking with the “consensus” when, as you admit, he suggests the value could be less than 2 °C because his suggestion is below the consensus range.
Hence, according to your own statements, you are wrong when you claim Annan is not “saying something at odds with the majority of scientists on the sensitivity question”.
In light of your previous mind-blocks when your errors are pointed out, I will restate your error in other words in hope that you will grasp at least one of the explanations.
(a) You say the “consensus” of most climate scientists is that
“Various observations favour a climate sensitivity value of about 3 °C, with a likely range of about 2–4.5 °C.”
and
(b) You admit Annan is suggesting climate sensitivity may be lower than 2 °C (i.e. lower than that “consensus”range.
but
(c) You make the claim that Annan is not disputing the “consensus” range, and this claim refutes either (a) or (b).
Richard
Friends:
Philip Shehan wrote, “At the risk of repeating myself yet again:”
Extrapolation suggests he will repeat himself again and again and …
He has done that on four previous WUWT threads.
Richard