BREAKING: an encouraging admission of lower climate sensitivity by a 'hockey team' scientist, along with new problems for the IPCC

richardscourtney says:

1. What bluff have I made?

You took great offense and demanded an apology to my suggestion that if we tried to ask the authors directly what they meant by their statement, you would just brush off their response as altering their criterion in retrospect. So, I called your bluff by agreeing to apologize for my statement if you were to prove my expectations wrong by actually agreeing to actually abide by what the authors say if we ask them (and they say that they meant what I am confident that they meant)…and to stop misrepresenting what they said henceforth.

2. What are your “substantive points”?

They are the points numbered (1) through (5) here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/01/encouraging-admission-of-lower-climate-sensitivity-by-a-hockey-team-scientist/#comment-1215586 plus the point demonstrating that talking about ruling something out at the 95% confidence level is not an oxymoron but in fact a statement one can find for example in discussions of the search for new particles like the Higgs Boson in high energy physics.

3. What points have you made which I have failed to demonstrate are plain wrong?

You have not demonstrated any of the points that I made in the comment that I linked to to be incorrect.

Joel says: You have proved my point.
Incredible. No matter what I say though, you’re always somehow sure that I’ve proved your point or that you were always correct. I could have said they chased spider monkeys round a haunted mansion for five hours and then declared that there were no near-zero or negative trends of 15 years or more in the model runs – and you would still say I’ve proved your point. Because in your mind you’re always correct no matter what I say.
They quite clearly state the models internal variability allows for near zero or negative trends of up to ten years but above 15 years!? No way. I guess if you run the simulations 1000 times and it never gets above 10 years then its pretty safe to rule out such a thing happening for 15 or more! You have to draw the line eventually.

I said:

Roger, with all due respect…

Urgh…Sorry for getting your name wrong! I think I see the “g” in your handle and interpret it as part of your first name.

P.P.S: the 95% level applies to the zero trends *that are observed in real life…actual temperature data, NOT the trends the models show*. Hence the models rule out the possibility of you observing trends that are statistically indistinguishable from zero with 95% confidence *in real life* not in the simulations. In this way, the (at the 95% level) DOES directly modify the observed zero trends, and obviously IN RELATION TO the subject of ‘what the simulations rule out’ (meaning exactly that, totally ruled out 100%). How much clearer can I make this? It specifically modifies “zero trends” *in relation to*, i.e connecting it to, ‘what the simulations rule out’. The way they wrote it, where they put the bracketed phrase, is the ONLY place they could put it for this meaning to be clear. Try it anywhere else! It doesn’t work.

The whole post was good, but I have a question about terminology. What you call “quasi-equilibrium” I would call “quasi-steady state” or “approximate steady state”: in each volume element of the climate system, the energy in is approximately equal to the energy out during periods (possibly indeterminate) when there is no net imbalance in the whole system (maybe now?) Are equilibrium and steady-state generally used interchangeably?
Well, it isn’t in thermal equilibrium, but yet it we speak of temperature, and even average temperature, quite glibly. Temperature is an equilibrium concept, so when we use it we are assuming at least approximate/local equipartition of energy. As you say, the Earth is in a quasi-steady state, one that we are seeking to characterize by an overall “temperature” even though it bears damn-all resemblance to any of the conventional definitions of one. When we examine that steady state, it is none too steady, but it appears to be in at least some parts as a sort of series of punctuated equilibria, describable by the sort of Hurst-Kolmogorov statistics favored by Koutsoyiannis.
In turn I tend to think of these as strange attractors that represent the stable points of a complicated multidimensional limit cycle with a characteristic locally stable “equilibrium” temperature, where external drivers, random chance, deterministic evolution, and so on periodically cause the system to jump attractors. IMO Bob Tisdale’s SST data (which he often presents as decades of stability followed by a very short timescale jump one way or the other up or down a bit in temperature) is very strong evidence for this as being a pretty good description of what’s going on. So is e.g. the UAH LTT series, which is not precisely flat but appears to be flat “on average” before the 1997-1998 El Nino, then bobbles for a bit, then appears to be flat “on average” since then.
So when I say quasi-equilibrium, I mean the sort of local “equilibrium” we have been for the last 14 or 15 years — a fairly steady process of fluctuations up and down across an approximately steady state “global average” temperature. “Equilibrium” because we assign the Earth a temperature, which it never has and which means nothing terribly like temperature outside of the context of the definition. Quasi because the temperature it is completely bogus and because the system isn’t even in dynamical equilibrium, it is fluctuating around in a flat, wide phase space such that the state is never even approximately stationary. As far as I know there is no more precise terminology for this, but if there is I’m happy to learn it.
rgb

Richard: Let’s look critically at your responses to my points, one by one.
In response to my first point, you say:

The only way the sentence could be written to mean what it says is to have written it as NOAA did.

I agree, which is why they wrote it the way that they did, putting the parenthetical phrase immediately after what it modifies. However, since I think what you are trying to say is that this is the only way that this sentence could be written so that it would mean what you misinterpret it to mine, then you are incorrect. Putting the parenthetical phrase after “zero trends” would clearly be a superior way to say what you want it to say. Writing the sentence as “The simulations rule out trends that are statistically-indistinguishable from zero at the 95% confidence level for 15 years or more” would very clearly and unambiguously state what you like to believe it says.
You next say:

As I there explained, the “(at the 95% level)” applies to “zero trends” and cannot apply to anything else in the sentence.

So, how do you parse the following sentence: ““When the black line descends below the red horizontal line at 1.0 on the vertical axis, people sometimes say that the Higgs Boson has been ruled out at 95% confidence level at this mass”? ( http://blog.vixra.org/2011/12/13/the-higgs-boson-live-from-cern/ ) What does the phrase “at 95% confidence level” apply to?
In response to my second and third points, you don’t actually give a response. You don’t address them at all. You basically just continue harping on point (1), not saying anything substantive.
In response to my 4th point, you say:

What you think “absurd” is not relevant. NOAA said what they said. And what NOAA said makes sense. You cannot refute it by saying it is “absurd” while failing to explain any absurdity.

So, again, you don’t respond to my point. You just claim that they said what you think they said. And, I explained why it is absurd. Let me make it really simple for you: If I have a theory that when you measure something then you should get the value 2…and you measure it and get the value 1.0 +/- 1.5, do you think that this measurement has “ruled out” the possibility that my theory is correct?

As I repeatedly told you on the other thread, there is no agreed method for adjusting for ENSO so the interpolation or extrapolation are each as good as any other ENSO correction method. And NOAA does NOT specify any particular adjustment method should be used:

Scientific papers are not written by lawyers. If a paper explains that the simulation and empirical data has been adjusted using a specific method and bases its conclusions on the use of this method, then I can’t just choose some other method and claim to have satisfied the conditions that their assertion is based upon.
Otherwise, I will just choose the following method to adjust for ENSO: The start of the record has a really big El Nino and the end has a pretty big La Nina, so I will adjust the trend by adding 0.2 C per decade to correct for this? Why? Because that is my adjustment method and apparently any method is as good as any other. Then my trend will be greater than 0.2 C per decade and your whole argument falls apart, even with your misinterpretation of the criterion.
Of course, I would never make such a silly claim that I can use whatever method I want. You apparently will.

Furthermore, in the previous thread you asserted (for no reason) that only that method should be used, so I challenged you to show that the (at the 95% level) zero trend is less than 15 years when using that method. Your response has been the chirping of crickets.

If you look at the paper that they reference, their method is not so easy to implement if one does not yet have the code set up to do it. It is not my responsibility to do this work for you. You are the one who wants to apply this “falsification” criterion of NOAA’s. So, it is your responsibility to apply it correctly. It is not my responsibility to do it for you.

So, you cannot back-up your lie that I made a “bluff”. I made no “bluff”.

I explained the bluff and will simply repeat my explanation: You took great offense and demanded an apology to my suggestion that if we tried to ask the authors directly what they meant by their statement, you would just brush off their response as altering their criterion in retrospect. So, I called your bluff by agreeing to apologize for my statement if you were to prove my expectations wrong by actually agreeing to actually abide by what the authors say if we ask them (and they say that they meant what I am confident that they meant)…and to stop misrepresenting what they said henceforth.

. If you believe that those other technologies that you mention will come along to stop this from occurring, then why not harness the forces of the marketplace to help that transition occur before we have imperiled ourselves? In other words, why not have them compete on a playing field where we do not give fossil fuels a “free pass” to significantly alter the chemistry of ouryou atmosphere without paying any price whatsoever for doing so?
Because it will cost trillions of dollars to do so! Tens of trillions of dollars. Spent now, when we aren’t even certain that there will be a problem at all, let alone that it will be “catastrophic”. You are killing people — and I mean this quite seriously, so pay attention — you are killing people now on a bet that by doing so you’ll save more people later. You are killing every single human that remains impoverished because your silleconomic first world games intended to create a “level playing field” simply ensure that they can never, ever, afford electrical power in their (significantly shortened) lifetime.
We don’t have an infinite amount of money, and energy poverty is the most fundamental sort of poverty that there is. Every time you spend two dollars for energy where you’ve deliberately manipulated the markets and supply to ensure that it will cost two dollars where in a freer market it would only cost one, you impoverish every single living human who uses energy. You inflate currency in the wealthy west on the back of the poorest people in the world. You damn men, women and children to starvation, disease, and war. You condemn Europe to a blighted economy as they continue to spend a medium sized fortune on a chimera, taking measures that even the designers admit won’t make a hill of beans difference in CO_2 levels in fifty years. And where are the people advocating nuclear power — one of the few technologies out there we have today that give us energy without carbon? Where are the people pushing for the emergency development of thorium as a nuclear fuel?
Do not pretend that the cap and trade measure areall designed to “save the world”. They are designed to make rich people richer, by extracting more money from everybody else by pushing up the cost of energy and increasing margins even as one does so. If it were saving the world, you’d be shouting for nukes from the rooftops. It isn’t. If it were saving the world, one would have to begin by suggesting measures that might actually work, according to their designers. The measures designed so far don’t, and won’t even according to their designers. And don’t even think of pretending that we’re taking the hundreds of billions of dollars that we’ve artificially pulled out of people’s pockets and using them to develop alternative fuels, nuclear energy, more efficient storage mechanisms. You’re off my two orders of magnitude. That money goes straight where it always does, and always will until people wake up and use their common sense. Most of it goes straight into the pockets of the very energy companies that are supposed to be the problem. Quite a lot of it disappears into graft, corruption, and lines the pockets of people who are smart enough to game the system. A small share goes to bribe the politicians, to continue the media “heat” that interprets every weather disaster as being caused by AGW and steadfastly ignores any and all evidence to the contrary.
So I don’t support the measures that are currently being taken because I am not, in fact, an unkindly man. I lived in India for seven years growing up. I’ve visited many countries around the world and walked their dark and impoverished streets. I’ve seen first hand the human cost of the solution you propose, the cost we are paying right now, not a hypothetical cost that we mi,ght pay in a hypothetical future, if some of the most difficult computations ever done by humanity turn out to be correct the first time, even before we have sufficient data to inform them. I don’t know that I would support those measures if the proposals of the CAGW crowd were all true as opposed to just being possible (but somewhat improbable). The measures I would support, today or any other day, do not include implementing immature technologies that are not cost effective today but that might become cost effective in the future.
There are those that want to tax the hell out of people in NC to take measures now to prepare for some hypothetical 1 to 1.5 meter SLR that we are supposed to see by the year 2100. After all, this is a clear and present danger, right? There is no chance that this prediction could be wrong, is there? And besides, think of all the money that will be made along the way, all of the graft and corruption. Of course the actual measured rate of SLR, averaged over the last 140 years, is not even one ince a decade, and the current rate of SLR is a rate that might add ten whole more inches to the nine whole inches from the last 140 years — if it is sustained. It might not be. And if it ever is sustained, and starts to measurably increase to a threatening level, will measures to counter it cost less then than the do now? Of course not. We have to pay for the money to fix them now, taking the substantial risk that we’re throwing the money away if the religious prophecy of rising seas fails to come to pass.
Economics is all about trade-offs. Betting possible human lives in 2100 against certain human deaths now is a bad choice.
rgb

rgbatduke says:

That means that each square meter absorbs 86,400 extra joules per day. This is net profit — it takes in this much more energy than it gives off. That poor square meter takes in roughly \pi \times 10^7 extra joules per year. If the Earth absorbed one whole lousy watt per square meter across its entire surface, on average, more than it radiated away we would boil the oceans away just like Hansen fantasized after he imbibed those mushrooms not in some indefinite Venus-like future but within a year or two.

Let’s actually do the calculation: We’ll use the 1 W/m^2 (although a more accurate value is more like 0.5 W/m^2) and we’ll use an ocean mixed layer depth of 100 m (although the ocean heat content measurements typically go down to 700 m, and it has recently been argued that one has to look down to 2000 m to really see the full view of ocean heat content increase).
So, we have \pi \times 10^7 extra joules per year distributed in a volume of ocean that is 1 m^2 by 100 m, or 100 m^3. With a density of 1000 kg/m^3, its mass is thus m = 10^5 kg. The specific heat C is ~4200 J per (kg*C). So, we have energy = C*m*(Delta_T). Solving for Delta_T, we get 0.07 C. So, no, the oceans aren’t going to boil in a year. The temperature in the mixed layer only is going to rise by about 0.07 C in a year.
And, as I noted, the heat really apparently goes down several hundred meters and the imbalance is more like 0.5 W/m^2, so the actual ocean temperature rise is going to be lower.
davidmhoffer says:

Similarly read what rgb wrote to you. He hit the nail on the head on the physics,

Really? I respect rgb greatly, but the fact is that he made an intuitive estimate (“We would boil the oceans away…within a year or two”) that wasn’t even close to correct…And, it didn’t even take a calculation to know it wasn’t even close to being correct because I am not the first person to convert between ocean heat content and radiative imbalance. There are tons of freakin’ papers on it, for heaven’s sake!
Yet, rgb said something that was not even close to being correct and you guys just ate it up. Talk about confirmation bias!!

rgbatduke says:

Take UAH LTT. Pick a year/month when the anomaly was roughly 0.2 C — say somewhere in 1988. Take December of last year (when the UAH anomaly was 0.2 C IIRC). The average imbalance between incoming radiation and outgoing radiation across that entire 24 year period is zero. That is, if you integrated 100% of the Joules received by planet Earth over all 24 years, and 100% of all of the Joules lost (and included Joules received from e.g. nuclear and tidal heating as “received”) you’d get a great big whopping zero! Or something so close to zero that when you divided by the number of seconds in 24 years (7.6 \times 10^8) you’d get millionths of nanowatts per square meter, or something like that.
…
Now, you can argue that it isn’t really zero because our measurements of average global temperature are a shit-lousy estimator for global Enthalpy, and if you did assert that I would loudly agree — but that argument cuts both ways, big time. Then we really do have to worry about things like what the ocean was doing, at depth throughout its bulk volume, because you can dump a truly stupendous amount of heat into the oceans without raising temperatures anywhere by much or the ocean can give up heat ditto.

Yes, indeed…Most of the heat is going into the oceans. That is well-known. Just the top few meters of ocean has the same total heat capacity [i.e., J/K, not J/(kg*K)] as the entire atmosphere. And, people have looked at the change in ocean heat content down to fairly significant depths. You seem to want to dismiss these measurements immediately without providing us with any evidence that they can’t be trusted even, say, to within a factor of 2 over, say, the last 30 years.
richardscourtney says:

Welcome to a very, very large club: many have tried and all have failed

You guys need to quit while you’re behind. The fact that rgb has said some demonstrably incorrect things and you guys just blindly endorse them does not look too good. It is one thing for someone to make the basic mistake like rgb has done in his statement of what an energy balance would translated into…but when nobody around here besides me seems to recognize these mistakes…and in fact blindly defends them…it really doesn’t say good things about your objectivity.