Mike’s AGU Trick
By Steve McIntyre
There has been considerable recent discussion of the fact that observations have been running cooler than models – see, for example, Lucia’s discussion of IPCC AR5 SOD Figure 9.8 (see here). However, Michael Mann at AGU took an entirely different line. Mann asserted that observations were running as hot or hotter than models. Mann’s assertion was taken even further by Naomi Oreskes, who asserted that climate models were under-estimating relative to observations. Oreskes squarely placed the blame for the supposed underestimates on climate skeptics.
In today’s post, I’ll look closely at the illustration in Mann’s AGU presentation, an illustration that gave an entirely different impression than the figure in the IPCC draft report. The reason for the difference can be traced to what I’ve termed here as “Mike’s AGU Trick”.
The IPCC AR5 SOD Graphic
An excerpt from IPCC AR5 SOD Figure 9.8 is shown below, clearly showing that the multimodel ensemble (red) is running noticeably hotter than observations (black). In my opinion, the difference is not merely “noticeable” but “statistically significant”, but that’s a story for a different day.
Figure 1. Excerpt from IPCC AR5 SOD Figure 9.8, comparing model ensemble to observations.
Mann’s AGU Presentation
However, Mann at AGU asserted that observations were running as hot or hotter than models. Mann’s model comparandum was Hansen’s Scenario B, which is widely regarded as the most reasonable scenario to use to interpret Hansen’s “forecast” – see past CA points on this issue.
Figure 2. Mann’s AGU slide comparing observations to Hansen’s 1988 Scenario B projection.
I took the photo with a new phone, with which I was then unfamiliar and unfortunately can only provide a muddy zoom on the graphic. Despite the muddiness, you can see that observations (red) appear to cohere with Hansen’s 1988 forecast (blue). In the loop below, I’ve overplotted data for models and observations to show more clearly what was shown to the AGU audience. (There was a bit of detective work in figuring this out – see below.) Click on the figure below for a loop illustrating the components of the zoomed figure). (Note: see below for Mann’s use of his AGU Trick to hide the divergence in a presentation a few months earlier at Rutgers).
Figure 3. Blowup of Mann’s slide comparing Hansen’s Scenario B to observations. Blue – Hansen’s Scenario B; red – “observations”.
Mann’s AGU slide obviously has a completely different rhetorical impression than the IPCC graphic. Whereas the discrepancy between observations and models was immediately noticeable in the IPCC graphic, Mann’s AGU graphic showed no such discrepancy. There were two reasons for the difference, the combination of which I’ll call “Mike’s AGU Trick” and will analyse below.
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Read the full post here: http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/02/mikes-agu-trick/
Reading the comments is also entertaining, particularly in watching Nick Stokes trying to defend the Mann, while McIntyre wipes the floor with his argument.
@ur momisugly ferd berple says: March 3, 2013 at 10:22 pm
Agree with your general thrust in above two comments.
But I think this also goes to very specific and observable things.
For example, recently in the news there has been a good bit about murder and disfunction in Chicago, focused in black communities. These people were the actual people Obama himself cut his teeth on apparently. After what, 40 years?, government “support” of the contemporary kind has resulted in (probably) a chosen few enhancing their lives whilst these communities, on a basic level of human function, have from all reports gone backwards over that time.
This is NOT an accident. It is REQUIRED even if this happens on an instinctual level for those influencing and implementing it.
As to the level of awareness now, of basic realities apparent to those 300 years ago, well, that is the problem isn’t it?
Rant alert!
In the aftermath of the fall of the Twin Towers, perhaps the loudest message sent was the silence of Muslim clerics around the world, who failed to distance themselves, their faith, and their followers from the evil of that act by condemning it.
It has often been suggested that the persistence of this horrifically costly mess called CAGW Science, so well characterized by Mann’s mendacity, is all the Globalist Left’s fault, or all the MSM’s fault, or all Public Education’s fault. No, it is all Science’s fault. If the immune system of Science is too weak or too confused or too complicit to respond to such an obvious hostile invader with deadly effect, Science is doomed and deserves to be. Silence is guilt. It is high time for Science to abandon this decrepit ship, hurling condemnations as they go, or go down with it and good riddance. Truth-seeking lower-case science will be the better for it, as will the good people worldwide who by lifetimes of honest labor make lives for themselves, their families, and their communities. And we might even get around to learning something true about climate in the process.
MattN says: “I’m glad Mann does not work in pharmaceuticals. With the way he blatantly changes data, he could wind up killing more people than smallpox…”
20,000 people die each winter in the UK. In one of the coldest years that was estimated to be around 40,000. In the third world people die because predictable short-term weather impacts DO NOT HAVE THE RESEARCH THEY NEED because the idoarty who run climate/weather research funding don’t care a damn about real lives that could be saved and instead waste it trying to prevent warming & CO2 which appears so far to be overwhelmingly beneficial. (EVEN STERN AGREES that 1°C warming is beneficial).
So, let’s work out just how many lives are at stake. 20,000 over the next century is 2 million in the UK alone. Multiply that by the number of northern nations. So how many additional lives will be lost because Mann and is evil ilk have raised fuel costs for the most vulnerable?
Now let’s look at the lives that could have been saved in the last decade if the same effort had gone into protecting lives from short-term weather in the developing world rather than paying huge skip-loads of dosh to the evil wind developers.
No … it’s too depressing even to contemplate the death toll directly attributable to Mann.
RE: which is closer to real-world emissions since 1988, Hansen’s Scenario A or his Scenario B?
Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit addressed this question five years ago:
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/02/mikes-agu-trick/#comment-402771
Steve’s argument is, essentially, that under Scenario A, the effects of CFC and Other Trace Gases (OTG) far outweigh those from CO2 (especially the further you move to the right).
However, none of the trace particulate emissions (or atmospheric concentrations) are anywhere near Scenario A implied levels.
However, I am confused on a couple of aspects from Steve’s January 24 1988 posting with respect to CO2, specifically the following:
1) “Sixth, none of these calculations deal with feedbacks. So the sort of numbers that result from these calculations are in the range of 1.2 deg C for doubling CO2…”
– Hansen refers to a feedback of 4.2 deg C in his 1988 report. This doesn’t tie in with the 1.2 deg C mentioned above.
2) Under Figure 2 from http://climateaudit.org/2008/01/24/hansen-1988-details-of-forcing-projections/ (also posted at the bottom of the July update): http://climateaudit.org/2008/07/28/hansen-update/ — the CO2 forcing stays approximately constant for Scenario A through 2050, whereas it rises constantly for Scenario B.
– The greater CO2 effect for Scenario B vs. Scenario A makes absolutely no sense.
So if the discussion is about CO2 emissions, Scenario A is a clear underestimate. If it’s about all GHG emissions, somewhere between Scenario A and Scenario B (closer to B, apparently) is the best estimate.
The general public is NOT being told this, however (nor is it apparent in a straightforward read of Hansen et al 1988). One wonders whether this was made clear to the AGU audience during Mann’s Dec. 2012 presentation.
(I posted a similar comment at CA — awaiting moderation currently).
Kurt in Switzerland
The forcing that Hansen used in Scenario B is almost bang on the actual forcing which occurred. Or at least, that is the actual forcing that the IPCC will be using in their upcoming report (change from the starting point in 1984 which is what Hansen says was the last year of real data he used).
So, Scenario B is what really happened. Hansen’s temp projection for 2012 under Scenario B: +1.065C. GIStemp in 2012: +0.56C.
http://www.realclimate.org/data/H88_scenarios_eff.dat
http://www.realclimate.org/data/scen_ABC_temp.data
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~mmalte/rcps/data/RCP6_MIDYEAR_RADFORCING.DAT
More on Scenarios A & B from Hansen et al 1988 vs actual emissions and the actual temperature record:
Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate covered the subject last month:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/02/2012-updates-to-model-observation-comparions/
His graph (bottom of post) is certainly more honest than Mann’s AGU presentation (since it includes the most recent data, the purpose of the post), but it fails to address the fact that human CO2 emissions are >25% above those envisaged in Scenario A and/or that CFC & OTG emission rates are not rising as foreseen in Scenario A (and the effect this would have on the temperature predictions per the model). He does summarize the numbers: Scenario B predicted about 0.29 ºC+/- 0.4ºC decade. Actuals (since 1985) have been just over half that (0.17-0.18ºC / decade for the data sets he chose).
FWIW, I believe other data sets show 0.15-0.16ºC / decade. Of course, that trend is declining with every year of failure to show increased warming. Given the apparent approximate 60 year cycle in global mean temperatures (based on the record for the past 150 y), the steepest sustained warming rate of 0.3ºC / decade from the 1920s not having been exceeded, current temperatures appear not to show a “man-made” trajectory, IPCC claims notwithstanding. Claims of a further rise beyond 1.0-1.5ºC by 2100 are looking more and more improbable.
Gavin goes on to make the following summary statement.
“The conclusion is the same as in each of the past few years; the models are on the low side of some changes, and on the high side of others, but despite short-term ups and downs, global warming continues much as predicted.”
For the reasons stated above, I consider Gavin’s comments regarding Hansen et al 1988 extremely weak. He is propping up a house of cards (and probably knows it). But at least he presented a reasonably honest graph on Hansen et al 1988 vs. actual temperatures). I’ll refrain comment on the rest of his post.
Kurt in Switzerland
Pamela Gray Says: ““Have Ph.D. dissertation committees become that bad at weeding out this kind of riff raff?”
Mann got where he is by serving a purpose that all started during his PhD dissertation, namely giving the graphic that showed climate was stable before the invention of the SUV. The funny thing is he believes all the crap he has been putting out there. That is why he was the perfect Useful Idiot from day one. Most scientists that are competent and with some conscience, would have realized what they had done and had a Mea Culpa moment.
Mann-designed bombs would only go up. Therefore never hitting the target. I guess Mann’s bombs would be SAMs instead.
Just a thought.
If someone mocked up a press release of this, stating the facts and calling deceit/dissembling/fraud, it could be around all the news media outlets tomorrow. PRNewswire is the best (and most expensive), and a release will cost about $700 for the US or $900 for US and UK.
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@ur momisugly Mike Haseler says: March 4, 2013 at 1:38 am
“No … it’s too depressing even to contemplate the death toll directly attributable to Mann.”
Depressing it is, but it should also be lighting a fire in people. It is time that the true costs of this right back to its genesis are quantified in terms in human life and misery, and displayed to the world. There are individuals in this who have been very aware of the basis or otherwise for what has been occurring. They must be held to account. Fully.
As this fails, there will increasingly be the refrain that “we”, meaning everyone, made a mistake. There is no “we” here.
@ur momisugly Glacierman says: March 4, 2013 at 6:20 am
“Most scientists that are competent and with some conscience, would have realized what they had done and had a Mea Culpa moment.”
Self – deception can be extreme but does have its limits. At some point it becomes deliberate. Mann is past any “justifying” limits.
There is a logically important distinction to be made between a prediction (aka forecast) and a projection which, however, is not observed by either Dr. Mann in his AGU presentation or by Mr. McIntire in this article. When this distinction is not observed, a consequence is for a misleading argument to be made in reference to the methodology of the research.
I like that you have the brass neck to run with this story on the same day you publish this graphic.
[Reply: your chart reflects U.S. temperatures. — mod.]
Sam the First – Regarding your first comment *March 3, 2013 at 7:52 am).
I have given a great deal of thought as to why both US Parties of Congress, with one Party much more than the other, fully embracing the CAGW scare despite solid evidence to the contrary. When trying to understand the motivation of politicians and their large political machines, I have found it useful to follow the money.
I first considered which Party has historically benefited from oil lobbyists. Shortly after, I came to the conclusion that the Government subsidizing (propping up) green energy is the other Party’s answer to tapping into ‘big energy’s’ financial resources/political contributions.
In other words, one Party’s campaign structure has financially benefited from green energy to counter the other Party’s historical source of major funding from oil (I’ll leave it to the reader to determine which Party is which).
I can think of no other answer as to why certain individual politicians, primarily in one Party, persist in embracing the illusion of CAGW when data (untampered/unadjusted) clearly refutes that premise.
Taking my theory a step further, it should be clear to any independent thinker, which Party the current major media outlets support. Considering this reality makes it all the clearer why the establishment media is hesitant to present both sides of the CAGW debate.
Other than some sort of epidemic-scaled Don Quixote/Chicken Little complex, I can find no other reason than the above as to why any politician, media outlet or scientific organization would continue to give Mike Mann the time of day, much less a platform to present his debauchery of the scientific method/science.
In short — Petroleum envy?