People send me stuff, today it was this “editors picks” from John Micklethwait, editor of The Economist. After years of being pro-warming, I was shocked to see this headline as a “pick”. It seems a change in editorial position may be afoot.
The article is quite blunt, and quite interesting for its details, here is the introduction:
OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, “the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.”
Temperatures fluctuate over short periods, but this lack of new warming is a surprise. Ed Hawkins, of the University of Reading, in Britain, points out that surface temperatures since 2005 are already at the low end of the range of projections derived from 20 climate models (see chart 1). If they remain flat, they will fall outside the models’ range within a few years.
The mismatch between rising greenhouse-gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now. It does not mean global warming is a delusion. Flat though they are, temperatures in the first decade of the 21st century remain almost 1°C above their level in the first decade of the 20th. But the puzzle does need explaining.
The mismatch might mean that—for some unexplained reason—there has been a temporary lag between more carbon dioxide and higher temperatures in 2000-10. Or it might be that the 1990s, when temperatures were rising fast, was the anomalous period. Or, as an increasing body of research is suggesting, it may be that the climate is responding to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in ways that had not been properly understood before. This possibility, if true, could have profound significance both for climate science and for environmental and social policy.
…
Clouds of uncertainty
This also means the case for saying the climate is less sensitive to CO₂ emissions than previously believed cannot rest on models alone. There must be other explanations—and, as it happens, there are: individual climatic influences and feedback loops that amplify (and sometimes moderate) climate change.
…
That last paragraph meshes very well with recent publications about lower climate sensitivity, which they reference.
Read the entire article here: http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21574461-climate-may-be-heating-up-less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions
While we are on the subject of sensitivity, they mention the recent paper by Nic Lewis who writes:
It even cites a paper that I’ve recently had accepted for publication, and which I think will at least get a mention in AR5 WG1.
They also have an editorial which says:
All in all, I think this is tremendous progress. Kudos to The Economist for embracing this maxim:
When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?
h/t to Nic Lewis and Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.
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Theo Goodwin says:
March 27, 2013 at 10:16 pm
“…To become a genuine science, climate science must account for natural variability and it must take as it primary goal the description of natural regularities…”
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As a matter of logic, it is impossible to ascertain climate sensitivity until one knows the bounds of natural variation.
In order to find cliamte sensitivity, one needs to remove the noise of natural variation, and it is only once that is done that one is left with the signal of climate sensitivity.
One of the major goals in climate science ought to be the ascertainment of natural variation and its bounds.
Australis says:
March 27, 2013 at 6:27 pm
“The mismatch might mean that—for some unexplained reason—there has been a temporary lag between more carbon dioxide and higher temperatures in 2000-10″
This will be the next line of retreat: DAGW is in remission but the patient still won’t recover. It’s sure to come back! The last 15 years are just a hiatus or pause in an inexorable long-term warming trend.
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What is the basic physics behind a ‘temporary lag’ Has CO2 temporarily lost its mojo as a heat trapping gas?
Surely, this line of argument is patently disengenuous. The best case argument for the warmists is that natural variation is presently equal to the CO” forcing, but natural variation is by its nature variable and there will come a time when the opposite forcing of natural varaition subsides and we will then see a return to the upward temperature trend caused by CO2 which will come back with a vengeance once released from the shackles of natural variation.
MODERATORS
Please replace my last post with this post (since I missed off a sentence)
Thanks
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Australis says:
March 27, 2013 at 6:27 pm
“The mismatch might mean that—for some unexplained reason—there has been a temporary lag between more carbon dioxide and higher temperatures in 2000-10″
This will be the next line of retreat: DAGW is in remission but the patient still won’t recover. It’s sure to come back! The last 15 years are just a hiatus or pause in an inexorable long-term warming trend.
/////////////////////////
What is the basic physics behind a ‘temporary lag’ Has CO2 temporarily lost its mojo as a heat trapping gas? How, Why? What are the special properties of CO2 that cause such phenomena?
Surely, this line of argument is patently disengenuous. The best case argument for the warmists is that natural variation is presently equal to the CO” forcing, but natural variation is by its nature variable and there will come a time when the opposite forcing of natural varaition subsides and we will then see a return to the upward temperature trend caused by CO2 which will come back with a vengeance once released from the shackles of natural variation.
The mismatch might mean that—for some unexplained reason …
Nothing unusual or surprising there, if scientists only look at the natural mitigating factors:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/EarthNV.htm
This is very significant for the Economist considering some of the past pronouncements in the subject of climate. However, it is not fully joined up. It does not matter how much the average temperature rises. It is the impacts of that rise upon human beings and the rest of nature that should be of concern. There are two factors that are important here.
First, is that lower sensitivity will imply a slower rate of temperature rise over time for a given rise in greenhouse gases. Therefore if median sensitivity is halved, so is halved the median expected temperature rise this century. The worst alleged impacts are from destabilization of the climate system as a result of rapid change. The climate tipping points are far less likely to be breached by slower rates of warming. Along with that, it is far easier to adapt to more gradual changes. So 30cm a century of sea level rise is far easier to adapt to that 30cm a decade.
Second, is that catastrophic impacts have been over-hyped. The most costly projected impacts have turned out to be founded on little or no substance. The melting of the ice sheets is not accelerating. Crops yields will not fall by 50% in some African countries by 2020. The Amazon will not suddenly collapse from a drop in rainfall. Tropical storms are not getting more frequent or violent. Etc.
These two components of slower warming rates and the lower costs from a rise in temperature over time multiply together, to make a dramatically different picture over time.
I laid out the components to consider when assessing the expected impacts here
http://manicbeancounter.com/2012/10/26/costs-of-climate-change-in-perspective/
Planet Earth says: “reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”.
Abit concerned about this statement
“Or, as an increasing body of research is suggesting, it may be that the climate is responding to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in ways that had not been properly understood before”
Or, as an increasing body of research is suggesting, it may be that the climate is responding to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide BY GETTING COLDER??????????
‘So what does all this amount to? The scientists are cautious about interpreting their findings. As Dr Knutti puts it, “the bottom line is that there are several lines of evidence, where the observed trends are pushing down, whereas the models are pushing up, so my personal view is that the overall assessment hasn’t changed much.”’
Well Professor Knutti, what it means to normal people is the consensus of eggsperts don’t have a clue what’s going on and the null hypothesis that the climate is always changing is alive and well. Naturally all those who behaved like shrieking schoolgirls with the vapours over the greatest consensus of chicken littles modern science has ever produced, need to try and extricate themselves with some skerrick of dignity and reputation intact. Now it’s the turn of we holocaust deniers to shriek with laughter at their shenanigans trying desperately to disguise their increasingly frantic rush for the exits. What a hoot.
It’s not just the Economist where minds are slowly turning. Over in Germany Notrickszone has been highlighting various media who are beginning to doubt the projections of doom and thermageddon. CAGW is a supertanker and don’t turn on a dime but it will turn as long as the lack of warming (or cooling) continues. Secondly, Warmist orgnaisaitons & climate scientists such as the Met Office and people like Dr. James Hansen are being forced to face reality. As they say the truth will out in the end.
This month
http://notrickszone.com/2013/03/27/the-climate-science-caricatures-jylland-posten-features-massive-4-full-pages-of-climate-science-skepticism/
http://notrickszone.com/2013/03/26/supersized-xxl-winter-in-complete-contradiction-to-climate-prognoses-reports-germanys-no-1-daily/
http://notrickszone.com/2013/03/25/flagship-daily-die-welt-stuns-germany-scientists-warn-of-ice-age-cites-new-peer-reviewed-russian-study/
While over in the UK we have various media which used to solidly back CAGW beginning to turn more sceptical. Examples are the Daily Mail, Express and I think the Telegraph. These recent pronoucements would have been shocking back in 2005.
Actually fellow/fellaw who wrote above about Cyprus banks will even trump all events even global warming. The beurocrats in the EU have probably started the greatest economic depression we will ever experience. Lucky I don’t live in the NH..They simply should have let Cyprus get out of the EU as Greece should have etc . Now they will all probably have to dissolve. Probably Germany will be the first to get out.
This small step in my view is a huge leap for the Economist. It has only been since June, 2012, that the cover story was of the Vanishing North, and a 14-page special report on the effects of global warming. This change is a major transformation in a short time.
http://www.economist.com/printedition/covers/2012-06-14/ap-e-eu-la-me-na-uk
This is purely wishful thinking, but could it only be a few more weeks until The Economist begins attacking those idiots who created such a self-damaging energy policy for Britain?
The Economist’s penultimate paragraph reads:
I thought there were “diminishing returns” from the addition of CO2. Is this paragraph a blunder?
When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?
– John Maynard Keynes
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A wording more reflective of Keynes life would be:
“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions – because I can’t figure out what the facts are.”
And the sunspot number this afternoon is down to 35. Not that you would notice in London though, because it’s overcas and raining, and the temperature is five degrees Celsius, dropping to minus two tonight.
It’s not the scientifically offensive propaganda that would annoy me if I still lived in the UK, nor even the customary wastage of taxpayers money, but the fact that the government has spent ten years promising a change in climate to that of the Costa Del Sol or Mauritius, and yet here I am, still freezing my nuts off on East Croydon station after trudging my way there through a spring blizzard.
But they promised!!
““You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling C02′” – Reid Bryson, the ‘Father of climatology’” Doubling CO2 may not have much of an effect on global temperatures but it would have a huge positive effect on all ecosystems since the producers (photo-synthesizers) would have an immediate increase of about 1/3 in biomass production.
They don’t even mention the other possibility that CO2 is not the fundamental factor in the short, medium, or long run because it is a trace gas and the multidecadal ocean cycles are far more important to begin with in short and medium run models and observational commentary.
Given the 20th century record of periodic 25-30 year flat or falling temperatures around an underlying rise of 0.75C (perhaps 0.4-0.5C allowing for siting distortion), the mystery is why anyone is mystified by the current pause.
Lord Leach of Fairford says:
March 28, 2013 at 8:40 am
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Would you care to predict a date when you expect warming to resume?
This piece was NOT published in the printed journal of The Economist 23-29 March. I have the journal in front of me , I wonder why? Perhaps Anthony could ask the editor-in-chief?
Also from The Economist, regarding Freeman Dyson:
“The same deep dislike of intellectual overconfidence has led Mr Dyson to challenge the received wisdom on climate change. Mr Dyson is not a climate sceptic; he concedes that Earth is warming and that man is responsible. But ever since he first tinkered with computer models of climate in the 1970s he has repeatedly found them so wanting as to make their dire projections worthless.”
http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21574470-missing-nobel
According to the Economist:
“One type of model—general-circulation models, or GCMs—use a bottom-up approach. These divide the Earth and its atmosphere into a grid which generates an enormous number of calculations in order to imitate the climate system and the multiple influences upon it. The advantage of such complex models is that they are extremely detailed. Their disadvantage is that they do not respond to new temperature readings. They simulate the way the climate works over the long run, without taking account of what current observations are. Their sensitivity is based upon how accurately they describe the processes and feedbacks in the climate system.”
The Economist’s account of models is the most sophisticated that has appeared in popular media but it contains a crucial error.
What the Economist has right is that GCMs imitate the climate system. In other words, a GCM is an attempt to reproduce, in a computer, the workings of the climate. In addition, the Economist is right that the models do not take account of observations.
What the Economist has wrong is that the models describe the processes and feedbacks in the climate system. Models do no such thing. Models imitate the processes and feedbacks but do not describe them. If the models described them then modelers could produce from model code the physical hypotheses that describe the relevant natural processes. Modelers cannot produce those physical hypotheses. Modelers create mathematical equations, not physical hypotheses, which take numbers as inputs and produce numbers as outputs. Modelers then interpret the output numbers as the effects of one or another natural process. However, any such work depends on modelers’ intuition and not something that can be shared and tested against reality the way that physical hypotheses can be shared among scientists. The “climate sensitivity” assigned to any model cannot be something different from the modeler’s intuitions about the model.
GCMs reproduce reality but do not describe it. Models imitate natural processes but do not describe them. Physical hypotheses describe natural processes but do not imitate or reproduce them. GCMs are not comparable to physical hypotheses. Only physical hypotheses can be confirmed or disconfirmed through experience. These facts are the reason that GCMs do not take account of observations. In principle, GCMs cannot take account of observations. The use of GCMs should be limited to analytic work and they must never be used as substitutes for physical hypotheses.
Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen wrote:
“This piece was NOT published in the printed journal of The Economist 23-29 March.”
No, it is in The Economist March 30 – April 5 issue, which came out in printed form today (a day early due to Easter). It is on pages 81-83
Embarrassing for Climate Scientists of the CO2 warming persuasion, I should think, to have journalists leading them out of the wilderness! When it has become patently obvious to the ordinary folk before the consensus wakes up, the team’s quality of science must be ‘worse that we thought’, ‘unprecedented’ in science.
“All in all, I think this is tremendous progress. Kudos to The Economist for embracing this maxim:
When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?”
Wrong.
The information didn’t changed, there wasn’t and still there isn’t any information to extract any conclusion.
The Economist is just going with the wind, like it went in the past.
And they go because they are nothing more than a socialist right magazine.