J Bryan Kramer writes of this interview with IPCC lead author Hans Van Storch in SPIEGEL.
Interview conducted by Olaf Stampf and Gerald Traufetter
Climate experts have long predicted that temperatures would rise in parallel with greenhouse gas emissions. But, for 15 years, they haven’t. In a SPIEGEL interview, meteorologist Hans von Storch discusses how this “puzzle” might force scientists to alter what could be “fundamentally wrong” models.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Storch, Germany has recently seen major flooding. Is global warming the culprit?
Storch: I’m not aware of any studies showing that floods happen more often today than in the past. I also just attended a hydrologists’ conference in Koblenz, and none of the scientists there described such a finding.
SPIEGEL: But don’t climate simulations for Germany’s latitudes predict that, as temperatures rise, there will be less, not more, rain in the summers?
Storch: That only appears to be contradictory. We actually do expect there to be less total precipitation during the summer months. But there may be more extreme weather events, in which a great deal of rain falls from the sky within a short span of time. But since there has been only moderate global warming so far, climate change shouldn’t be playing a major role in any case yet.
SPIEGEL: Would you say that people no longer reflexively attribute every severe weather event to global warming as much as they once did?
Storch: Yes, my impression is that there is less hysteria over the climate. There are certainly still people who almost ritualistically cry, “Stop thief! Climate change is at fault!” over any natural disaster. But people are now talking much more about the likely causes of flooding, such as land being paved over or the disappearance of natural flood zones — and that’s a good thing.
SPIEGEL: Will the greenhouse effect be an issue in the upcoming German parliamentary elections? Singer Marius Müller-Westernhagen is leading a celebrity initiative calling for the addition of climate protection as a national policy objective in the German constitution.
Storch: It’s a strange idea. What state of the Earth’s atmosphere do we want to protect, and in what way? And what might happen as a result? Are we going to declare war on China if the country emits too much CO2 into the air and thereby violates our constitution?
SPIEGEL: Yet it was climate researchers, with their apocalyptic warnings, who gave people these ideas in the first place.
Storch: Unfortunately, some scientists behave like preachers, delivering sermons to people. What this approach ignores is the fact that there are many threats in our world that must be weighed against one another. If I’m driving my car and find myself speeding toward an obstacle, I can’t simple yank the wheel to the side without first checking to see if I’ll instead be driving straight into a crowd of people. Climate researchers cannot and should not take this process of weighing different factors out of the hands of politics and society.
…
SPIEGEL: Just since the turn of the millennium, humanity has emitted another 400 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, yet temperatures haven’t risen in nearly 15 years. What can explain this?
Storch: So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break. We’re facing a puzzle. Recent CO2 emissions have actually risen even more steeply than we feared. As a result, according to most climate models, we should have seen temperatures rise by around 0.25 degrees Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 10 years. That hasn’t happened. In fact, the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) — a value very close to zero. This is a serious scientific problem that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will have to confront when it presents its next Assessment Report late next year.
SPIEGEL: Do the computer models with which physicists simulate the future climate ever show the sort of long standstill in temperature change that we’re observing right now?
Storch: Yes, but only extremely rarely. At my institute, we analyzed how often such a 15-year stagnation in global warming occurred in the simulations. The answer was: in under 2 percent of all the times we ran the simulation. In other words, over 98 percent of forecasts show CO2 emissions as high as we have had in recent years leading to more of a temperature increase.
SPIEGEL: How long will it still be possible to reconcile such a pause in global warming with established climate forecasts?
Storch: If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models. A 20-year pause in global warming does not occur in a single modeled scenario. But even today, we are finding it very difficult to reconcile actual temperature trends with our expectations.
SPIEGEL: What could be wrong with the models?
Storch: There are two conceivable explanations — and neither is very pleasant for us. The first possibility is that less global warming is occurring than expected because greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have less of an effect than we have assumed. This wouldn’t mean that there is no man-made greenhouse effect, but simply that our effect on climate events is not as great as we have believed. The other possibility is that, in our simulations, we have underestimated how much the climate fluctuates owing to natural causes.
SPIEGEL: That sounds quite embarrassing for your profession, if you have to go back and adjust your models to fit with reality…
Storch: Why? That’s how the process of scientific discovery works. There is no last word in research, and that includes climate research. It’s never the truth that we offer, but only our best possible approximation of reality. But that often gets forgotten in the way the public perceives and describes our work.
SPIEGEL: But it has been climate researchers themselves who have feigned a degree of certainty even though it doesn’t actually exist. For example, the IPCC announced with 95 percent certainty that humans contribute to climate change.
Storch: And there are good reasons for that statement. We could no longer explain the considerable rise in global temperatures observed between the early 1970s and the late 1990s with natural causes. My team at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, in Hamburg, was able to provide evidence in 1995 of humans’ influence on climate events. Of course, that evidence presupposed that we had correctly assessed the amount of natural climate fluctuation. Now that we have a new development, we may need to make adjustments.
SPIEGEL: In which areas do you need to improve the models?
Storch: Among other things, there is evidence that the oceans have absorbed more heat than we initially calculated. Temperatures at depths greater than 700 meters (2,300 feet) appear to have increased more than ever before. The only unfortunate thing is that our simulations failed to predict this effect.
SPIEGEL: That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Storch: Certainly the greatest mistake of climate researchers has been giving the impression that they are declaring the definitive truth. The end result is foolishness along the lines of the climate protection brochures recently published by Germany’s Federal Environmental Agency under the title “Sie erwärmt sich doch” (“The Earth is getting warmer”). Pamphlets like that aren’t going to convince any skeptics. It’s not a bad thing to make mistakes and have to correct them. The only thing that was bad was acting beforehand as if we were infallible. By doing so, we have gambled away the most important asset we have as scientists: the public’s trust. We went through something similar with deforestation, too — and then we didn’t hear much about the topic for a long time.
…
SPIEGEL: And how good are the long-term forecasts concerning temperature and precipitation?
Storch: Those are also still difficult. For example, according to the models, the Mediterranean region will grow drier all year round. At the moment, however, there is actually more rain there in the fall months than there used to be. We will need to observe further developments closely in the coming years. Temperature increases are also very much dependent on clouds, which can both amplify and mitigate the greenhouse effect. For as long as I’ve been working in this field, for over 30 years, there has unfortunately been very little progress made in the simulation of clouds.
SPIEGEL: Despite all these problem areas, do you still believe global warming will continue?
Storch: Yes, we are certainly going to see an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or more — and by the end of this century, mind you. That’s what my instinct tells me, since I don’t know exactly how emission levels will develop. Other climate researchers might have a different instinct. Our models certainly include a great number of highly subjective assumptions. Natural science is also a social process, and one far more influenced by the spirit of the times than non-scientists can imagine. You can expect many more surprises.
SPIEGEL: What exactly are politicians supposed to do with such vague predictions?
Storch: Whether it ends up being one, two or three degrees, the exact figure is ultimately not the important thing. Quite apart from our climate simulations, there is a general societal consensus that we should be more conservative with fossil fuels. Also, the more serious effects of climate change won’t affect us for at least 30 years. We have enough time to prepare ourselves.
SPIEGEL: In a SPIEGEL interview 10 years ago, you said, “We need to allay people’s fear of climate change.” You also said, “We’ll manage this.” At the time, you were harshly criticized for these comments. Do you still take such a laidback stance toward global warming?
Storch: Yes, I do. I was accused of believing it was unnecessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is not the case. I simply meant that it is no longer possible in any case to completely prevent further warming, and thus it would be wise of us to prepare for the inevitable, for example by building higher ocean dikes. And I have the impression that I’m no longer quite as alone in having this opinion as I was then. The climate debate is no longer an all-or-nothing debate — except perhaps in the case of colleagues such as a certain employee of Schellnhuber’s, whose verbal attacks against anyone who expresses doubt continue to breathe new life into the climate change denial camp.
Storch: “Certainly the greatest mistake of climate researchers has been giving the impression that they are declaring the definitive truth. …”
Storch: “Yes, we are certainly going to see an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or more — and by the end of this century, mind you. That’s what my instinct tells me, …”
So we are now switching from “declaring the definitive truth” to what our instinct tells us?
OK, I gotta know–who is Schellnhuber’s employee?
Wow…..
SPIEGEL: Despite all these problem areas, do you still believe global warming will continue?
Storch: Yes, we are certainly going to see an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or more — and by the end of this century, mind you. That’s what my instinct tells me, since I don’t know exactly how emission levels will develop. Other climate researchers might have a different instinct. Our models certainly include a great number of highly subjective assumptions. Natural science is also a social process, and one far more influenced by the spirit of the times than non-scientists can imagine. You can expect many more surprises.
Honesty perhaps, but certainly contradictions aplenty, and blind faith too. And now we have to rely on instinct?
It’s breaking up fast.
The science is settled…..we don’t know, and we are sure of that.
Schellnhuber is no slouch when it comes to nutty climopocalypse comments-
“When you imagine that if all these 9 billion people claim all these resources, then the earth will explode.”
Joachim Schellnhuber, 11/23/2008
“In a very cynical way, it’s a triumph for science because at last we have stabilized something –- namely the estimates for the carrying capacity of the planet, namely below 1 billion people.”
Joachim Schellnhuber, Copenhagen, 12/2009
After predicting 8 C temperature rise by 2200, he says “the global organs will be pushed to destabilization and collapse“.
Joachim Schellnhuber, 4/22/2013
We can ackownledge it now.
The problem is not the climate models, though. The problem is the misconception about computer models many scientists have. Computer models do not generate empirical data, Empirical data only can come from real life experimentation. Computer models should only be used to test the validity of our hypotheses, which, in the climate science in particular are all wrong.
It was a foregone conclusion, anyway, If you have two different computer models, it is obvious that at least one of them must be wrong. And if the two of them give you the same result, then the two of them are wrong.
Storch: There are two conceivable explanations — and neither is very pleasant for us. The first possibility is that less global warming is occurring than expected because greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have less of an effect than we have assumed.
So … if it turns out that the world is NOT going to burn up from CO2 caused catastrophic global warming, that circumstance is described as “not very pleasant for us.”
Priceless.
How can any gas be GHG? Can you make a Green house out of gases which are freely moving molecule? Gases help the earth to cool down by convection method of heat transmission. Troposphere is not layered but homogenous, if layered CO2 the heaviest gas would be at the bottom not on top. For cause and solution to CC, click on my name.
That’s what my instinct tells me.
The hubris, it burns!
It’s just amazing even when confronted with the facts Dr. Hans Van Storch can’t help but talk out of both sides of his mouth.
He is asked:
SPIEGEL: What could be wrong with the models?
He responds:
Storch: There are two conceivable explanations — and neither is very pleasant for us. The first possibility is that less global warming is occurring than expected because greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have less of an effect than we have assumed. This wouldn’t mean that there is no man-made greenhouse effect, but simply that our effect on climate events is not as great as we have believed. The other possibility is that, in our simulations, we have underestimated how much the climate fluctuates owing to natural causes.
What ? ! !
“ . . . neither is very pleasant for us.” To who? How? To funding?
After that he just starts backtracking and crawfishing.
I have no definitive proof, but Stefan Rahmstorf is an employee of pic, the director of which is Hans Joachim Schelinhuber. Stefan Rahmstorf has published a few articles of the top alarmist varity of which Mr. Storch seems to be particularly against.
Freeman Dyson
“The climate-studies people who work with models always tend to overestimate their models,” Dyson was saying. “They come to believe models are real and forget they are only models.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Van Storch is one of the good guys. The Climategate scientists tried to cause trouble for him, because he allowed skeptics to publish.
Climategate Email 1051190249.txt
Mike’s idea to get editorial board members to resign will probably not work — we must get rid of von Storch too, otherwise holes will eventually be filled with people like Legates, Balling, Lindzen, Michaels, Singer, etc. I have heard the publishers are not happy with von Storch, so the above approach might remove that hurdle too
“That’s what my instinct tells me,”
As stated above but let me summarize again anyway because this was the take away message for me:
“All our models have failed but my instinct is all I really take notice of.”
Don’t tell Obama. He still watching AGW cartoons and old Hansen arrest videos.
Well it’s not only the models … The real world is experiencing the opposite to what was forecast.
Look here at this year’s CET temps..
http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=cet;sess=
There is not one month this year that has had a higher than average temperature (June may go either way though).
Here in England we’re often treated to the BBC telling us that weather events are being caused by climate chaos. What these warmists seem to forget is that climate chaos (if it could exist) depends upon raised temperatures. But if the temperature hasn’t gone up significantly then climate chaos cannot ensue. Our Central England Temperatures are plummeting back towards ‘normal’ http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/. When a river inevitably bursts its banks somewhere perhaps in Tewkesbury or Durham, the BBC will shout ‘Climate Chaos’. But based on what?
Don’t be too hard on Van Storch. As a rough equivalent think of him as Germany’s Judith Curry. As Eric Worrall says he has been vilified by the climate science community for being open to dissenting views.
Schellnhuber is the founding Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. As such his sole raison d’etre is to promote climate catastrophe; without it he and his team would be out of a job. I heard him talk last year and every slide of his presentation gave an apocalyptic view of the future.
It’s supposed to be 97% of the model runs that show no rise, not 98%. At least, that’s what the choirbook I have says.
I have been able to provide a compelling answer, you just don’t like it. In fact, I’ve been saying it for over 10 years. And, what’s more, my answer is more scientifically valid than your CO2 theory. Here’s my answer: CO2 DOES NOT DRIVE CLIMATE
Oh, and, if you were ACTUALLY concerned about the “environment” this would actually be GOOD news. The world isn’t going to meltdown. Yay.
” The only thing that was bad was acting beforehand as if we were infallible. By doing so, we have gambled away the most important asset we have as scientists: the public’s trust. ”
“Yes, we are certainly going to see an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or more — and by the end of this century, mind you.”
++++++++++
OK – so we don’t know, but he is certain of 2 degress C.
WUWT?
Storch says ‘If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models. ‘
Which is odd because reported in the Australian, the UN’s climate change chief, Rajendra Pachauri, has acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises, confirmed recently by Britain’s Met Office, but said it would need to last “30 to 40 years at least” to break the long-term global warming trend.
You would have thought that they could get their story straight and stick to it.
What am I to believe now?
Explain billions of dollars spent on instinct. Instinct is all very well, in certain circumstances, it even has it’s place, but never in science and certainly not when the models have failed so catastrophically.
It’s a shame, too, that what is outstandingly good news for the world (we are not on the brink of destroying our planet, after all), is described as “not very pleasant” for the climate scientist community. If that doesn’t prove they’re in it for the funding, what does?
Shouldn’t the whole CAGW crowd be overjoyed that “we are saved!”? No? Didn’t think so. Like it or not, that reaction reflects on their motives.
From some of the above comments, I understand Van Storch is one of the “good guys”, but he nevertheless seems to prefer the models to be right, catastrophe to be assured and funding to continue. Either that or he’s secretly more skeptical than he claims and is just mouthing what the warmist camp needs to hear. I hope he makes a clean transition.
We already know the models are junk. There’s no reason to throw five more years of funding at them.
What, no mention of enhanced CO2 fertilization benefits? It also isn’t necessarily another 5 years, depending on what future temperatures do, to get a 20 year no warming interval.
As I read this interview my respect grew, but then it drained away and at the end I was concluding this is a man who refuses to acknowledge he has been wrong. I also concluded that in his mind he knows he has been wrong but has not learnt how to stand up.
“The first possibility is that less global warming is occurring than expected because greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have less of an effect than we have assumed. ” He states this isn’t pleasant for us?
Kaboom says:
“We already know the models are junk. There’s no reason to throw five more years of funding at them.”
Of course there is… retirement funds !!!
or redundancy funds,
which ever comes first ! 😉
juan slayton says:
June 20, 2013 at 10:24 pm
“OK, I gotta know–who is Schellnhuber’s employee?”
Stefan Rahmstorff.
Storch 1: It will not be very pleasant for climate scientists if it turns out they got things fundamentally wrong.
Storch 2: Why would it be embarrassing for the profession if climate scientists got things fundamentally wrong?
Too funny. He’s honest enough to admit the possibility of serious error, but then defensively rejects criticism when it comes from an outsider.
“This is a serious scientific problem…”
…because if we don’t come up with a plausible excuse pretty soon, they’re going to start cutting our grants.
The Start of the End
V,
[von Storch]
“Our models certainly include a great number of highly subjective assumptions. Natural science is also a social process, and one far more influenced by the spirit of the times than non-scientists can imagine.”
Even though von Storch is not a powerhungry totalitarian loon like Schellhuber, his arrogance still drives me nuts. I as a non-scientist can imagine the state of corruption and groupthink warmist scientists operate in very well, thank you very much, Herr von Storch, but thanks for defining what a peon can or can’t imagine.
Maybe it’s his aristocrat ancestry. He’s incredibly arrogant in the way he states anything.
OT: Al Gore spoke of “very intriguing development in COLD Fusion” in this Google+ sponsored round table discussion
http://atom-ecology.russgeorge.net/2013/06/11/al-gore-cold-fusion/
Imagine he would have been elected President and spent billions for Woodoo science.
OK, so first it was 17 years with no warming would invalidate the models, now it’s 23 years !
I wonder what timescale will be required then?
Andi
And the Arch angel Storch appeared unto Adam and saith unto him: ‘ Verily I say. “Yes, we are certainly going to see an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or more — and by the end of this century, mind you. That’s what my instinct tells me, since I don’t know exactly how emission levels will develop.” So Adam gathered up his cloth about his loins and departed the garden of Eden for he believed that the serpent hath spake of the truth and that his garden would be o’ertaken by great flood and pestilence. Whence the serpent Hansen did rise up with mighty glee and did transport his nest of vipers unto Eden and henceforth Eden became a pit of poverty and Damnation, and the people wept with much tearing of hair and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Hence the new millennium was born.
(Extract from the WWF new age bible written 200 years ago in 2018)
“I have been able to provide a compelling answer, you just don’t like it. In fact, I’ve been saying it for over 10 years. And, what’s more, my answer is more scientifically valid than your CO2 theory. Here’s my answer: CO2 DOES NOT DRIVE CLIMATE
Oh, and, if you were ACTUALLY concerned about the “environment” this would actually be GOOD news. The world isn’t going to meltdown. Yay.”
Codetech, That sums up my thoughts on it very succinctly. Only climate alarmists would be shocked and dissapointed that humanity is going to escape from a mass-genocidal climate apocalypse.
The rest of humanity should be celebrating.
@Julian in Wales says:
June 21, 2013 at 12:05 am
Agreed, at least with the last part.
No respect is due to a being whose base position is that he has an “instinct” and that by implication his “instinct” should have primacy over the “instinct” of others not in his position of ratified if clearly undeserved “expertise”.
His “instinct” on any issue, at any time, is of no more value than any other random life-form and on this issue is mated with his “intellectual” conviction of the truth of something that has no demonstrable reality.
In other words, the conviction that the manufacture of his own processes should prevail over all.
Thus his affirmation of the certainty of the Rightness of Action according to his dictates.
To the degree that he is of a superior caste to the majority of his associates simply illustrates the depth of degradation these beings represent.
To find reason to excuse one because they give some indication of being less of an offense to human standards than the majority is wrong.
No one should allow their attention to be distracted from those slaughtered by this agenda.
Spoken like a true believer – never mind the evidence we have faith. No wonder many believe climate “science” is just pseudoscience!
I think leaders in Germany are beginning to realise the predictions based on global climate computer simulation outputs are, in reality, rubbish. Actual temperatures are not rising with increases in CO2 concentrations and manufacturing industries cannot be run with power from wind and solar generation.
“There is no last word in research, and that includes climate research. It’s never the truth that we offer, but only our best possible approximation of reality. But that often gets forgotten in the way the public perceives and describes our work”
HAH! The man has obviously never swung by WWUT where the last word in research can be found. Only last week we could read a game-changing wiggle-matching paper by David Archibald which promised a 3 degree global temperature drop in the next 3 years with 20% of the worlds population being killed.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/18/two-years-to-a-1740-type-event/#more-88410
We shall all be gloating when the deft swordsmanship of Sir Christopher’s “monthly index of the variance between the IPCC’s predicted global warming and the thermometers’ measurements” prove just how true this is
Storch: Yes, we are certainly going to see an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or more — and by the end of this century, mind you …
——————————————————
His prediction is almost double the observed rate since 1950 (HADCRUT3 about 0.12C/decade), ditto RSS since 1980 (about 0.12C/decade).
Not only would he be attributing all the temperature rise since (say) 1950 to the continuously rising CO2 + feedbacks, unlikely given the net warming is limited to 1980 — 2000, but he is also certain that the warming rate will increase for no apparent reason.
I thought scientists above all were supposed to be empiricists.
Where is left-brain-only Jai..
This guy need your expert help, dude !!!
His one comment about fossil fuels is the real reason for this whole fiasco. People like him believe fossil fuels are highly polluting and have always seen this as a way to stop there use. Or at least a limited resource which must be rationed.
These statements are, well, interesting:
‘Storch: Yes, we are certainly going to see an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or more — and by the end of this century, mind you. That’s what my instinct tells me, since I don’t know exactly how emission levels will develop. Other climate researchers might have a different instinct.’
First it’s: “Yes, we are certainly…” Then it’s qualified by: “That’s what my instinct tells me…” Which is further qualified by: “Other climate researchers might have a different instinct.”
It’s all there folks: The certainty, despite, in the same breath, the admission that the certainty is still just a guess, tempered by other guesses.
Yeah, this is science.
The climate system is far too complex and poorly understood to be modeled by simple GCM’s.
Even our best operational forecast models go to chaos after only 10-days or so.
Just another academic grant whore.
Even if the likes of Storch are beginning to be a little more honest about Global Warming now, the cost and damage inflicted on tax payers by ludicrous green policies will take many more years to work their way out of the system. While scientists can work a relatively quick U turn on their work, the public will continue to be forced to pay for green subsidies, Climate Change Acts, failure to exploit shale gas etc.
Climate scientists will take a brief hit of their reputations, but tax payers will fund the fruits of their low grade science for many years to come.
But wait, I thought the science was settled???
AndiC on June 21, 2013 at 12:47 am
OK, so first it was 17 years with no warming would invalidate the models, now it’s 23 years !
I wonder what timescale will be required then?
Andi
————————–
Another 5 years. It’s always going to be “wait, it’s just around the corner”.
What’s more, it wouldn’t be difficult at all to throw a little pause in those models and continue the warming prediction 20 years out and say ” see, our new and improved model is even better and more predictive of the doom and gloom “
He speaks of the two possible problems explaining model failure, natural processes underestimated and CO2 with lower sensitivity, as if they are mutually exclusive. In fact, it’s probably a combination of both.
I do like the way he says ‘five years at the latest’ for when he’d acknowledge something wrong with the models. Frankly, he’s there already.
==================
97% of scientists agree, ie. can’t be wrong, means 97% of scientists can’t know if they’re wrong, because from then on, the social dynamic and peer pressure locks the culture into a closed state.
That’s the only warning sign anyone needed about global warming — once they proclaimed a consensus, they’ve gone into a closed state, and self-correction ceases.
You don’t need to understand the science, just look at the culture, is it in an open or closed state? Closed science stops self-correcting.
The very interesting problem for scientists now is how to accept new data into a closed social dynamic. I think there will be a lot of pretending one thing whilst slowly adding another, until the culture reaches a… ahem, tipping point.
But c’mon, when he talks about the rainfall around the Mediterranean, does he really believe his models have regional skill?
=================
Well I have pegged my short term climate future bet firmly in the ground – and if correct, then the models will have a even greater problem to contend with.
The obseravtion is simple, The satellite record is 34 years long now. Nyquist tells us that in that record are captured all natural cycles that have occured during that period up to ~15 years long now (with less precision on the longer periods).
Low pass signal analysis of the satellite data says that there are observed natural periodic features of 37 months, 4 years, 7 years (3+4) and 12 years (3*4). Why those values? I don’t know. It if just they are there.
http://s1291.photobucket.com/user/RichardLH/story/70051
If you were to treat the satellite data series as from any other source then the above would not be contentious.
‘If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models.‘
If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that if it goes on like this for yet 5 more years, we shall truly be forced to acknowledge that our climate models need some superficial tweaking. Or, as a more likely solution, we’ll have to announce that global weirding has reached a stage where the Earth system no longer knows physics.
There, fixed.
Storch: If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models.
Ve vill ask ze qvestion again, and ziss time, you vill give ze KORREKT ansver:
Storch: Yes, we are certainly going to see an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or more — and by the end of this century, mind you…..
Long ago, I thought the “new ice age scare” was overblown but I had to agree that the long range temps did indicate that a new ice age would be coming some day. I could buy that within 500 years we might see the beginning of a full scale ice age. I realize that it is believed that Earth is in the middle of an Ice Age right now under technical use of the term, but I mean a return to glaciers advancing rapidly across the north and forcing people to migrate.
Then, all of a sudden it was discovered that man-caused “global warming” was a better money-maker. I never really saw any evidence at all for this scare since the temp rises were tiny and the temps had been going up since the end of the little ice age anyway. But the deal-breaker for me was when I found out that Hansen and others had to fudge the data to make the case. With his magic time machine his people went back in time and re-read the thermometers to change the readings and make the present look relativity hotter. When I was first taught science in college they pounded into us that we must be skeptical and always be honest with our data or else we would be guilty of fraud — and scientific fraud harmed all humanity. (don’t hear that much anymore as far as I can tell)
Now we have computers predicting Armageddon, activists shouting inane heifer dust from every pulpit, and a president on tour in Europe making crazy claims.
When will the madness end? Will it take a glacier covering the NY Times building?
ThHe more these guys talk the less credibility they have. They really need to shut up. Can anybody reconcile the following two statement made by Storch:
Storch: “Certainly the greatest mistake of climate researchers has been giving the impression that they are declaring the definitive”
and
Storch: “Yes, we are certainly going to see an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or more — and by the end of this century, mind you.”
We were wrong to declare we were certain, but I am certain that in the future….
Do these guys need to fail an IQ test to become “climate scientists”?
Wrong models are profitable. When they stop being profitable, they will go away.
All this strange stuff about “facts” and “logic” has zero connection with science. Science is solely about maximizing share value.
I will repeat, for the AGW bletheren.
Coal is carbon. It mostly comes from buried plant life.
This carbon that was buried is MEANT to be in the atmosphere as CO2
.
THAT IS WHERE IT BELONGS !!!!!!
If you can hear a whirring noise, it’s the sound of climate scientists back-pedaling.
“The other possibility is that, in our simulations, we have underestimated how much the climate fluctuates owing to natural causes.” Damn that climate, obeying to natural causes and not to our models.
98% (TM) of climate models say that 97% of climate scientists are wrong!
Alarmists across the world must be suffering agonising convulsions of apoplexy at these developments. Their sainted models are failing in front of the whole world – and this time no amount of spin can alter that fact.
Their number one question to themselves:
“How can we extract ourselves from utter humiliation while protecting our money and status – without losing our money, our status and being, erm, utterley humiliated”?
This disconfirmed CAGW theory is imploding faster than the US national debt is exploding.
The fundamental cause for the CAGW hoax and the worldwide sovereign debt crisis are the same: gigantic government bureaucracies run by egotistical elitist that covet control and power and think they know best how to control people’s lives and their property. The MSM plays along as they are part of the elitist cabal.
It’s sickening this absurd hoax has lasted as long as it has and I’m delighted to see it rapidly disintegrating at an accelerating pace.
I’m not sure what to make of Von Storch. Some say he’s Germany’s equivalent of Judy Curry, but I wouldn’t give him that much credit. Like many of his climastrology colleagues, he has mastered the art of speaking from both ends. His talent in this regard is on full display in this interview. It’s a finely crafted mixture of truth and BS. I second what Dirk H says.
After “97%”, the commonest number always seems to be “5 Years”.
Thank you Herr Van Storch for confirming everything that I have learned from this web site CA and all the other blogs which educate and inform with integrity.
Instincts are for beasts of the field and not for this debate.
The alarmists have bragging rights and are able to have free life membership to the oldest profession 🙂
They do not understand that rising CO2 levels has not brought on rising temperatures.
It is because CO2 has NOTHING to do with temperature; it is the SUN. Dumb clucks.
Billions in taxpayers money taken from the poor and given to the hopelessly stupid; who’s only premise to a non-fact is a “gut feeling”.
My instincts tell me it will be warmer at the turn of the next century, or perhaps cooler, or just maybe about the same. My brain tells me I don’t have a clue what the global temp will be at that point. Nearly 15 years of rummaging through the continuing deluge of crap PR science put out on this topic, which BTW constitutes the only really dangerous flood that can be ascribed to CAGW with any certainty, has led me to suspect that no one else really has any more of a clue than I do.
There seem to be at least six and perhaps as many as ten or more hypotheses which have been put forth to explain what may be driving the climate. If forced I could come up with an argument to support any of them, but none of those arguments would be anywhere near to convincing.
My own strongest suspicion is that we will eventually recognize that the climate is an ongoing synthesis of hundreds of influences, each following its own rhythm and cyclicity, and when enough of those cycles align in the same direction the climate is moved. When the cycles drift apart or when another more powerful set of influences align in another direction the climactic center of gravity shifts accordingly. Although I have always viewed the Gaia theory as New Age mystical hokum, the more time I spend on this topic the more I come to the view that the analogy of the Earth as a giant living organism is likely more realistic and useful than the sophistry that the climate can be reduced to a simple, or even a very complex set of equations, or two or three box models.
I thnk Von Storch has tended to act more like a proper scientist that most other self-appointed “climate scientists” over the years. The first half of the interview is a refeshing and honest admission that the models are, frankly, bollocks. Interestingly he states their models produce 15 year flat spots around 2% of the time. I recall just a year or two ago that others (Trenberth?) said models didn’t even produce 10 year flat spots. I sense the goal posts being moved…
The second half of the interview appears to flatly contradict the first half and is a non-sequitur. After admitting the models are poor, they only give a 15 year flat spot 2% of the time (serendipity?), accepting the reasons for the poor model perfomance could be (a) global warming due to CO2 is small or (b) other physical effects wrong/not modelled or (c) natural causes are bigger than we thought and not understood, Von Storch then seems to claim with great certainty something his instinct tells him. This is certainly not a basis for public policy….
Overall the admission is clear, and fits nicely with RGB comments recently. We can conclude:
1. The models are diverging from reality very rapidly and have no predictive value
2. Climate scientitists are unlikely to be able to model the non-linear, chaotic climate system for the foreseeable future
3. The science is not settled: natural causes may be more singificant than previously thought
4. CO2 may not have anything like the impact on climate previously attributed to it (this follows from (3)).
5. There are many aspects of climate physics that are just not understood: water vapour feedback, clouds to name just two.
Von Storch talks about losing trust and then makes a silly statement about his instinct 87 years from now. I have lost all trust in Von Storch.
@Louis Hooffstetter
Difference is that HvS is a director of a prestigious institute and has certain internal political obligations. The old saying: “Whose bread one eats, whose words one speaks”. For German standards, he really is a climate maverick.
Troposphere is not layered but homogenous, if layered CO2 the heaviest gas would be at the bottom not on top.
Mmmm, no. My understanding is that it is layered, but what’s going on is that lower and upper troposphere are exchanging with each other like a number of giant conveyor belts. That leaves a more “stagnant” area in the middle (where the missing hot spot is supposed to be).
So CO2 just rides along the belt and winds up in the UT.
As far as I am concerned I give great credit to Speigel for asking those questions, Here in Australia we get lame brains from the Australian Broadcasting Commission almost begging meteorologists to blame climate change for any rough weather, floods, etc.and almost get angry if weather scientists don’t take their over obvious prompt. Of course they are so used to the climate Commissioners appointed by the government laying it on thick blaming everything and anything on increasing and dangerous carbon increases. So for me the message IS that the “Media” are finally asking what they should have asked 10 years back. Soon the Manns and Schmidts just might have to dodge some tough questions or even be forced to answer or else be seen as the True D**n**rs as they try to lie and avoid the hard questions.
The Washington Post here has a piece that informs me that ‘Earth had third warmest May on record (tie with 1998 and 2005)’ – are they correct?
“My team at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, in Hamburg, was able to provide evidence in 1995 of humans’ influence on climate events. Of course, that evidence presupposed that we had correctly assessed the amount of natural climate fluctuation. Now that we have a new development, we may need to make adjustments.”
In other words, “Oh, don’t blame us; we had “evidence” based on a presupposition.” Nice try Storch, but you don’t get off that easy. True science doesn’t just presuppose, and then build “evidence” upon that.
He does get high marks for some mighty fine footwork and high-stepping though. Nice song at the end about what “his instinct” tells him, that there will still be at least a 2° C temperature rise by end-of-century. That isn’t science, but Faith. Storch is simply acting like a politician. A slippery one at that.
Good grief.Is this a new Loony Tunes sketch?
@P. Gosselin. Do you know his age? Considering his photograph, I would guess that he needs those 5 years till his retirement. If he were my student, and answered only two percent of the final exam items correctly, I would not negotiate with him for five years about his good-luck-achievements but tell him that it’s time to go.
Wow!!! Wow!!! Wow!!!
The comments made in this interview are an unprecedented admission of the failure of the general circulation models and the first public admission from a lead warmist that the climate ‘science’ was fudged. In reply to comments by IPCC lead author Hans Van Storch
Comment 1: “At my institute, we analyzed how often such a 15-year stagnation in global warming occurred in the simulations. The answer was: … in under 2 percent of all the times we ran the simulation. In other words, over 98 percent of forecasts show CO2 emissions as high as we have had in recent years leading to more of a temperature increase.”
William: There is a 98% chance that general circulation models are incorrect based on average global temperature Vs GCM model prediction and there is a 100% chance that that the GCM are incorrect based on the fact that there is no observed tropical tropospheric warming. The gig is up.
Comment 2: There are two conceivable explanations — and neither is very pleasant for us. The first possibility is that less global warming is occurring than expected because greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have less of an effect than we have assumed. This wouldn’t mean that there is no man-made greenhouse effect, but simply that our effect on climate events is not as great as we have believed. The other possibility is that, in our simulations, we have underestimated how much the climate fluctuates owing to natural causes.
William: Less warming CO2 warming does not explain no warming for 15 years. As atmospheric CO2 continues to rise planetary temperature must increase in a wiggly manner as the CO2 forcing does not go away. It appears at least 0.45C of the 0.7C warming in the last 70 years was caused by solar modulation of planetary clouds. The latitudes where the warming has occurred are the latitudes that are most strongly affected by solar modulation of planetary cloud cover. There is a lack of warming to explain and the fact that the latitudinal pattern of observed warming does not match the AGW forcing pattern. .. ….There is now observed cooling in both the Arctic and the Antarctic. The observed increase in rainfall and flooding matches what happened in the Little Ice Age. Something is causing the sudden and abrupt change in climate. The other hat is about to fall. Hans Van Storch and the IPCC will need to explain significant global cooling 0.45C over 3 to 5 years, due to the abrupt slowdown in the solar magnetic cycle. http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_recent_cycles.png
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_similar_cycles.png
Comment 3: Yes, we are certainly going to see an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or more — and by the end of this century, mind you. That’s what my instinct tells me, since I don’t know exactly how emission levels will develop. Other climate researchers might have a different instinct. Our models certainly include a great number of highly subjective assumptions. Natural science is also a social process, and one far more influenced by the spirit of the times than non-scientists can imagine. You can expect many more surprises.
William: Give me a break. We will see less than 1C warming due to doubling of atmospheric CO2. ‘Skeptic’ scientist analysis puts the estimated warming at 0.3C. There is no need to ask people what their ‘instinct’ tells them. Enough is enough, the propaganda has to stop and will stop, the planet is going to cool. … …. The so called ‘skeptics’ have been unequivocally stating for at least 15 years that there has been massive fudging, manipulation of data and propaganda related to climate ‘science’. … ….The surprise is the planet is about to abruptly cool. There will be political and environmental consequences to global cooling (crop failures and so on). Politicians on mass are going to abandon the global warming cause. There will be political action to house clean climate ‘science’.
Comment 4: “What state of the Earth’s atmosphere do we want to protect, and in what way? And what might happen as a result? “Are we going to declare war on China” (William: And Russia, India & the developing world) if the (William: Any) country emits too much CO2 into the air (or cuts down trees such as is currently occurring in the Brazilian rainforest) and thereby violates our constitution?”
William: Any real reduction of world CO2 emission will require the real threat of military action, war time like rationing of energy, and a massive reduction in the standard of life for all countries of the world. The only viable technical solution is a massive construction nuclear power plants if a substantial reduction in CO2 emissions is required. ‘Green’ energy is a scam, a lie, a colossal waste of money, and in the case of the conversion of food to biofuel a policy that will lead to food wars and a massive loss of virgin forest.
Storch…. whoops, me bad.
I was think Larry Storch !!!
He was a comedian, too . 🙂
At last a warmist declares: “But since there has been only moderate global warming so far, climate change shouldn’t be playing a major role in any case yet.” for those who maintain global warming is responsible for everything under the sun..Warmistas: There is NO global warming! It ain’t happenong.
The meme is/has been cast, replacing ‘global warming’ and climate change, hereafter the calamity to befall mankind and planet Gaia unless capitulation to the mandate imposing a lifestyle straight out of the 1400’s (wood fires only for heating and cooking) is :
. . . . . . . . Beware the !! Extreme Weather Events !!
.
“So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break.”
Wow, Anthony and Lucia and Bishop Hill and other people like that must be SuperGeniuses or something, since they’ve given very clear and compelling answers to the question.
(although I think von storch is accidentally betraying an internal psychological bias here; to him and other warmistas, anyone classified as a “skeptic” doesn’t count as a person and therefore is to be ignored.)
Climate scientist is quickly becoming an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp and army intelligence. Real scientists must look at these “climate”clowns the way astronomers look at astrologists. It is a branch of social science, (another oxymoron) very close to poli- science a disipline where consensus counts. It is where activists get together to instititute their plans for saving the world, they remind me of “Pinky and the Brain”.
He’s preaching against preaching to preach what the preachers preach. Ahhh. Clever. Don’t listen to their instinct, but do listen to the same instinct that I state with a more moderate sounding tone.
Sounds like a crack in the dam. Trouble is, they’ve got the media, the governments, the schools and the money and they’re going ahead with it regardless.
Why wait 5 years? From at von Storch’s Klimazwiebel site on the Spiegel interview on the temperature standstill.
It’s a serious problem NOW. A 2% success rate is a calamity, yet we are being told to spend billions on the back of laughable failure. Tossing a coin would have been far more skillful. I have been told by Warmists that in the long term climate is easier to project than predicting the weather seasonally. This is a monumental FAIL right now. Five more years is just 5 more years of a charade.
“The climate debate is no longer an all-or-nothing debate — except perhaps in the case of colleagues such as a certain employee of Schellnhuber’s, whose verbal attacks against anyone who expresses doubt continue to breathe new life into the climate change denial camp.”
Amazing. He admits as true what skeptics have been saying for years, and yet he still refers to them as climate change deniers. What a tool.
This is very revealing:
“SPIEGEL: What exactly are politicians supposed to do with such vague predictions?
Storch: Whether it ends up being one, two or three degrees, the exact figure is ultimately not the important thing. Quite apart from our climate simulations, there is a general societal consensus that we should be more conservative with fossil fuels. Also, the more serious effects of climate change won’t affect us for at least 30 years. We have enough time to prepare ourselves.”
We can translate the first part of his answer to:
“So railroading society with fibs and hype into agreeing with AGW alarmists was OK, and it does not matter how wrong we have been.”
To interpret the 98% vs. 2% point:
“The consensus of 98% of the models is this ‘pause’ cannot happen, but we will stick with the models anyway.”
Every summer in Germany over the last 10 years has seen normal or above normal precipitation. Winter temperatures have nosedived in the last 13 years according to the German Weather Service (DWD), contrary to the warmer winters they were excitedly waiting for.
The models are crap and this entire episode of the great global warming scare is quite frankly embarrassing.
So one of the instigators of the CAGW scare now declares the predictions were wrong, the models are looking overwhelmingly likely to be wrong and there is no sign of anthropogenic global warming. All that remains is instinct? And we’re supposed to hand control of national economies over to bureaucrats on this basis? We’re supposed to increase the cost of energy to the point it will inflict mortal damage on the poor of the whole world, developed and developing (don’t expect crooked governments not to stuff ‘green reparations’ into their own pockets) on the basis on a hunch? I thought the science was settled.
Van Storch is a highly respected ‘climatologist’ (for those who respect them), central to the current catastrophism, even if his prognostications have been greatly exaggerated or taken out of context. He is in any case very difficult for the warmista to dismiss as a ‘crank’ (though it wouldn’t surprise me to see them try). In this interview, his views are as sceptical as those of many regular contributors here. This interview should be made a sticky and spread far and wide. It should be posted on the message boards of ‘Skeptical’ Science, and used as a riposte for any handwaving dismissal of observations presented by alarmist cheerleaders. Despite his (understandable) squirming and nonsense about ‘instincts’, he has also done science and reason a service by admitting he might have been wrong, and should be applauded for it.
I suspect the proposed grace period of five years for the models has something to do with von Storch’s reaching retirement age.
A textbook example of climate equivocation. Storch both agrees and disagrees with his own opinion/analysis.
As has been rightly pointed out at the Bishop’s, the sentence “Yes, we are certainly going to see an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or more — and by the end of this century, mind you.” is almost certainly too strong. The word ‘certainly’ here (‘zwei Grad oder mehr werden wir WOHL kriegen’) means ‘likely’ or ‘probably’, much weaker than certainly. “We’re probably going to see an increase ….” This makes him less contradictory with other statements he makes on the uncertainty of warming and the models. A bit of nuance has got lost in translation!
As for this being his instinct (Instinkt), I just asked a German native speaker and this relates more to feelings, so he ‘still feels this might be the case’. Bit unfair to read too much into it.
Very true.
Far better on that than on Climatology. Incidentally, here’s what Rick Werme posted on WUWT recently on the test of Rossi’s latest gadget, his Hot Cat 2:
If cold fusion pans out, it will cost much less than fossil fuel or fission-nuclear power plants, and will displace them naturally, without government intervention. If it had been discovered ten years earlier, thanks to government backing, spending lots of uneconomic wind and solar devices would have been avoided.
Compared to the following in the same interview:
Why rely on your “instinct” when you can rely on your computer models? Should we spend billions in ‘fighting climate change’ based on gut feeling or based on evidence? You decide.
Hilarious—but it would have benefited us slow-in-the-uptake readers if “Spiegel:” had been included where I’ve inserted it above.
No mention of H2O feedbacks in the GCMs should negate the CO2 effect, not reinforce it.
Instincts indeed.
My instincts tell me to fight to the death to keep my liberty against any elitist power grab.
I’ve seen other comments where it is assumed that the academic field of “political science” is highly politicized. For some crazy reason it is much less politicized than sociology or nearly any humanities field.
In five years, how many more $billions will have been flushed down the CAGW crapper? I suppose, compared to bald-faced liars like Mikey, Storch’s hesitant, waffling, somewhat more honest stance could be viewed in a positive light. Still, you just want to bitch-slap the guy for continuing to hang on to the “hope” that they were right, because, after all, fossil fuels are baaaaad and/or running out.
Dissecting the deeper thoughts of the climate scientists. They are worried about a lack of warming. Why? Ruined reputations? Embarrassment? What is it?
And in an earlier period we had:
Shouldn’t the formerly worried climate scientists be happy? Is there some sort of hidden agenda? Do they actually care about honest science? Is this ‘science’ for the cause? These and many other questions will be asked by historians in the coming decades as the world goes into cool mode – well, that’s what my instinct tells me. 🙂
Good heavens. I graduated from high school in an era that was not yet out of the “you can become anything you want as long as you also take a home economics class in college”. I lived in an all-women’s dorm called the “Nunnary”. I had to figure out the research method on my own (which actually was a pretty good idea, thanks prof). I am just a little no-account lady who struggled to get her own work published (and even then I had to give top billing to the guy who owned the lab). And I can figure out that the drivers of natural variability have far greater stored energy imminently more powerful then anything CO2 can do from one minute to the next to drive a long term weather pattern trend.
A great man once said, Nuts.
Storch: If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest
==============
Liars….if we get another hic-cup in the next five years they will claim temps are going up….
…even when the long term trend is down
How can they scream “the science is settled” from the rooftops and them admit this with a straight face, and not a hint of contrition or irony? I could not be a politician (or politio-scientist), as I just could not do this.
My instinct tells me the climate “scientists” are worried for many reasons, not least of which would be monetary. Their valuable (to them) gravy train would be stopped in its tracks. Jobs would be lost, and indeed entire careers trashed. To add insult to their injury, reputations would be in the toilet. Who would hire them? And finally would be the inevitable investigations of possible wrong-doing. We will see “scientists” turn on each other, in hopes of saving their own bacon. It will not be pretty.
“Storch: There are two conceivable explanations — and neither is very pleasant for us. The first possibility is that less global warming is occurring than expected because greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have less of an effect than we have assumed. This wouldn’t mean that there is no man-made greenhouse effect, but simply that our effect on climate events is not as great as we have believed. The other possibility is that, in our simulations, we have underestimated how much the climate fluctuates owing to natural causes.”
Neither is very pleasant because eating crow is never pleasant. However, it is good news for all non climate modelers that CO2 appears to be having less effect than they thought.
I find it amusing that the two explanations (less CO2 forcing or greater variability) are presented as separate or opposing possibilities. An increase in natural variability wouldn’t magically kick in right at the warmest peak- increased natural variability would also account much of the earlier “unexplainable” run up they claimed for CO2. That’s why they are fighting so hard to avoid acknowledging lower sensitivity…because it will inevitably force them to rejigger their models and move a big chunk of earlier warming from anthropogenic crimes against nature over into the column of relatively benign natural climate variation.
To which I say- Hooray! Props to Von Storch for at least laying out the issue.
Tiny leaks can cause a great dam to break. There are more then “tiny leaks” in the global warming scam dam.
The sun, oceans stochastic events render the increase in co2 due to man noise in the entire field. Temps will be back to 1978 levels, when the PDO flipped, by the end of this cold cycle, once the atlantic joins it
Storch: So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break.
==========
Storch: Among other things, there is evidence that the oceans have absorbed more heat than we initially calculated. Temperatures at depths greater than 700 meters (2,300 feet) appear to have increased more than ever before. The only unfortunate thing is that our simulations failed to predict this effect.
==============
what a lying dumbass…….you couldn’t predict it because it’s never happened before…and isn’t happening now
All of a sudden, out of the blue, the ocean decided that temps increased less than a fraction of a degree…so let’s hide it….when it didn’t hide it all the way to getting there
Temps will be back to 1978 levels
=====
great /snark
Don’t know why not though, trend has been overall down
My instinct tells me there are two conceivable explanations — and neither is very pleasant for them. The first is that they haven’t figured out a way to tamper with the satellite data, like they have with land temp data. The other is that they haven’t figured out a way to geo-engineer actual warming so that the earth conforms to their models.
The Chicken Littles are coming home to roost!
Bears repeating: Climate Models are merely contrivances designed to project a warming trend indefinitely. There is about 10% science and 90% parameter fiddling to these contrivances. These are then fed into the AGW propaganda mill and so lots of peope are fooled. It’s aptly been said that Global Warming is an IQ test.
Dueling eschatologies: Which will come first, catastrophic global warming, or the return of Christ?
I said it before and I’ll say it again: they will keep pushing extending the time period. Lavish climate ‘research’ funding and reputations are at stake. Politicians, celebrities and most of the media have committed themselves. Why embarrass such distinguished suckers.
Children just aren’t going to know what a “carbon footprint” is.
You know science and policy are distorted when they can grant themselves five more years to watch while statistical evaluation says otherwise and bad public policy is embedded deeper in the code. It also grants themselves five more years of funding and time to phrase the next response.
I agree with Kim above.
{ The first possibility is that less global warming is occurring than expected because greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have less of an effect than we have assumed. This wouldn’t mean that there is no man-made greenhouse effect, but simply that our effect on climate events is not as great as we have believed. The other possibility is that, in our simulations, we have underestimated how much the climate fluctuates owing to natural causes……}
OR BOTH.
Can help explain the last 17 years……
As Ken states above, Spiegel inaccurately translated the word “wohl” to “certainly”. “Wohl” means likely or “probably”. “We’re probably going to see an increase ….”
“The only thing that was bad was acting beforehand as if we were infallible. By doing so, we have gambled away the most important asset we have as scientists: the public’s trust.”
That’s not the “only thing that was bad”. The interview’s clearly littered with other clues of what was bad, including countless allusions to false assumptions, false presuppositions, socially corrupted instincts, etc.
Wrong isn’t the same as fundamentally wrong. That’s why this is so true:
“[…] we have gambled away the most important asset we have as scientists: the public’s trust.”
This interview should be required reading — every word of it.
Buried treasure:
“A 20-year pause in global warming does not occur in a single modeled scenario.”
= concisely informative soundbite headline
Just to add to Ken and P Gosselin’s comments on the poor translation of “wohl” to mean “certainly” … I would try to keep the basic, literal meaning of the German word and translate the phrase as “We could well see an increase in temps of 2C by the end of the century.”
This sounds pretty similar to me to the meaning I’d take from the original German.
The modeled 2 degree increase is as certain as the modeled 6 degrees. Two degree’s is a just more models (turtles) all the way down.
“That’s what my instinct tells me,”
Instinct, the clever replacement word for what it really is, namelyreligious belief
Still, a step forward, nonetheless.
Does anybody else get the feeling that his “instinct” is leading to confirmation bias in only finding results that agree with said “instinct”?
Darn, they’re moving that goalpost again!
To paraphrase IPCC lead author Heir Doctor Professor Hans Van Storch:
1. ‘We were wrong about the impact of CO2,’ or
2. ” we… underestimate… natural causes.”
Well that would cover it. He can’t be wrong… about what’s wrong… with that summary.
His models aren’t right, but his assessment of what’s wrong is correct… ROTFFLMAO, WHAT!?
The shifty goalposts is another example of how the environmental movement is filled with flat-Earthers-
Consider flat-Earth beliefs many centuries ago. Beyond the observational horizon, great minds conceived of monsters, peril and disaster, an edge or cliff or tipping point that would lead to certain destruction. This was based partly on acknowledging the common-sense flatness of the observed world, and that this flatness could not extend without limits.
Now think about the apocalyptic predictions portended by the great minds of the environmental movement. Although things may appear ok now, this cannot continue without limits. There must be a tipping point or edge or cliff just a little into the future, a horizon that cannot be observed. The tipping point leads to super-exponential change and the dead-certain destruction of all life on Earth; a lead-melting Venusian world.
Of course, the decayed husks of failed end-of-the-world predictions litter human history, and are as common today as they were during the middle ages.
As time marches on, the edges of the map catch up with the predicted cliffs. The old predictions of the ends-of-the-Earth are revealed as ignorant bafflegab. Unlike the flat-Earthers of the past, however, the current crop of eco-doomsters simply moves the cliffs and edges out past the horizon, once again proclaiming equally dire apocalypse just over the horizon.
Ken G says:
Von Storch: “The climate debate is no longer an all-or-nothing debate — except perhaps in the case of colleagues such as a certain employee of Schellnhuber’s, whose verbal attacks against anyone who expresses doubt continue to breathe new life into the climate change denial camp.”
Amazing. He admits as true what skeptics have been saying for years, and yet he still refers to them as climate change deniers.
Yes, and in the very same breath! Now that’s “Speaking from both ends!”
Michael Palmer says:
June 21, 2013 at 6:24
I suspect the proposed grace period of five years for the models has something to do with von Storch’s reaching retirement age.
###########
that’s a vicious statement to make. You’ve never met Hans. He is frank and honest about the shortcomings of climate science, but here at WUWT moderators allow people to throw all manner of shit at him. This place is getting more and more like Sks with each passing day.
[REPLY: Mosh, there’s precedence for this idea. Dr. Joanne Simspon didn’t speak out against Climate Science until she retired.
See our WUWT story on it: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/02/27/now-this-is-interesting-pielke-on-dr-joanne-simpson/
I don’t know if this has anything to do with Storch’s coming up with a 5 year number (criteria?) but calling the idea “shit” when it could be possible just doesn’t fly here. Besides, since I went to open moderation, this is the first I’ve seen the comment, and I doubt any other moderator saw it. It was automatically posted, so don’t blame a moderator. Your comment, containing the word “shit” got held for inspection, BTW. – Anthony]
Von Storch talks of the “climate change denial camp”. I do wish people like him would be more up front and explain what this means. I notice that with this interview he seems to have shifted a bit to the sceptics camp and yet call us deniers. What if in 5 or 6 years temps fail to rise? Will he find himself in the “climate change denial camp”? This is why Warmists have to be very careful about what they say today and it may come back to haunt them tomorrow.
I believe we can declare by acclamation that Bruce Cobb has won the thread.
Bruce Cobb says:
June 21, 2013 at 9:22 am
Children just aren’t going to know what a “carbon footprint” is.
What is funny is that governments around the world are toying with disastrous policy which will most certainly wreck entire economies in order to limit the amount of warming to 2 degrees – which Storch now admits is the likely scenario (provided warming starts up again).
Tez says: @ June 20, 2013 at 11:46 pm
…What am I to believe now?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The NOAA falsification criterion is on page S23 of its 2008 report titled The State Of The Climate
The end of an era always closes with Japanese “B” movies about giant anthropogenic monsters. Should be good for lots of laughs!
Steven Mosher says:
“This place is getting more and more like Sks with each passing day.”
You can disagree without being über-insulting. WUWT does not alter the language of comments, or arbitrarily delete comments without stating why. This site is honest. SkS is not. That is why WUWT has such a large traffic flow; SkS traffic is pitiful by comparison.
If you don’t agree with someone’s comment, then post your own rebuttal. But don’t insult WUWT by comparing the internet’s “Best Science” site with a despicable propaganda blog. You should be better than that.
Anthony Watts, see this in the Economist blog.
What, like no moderation comments except caused by trigger words?
Also at SkS:
“You need to be logged in to post a comment. Login via the left margin or if you’re new, register here.”
WUWT is getting less and less like SkS each passing day.
Jimbo,
Comments below the Economist’s article indicate that the climate scare is abating. Thanks for posting the link.
Mosh, you say:
that’s a vicious statement to make. You’ve never met Hans. He is frank and honest about the shortcomings of climate science, but here at WUWT moderators allow people to throw all manner of (sic) at him. This place is getting more and more like Sks with each passing day
I can understand your anger but VS is a big boy too. He can take it precisely because he is frank and honest.
As is, our host at WUWT.
Anthony has considerably lightened his moderation recently; the antithesis of SKS.
That VS gets flack from this site is not surprising (there’s a lot of really upset people out in the wild – a consequence perhaps of years of vilification) but, I suspect, this will be small beer compared to the pounding that he will take from his ‘colleagues’
I applaude his bravery as I much as admire your sense of fair play and decency. Van Storch has said it as he sees it . If some here wish to denigrate him for not fully complying with their wishes then so be it but let no one doubt his integrity or that of our host.
Bruce Cobb says —
Children just aren’t going to know what a “carbon footprint” is.
Yes, clear winner. Give him a WUWT coffee cup.
Eugene WR Gallun
Hans Van Storch says —
“Certainly the greatest mistake of climate researchers has been giving the impression that they are declaring the definitive truth ………The only thing that was bad was acting beforehand as if we were infallible.”
These are probably the most disingenuous lines in his spiel. In fact it is rather mind boggling.
Let me see — if “the only thing that was bad was acting beforehand as if we were infallible” then trying to exclude dissenting papers from the professional journals was not bad and “pal review” was not bad. Trying to get journal editors fired who played honestly with all parties was not bad. Refusing to share your data so none could replicate your work was not bad. Talking about destroying your data so others can never review it and later announcing it had accidentally been destroyed was not bad. Deliberately misusing statistics was not bad. Cherry picking data was not bad. Hiding the decline was not bad. Creating a totally false hockey stick was not bad. Claiming to use only peer reviewed literature in UN reports but lifting a lot of sources from “magazines” was not bad? This list could go on and on.
These people committed crimes against science but nothing was bad except a little bit of hubris.on their part?
So the crimes against science they have committed have been reduced to ‘hubris”? And hubris is not a crime. In fact they are victims — victims of their own hubris and should receive some sympathy since they have belatedly recognized it and manfully owned up to it. We should pat them on the head and say “never mind” because are not we all over-sympathetic to our own ideas?. All of us the victims of our own hubris occasionally? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
It is the hubris of all criminals that leads them to commit crimes — they believe they can get away with it. Believing you can get away with a crime does not excuse you for doing it. To proclaim hubris as your defense is, well, mind boggling hubris.
Eugene WR Gallun
“Storch: Among other things, there is evidence that the oceans have absorbed more heat than we initially calculated. Temperatures at depths greater than 700 meters (2,300 feet) appear to have increased more than ever before. The only unfortunate thing is that our simulations failed to predict this effect.”
Storch, too, grasps at Trenberth’s straw. Things have moved beyond the desperate to the hallucinatory.
Mosh Pit:
I re-read the comments but fail to see “all manner of s*** thrown” at Von Storch. Several people pointed out that he was an “Honest Broker” early in the climate debate, and pretty much has been since. But this latest interview makes it obvious to me (and apparently to many others) that Von Storch is a cat who adroitly walks the narrow fence between alarmists and deniers.
His own statement: “The climate debate is no longer an all-or-nothing debate — except perhaps in the case of colleagues such as a certain employee of Schellnhuber’s, whose verbal attacks against anyone who expresses doubt continue to breathe new life into the climate change denial camp.” illustrates this perfectly. In one breath he takes a swipe at Stephan Rahmstorf and all of us here at WUWT Pointing out his inconsistent foibles and expressing distrust and dismay over them is not slinging crap at the man.
A.D. Everard says:
June 20, 2013 at 11:47 pm
“Explain billions of dollars spent on instinct. Instinct is all very well, in certain circumstances, it even has it’s place, but never in science and certainly not when the models have failed so catastrophically.”
As with all Alarmists climate scientists, the man has no instinct for the empirical. There is not one Feynman among them.
Eugene WR Gallun says:
June 21, 2013 at 7:22 pm
Brilliant comment, Mr. Gallun
Sometimes you just need to take what they are giving :
4th race – Arlington Park – Friday, June 21, 2013
3 Mish Mosh 13.80 6.40 3.00
6 Xbalanque 9.00 3.80
7 Razzo Succo 3.00
=============
I did :), never a doubt.
“A 20-year pause in global warming does not occur in a single modeled scenario.”
There’s time to “fix” that before retirement (if you’re within 5 years of retirement).
Which climate “scientists” are twitching for a hallucinatory fix?
Place bets now on how much taxpayer money will be fire-hosed at climate “scientists” who can “fix” the following within 5 years:
“A 20-year pause in global warming does not occur in a single modeled scenario.”
My guess: Muller & accompanying PR circus (along with many other clowns) to the (attempted) rescue.
My concern is that they’re playing for time…hoping another large El Niño will come along and give them the boost they need. Five more years has a decent chance of another large El Niño, and that would likely breath life into the whole shebang.
Even given the ever shifting goal posts, the next five years really is make or break for the AGW hypothesis. Flat or declining temps without measurable warming in the oceans for another five years, AGW will be ridiculed like Y2k. One big El Niño and the hysteria ramps up again.
Village Idiot says:
June 21, 2013 at 1:00 am
If your comment was meant in sarcasm, I missed it.
If not, you comment is so disconnected from your reference that you are inviting insulting retorts.
Von Storch does show flashes of honesty and even brilliance in those responses …
Honesty at last.
He’s talking about you McKibben ( and a few others who know who they are ).
These last two are brilliant and plain common sense. He is ridiculing what I describe as the Megalomania God-complex that infests the leftist mind and leads them to believe they have been placed in charge of the present, and even the future. Mosher and Fuller have dabbled in this with several posts here about moving from Fossil Fuels and “Planning Ahead” the methods of future energy sources for our grandkids. Never does the morality of such grandiose thinking cross their minds. Here’s a clue, in the future they will use what is most available and easily obtainable and inexpensive. It means they will decide, not us.
I love the swerving car analogy. At the heart of it is “unintended consequences”, something that can never be understood by leftists who suffer from narcissistic tunnel vision. Von Storch doesn’t go far enough though. We sit here at some undetermined location within an Ice Age interglacial warm-up, apparently just leaving a Little Ice Age ( and a mini-freeze in the 1960’s to 1970’s ) and we are perhaps a whole degree warmer now than that LIA. So I ask, just who the hell thinks they are qualified to propose that we lock the current “climate” into a holding pattern ( as if we really could! ) and preserve the planet like some kind of museum. That’s what I imagine that Von Storch really thinks but is still too wrapped up in the AGW cult to honestly state it outright.
Blade says:
“So I ask, just who the hell thinks they are qualified to propose that we lock the current “climate” into a holding pattern ( as if we really could! ) and preserve the planet like some kind of museum. That’s what I imagine that Von Storch really thinks but is still too wrapped up in the AGW cult to honestly state it outright.”
Great question. I’d like to present a failed attempt by nature lovers to preserve Yellowstone and look what permanent damage they did. I recall they killed the wolves off to protect the deer, which then over populated the area, ate up all of their food sources, which destroyed many areas. Deer were starving so they had to be killed down. Yellowstone has not recovered. The indigenous wolf population was previously wiped out, so they imported wolves from another location! But the damage of preservation was done.
SPIEGEL: That sounds quite embarrassing for your profession, if you have to go back and adjust your models to fit with reality…
Storch: Why? That’s how the process of scientific discovery works.
Not all scientific research costs us trillions and forces millions of people into poverty as a result of their failed research though does it? Nice to show a level of concern and humility towards those who have suffered due to the errors that were pointed out years ago jackass.
Blade (June 22, 2013 at 2:19 pm) wrote:
“I love the swerving car analogy. At the heart of it is “unintended consequences”, something that can never be understood by leftists who suffer from narcissistic tunnel vision.”
You’ve got that assessment exactly right. A case of cure worse than disease.
“In resource management, as elsewhere, accurate knowledge of the causal network can be essential for avoiding unforeseen consequences of regulatory actions.”
Sugihara+(2012). Detecting causality in complex ecosystems. Science 338, 496-500.
http://www.uvm.edu/~cdanfort/csc-reading-group/sugihara-causality-science-2012.pdf
I’ve elaborated here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/18/the-ensemble-of-models-is-completely-meaningless-statistically/#comment-1343895
And I’ll say it once again:
Only a natural force as powerful as organized religion can arrest and correct the insufferable corruption of government & university modeling “science”.
May God bless the human race.
Something’s “fundamentally wrong” when you have conceived that immersing a warm rock spinning a thousand miles per hour, into a miles deep refrigerated, fluid, (gas) bath, WARMS the rock.
That’s how you know you’re off the mark. When you think cooling is heating,
and that a convection-driven refrigeration augmented,
frigid gas bath is a big, warm, convection suppressing blankie.
Pfft. Anybody who ever claimed they believed in magic gas should be deprived of driving privileges until a psychiatric evaluation is performed on them.
Days late (on a road trip, sorry) but what Storch seems sadly enormously blind to is the following statement:
Null Hypothesis: General Circulation Models accurately predict the future climate.
Evidence: The last 15 years is unlikely at the level of p = 0.02 aggregating over all simulation runs of all of the GCMs. (Whether or not this is a reasonable thing to do, mind you. Either way it is a harsh indictment of GCMs “in general”.)
Conclusion: It is quite reasonable to reject the null hypothesis that GCMs in general accurately predict the future climate now, instead of waiting five more years. What is he waiting for? Something, anything to avoid being personally embarrassed? Actually, I think Storch has a lot less to apologize for than the “preachers” of the climate research community he refers to. But he still cannot face the idea that his defense of “95% confidence” as being reasonable earlier is itself indefensible.
Since there are many, completely independent GCMs with different implementations in code, physics, model granularity, this suggests that the situation is far worse than this — that almost all of the GCMs fail a simple hypothesis test with p-values less than 1%, while a few either barely avoid traditional “failure” at 0.05 (beware data dredging — with multiple models 0.05 is not enough to reasonably avoid failure and yes, there is theory to help one out there) or barely fail.
Where is the brutal honesty Feynman calls for? Are we going to see more crapulous analysis in AR5’s Summary for Policy Makers where they form means and standard deviations of the myriad of GCMs and then use this backwards to make assertions about the “probability” of (say) 3 C warming by 2100?
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Something’s “fundamentally wrong” when you have conceived that immersing a warm rock spinning a thousand miles per hour, into a miles deep refrigerated, fluid, (gas) bath, WARMS the rock.
Something is “fundamentally wrong” when you have a warm rock right next door that is significantly colder, on average, because it doesn’t have that warming fluid blanketing it and you still post nonsense instead of trying to understand the physics of radiative cooling.
For one thing, the gas is not refrigerated. It is heated, by the only source of energy that matters — Mr. Sun. It, like the Earth itself, has to shed heat the only way it can, via radiation. Because it is optically opaque in a significant chunk of the LWIR band associated with blackbody radiation from objects in the ballpark of 250-300K, the only place it can radiate heat away is high up, where the gas thins to the point where it is no longer optically opaque. Convection maintains a temperature difference between the surface and that altitude (the dry adiabatic lapse rate) and the fact that most of the cooling of the atmosphere occurs at this (range of) heights is what causes the formation of the tropopause at the top of the troposphere (above in the stratosphere and beyond, the atmosphere warms with height). The cooling rate of the Earth’s surface is substantially reduced because the warmer lower atmosphere returns a lot of the heat it would otherwise radiate directly through an atmosphere that was transparent instead of opaque in the LWIR band. It is consequently warmer, due to greenhouse gases.
It is this sort of shooting from the hip nonsense that make it so easy for Storch and others to casually reject the serious scientific argument against catastrophe, which he openly acknowledges exists and should be taken seriously even as his “gut” tells him it will warm by 2-3 C by 2100. He is at fault there — a better educated fault but fault nonetheless — but so far nobody in climate research can quite bring themselves to admit the truth.
We have no good, trustworthy, reliable way to have a well-founded opinion about what the climate will be doing in 2100. Natural variation could completely overwhelm CO_2 linked warming. Miscomputed feedback from e.g. clouds could completely cancel CO_2 linked warming. Or, we could be in that 2% or less unlikely Universe where by chance there was no warming by chance and in a year warming will come roaring back and Hansen will turn out to be right after all. Gut feelings are not science, they are confirmation bias waiting to happen. Good scientists have them all the time — they are part of one’s conceptual understanding of a discipline — and they learn the hard way not to trust them in research because if we knew the answer, why would we bother looking? Indeed, most good research methodology is designed the way it is to prevent our preconceived gut feeling from influencing the result, because we have learned the hardest of ways that if you go looking for something in the world of data, be it evidence for ESP or proof of aliens living among us, you will find it.
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