At the request of the authors, this was converted from a poster displayed at the AGU Science Policy Conference, Washington, June 24-26. – Anthony
By Paul C. Knappenberger and Patrick J. Michaels
Center for the Study of Science, Cato Institute, Washington DC
INTRODUCTION
Assessing the consistency between real-world observations and climate model projections
is a challenging problem but one that is essential prior to making policy decisions which
depend largely on such projections. National and international assessments often mischaracterize the level of consistency between observations and projections.
Unfortunately, policymakers are often unaware of this situation, which leaves them
vulnerable to developing policies that are ineffective at best and dangerous at worst.
Here, we find that at the global scale, climate models are on the verge of failing to
adequately capture observed changes in the average temperature over the past 10 to 30
years—the period of the greatest human influence on the atmosphere. At the regional
scale, specifically across the United States, climate models largely fail to replicate known
precipitation changes both in sign as well as magnitude.
On the first count, the near inability of climate model projections to contain the observed
global temperature trends, it is likely that the climate model overestimation of the earth’s
equilibrium climate sensitivity—an overestimation which averages about 40 percent—is
playing a large role in the models’ gross exaggeration of the current rate of temperature
rise (which, for example, has been virtually zero during the past 16 years).
On the second count, the general inability of general circulation models to even get the sign of the observed precipitation changes across the U.S. correct, much less the magnitude, likely stems from the complexities of the climate system on spatial and temporal scales that lie far beneath those of current generation GCMs.
GLOBAL TEMPERATURE
12-year Trends:
15-year Trends:
Global Average Surface Temperatures, 2001-2012:
Global Average Surface Temperature Projections, 2001-2020:
U. S. PRECIPITATION
Observed U.S. Precipitation Change:
precipitation differences by decade (relative to the 1901-1960 average) for each region. The far right bar is for 2001-2011. (Figure source: Draft National Assessment Report)
Projected U.S. Precipitation Change
precipitation increases, and brown, decreases. Hatched areas indicate
confidence that the projected changes are large and are consistently wetter or drier. White areas indicate confidence that the changes are small. (Figure source: Draft National Assessment Report)
Number of Years Before Predicted Changes Are Greater Than Natural Variability:
standard deviation (calculated using the 1896-2011 data) from the 1991-2011 average value (calculated using McRoberts and Nielsen-Gammon, 2011). Blue indicates projected increases, red indicates projected decreases. A “n/a” indicates that no consistent projection was made, “achieved” means that the projected change has already been exceeded (that is, the change from 1901-1960 to 1991-2011 was larger than the climate model projected change from 1901-1960 to 2070-2099). Highlighted values indicate two centuries or more.
Observations, 1951 – 2005:
Models, 1951 – 2005:
influence of internal climate variability. (Source: Polson et al., 2013)
CONCLUSIONS:
It is impossible to present reliable future projections from a collection of climate
models which generally cannot simulate observed change. As a consequence, we
recommend that unless/until the collection of climate models can be demonstrated to accurately capture observed characteristics of known climate changes, policymakers should avoid basing any decisions upon projections made from them. Further, those policies which have already be established using projections from these climate models should be revisited.
Assessments which suffer from the inclusion of unreliable climate model projections include those produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Global Climate Change Research Program (including the draft of their most recent National Climate Assessment). Policies which are based upon such assessments include those established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pertaining to the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.
References:
Aldrin, M., et al., 2012. Bayesian estimation of climate sensitivity based on a
simple climate model fitted to observations of hemispheric temperature and global
ocean heat content. Environmetrics, doi: 10.1002/env.2140.
Annan, J.D., and J.C Hargreaves, 2011. On the generation and interpretation of
probabilistic estimates of climate sensitivity. Climatic Change, 104, 324-436.
Hargreaves, J.C., et al., 2012. Can the Last Glacial Maximum constrain climate
sensitivity? Geophysical Research Letters, 39, L24702, doi:
10.1029/2012GL053872
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007. Climate Change 2007: The
Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment
Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Solomon, S., et al.
(eds). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 996pp.
Lewis, N. 2013. An objective Bayesian, improved approach for applying optimal
fingerprint techniques to estimate climate sensitivity. Journal of Climate, doi:
10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00473.1.
Lindzen, R.S., and Y-S. Choi, 2011. On the observational determination of climate
sensitivity and its implications. Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Science, 47,
377-390.
Ring, M.J., et al., 2012. Causes of the global warming observed since the 19th
century. Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, 2, 401-415, doi:
10.4236/acs.2012.24035.
Schmittner, A., et al. 2011. Climate sensitivity estimated from temperature
reconstructions of the Last Glacial Maximum. Science, 334, 1385-1388, doi:
10.1126/science.1203513.
No models will EVER accurately simulate actual climate behavior – the biggest supercomputer can’t do it, and all of the factors known and unknown can ever be correctly represented in them. Policymakers should avoid basing their decisions on models like the plague.
Assessments which suffer from the inclusion of unreliable climate model projections include …those established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pertaining to the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.
We don’t suffer from “carbon pollution”
Our scourge is “model pollution.”
It’s the politicians who need to see this, but then, not many are willing to look just yet.
It’s happening, just slowly. As more wake up to the fact that basing decisions on extreme models makes them personally look bad no matter how they cut it – incompetent at best and outright criminal at worst – the whisper will spread and grow, and more will shy away. It’s frustrating waiting for that magical moment. They’re taking a dang long time for to get up to speed.
Well if you want your model to emulate the system you are measuring, you first have to know just what is the system you are measuring, and then you have to model that system; not some time averaged substitute for it.
I agree with the gist of the above poster-to-post. But, why in the WORLD did they write it in such weak, hesitating, style? The above post was not written in the robust, forthright, manner one uses when trying to convince someone. It has an odd, walk-on-eggshells, feel.
Which language would you use to argue your case?
1. A. Assessing the consistency between real-world observations and climate model projections is a challenging problem but one that is essential prior to making policy decisions which depend largely on such projections.
OR
B. Do climate model projections match reality? We must know the answer to this before we make major policy decisions based on models.
2. A. National and international assessments often mischaracterize the level of consistency between observations and projections.
OR
B. Many climate group reports say that models closely match reality when they do not.
3. A. Here, we find that at the global scale, climate models are on the verge of failing to
adequately capture… .
OR
B. Every single one of the global climate models has failed to project what temperatures actually did.
4. A. It is impossible to present reliable future projections from a collection of climate
models which generally cannot simulate observed change. As a consequence, we
recommend that unless/until the collection of climate models can be demonstrated to accurately capture observed characteristics of known climate changes, policymakers should avoid basing any decisions upon projections made from them. Further, those policies which have already be established using projections from these climate models should be revisited.
OR
B. Climate models that cannot hindcast, i.e., accurately project historical data, are useless at best, dangerously misleading at worst. No policy should be based on them. Any current policies that are based on them need to be fixed.
5. A. Assessments which suffer from the inclusion of unreliable climate model projections include … .
OR
B. Climate reports that use the failed models include… .
****************************
Also, the graphics used are generally quite poor at communicating the authors’ message. Most of the graphics do not communicate with clarity and do more to confuse than to illuminate.
***********************************************************
[Note: We had another Chip Knappenberger article on WUWT recently which (unless he was intentionally supporting CAGW) due to sloppy writing ended up supporting CAGW.]
Perhaps, the authors ARE trying to get the truth out, but can only do it in the most tentative manner due to the ever-present FUNDING issue… .
“Policymakers should avoid basing their decisions on models like the plague.”
[Chad Wozniak]
Now, THAT’s more like it! That’s the kind of robust language to use. #[:)]
“””””…..On the second count, the general inability of general circulation models to even get the sign of the observed precipitation changes across the U.S. correct, much less the magnitude, likely stems from the complexities of the climate system on spatial and temporal scales that lie far beneath those of current generation GCMs……”””””
Heck; they are not suggesting that there could be a Nyquist criterion failure here, are they ??
Nah; why would anyone care about a telephone system nicety !!.
Scientists traditionally use very conservative language, only stating what they know and can prove to be true and always taking painstaking care to point out the limits of their knowledge. In that respect the language used here is typically scientific. That it seems weak compared to what we are used to seeing from climate scientists simply demonstrates how far climate scientists have habitually departed from the scientific norm in their use of language.
These guys actually sound like scientists whereas the typical AGW supporting climate scientist these days sounds more like a political hack.
CONCLUSIONS:
OR
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
AS MODELS REPRESENTING CURRENT CLIMATE THESE ARE WORTHLESS!
Climate models are based on the idea that rising CO2 levels cause rising global temperatures, and more importantly rising CO2 levels are the dominant driver of temperature changes.
If you pop this in your browser
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1960/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.01/offset:-3.2
you will clearly see temperature does not slavishly follow CO2
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/isolate:60/mean:12/scale:0.25/plot/hadcrut3vgl/isolate:60/mean:12/from:1958
this graph shows changes in temperature PRECEED changes in CO2
If rising CO2 levels are not the cause of rising temperature then climate sensitivity has no physical existence, and the climate models are based on a false assumption which somewhat reduces the likelihood of them producing anything related to the real world (ha).
In addition there is clearly a cyclic pattern in the data which has been noted many times, for example, http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/the-occams-razor-oscillatory-model/
or if you prefer it in pictures http://jeremyshiers.com/blog/global-temperature-rise-do-cycles-or-straight-lines-fit-best-may-2013/2cosfit/
As far as I know the models make no allowance for naturally occurring cycles (actually there is a long list of things models don’t take account of).
So policy is being driven by make believe.
I wonder who is making money out of this.
Personally I feel 24 news media has a lot to blame, after all they have 24 hours every day to be filled with something. Yesterday Sky News in UK broadcast a projected ramble by some old bloke from Friends of the Earth who state emphatically (and without being challenged in anyway) UK should not use shale gas, renewables are the answer. In any case shale gas wouldn’t work and wouldn’t bring down energy prices as “IT’S A DIFFERENT TYPE OF SHALE GAS TO THAT IN THE US”
Why GCMs fail so badly…
In ‘Science’ of 31 May, 2013, you can read a very good article by two of the world’s climatologists on why the General Circulation Models (GCMs) used to predict future climate fail so spectacularly. Drs Bjorn Stevens of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany, and Sandrine Bony, of the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique – Institute Pierre Simon Laplace, CNRS, University of Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, France, present a 2-page article titled: “What are climate models missing?”. Here they lay the answer out bare and blatantly:“…an adequate description of basic processes like cloud formation, moist convection, and mixing is what climate models miss most.”
To us at WUWT, this may not be new information, but to others who have buried their heads in sand for a couple of decades and relied on the climate specialists knowing their job, it may come as a shock?
Another excerpt from their article reads:
“The increase in complexity has greatly expanded the scope of questions to which GCMs can be applied (5). Yet, it has had relatively little impact on key uncertainties that emerged in early studies with less comprehensive models ( 6). These uncertainties include the equilibrium climate sensitivity (that is, the global warming associated with a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide), arctic amplification of temperature changes, and regional precipitation responses. Rather than reducing biases stemming from an inadequate representation of basic processes, additional complexity has multiplied the ways in which these biases introduce uncertainties in climate simulations ( 7, 8).
For instance, a poor understanding of what controls the distribution of tropical precipitation over land, and hence vegetation dynamics, limits attempts to understand the carbon cycle ( 9). Similarly, uncertainties in arctic amplification of warming hinder predictions of permafrost melting and resultant changes in soil biogeochemistry.»
5. G. M. Flato, WIREs Clim. Change 2, 783 (2011).
6. S. Bony et al., in Climate Science for Serving Society:
Research, Modelling and Prediction Priorities, G. R. Asrar,
J. W. Hurrell, Eds. (Springer, Berlin, 2013).
7. Q. Min, S. Wang, Geophys. Res. Lett. 35, L02406 (2008).
8. I. B. Ocko, V. Ramaswamy, P. Ginoux, Y. Ming, L. W.
Horowitz, J. Geophys. Res. 117, D20203 (2012).
9. P. Good et al., J. Clim. 26, 495 (2013).”
So, the truth is out – even in Science! – Will this bring any reaction or explanation as to why our governments still back such sloppy science, at all?
Intriguing article and interestingly I can throw further historic light on this subject by referencing my recent article here
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/26/noticeable-climate-change/
in it I demonstrated that ‘noticeable’ climate change is a normal state if we look at a real world example such as the Central England record dating to 1659 and reconstructed by myself to 1538.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/26/noticeable-climate-change/
Virtually no two consecutive decades are the same which is the scale that humans are affected by.
The models do a reasonable job back to 1500AD in noting the amount of variability over a long period such as 50 years or more, which is the margin of error on most proxies which tend to be very imprecise.
However they fail to note the decadal variability which is up to ten times greater.
in other words models use a very coarse sieve through which annual and decadal changes fall.
they therefore give a completely false impression of historic climate stability best seen in figure 4
of the link. it is irresponsible for govts to make policy decisions based on the misleading impression of climate stability in the past given by models
tonyb
Gee, if those MODELS are right, people in the Rockies better buy snow blowers as snow fall is going to be 10 to 20% above “normal” whatever that is … in contrast to the USGS that says ski resorts are going to be in trouble from lack of snow. Oh, and the snow pack in the Canadian Rockies was in fact about 20% above normal this year large and with a stationary low dumping on it we have big time floods, not droughts. Of course they include one of the driest periods in recent history in their baseline so areas showing more precip. should not be a surprise to anyone.
@ Janice Moore – June 27, 2013 at 10:13 pm
I understand what you’re saying but the style they write in is typical for published manuscripts. The reason being if your conclusions are based upon a 95% confidence interval (alpha = 0.05 or P < 0.05) there is up to a 5% probability your conclusion could be wrong and the result of chance. As such, when writing the conclusions you will typically see language like "lending evidence to support" rather than "this proves."
It's not so much walking on egg shells but rather a form of respect paid to the reader. To emphatically assert your findings are poof of something to a reader who understands statistics can be seen as novice.
Many warmists are reluctantly admitting the temperature stall. But they say “We’ve had stalls and drops before within this general warming trend. The stall is natural, and the [catastrophic] warming will resume in the future.”
The problem with this view is that the warmists had led us to believe that CO2 driven warming was to supersede everything natural; indeed we got the impression that the warming by now would be already hellish, and the seas were to have already risen substantially (consider Hansen in 1988 said that Manhattan would be under water by 2008). Their models assumed that any natural trends were going to be easily overpowered by the extreme and dominant man-made warming trend.
I don’t think the models are on the “verge” of failure. They have already failed, no: they have FAILED big time with a capital F and a capital the rest. The models represent Hansen et al’s vision of a doomed future world, and that future has arrived, and all is fine. Not an iota of sea level rise that I can see, and the temperatures seem just like before. No change. If there is some technical way to say that the models have not quite yet actually failed, you’d have to agree that in spirit they have failed. In fact at a quick glance one could see that the models are obviously way off the mark.
Ocean temperatures are critical for long term climate variability. In the N. Atlantic ocean’s surface temperature has followed with a degree of accuracy, with some delay geologic and tectonic history of highly active area on the each side of the Arctic circle.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/NAP-SST.htm
This activity has experienced strong downturn in the last decade, the SST may or may not follow, but past history (providing my calculations are at a reasonable level of accuracy) suggests that the SST is on the verge of downturn.
Are these natural oscillation predictable?
Geologically speaking not, but because of certain inbuilt delay (most likely due to low velocity of the oceanic currents) there is a degree of predictability,
Further more the observation data of the solar magnetic cycle combined with the Earth magnetic oscillations produce more detailed correlation
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSC1.htm
(subject to the calculations accuracy) again indicate a forthcoming downturn.
Climate models failing to perform is a bad omen for the climate science, not to mention billions invested in the unprofitable sources of energy based on the projections of the unsound ‘global temperature’ modeling.
It is time to for science to turn to investigation of natural causal relationships.
You think Obama, Gore, Cameron, Merkel, Rudd, Hollande, Barroso, Pauchari, and all the rest of them care two hoots about how good their precious ‘models’ are?
You think 97%(TM) of the “Climate Scientists” really believe in their hearts that their models are any good for anything (except for milking grant funding)?
They are SAVING THE PLANET!
(Well, obscenely feathering their nests, actually – and who cares about the economy or the world’s poor and vulnerable?)
DON’T confuse them with facts, they’ve made up their minds!
This isn’t a criticism of Knappenberger and Michaels posting. It’s excellent. One to keep. But don’t imagine that any of the crooks who are running this scam will spend a second to reconsider their position.
And one major policy implication is that you shouldn’t do what the UK did.
From my Real Science comment: Having adopted a climate program similar to what the US House passed in 2009, the UK is at just the very beginning and super easy part of a 40 year journey into energy and economic oblivion. Maybe it’s poetic justice and self-loathing for their centuries of imperialism, and now they will become an international pygmy.
Anyway, the news:
(Reuters) – Britain’s risk of electricity blackouts by 2015 is more serious than previously thought, regulator Ofgem warned on Thursday.
The country’s spare electricity supply margin could fall as low as 2 percent in 2015/16, down from around 14 percent currently. Last year Ofgem gave an estimate of 4 percent.
“Electricity supplies are set to tighten faster than previously expected in the middle of this decade,” Ofgem said in a report, adding that the chance of supply disruptions would rise to one in 12 years in 2015/16 from one in 47 years now.
Britain has seen a vast number of power plants close and being mothballed due to emissions-reduction policies and the loss-making economics of gas-fired power plants.
The policy process is political. Obama has to wait for his re-election to unveil his climate change policy although he could be aware that most of the countries committed to Kyoto are now having second thoughts. The models and “scientific” works are just icing to policy decisions already made. The policy makers might have relied more on Delphi methods using selected experts and externally supported by the consensus science. The Delphi method could be gleamed from the use of averages from various models after all Delphi method is just the consensus of experts.
Lies, damned lies, and climate science are poor grounds for any policies, much less life-and-death decisions affecting the poorest and most sensitive parts of the global economy. Dante would have been challenged coming up with suitable rewards for those ramming through said policies.
Sorry for the OT, but this is sad/funny can’t decide which:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/10146081/Twitchers-flocking-to-see-rare-bird-saw-it-killed-by-wind-turbine.html
Jeremy Shiers says:
June 27, 2013 at 10:59 pm
////////////////////////
Spot on.
The first and paramount step would be to test the validity of the fundamental assumptions against empirical observational data. One needs to know whether the assumptions are robust, since if they are not robust, and if there is still some measure of concern as to whether climate change would be serious or not, adaption (and not mitigation) is the best policy.
Adaption works every time. If in the real world (not the cyberspace of computer models) the problem is not serious, we will not have to adapt, or not to a significant degree. Further, a warming climate in reality may turn out to be beneficial and we will enjoy that benefit rather than depriving ourselves of the benefit should steps be taken to mitigate. Further climate change may be real but not driven by GHCs adaption (not mitigation) is the only course that workls in this scenario.
Mitigation on the other hand is a failed venture if either, the problem is not serious, or GHCs do not drive the climate and therefore reducing emissions has no effect and the warming continues unabated because it is a naturally driven process, alternatively if in the real world a warming climate is beneficial.
The more uncertain that you are of the fundamentals, the stronger the argument for adaption becomes. Has anyone stopped to consider, but for policy towards climate change adopted by western countries, whether the western world would be in the economic mess that it is in today. I suggest that there is a strong argument to the effect that had the western world adopted a policy of adaption, and not wasted trillions of dollars on the climate issue, the west would not be in a deep recession and/or would quickly have recovered.
In the UK (and this applies to much of Europe) the cost of our energy is twice high as it need be simply because of the approach to climate change. This has had a serious impact on manufacturing and its competitiveness on the world stage and hence on corporate taxes, employment (adverse effect on income tax, and welfare benefit payments) and social unrest. Yet further, much industry has been driven overseas where there is less regulation and cheaper energy which has had an adverse effect on the balance of payments (the country ends up importing far more than it exports which long term bankrupts a country) and has enriched our competitors 9why give them this step up). If we had kept our manufacturing industry, there would not be levels of youth unemployment ranging between about 18% to just over 60% (depending upon which EU country you look at). This may have been an unforeseen consequence of the policy choice of mitigation, but it goes to emphasise why adaption is always the superior policy.
A strange world when just as the models are failing the most, those who have always been saying so are finally relegated at the highest level to the ‘flat earth society’.
As Galileo was forced to recant and say the earth stood still, as he walked out he was heard to say “and yet it moves”. Now they are saying the temperature ‘moves’ when its standing still. Nobody ever bothers to check the data.
But there is one computer that can do it …
likely stems from the complexities of the climate system on spatial and temporal scales that lie far beneath those of current generation GCMs.
An article of faith in the climate modelling community, but almost certainly wrong in my opinion. There is no evidence that decreasing spatial and temporal scales (with faster computers) has in any way improved climate models.
I could go on, but would likely offend those with religous faiths.
If the models fail to follow reality they are WRONG. This is an easy rule to follow.
Why are policymakers even using model projections? They aren’t data. At All. They are the product of suppositions, now clearly demonstrated to be wrong at best, and biased-wrong at worst…This is akin to climate-policy-by-witchcraft. HOW can anyone be so myopic? How can this be presented as the ‘greatest challenge of our time’ when it can’t even be defined in physical reality? This is way more troubling than all the alarmism that it feeds. It’s wrong, and yet, Obama forges ahead with a stupendously sloppy misinformation campaign…to remedy what doesn’t exist. This is madness!
I agree with those who insist that politicians should be forced to read this paper: or at least the conclusions. However, I really doubt that they will believe the findings, at least here in the UK. Even though it has just been forecast that our power supply could fail to produce the required quantity in a couple of years.
It’s not likely the “policymakers” will change course unless voted out of office or replaced by the newly elected policymakers. If a an elected policymaker casually tag along starting with man caused global warming to carbon pollution over the same span, one wonders what it will take to convince the populations to simple replace them at the ballot box.
Remember, use the weapons of the greenies and the left — bash the models as causing “policymakers” to kill women and children, etc., by being so wrong. Using them to argue against CO2 global warming, et al, just won’t work. Count the windmills to see how that’s going. Even the policymakers that are backing off the windmills are merely moving on to some other expensive, and useless, solution. The steps are first bash them for impacts then further bash them with the science and studies like these. I.E., Not only are they killing you, they’re also wrong on their science.
Chad Wozniak says:
June 27, 2013 at 9:45 pm
“No models will EVER accurately simulate actual climate behavior….”
I’m sure that’s true. Even if by some magic the models were 100% pefect they would still fail. That’s because the initial conditions can never be known with absolute certainty. On each computation loop the uncertainties will tend to increase exponentially – this is why weather forecasts beyond a few days are impossible.
Of course, the models are far from perfect, due to the modellers’ obsession with CO2 and the huge amount of uncertainty in our knowledge of how the climate works.
With these in mind, it seems clear that attempts to forecast the climate in 50 or 100 years’s time is utterly, uterly futile. The truth is that nobody knows. One of the great crimes of the climate science community is to try to hide this overwhelming uncertainty from the politicians. For example, Ed Davey (the UK’s energy and climate change minister), in his recent attack on sceptics, stated that the science was ‘certain’. The ignorance of Davey – and of the world’s most powerful man – is breathtaking. I sometimes wonder if the sceptics can ever win against such ignorance and stupidity.
Meanwhile, the UK moves ever closer to the prospect of regular power cuts, all due to the global warming cult. You can be sure that the solution to this will be to build yet more wind farms.
I suspect that the Ofgem report simply examined average power generation, and may have ignored what happens when there’s no wind. Of course, the more we depend on wind power, the greater the loss of power generation when the wind doesn’t blow. As far as I know, there are no plans to build conventional power stations specifically for backup. The rolling power cuts may be a lot closer than we think.
In today’s printed Daily Telegraph it’s reported that birdwatchers who had gathered to observe a vary rare bird were devestated to see the bird killed by a wind turbine.
For a period ten days ago, all of the UK’s wind farms were generating a massive 45 MW, which is as close to zero as makes no difference. Is there no end to this madness?
Chris
Eric Simpson says:
June 28, 2013 at 12:56 am
///////////////////////
The energy market has become so distorted in the UK as a consequence of (i) the subsidies given to renewables to encourage tehir roll out, (ii) the minimum floor price paid for the energy they produce, and (iii) the payments being made to compensate them for not producing energy, that even if local shale was to come on the market, it is doubtful whether it would significantly drive down energy costs, at least not in the short term, since if it were to be used in priority to renewables, there would be huge compensation payments to be made to those engaged in renewables which would significantly erode the cost benefit of shale.
One often hears government spokes-people suggesting that the UK will not see the energy revolution seen in the States, and/or that shale will not significantly reduce energy costs. There is some element of truth in this, and the government is not explaining why. It is because they have screwed up the energy market and there would be huge compensation payments to be made if shale were to be exploited to the full.
There should be only 2 concerns on the mind of the Department of Energy, namely (i) the production and supply of stable, secure and sufficient energy; and (ii) at a price as cheap as possible. .
The Department appears to have gone for a policy that achieves the very opposite, namely unsecure and inadequate stable supply and at a price as high as possible.
A crazy world we live in.
Chris Wright says:
June 28, 2013 at 3:09 am
///////////////////////
No new conventional power station can be built before 2015, or 2016 because of planning and red tape. It is just impossible to build something up and running before then. The only short term option is to recommission mothballed conventionally powered generators. That is a stark fact.
The experience of the winter 2009/10 and 2010/11 ought to have killed stone dead the idea that wind could play a significant role in energy production. I monitored performance during those winters. for the main part, wind farms were producing only about 3 to 5% of nameplate capacity and this was the case for about 4 to 6 weeks, just when energy demand was highest. There were occassional days of about 8% of nameplate capacity, but again there were days when it was only 1%. Further, when production is so low, it means that many windfarms were probably drawing energy from the grid just to keep the windmills from dying (heating oil, keeping the rotars turning, or yaw mechanisms working etc, stopping it from freezing up), and this data is not freely aavailable. It may be the case that on days when they were producing say 3% of nameplate capacity, overall windfarms, on a national basis, drew more energy from the grid than they put in to it.
At the time, I commented upon what would happen if the UK were dependent upon wind meeting 15% let alone 30% of its energy requirements from wind and whether the government hasd commissioned how the UK would cope in such conditions should they be repeated and how many deaths they consider would arise.
Many ordinary people do not realise the implications of electricity cuts/rationing in winter. They think that they are OK because they have gas (or oil). They fail to appreciate that gas (and oil) central heating will not work without electrical power since this is required for ignition and for the circulation pump. Only those with log or coal fires will be able to keep warm. However, many communities were snowed in for lengthy periods. Those unprepared for a harsh winter such as the elderly are unlikely to have suffieicient wood or coal and wood and coal deliveries would not have been possible in many areas 9roads not properly gritted due to local government cut backs in anticipation of forecaster milder winters and snows a thing of the past).
Who designs an energy system which is at its least efficient just when demand is at its highest. For the UK this is winter nights particulalry during protracted cold speslls due to a blocking high.These conditions are when wind farms are at their least efficient (and of course solar does not produce at night). Sheer madness from an engineering point of view.
Ian H says: @ June 27, 2013 at 10:39 pm
“…..These guys actually sound like scientists whereas the typical AGW supporting climate scientist these days sounds more like a political
hackactivist.”There fixed it for you.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Janice you are correct and clearly illustrate why people who use classic scientific language have been losing the battle.
“Can we balance the need for a sustainable planet with the need to provide billions with decent living standards? Can we do that without questioning radically the Western way of life? These may be complex questions, but they demand answers.” ~ Pascal Lamy Director-General of the World Trade Organization
“We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” ~ Prof. Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.” ~ Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
“The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful.” ~ Dr David Frame, climate modeler, Oxford University
“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.” ~ Daniel Botkin emeritus professor Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It is not and never has been about science. The IPCC was formed to come up with a whip to drive people in the direction the bureaucrats wanted.
Pascal Lamy comes right out and says it.
The Bretton Woods system gave us the IMF and the World Bank. It was setup by a soviet spy within the US treasury, Harry Dexter White.
From a book report by The Council on Foreign Relations on a book title: The Battle of Bretton WoodsJohn Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order
Why is this important?
Because former IPCC chair Robert Watson (from 1997 to 2002 ) was a World Bank employee and the World Bank Carbon Finance Report for 2007 says
So we have the IPCC mandate which states:
It is not and never has been about trying to figure out what drives the climate. It has always been about finding clubs and whips to drive humanity.
Here is the clincher: Why academia has aided and abetted this giant hoax.
Survey shocker: Liberal profs admit they’d discriminate against conservatives in hiring, advancement: ‘Impossible lack of diversity’ reflects ideological intimidation on campus
This is also why WUWT commenters are so often accused of being Republicans or conservatives when often we are not. This is why in the Climategate e-mails we have “I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but it’s not helping the cause, or her professional credibility.” ~ Dr. Michael Mann, IPCC Lead Author, disclosed Climategate e-mail, May 30, 2008
richard verney says: June 28, 2013 at 3:12 am
The energy market has become so distorted in the UK as a consequence of (i) the subsidies given to renewables to encourage tehir roll out….
Renewable energy market in the UK is in a mess, and even bigger mess on horizon …
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/27/column-wynn-uk-offshorewind-idUKL5N0F322W20130627
It appears everything we have been told concerning the rise in atmospheric CO2 from the warmists has been incorrect. There is no global warming problem due to atmospheric CO2 rise. The CO2 rise has caused the biosphere to expand. Plants thrive (including all human cereal crops, trees, shrubs, flowers, and so on) and can grow with less water when CO2 levels rise. The rise in atmospheric CO2 is unequivocally beneficial for the biosphere and hence for humanity also…. …..The CO2 science is not settled, it was fudged. The general circulation models are incorrect for non-scientific reasons. … ….Solar magnetic cycle changes caused almost of all of the warming in the last 70 years. The solar magnetic cycle is abruptly slowing down. This has happened before (warming and cooling, nine times before, with cooling phases that last for 50 to 100 years) there are solar magnetic cycle changes at each and every past warming and cooling cycle. Based on what has happened before the planet will cool roughly 0.5C in roughly 3 years. The climate change problem will be global cooling.
.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-hans-von-storch-on-problems-with-climate-change-models-a-906721.html
Climate Expert von Storch and IPCC lead author: Why Is Global Warming Stagnating?
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: 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.
Storch: ….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.
Storch: ….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: 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.
HankH says: @ June 28, 2013 at 12:18 am
It’s not so much walking on egg shells but rather a form of respect paid to the reader. To emphatically assert your findings are poof of something to a reader who understands statistics can be seen as novice.
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Politicians are lawyers and would not know statistical uncertainty if it bit them on the nose. They do however know How to Lie with Statistics It is part of their stock-in-trade.
The other audience, the general public doesn’t even know what the word statistics means. Heck they had to pass a new law in North Carolina making it mandatory that students learn to write and learn the multiplication tables!
This ‘scientifically correct’ language sounds to the layman like you are just raising a few doubts and cravats. Where as the ClimAstrologists sound like Moses delivering the Ten Commandments to the cowering masses.
As others have pointed out we are wining the scientific battle but losing the political war. This is why.
Politicians cannot pay attention to reality, at this late date. They made a mistake, in their greed, and spent the money before they collected the Carbon Taxes. And now you tell them Carbon Taxes are not needed?
Old farmers know better. The saying is, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”
Well, a fox has been in the hen-house, and there are no eggs left. However the politicians must stride ahead, promising omelets.
The climate models, described above, use parameters (whose magnitude nor sign is known with any great amount of certainty) that are force fitted in an attempt to simulate the past climate. (Plus there are probably parameters that need to be used in the models that are either ignored or not known.) Model results with these inputs are purely an academic exercise. Any attempt to use such models to predict the future climate is useless because the modelers have no idea whatsoever if their parameter inputs to “tune” their model to fit the past climate will be of the correct magnitude or sign for the modeling of the future climate.
Or in technical terms: Garbage in = Garbage out.
Climate models are so – yesterday. Now we have “instinct”, the 97.1 Cooksensus, “weird” weather/jet streams, and of course, the biggy; “The Arctic Is Melting!” With all that, who needs models? Besides, the heat is just hiding in the deep oceans, waiting for the right time to show itself. Anyone who disagrees is a flat-earther denier beholden to Big Oil and King Coal. /sarc
Janice Moore says:
June 27, 2013 at 10:13 pm
I strongly agree with Ms. Moore. Why present such a resoundingly important issue in such a fainthearted way? And yes, those graphs and charts are confusing and don’t make a clear point at all.
And the IPCC models assume that all the recent warming is due to CO2. So the real sensitivity is anywhere from 2C down to a mere couple tenths C.
Gail Combs says:
June 28, 2013 at 5:09 am
HankH says: @ June 28, 2013 at 12:18 am
It’s not so much walking on egg shells but rather a form of respect paid to the reader. To emphatically assert your findings are poof of something to a reader who understands statistics can be seen as novice.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Politicians are lawyers and would not know statistical uncertainty if it bit them on the nose. They do however know How to Lie with Statistics It is part of their stock-in-trade.
The other audience, the general public doesn’t even know what the word statistics means. Heck they had to pass a new law in North Carolina making it mandatory that students learn to write and learn the multiplication tables!
This ‘scientifically correct’ language sounds to the layman like you are just raising a few doubts and cravats. Where as the ClimAstrologists sound like Moses delivering the Ten Commandments to the cowering masses.
As others have pointed out we are wining the scientific battle but losing the political war. This is why.
Unfortunately, this has always been the case as in the ‘expert witness’ that sounds uncertain, I believe though that the approach espoused by
Janice Moore says:
June 27, 2013 at 10:13 pm
would be better with use of robust language, So it should be said that NONE of the models are correct in any respect. But the models and their authors should be named and demands made that the modelers funding should be withdrawn until they can show better results. ONLY allow the IPCC to show models that are relatively close to reality in ALL respects. They are running a scam and should be talked to in that mode. A ,model that shows almost close to 95% correct in temperature that is totally wrong in all other respects is a failure.
Politicians should be told that they will be the laughing stock of history being conned by such slapdash amateur modelers. .Their legacy will be their name being used as a synonym for stupidity or duplicity.
Well, since we’re editing…
“No policy should be based on them. Any current policies that are based on them need to be rescinded.”
is giss data in such disagreement with satellite data that the following graph is accurate?
http://web.archive.org/web/20111109144404/http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/mostmods.jpg
There is one problem with all models: they attempt to calculate warming from carbon dioxide greenhouse effect. It does not exist. It is no secret that there has been no warming for the last 15 years. At the same time, carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere has been the highest ever. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that this carbon dioxide is not causing any greenhouse warming now, and has not done it for fifteen years. It is also quite certain that it did not suddenly change its behavior 15 years ago. It is very clear now that it has never caused any greenhouse warming at all and that warming attributed to it in the past is misappropriated natural warming. Except for the non-existent late twentieth century warming which is an outright scientific fraud. But instead of accepting observations of nature what you see now is various “climate” scientists trying to explain away the current lack of warming. One of their favorites is the claim that the missing greenhouse warming can be found at the bottom of the ocean. This is so ridiculous as to be laughable. How can that OLR that CO2 is supposed to capture and turn into heat avoid capture, turn around, and head for the ocean bottom is incomprehensible. It is purely a rear-guard action, a last-ditch attempt to avoid the inevitable conclusion that CO2 is not warming the world and that AGW does not exist. If understood by politicians this just might turn off the spigot of money from Uncle Sam that they are all feeding from.
The policy implications will be the need to redouble their efforts to get as much of their agenda passed before the entire scam collapses.
OMG, space models are also no good: said Voyager project scientist Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, lead author of one of the new studies and co-author of another.
“But it’s speculation, because none of the models we have, have this particular region in them,” Stone told SPACE.com. “So none of the models can be directly and accurately compared to what we’re observing. What we’re observing is really quite new.”
In reply to:
bobbyv says:
June 28, 2013 at 8:09 am
is giss data in such disagreement with satellite data that the following graph is accurate?
William:
The GISS temperature data is manipulated and is high by rough 0.25C. Why does NASA not use satellite temperature data? It is not possible to manipulate the satellite data.
There has been no warming for 16 years. Manipulating the temperature data does not make the planet warmer. Roy Spencer has access to the general circulation models and re-ran them for the most recent period.
The fact that there has been no increase in warming for 16 years indicates there are fundamental errors in the general circulation models that were used by the IPCC. The general circulation models also predict a tropic tropospheric hot spot at roughly 8km above the surface of the planet which cause the majority of the warming in the tropics. That hot spot is not observed. Lindzen and Choi found that planetary clouds in the tropics increase or decrease to resist forcing changes, negative feedback. The IPCC general circulation models assume amplification in the tropics whose signature is the tropical troposphere hot spot. No hot spot.
….Curious that Tamino (aka Grant Foster) ignores the fact that there is no tropical tropospheric hot spot. …. EPA’s own senior analysis agrees with the above comments. The EPA unfortunately buried their analysis’ critique of the extreme AGW hypothesis.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/04/global-warming-slowdown-the-view-from-space/
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-global-LT-vs-UAH-and-RSS.png
This is a link to a review paper that was prepared by EPA’s own scientist that supports the assertion that research and analysis does not support the extreme AGW paradigm. The EPA buried the report.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/endangermentcommentsv7b1.pdf
“Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act”
“I have become increasingly concerned that EPA has itself paid too little attention to the science of global warming. EPA and others have tended to accept the findings reached by outside groups, particularly the IPCC and the CCSP, as being correct without a careful and critical examination of their conclusions and documentation. If they should be found to be incorrect at a later date, however, and EPA is found not to have made a really careful independent review of them before reaching its decisions on endangerment, it appears likely that it is EPA rather than these other groups that may be blamed for any errors. Restricting the source of inputs into the process to these two sources may make EPA’s current task easier but it may come with enormous costs later if they should result in policies that may not be scientifically supportable.
The failings are listed below in decreasing order of importance in my view: (See attached for details.)
1. Lack of observed upper tropospheric heating in the tropics (see Section 2.9 for a detailed discussion).
2. Lack of observed constant humidity levels, a very important assumption of all the IPCC models, as CO2levels have risen (see Section 1.7).
3. The most reliable sets of global temperature data we have, using satellite microwave sounding units, show no appreciable temperature increases during the critical period 1978-1997, just when the surface station data show a pronounced rise (see Section 2.4). Satellite data after 1998 is also inconsistent with the GHG/CO2/AGW hypothesis 2009 v
4. The models used by the IPCC do not take into account or show the most important ocean oscillations which clearly do affect global temperatures, namely, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and the ENSO (Section 2.4). Leaving out any major potential causes for global warming from the analysis results in the likely misattribution of the effects of these oscillations to the GHGs/CO2 and hence is likely to overstate their importance as a cause for climate change.
5. The models and the IPCC ignored the possibility of indirect solar variability (Section 2.5), which if important would again be likely to have the effect of overstating the importance of GHGs/CO2.
6. The models and the IPCC ignored the possibility that there may be other significant natural effects on global temperatures that we do not yet understand (Section 2.4). This possibility invalidates their statements that one must assume anthropogenic sources in order to duplicate the temperature record. The 1998 spike in global temperatures is very difficult to explain in any other way (see Section 2.4).
7. Surface global temperature data may have been hopelessly corrupted by the urban heat island effect and other problems which may explain some portion of the warming that would otherwise be attributed to GHGs/CO2. In fact, the Draft TSD refers almost exclusively in Section 5 to surface rather than satellite data.”
“2.9 The Missing Heating in the Tropical Troposphere
Computer models based on the theory of GHG/CO2 warming predict that the troposphere in the tropics should warm faster than the surface in response to increasing CO2 concentrations, because that is where the CO2 greenhouse effect operates. Sun-Cosmic ray warming will warm the troposphere more uniformly. ,,,, ,,,,The UN’s IPCC AR4 report includes a set of plots of computer model predicted rate of temperature change from the surface to 30 km altitude and over all latitudes for 5 types of climate forcings as shown below. … ….The Hadley Centre’s real-world plot of radiosonde temperature observations shown below, however, does not show the projected CO2 induced global warming hot-spot at all. The predicted hot-spot is entirely absent from the observational record. This shows that most of the global temperature change cannot be attributed to increasing CO2 concentrations.”
William: Peer reviewed research also shows the tropical troposphere is not warming.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/DOUGLASPAPER.pdf
“ A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions
beng says:
June 28, 2013 at 6:49 am
And the IPCC models assume that all the recent warming is due to CO2. So the real sensitivity is anywhere from 2C down to a mere couple tenths C.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It is worse than that as I have said before. This is a clear statement of the thinking of a warmist by a Physical Chemist.
Two of the most important drivers of the earth’s climate are the sun and water, yet the backa$$wards thinking of these modelers is that a miniscule amount of CO2 (400ppm) in the atmosphere is DRIVING 1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers (332,519,000 cubic miles) of water.
From NOAA:
I guess none of these people ever heard of Henry’s Law.
In other words the temperature of the oceans DRIVES the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by outgassing as the oceans warm up.
The ClimAstrologists think that the downwelling radiation from CO2 is ‘Warming’ the oceans. Aside from the 1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers vs 400ppm problem you have the fact that IR wavelengths from CO2 can not penetrate the ocean beyond a few microns while the visible to extreme ultra violet wavelengths from the sun, which have a lot more ‘energy’ penetrate to depths of 100 meters
Graph of Sunlight at Top of Atmosphere, surface and 10 meters below ocean surface
Graph of Solar Radiation Intensity and Wavelengths at specific Ocean depths
This graph is the clincher: Relative Energy of incoming solar radiation and out going terrestrial radiation Note the exponential scale so it is like comparing billions of dollar (solar energy) to nickels and dimes (terrestrial energy) However the ClimAstrologists much prefer to use this Graph
This graph gives where CO2 vs water, O3, N2O absorption bands are with relation to the incoming solar radiation and out going terrestrial radiation. (Note H2O is a much more significant GHG and CO2 is not absorbing at the peak radiation wave lengths as H2O does.)
Of course the ClimAstrologists had to also get rid of this older article from NOAA showing Sunlight has varied from 1950 to 2000. (This is the rewrite without a date change).
Unfortunately for the ClimAstrologists, new data is showing the visible to extreme UV varies a lot more than originally thought even though the total insolation may remain more or less constant. NASA link and NASA: UV Exposure Has Increased Over the Last 30 Years, but Stabilized Since the Mid-1990s
UV and Ozone and its effect on climate is another entire subject and worth your while looking up.
To put it bluntly the ClimAstrologists do not have a scientific leg to stand on but that doesn’t keep them from saying CO2 is the ‘Control Knob’ and then calling the effects of water on the climate a ‘Feedback’ and therefore part of ‘the forcing in anthropogenic warming’. That was the only way they could show increases in CO2 are ‘Catastrophic’. Mother Nature of course is now calling them liars.
You can make a stochastic model do anything. There are armies of university & government experts in stochastic bullsh*tting.
Modeling “scientists” are busy right now tweaking model parameters to “account” for ‘the pause’. Within 5 years (maybe within 1 year) they’ll have models that “account” for pauses & declines. They’ll easily reach this stage without the slightest understanding & appreciation of nature.
Recognize the enemy: Stochastic Bullsh*tting. It’s the same enemy in economics as in climate and elsewhere. Sober suggestion: Reject stochastic bullsh*tting. Dismiss it out of hand. Never listen to it for even a second …ever.
SB = BS
thanks William Astley
I guess without skeptics, there would be no evaluation of the performance of climate models; WUWT?
Meanwhile back here in the UK, ministers are trying to persuade us that there is no possiblitly of us running out of energy. Yep, and I also believe in the man in the moon
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/pay-firms-to-ration-electricity-use-says-national-grid-as-government-insists-the-lights-will-stay-on-despite-blackout-britain-warnings-8678263.html
Gary Pearse says:
June 28, 2013 at 9:42 am
I guess without skeptics, there would be no evaluation of the performance of climate models; WUWT?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
As I stated in my above comment CAGW has ALWAYS been political. Going all the way back to the first UN Earth Summit in 1972 where Maurice Strong talked of Global Warming and not only invited Greenpeace but paid their expenses and then told them to go home and raise he!!.
Maurice Strong is said to have originated the idea of NGOs, getting the idea from his early employment by YMCA international. Strong was a Senior Advisor to the World Bank, part of the UN Commission on Global Governance and a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation. Although a Canadian he was a major contributor to both the Republican and Democratic parties in the USA. So much so that George W. Bush went to bat for him and saw to it that Strong became Chair at Kyoto.
Strong is also great buddies with Al Gore. During the First Earth Day in the USA, Gore held up Maurice Strong’s company, Molten Metal Tech. as an example of ‘Green Technology’ The stock prices when up, Strong cashed in and the company then bankrupted when the DOT no longer forked over more grants. (sound familiar) There was even a Congressional investigation which as usual went no where. However the scammed stockholders also sued.
Fast forward and you have Al Gore and Maurice Strong setting up the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) with lawyer Obama help
The idea we have two parties in the USA so both sides of a question are represented is utterly laughable. Dwayne Andreas former CEO of Archer Daniels Midland Co. is perhaps the greatest contributor to both the republican and democratic parties in history. You have to look no further than good old Dwayne and his $$$ to understand why subsidies on corn, sugar and biofuel will never go away. (And why we got the Food Modernization Act designed to destroy US family farms )
Anyone who thinks Money and Politics is not behind CAGW has not been paying attention.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” ~ H. L. Mencken
With CAGW we are seeing practical politics up close and personal as we are fleeced down to the bone and sold like so much hanging meat by our ‘Representatives’
I agree entirely with Janice Moore above. The article is weak and hesitant. One more example : instead of “…… Climate Models on the verge of failure” it should read “Climate models fail signally” or some such positive assertion. In sum, the article strikes one as weak and limp-wristed.
Gail Combs says:
June 28, 2013 at 5:09 am
“As others have pointed out we are wining the scientific battle but losing the political war. This is why.”
There is no political war. All parties support what gives the state more power.
““The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers.
Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so the the American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy.””
[Carrol Quigley, mentor of Bill Clinton]
http://www.newsofinterest.tv/video_pages_flash/politics/misc_neocon_globalist/caroll_quigley_trag_hope.php
In Germany, where the use of CO2AGW to further the power grab is a far more accepted tool due to the panicky nature of the German, all parties are Green parties.
The process cannot be reversed by a political fight; but by a collapse.
I defer to a Donald Rumsfeld quote here as I believe it is prescient of the state of the models and climate analysis in general –
IMO Climate analysis is full of ‘unknown unknowns’ and I believe we are so far from knowing as currently we do not know what tools are required to find these unknowns.
tckev (June 28, 2013 at 5:29 pm) suggested:
“we do not know what tools are required to find these unknowns”
Tuned aggregates illustrate the way. Someone with the right background, natural symbolic talent, and sufficient time on their hands will easily reorganize those illustrations into a formal algebraic proof …but of course that’s just unnecessary cultural pomp — the pictures convey the story thoroughly to graphically literate communication receivers with a firm handle on aggregation criteria & thermal wind.
Follow-up (to June 29, 2013 at 5:39 pm) …
Lots of attention to temperatures in the climate discussion, but with insufficient attention to temperature gradients & coupled flows.
Along comes a 15-year-old to shine a simple light (video length = 1 min 37 sec) :
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/29/an-energy-model-for-the-future-from-the-12th-century/#comment-338643
The probability density functions (PDFs) in climate models are spatiotemporally biased (egregiously so) due to grossly insufficient temperature gradient diagnostics.
Wind-driven ocean welling (up & down) is externally governed.
There are layers of potentially-mesmerizing spatiotemporally-chaotic changing gear-ratios in the climate system, but paradoxical blindness to the whole can be shed by stepping back from the hypnotically-intoxicating details of the coupled network of shifting known & unknown gear-ratios far enough to see holistically (via universal tachometer) the common drive shaft.
This isn’t some mysterious emergent property. It’s simple external governance.
Models work in Australia, well, so the experts say!
@ tckev says June 28, 2013 at 5:29 pm
Rumsfeld’s analysis is simply three parts of Boston Square Chart. The fourth quarter missed out from his assessment is “Unknown Knowns” that is:- The things that we used to known but have now forgotten about.