Dutch advice to IPCC: limiting the scope to human induced climate change is undesirable
Governments around the world have been asked by IPCC to think about the future of the IPCC. The Netherlands now sent their submission to the IPCC and made it available on the website of KNMI.
I would say Holland is fairly critical about how IPCC is operating right now. This part struck me as most interesting:
The IPCC needs to adjust its principles. We believe that limiting the scope of the IPCC to human induced climate change is undesirable, especially because natural climate change is a crucial part of the total understanding of the climate system, including human-induced climate change. The Netherlands is also of the opinion that the word ‘comprehensive’ may have to be deleted, because producing comprehensive assessments becomes virtually impossible with the ever expanding body of knowledge and IPCC may be more relevant by producing more special reports on topics that are new and controversial.
I agree with both points. The (almost) obsession of IPCC with greenhouse forcing has greatly limited progress in climate science in my opinion, so I am glad my government now raises this point. And in my (Dutch) book De Staat van het Klimaat I concluded that IPCC in AR4 had not succeeded to come up with a “comprehensive” report. I also agree IPCC should pay much more attention to controversial topics. The treatment of controversial topics in AR4 and also AR5 was and is unsatisfactory for two reasons: there is not enough space reserved to go into the necessary details and the author teams are almost always biased in favor of the consensus view and therefore not giving enough credit to minority views.
The Netherlands also want to make an end to the huge volumes IPCC is producing and replace it by shorter web based (special) reports:
More here:
http://www.staatvanhetklimaat.nl/2013/07/05/dutch-advise-to-ipcc-limiting-the-scope-to-human-induced-climate-change-is-undesirable/
“The IPCC needs to adjust its principles. We believe that limiting the scope of the IPCC to human induced climate change is undesirable, especially because natural climate change is a crucial part of the total understanding of the climate system, including human-induced climate change. “
I disagree with the entire premise. The UN is a political body. It was not conceived to partake in scientific research, whether summarizing, advocating, or whatnot. The UN should never have been co-opted to this process, although this is hardly the first time the UN has been co-opted by those yearning and thirsting for power.
The IPCC was conceived to translate scientific results to political power across the world. This is a recipe not to advance science, but to retard it. Science and politics don’t mix. That is why universities have always existed at an arm’s length from governments, why tenure exists, and so on. We have seen how science has become tortured and politicized by the IPCC, and we need not generalize this, instead, we should put the IPCC in its grave.
Co2 being a greenhouse gas is not controversial (despite men fighting dragons). Co2 positive feedback quantification is utterly and absolutely controversial. Look at the 16 years temperature standstill while co2 shot up. Look at the missing (predicted) hotspot and you will realise the absolute controversy. Look at the Warmer NH winters we were promised and was it warm in your country these past few winters? Co2 positive feedback quantification is what the controversy is about. HOW MUCH????
I agree with Scarface. Leif is trolling, Marcel Crok’s meaning was clear (study factors other than CO2), and one day Leif’s worst fears will be realised when someone else works out the link between sun and climate. OK, that’s maybe a bit too harsh, but how far off the mark am I really?
BTW, I disagree with Marcel Crok, in that I don’t think the IPCC should look at factors other than CO2 – I think the IPCC has shown itself to be so wilfully biased that the only credible way forward is to scrap it. No other field of science has an IPCC, and climate science shouldn’t have one either.
Mike Jonas says:
July 5, 2013 at 3:08 pm
I agree with Scarface. Leif is trolling, Marcel Crok’s meaning was clear (study factors other than CO2)
Of course, because the role of CO2 is not controversial, which is the take-home lesson.
and one day Leif’s worst fears will be realised when someone else works out the link between sun and climate.
Not at all. I have myself published several papers on this. E.g.
Solar magnetic sector structure: Relation to circulation of the earth’s atmosphere
John M Wilcox, Philip H Scherrer, Leif Svalgaard, Walter Orr Roberts, Roger H Olson
Publication date 1973/4/13, Science, Volume 180, issue 4082, Pages 185-186 (cited by 121 other papers and still cited today). And have had high interest in this field for decades. Unfortunately, there has been no progress worth writing home about, and the field is as barren as it ever was [going back to 1651]. P.S. Walt Roberts was the founder of NCAR [National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO].
My great hope is that the effort will pan out, as that would greatly increase funding and relevance of solar physics. But, alas, I see nothing on the horizon to promise that. All the same tired, old arguments and dubious correlations are still trotted out.
how far off the mark am I really?
As far as one can get.
lsvalgaard says:
The evidence is there for all to see:
Mr Bliss says: July 5, 2013 at 12:32 pm
The IPCC has a party line?
—-
Thats evidence that I wanted your interpretation of the IPCC party line – since you brought it up.
Unfortunately you had to wait for SCF to come up with a definition for you
A committee of scientists selected by 194 countries to push a political agenda is not going to resolve the climate change anomalies.
The IPCC will be forced to try to explain global cooling before that unwieldy group is abandoned.
There will be a high level independent scientific group formed to try to understand and predict the implications of global cooling.
There is now observed cooling at both poles and a massive increase in snow fall on the Antarctic ice sheet. Step change observations require a step change forcing change. The current solar change is causing the observed change in planetary climate.
http://www.cato.org/blog/long-awaited-snowfall-increase-antarctica-now-underway
A paper to soon appear in Geophysical Research Letters gives us another enticing look at recent snowfall changes in Antarctica. In “Snowfall driven mass change on the East Antarctic ice sheet,” Carmen Boening and colleagues from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory report that extreme precipitation (snowfall) events in recent years (beginning in 2009) have led to a dramatic gain in the ice mass in the coastal portions of East Antarctica amounting to about 350 Gt in total (Figure 1)
The following is a partial list of anomalies that require an answer.
1. There has been 16 years without warming. That is not possible based on the general circulation models. There is no observed warming in the tropical troposphere as predicted by the GW theory and by the general circulation models. That also is not possible if the general circulation models are correct. When the paleo record is examined in detail there are multiple periods when greenhouse gases increase and decrease and there is no change in temperature. There is no explanation for periods when greenhouse gas changes do not correlate with planetary temperature. That is not possible based on the general circulation models and the known natural climate forcing mechanism. Based on the observations either the greenhouse gas mechanism saturates (one or more fundamental assumptions concerning atmospheric processes are incorrect) or there are strange smart forces that when necessary inhibit the greenhouse mechanism and/or cause warming and cooling when required explain the paleoclimatic record.
2. During the current interglacial there has been nine (9) periods of warming and cooling all of which correlate with solar magnetic cycle changes. The regions of the planet that warmed during the nine (9) climate cycles are the same regions of the planet that have warmed in the last 70 years. Solar activity has the highest in 8000 years in the last 70 years. The solar magnetic cycle has abruptly slowed down. The sun is entering a Maunder minimum. Based on what has happened before the planet will start to cool and there will be increased precipitation and cloud cover 40 to 65 degree North and South. There has been an observed increase in precipitation and cooling, with the cooling and increased precipitation in the same regions as observed in the Little Ice Age.
Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper. http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_recent_cycles.png
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/nature02995.pdf
Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years
http://cio.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/FILES/root/1999/QuatSciRevvGeel/1999QuatSciRevvGeel.pdf
“The role of solar forcing upon climate change”
https://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/74103.pdf
The Sun-Climate Connection by John A. Eddy, National Solar Observatory
http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/pdf/Atmos_060302.pdf
3. It has been discovered that there are geomagnetic field changes (abrupt changes to the geomagnetic field orientation 10 to 15 degree and geomagnetic excursions) that correlate with super sets of solar magnetic cycle changes. We are current at the end of a solar magnetic cycle super set. In the 1990’s the North geomagnetic pole location drift velocity abruptly increase from 10 to 15 km per year to 55 km year correlating with a sudden change to the solar magnetic cycle starting the end of a super cycle.
A geomagnetic anomaly (it appears the South Atlantic field anomaly is either a reversal or an attempted reversal, the field strength in this location is 30% less than the main field) was discovered in the South Atlantic region in 1958. The South Atlantic anomaly has increased in extent from 55 million sq km in 1958 to 75 million sq km in 2011.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682611002896
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010EO510001/pdf
What Caused Recent Acceleration of the North Magnetic Pole Drift?
Abrupt climate changes correlate with geomagnetic excursions. Svensmark’s mechanism explains both the cooling and warming due to abrupt increases and decreases to intensity geomagnetic field. The geomagnetic field intensity increases by a factor of 3 to 4 during the interglacial periods. Geomagnetic excursions correlate with the start and end of the interglacial periods.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682611002896
http://sciences.blogs.liberation.fr/home/files/Courtillot07EPSL.pdf
Are there connections between the Earth’s magnetic field and climate? Vincent Courtillot, Yves Gallet, Jean-Louis Le Mouël, Frédéric Fluteau, Agnès Genevey
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/BardPapers/responseCourtillotEPSL07.pdf
Response to Comment on “Are there connections between Earth’s magnetic field and climate?, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 253, 328–339, 2007” by Bard, E., and Delaygue, M., Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., in press, 2007
Mr Bliss says:
July 5, 2013 at 3:27 pm
That’s evidence that I wanted your interpretation of the IPCC party line
That is evidence that you doubted there was a party line. And I think just about everybody here agrees that there is [with the possible exception of you] and what it is. SCF nicely summarized the line, do I have to do everything? A good rule for you to follow: ‘when in a hole, stop digging’.
There are many areas of science that are important to our current civilization, economies, technologies, and future, but climate is the ONLY area that needs a UN-based oversight department? Why? It’s simple. The IPCC is a propaganda machine and, dressed up as a “scientific body,” it can propagate propaganda to suit its purposes and agenda. It is a political body that was never meant to be scientific, just to appear scientific.
The IPCC should be dissolved.
https://www.ipcc.ch/scoping_meeting_ar5/doc7.pdf
The above appears to be the response of the IPCC to the national recommendations. It would seem the IPCC considers much of what the Netherlands said to be in the ‘outlier’ category.
William Astley says:
July 5, 2013 at 3:38 pm
The current solar change is causing the observed change in planetary climate.
there is no evidence for that, just your supposition. The solar energy output is now the highest it has ever been since the start of reliable [and well-calibrated] measurements in 2003.
During the current interglacial there has been nine (9) periods of warming and cooling all of which correlate with solar magnetic cycle changes.
No, that is not generally accepted.
Solar activity has the highest in 8000 years in the last 70 years.
As we have discussed many times, this is incorrect.
It has been discovered that there are geomagnetic field changes (abrupt changes to the geomagnetic field orientation 10 to 15 degree and geomagnetic excursions) that correlate with super sets of solar magnetic cycle changes.
No such discovery has been made.
Geomagnetic excursions correlate with the start and end of the interglacial periods.
These are caused by totally unrelated processes and no such correlation has been established
in press, 2007
speaks for itself.
oops that was the 4th assessment review
I don’t believe that anything more than the following simple observations are necessary to relegate CO2 to insignificance in climate change:
1. There were three periods of temperatures higher than today, while CO2 was much less than today, within the historical record: Hittite-Minoan-Mycenean, 1800-1400 BC, Roman Climate Optimum, 100B -300AD, and Medieval Warm Period, 900-1300AD. The abundantly and solidly documented anecdotal evidence of these periods cannot be erased by a model whose “proxy” temperatures correlate less to actual temps than random numbers do (he hockey stick, as demonstrated by Steve McIntyre).
2. The existing, actual, unfudged temperature data shows conclusively that the highest temps in the last 100 years occurred during the 1930s, when there was 40% less CO2 in the atmosphere than today. The regression line from 1933 to 2013 definitely slopes quite steeply DOWNWARD, for an 80-year period – not just 17 or 15 or whatever the alarmists claim.
3. Temps were flat from 1997 to 2002 and have declined since then, all alarmist lies to the contrary notwithstanding, while CO2 went up another 15 percent.
4. Greenhouse operators consistently maintain CO2 at 1,000-1,500 parts per million in their buildings (to obtain higher yields) and there is no runaway heating there; in fact, the added CO2 barely affects the temps in those buildings..
5. All the alarmists are of extreme left political persuasions, and while this may sound like ad hominem, keep in mind that people with these beliefs do not hesitate to lie concerning anything that appears to justify their political agendas, and to deny (if in fact they will even acknowledge) anything that refutes their arguments. It’s not ad hominem when you have proof otherwise, i.e., documented observation, that someone is a habitual liar.
From what I can see, lsvalgaard made the first comment in an overly terse manner, which appears to have given everyone the wrong idea.
The IPCC does not consider the role of CO2 to be controversial. It appears to them to be an obvious fact, and not worth disputing in any way. The IPCC was formed to collect all supporting documents for their position and marginalize anything else.
My personal opinion is that the sun influences climate in several ways, but we still have not identified to what extent and in what manner all of these influences happen.
There is no single answer to climate influences. None. It’s obvious that CO2 does not drive climate, but it may have some influence… then again, CO2 levels may also be an artifact of climate, not a driver.
It is as wrong to state with certainty that the Sun is the only driver as it is to state with certainty that CO2 is.
As I have said before, if climate research money had been spent on identifying the causes for the cycles we know exist then we might have a better idea by now what is going on. As it is, we are ALL still groping in the dark. As soon as someone can provide a credible and scientifically valid reason for the LIA and MWP we will be on our way to understanding climate.
Remember, this all started when scientists first realized that there had been Ice Ages.
In reply to:
lsvalgaard says:
July 5, 2013 at 4:17 pm
William Astley says:
July 5, 2013 at 3:38 pm
The current solar change is causing the observed change in planetary climate.
Leif: there is no evidence for that, just your supposition. The solar energy output is now the highest it has ever been since the start of reliable [and well-calibrated] measurements in 2003.
William: You should by now understand that solar magnetic cycle changes modulate planetary climate, rather than ‘total solar irradiance’ TSI. The planet becomes warmer or colder due to less or more sunlight reflected off to space.
Do you claim there has been no change to the sun?
Or do you claim there has been no sudden and abrupt climate change?
The planet has suddenly started to cool. There has been record cold winters in Europe and the start of cold wet summers in both North America and in Europe.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2013/0705/Year-after-drought-wettest-Midwest-spring-in-40-years-delays-crop-planting
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2013/cold-spring
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/cold-german-winter-refuses-to-warm-up-for-easter-a-891468.html
Complaining about the weather has reached epidemic proportions in northern Germany this “spring.” And with good reason. With Easter just around the corner, meteorologists are telling us this could end up being the coldest March in Berlin and its surroundings since records began in the 1880s.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22835154
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
…Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of cooling that occurred after the Medieval Warm Period (Medieval Climate Optimum).[1] While it was not a true ice age, the term was introduced into the scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939.[2] It has been conventionally defined as a period extending from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries,[3][4][5] or alternatively, from about 1350 to about 1850
Crop practices throughout Europe had to be altered to adapt to the shortened, less reliable growing season, and there were many years of dearth and famine (such as the Great Famine of 1315–1317, although this may have been before the LIA proper).[25] According to Elizabeth Ewan and Janay Nugent, “Famines in France 1693–94, Norway 1695–96 and Sweden 1696–97 claimed roughly 10% of the population of each country. In Estonia and Finland in 1696–97, losses have been estimated at a fifth and a third of the national populations, respectively.”[26] Viticulture disappeared from some northern regions. Violent storms caused serious flooding and loss of life. Some of these resulted in permanent loss of large areas of land from the Danish, German and Dutch coasts.[24]
The extent of mountain glaciers had been mapped by the late nineteenth century. In both the north and the south temperate zones, snowlines (the boundaries separating zones of net accumulation from those of net ablation) were about 100 m lower than they were in 1975.[27] In Glacier National Park, the last episode of glacier advance came in the late 18th and early nineteenth centuries.[28] In Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, large temperature excursions were possibly related to changes in the strength of North Atlantic thermohaline circulation.[29]
In Ethiopia and Mauritania, permanent snow was reported on mountain peaks at levels where it does not occur today.[30] Timbuktu, an important city on the trans-Saharan caravan route, was flooded at least 13 times by the Niger River; there are no records of similar flooding before or since.[30] In China, warm-weather crops, such as oranges, were abandoned in Jiangxi Province, where they had been grown for centuries.[30] Also, two periods of most frequent typhoon strikes in Guangdong coincide with two of the coldest and driest periods in northern and central China (AD 1660-1680, 1850–1880).[31] In North America, the early European settlers reported exceptionally severe winters. For example, in 1607-1608, ice persisted on Lake Superior until June.[24] The journal of Pierre de Troyes, Chevalier de Troyes, who led an expedition to James Bay in 1686, recorded that James Bay was still littered with so much floating ice that he could hide behind it in his canoe on July 1.[32]
During the current interglacial there has been nine (9) periods of warming and cooling all of which correlate with solar magnetic cycle changes.
No, that is not generally accepted.
William: You need more help from a warmist friend. The problem is how Greenland ice sheet temperature has changed. Do you deny the Little Ice Age occurred? How about the Medieval warm period? Do you deny there has been an abrupt and unexplained change to the planetary climate in the last 3 years?
Solar activity has the highest in 8000 years in the last 70 years.
Lief: As we have discussed many times, this is incorrect.
William: Sorry. You are incorrect. Global cooling due to the recent solar magnetic cycle change will bring the climate wars to an end.
There has been a sudden and abrupt change to the sun. The planet has started to cool. It appears observations are on the side of those how assert the majority of the warming in the last 70 years has caused by solar magnetic cycle changes.
Do you deny there has been a sudden and abrupt change to the solar magnetic cycle? The following is a comparison of solar magnetic cycle 21, 22, and 23. There appears to be a reduction in the solar magnetic cycle of a factor of 3.
http://www.solen.info/solar/images/comparison_recent_cycles.png
http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/nature02995.pdf
Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years
http://cio.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/FILES/root/1999/QuatSciRevvGeel/1999QuatSciRevvGeel.pdf
“The role of solar forcing upon climate change”
https://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/74103.pdf
The Sun-Climate Connection by John A. Eddy, National Solar Observatory
http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/pdf/Atmos_060302.pdf
It has been discovered that there are geomagnetic field changes (abrupt changes to the geomagnetic field orientation 10 to 15 degree and geomagnetic excursions) that correlate with super sets of solar magnetic cycle changes.
Leif: No such discovery has been made.
William: You are not interested in this subject and have no idea how the sun causes what is observed.
Geomagnetic excursions correlate with the start and end of the interglacial periods.
These are caused by totally unrelated processes and no such correlation has been established in press, 2007speaks for itself.
William: The paper in question was published. See the response to criticism of the paper.
Life is not easy being a sceptic of CAGW, AGW, Climate Disruption, Climate Change, Weird Weather, Crazy Weather, I have never known weather like this, My Grandma Got Heat Stroke, etc.Worst of all, weather is NOW the climate (5 years ago it wasn’t – see Monbiot et. a..). What caused the following harmless changes in climate of the benign Holocene.?
Holocene climate extremes
Wiki is almost always top in Google for global warming ‘general’ searches. I just searched for ‘AGW theory’ and I got “Global warming controversy “. What??? Controversy? But I was told this is not controversial. The fact that there are some people on this thread discussing carbon dioxide and global warming says it all. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist. THIS IS A CONTROVERSY NO MATTER HOW SMART YOU THINK YOU ARE. You are here? No? Are you discussing controversy??? No??? Let’s take time out.
The IPCC was formed with the express mission to find the link between CO2 and Global Warming.
Bad science starts with assuming the answer at the start and then seeking to prove it. It’s a perversion of the Scientific Method which takes exactly the opposite approach.
John Holdren’s appointment was pushed by Margaret Thatcher as part of her effort to defeat the National Union of (Coal) Miners in the UK. The NUM brought down the previous Conservative government led by Ted Heath in 1974. It was all about settling scores.
She didn’t need to do that as she suckered the NUM into a disastrous national strike, their union leader Arthur Scargill fell for it hook line and sinker, the miners were Lions lead by Donkeys.
The IPCC is in trouble.
All the model temperature trends are already submitted.
And they are very far off the current temperatures.
What are they going to do? Ignore the models. Screw around with the charts so that noone can see how far off the theory and the models are. Explain that natural variability is a bigger factor than the IPCC assumed previously. Lie.
They have no choice except to eat Crow now.
The so called “greenhouse effect” based on the work John Tyndall in 1859, Svante Arrhenius in 1869, and others before and since and is well regarded theory, meaning it is not controversial. Modeled positive and negative feed backs are controversial. The computer models are hypotheses, and the past 15 years of data appear to be falsifying the high “climate sensitivity” models. Stay tuned.
Over 95% of the climate models have failed in their recent temperature projections . This is the elephant in the room and one of the causes of the CONTROVERSY. Co2 was the alleged main culprit. Arrive at your own conclusions. I am getting tar and feather ready.
“The IPCC needs to adjust its principles.”
Can I conclude that IPCC has no principles?
Sorry John Hadley not John Holdren
Nonsense. Agents 99 and 86 took Control of Chaos long ago.
In a hole with nothing but a shovel……..
..sounds like an engineering problem ?
William Astley says:
July 5, 2013 at 5:17 pm
William: You should by now understand that solar magnetic cycle changes modulate planetary climate, rather than ‘total solar irradiance’ TSI.
TSI and the solar magnetic cycle are closely coupled: variations in the magnetic field is the cause of variations of TSI and cosmic rays and just about everything solar.
The planet becomes warmer or colder due to less or more sunlight reflected off to space.
The question is why the cloudiness varies.
The planet has suddenly started to cool.
Sitting in 110 degree F in California one is reminded that weather is not climate.
Your ranting quotes from cherry-picked ‘papers’ are not impressive, just serve to muddle your mind.
Do you deny the Little Ice Age occurred? How about the Medieval warm period?
they only roughly match solar excursions and can be explained as coincidences.
Do you deny there has been an abrupt and unexplained change to the planetary climate in the last 3 years?
Yes, as 3 years is not ‘climate’.
Solar activity has the highest in 8000 years in the last 70 years.
Leif: As we have discussed many times, this is incorrect.
William: Sorry. You are incorrect.
We just concluded a major workshop on this subject. Conclusion: solar activity had not hit unusual highs.
Do you deny there has been a sudden and abrupt change to the solar magnetic cycle? The following is a comparison of solar magnetic cycle 21, 22, and 23. There appears to be a reduction in the solar magnetic cycle of a factor of 3.
Happens all the time [although the factor of 3 is wrong,, should be more like just reduction of 33%], From cycle 19 to 20: almost a factor of 2; from cycle 4 to cycle 5: almost a factor of 3, etc.
Leif: No such discovery has been made.
William: You are not interested in this subject and have no idea how the sun causes what is observed.
I have studied this subject for 40 years and it is indeed true that nobody knows if [and certainly not how] the Sun causes what is observed.
William: The paper in question was published. See the response to criticism of the paper.
A lot of junk is published; you have a knack of finding such.