Just 2% short of the magic 97% number, I’m sure the SkS kidz will be devastated.
From Reuters:
Drafts seen by Reuters of the study by the U.N. panel of experts, due to be published next month, say it is at least 95 percent likely that human activities – chiefly the burning of fossil fuels – are the main cause of warming since the 1950s.
That is up from at least 90 percent in the last report in 2007, 66 percent in 2001, and just over 50 in 1995, steadily squeezing out the arguments by a small minority of scientists that natural variations in the climate might be to blame.
That shifts the debate onto the extent of temperature rises and the likely impacts, from manageable to catastrophic. Governments have agreed to work out an international deal by the end of 2015 to rein in rising emissions.
“We have got quite a bit more certain that climate change … is largely manmade,” said Reto Knutti, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. “We’re less certain than many would hope about the local impacts.”
…
WARMING SLOWING
The panel will try to explain why global temperatures, while still increasing, have risen more slowly since about 1998 even though greenhouse gas concentrations have hit repeated record highs in that time, led by industrial emissions by China and other emerging nations.
An IPCC draft says there is “medium confidence” that the slowing of the rise is “due in roughly equal measure” to natural variations in the weather and to other factors affecting energy reaching the Earth’s surface.
Scientists believe causes could include: greater-than-expected quantities of ash from volcanoes, which dims sunlight; a decline in heat from the sun during a current 11-year solar cycle; more heat being absorbed by the deep oceans; or the possibility that the climate may be less sensitive than expected to a build-up of carbon dioxide.
“It might be down to minor contributions that all add up,” said Gabriele Hegerl, a professor at Edinburgh University. Or maybe, scientists say, the latest decade is just a blip.
In scientific parlance, I’d call that a SWAG>
At DNAindia:
Drafts seen by Reuters of the study by the UN panel of experts, due to be published next month, say it is at least 95 percent likely that human activities – chiefly the burning of fossil fuels – are the main cause of warming since the 1950s. That is up from at least 90 percent in the last report in 2007, 66 percent in 2001, and just over 50 in 1995, steadily squeezing out the arguments by a small minority of scientists that natural variations in the climate might be to blame.
That “squeeze out” is about right, look at Dr. Roger Pielke’s minority view with the AGU:
His minority view was one of 15 people that made the statement.
That works out to about a 7% minority view (or 93% majority) on that panel
Tom Nelson wonders about the 95% certainty:
[Were those numbers calculated, or just pulled out of some orifice?]
UPDATE:
Kurt Rohlfs writes via email about that statement from Tom Nelson:
Your article asks “Were those numbers calculated, or just pulled out of some orifice?” They were not calculated, at least if the same procedure from the fourth assessment report was used. In that prior climate assessment, buried in a footnote in the Summary for Policymakers, the IPCC admitted that the reported 90% confidence interval was simply based on “expert judgment” i.e. conjecture. This, of course begs the question as to how any human being can have “expertise” in attributing temperature trends to human causes when there is no scientific instrument or procedure capable of verifying the expert attributions.
Meanwhile, they haven’t offered up an explanation as to why reality and IPCC models diverge, perhaps because they can’t.
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> 95% likely with just 4% of the CO2… hmmm
97% is for the next report. Unless it is pal reviewed in which case it might be 102%
There was an error in the quote, so I fixed it for them. 😉
=========
Drafts seen by Reuters of the study by the U.N. panel of advocates, due to be published next month, say it is at least 95 percent likely that human activities – chiefly the burning of fossil fuels – are the main cause of warming since the 1950s.
That is up from at least 90 percent in the last report in 2007, 66 percent in 2001, and just over 50 in 1995, steadily squeezing out the arguments by a large majority of scientists that natural variations in the climate might be to blame.
==========
Variations in the WEATHER?
Did I read right?
they are 95% certain that 3-4% of the CO2 caused the warming since the 1950’s….
and equally certain that the lack of warming was caused by natural causes
…and I’m 100% certain they are either stupid…..or crooked….more than likely both
Since the definition of climate change and of global warming, is, according to UNFCC, UNEP, and IPCC, warming caused by human activity, AR5 is in conflict with itself.
All warming is AGW according to them, not “most” warming.
See they are still not living in the real world then!!
Taking their lesson from Rusty Limbaugh’s “99.4% correct, as audited by ” To *them*, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Those percentages bear a creepy resemblance to the Free and Democratic election results of Soviet Russia, 1954 -1989. So does the squeezing out of the opposition.
Well I am 99.99% certain that of the 0.74 C that the global temperature allegedly rose in the last century, mankind is responsible for less than 0.01 C of that 0.74 C.
However, I am 100% certain that the models which the IPCC uses and has used in the past, are 100% crap.
Statistical Dissonance
In STILL Epic Fail: 73 Climate Models vs. Measurements, Running 5-Year Means Roy Spencer showed projections of 75 models from 1979 ALL running higher than recent satellite temperature measurements. See Graph
That appears to be >97% FAIL. i.e., > 2 sigma from the mean evidence, or 95% probability that the IPCC’s anthropogenic warming is NOT due primarily to human causes.
For the technical trend probabilities see Lucia’s explorations at The Blackboard. e.g., citing von Storch for the last 15 years (from 1998):
Lucia observes:
So much for 97% confidence of anthropogenic causes!!!
Calling all Statisticians.
The IPPC are 95% certain that Climastrology is the way forward, and It is Mann made.
The science never worked for them.
The data never worked for them.
Their models fail them.
Then, there was Climategate.
All they can do is desperately cling to the old, tired mantras like “most scientists agree”, and “the heat is hiding in the deep oceans”.
They are desperate.
You’re missing the big news from the Reuters story:
“…the IPCC has added what diplomats say is an improbable scenario for radical government action that would require cuts in global greenhouse gases to zero by about 2070.”
They would like to remove all CO2 and water vapor from the atmosphere. The Environmental Impact Study for that will be interesting!
More seriously, is this just sloppy writing — or does the reporter not understand that “greenhouse gases” are a natural part of the air?
Friends:
I am 100% certain that the claimed increase in certainty concerning the cause of twentieth century warming is fabricated.
My certainty derives from the lack of any twenty first century warming despite the prediction of “committed warming” in the IPCC’s 2007 report.
Richard
Footnote on Committed Warming
The explanation for this is in IPCC AR4 (2007) Chapter 10.7 which can be read at
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-7.html
It says there
In other words, it was expected that global temperature would rise at an average rate of “0.2°C per decade” over the first two decades of this century with half of this rise being due to atmospheric GHG emissions which were already in the system.
This assertion of “committed warming” should have had large uncertainty because the Report was published in 2007 and there was then no indication of any global temperature rise over the previous 7 years. There has still not been any rise and we are now way past the half-way mark of the “first two decades of the 21st century”.
So, if this “committed warming” is to occur such as to provide a rise of 0.2°C per decade by 2020 then global temperature would need to rise over the next 7 years by about 0.4°C. And this assumes the “average” rise over the two decades is the difference between the temperatures at 2000 and 2020. If the average rise of each of the two decades is assumed to be the “average” (i.e. linear trend) over those two decades then global temperature now needs to rise before 2020 by more than it rose over the entire twentieth century. It only rose ~0.8°C over the entire twentieth century.
Simply, the “committed warming” has disappeared (perhaps it has eloped with Trenberth’s ‘missing heat’?).
Why is the headline conflating the confidence level and the consensus figure. They are two different things. This isn’t about what 95% of scientists think. This is a 95% chance that the oberved warming is the result of human activities. This is a simple reading comprehension matter.
Scientists believe causes could include: greater-than-expected quantities of ash from volcanoes, which dims sunlight; a decline in heat from the sun during a current 11-year solar cycle; more heat being absorbed by the deep oceans; or the possibility that the climate may be less sensitive than expected to a build-up of carbon dioxide.
I guess they just ignore peer reviewed science. This paper:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012JD017997/abstract
covered here:
http://scienceofdoom.com/2013/02/07/ceres-airs-outgoing-longwave-radiation-el-nino/
clearly shows the recent cooling is the result of ENSO changes. They measured it for god sakes. This result supports the hypothesis put forward by Bob Tisdale that ENSO is the driver of global temperatures. Since the PDO is a good index of ENSO activity I like to use it when discussing climate drivers. This is evident in charts like this one:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/figure-113.png
That global temperatures have been driven by the Pacific Ocean for at least a century.
It appears the IPCC is going to ignore this strong evidence that human emissions ARE NOT the driver of changes in global temperatures.
This isn’t about consensus but about confidence. You can argue about the confidence but you cannot link the two, as is done in the headline.
Speaking as a statistician, measurements such as “97% certain” are generally overstated.
Why? Because such statements necessarily assume a specific model, and the uncertainty in the assumptions behind the model are never fully understood. It’s not possible to do so, since that would require complete knowledge of a situation. In other words, there are things we don’t even know that we don’t know, and we cannot model that.
In short, the IPCC is making a ridiculously accurate statement for a situation that is rife with ignorance and complication. They would do better to simply state their belief that AGW is almost certainly occurring rather than trying to bully with faux mathematics.
Given the undisputed facts that CO2 has increased since FAR, but temperatures have not, the IPCC is setting themselves up for public ridicule.
Maybe down in the fine print they justify the increase in confidence to 95% percent the humans have caused the majority of warming, but I think this is only scientifically justifiable by simultaneously saying human contribution of warming has dropped from 90% to 60% (still a majority), and that the estimate for overall warming due to CO2 has dropped from near 2 degrees to less than 1 deg. But that would be only if they are playing it straight.
There is little doubt in my mind that the “Bum’s Rush” is on. The only thing that will matter is the Press Release before the publication of the Executive Summary which is a month before the publication of detailed report. Bait and switch, headlines matter, fine print be damned.
If that’s the way they want to play the game, then the opposition needs to pull no punches. In FAR, they were 90% confident that humans cause most of the warming through CO2 increases. In the past five years, computer models all predicted higher temperatures. Instead, nature has remained flat to cooling. No objective scientist would increase their confidence given such a poor record of prediction. The only confidence that should increase is the belief that the IPCC is playing the world’s taxpayers for fools. Like Latitude, my confidence is 100% the IPCC is engaging in daylight robbery.
“Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.”
Attempt to fool me a fifth time,
we need to apply the tar and feathers.
rabbit:
re your post at August 16, 2013 at 1:37 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/16/the-ipccs-new-certainty-is-95-what-not-97/#comment-1392538
I think you are saying 95% of all statistics are made up.
Have I got that right? If so, then with respect to the IPCC I agree.
Richard
Margaret Hardman says:
August 16, 2013 at 1:36 pm
This isn’t about consensus but about confidence. You can argue about the confidence but you cannot link the two, as is done in the headline.
————————-
I’m sure that AW is aware of the difference. The connection is that CACCA consistently, shamelessly uses baselessly high percentages when talking up support for its ludicrous lies.
There is zero evidentiary basis for the assertion that humans are the main cause of climate change at the 95% confidence level, just as there is zero support for the claim that 97% of “active climate scientists” believe the same, let alone all scientists, as that particular lie is commonly reported.
Correction to 1:39 pm.
“FAR” should be “AR4”
[snip . . stop it , that’s spam . . mod]
So … the predictions and models have proven to be less and less accurate as time goes on, but the confidence that they are right is increasing as time goes on. Why not just go ahead and say “The more I am wrong just proves that I was right.”