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.
The IPCC are nothing but a gang of criminals, guilty of crimes against humanity.
In 2001 they were 66% certain; now they’re 95% certain. Since then, temperatures are, well, to be kind, flat; but CO2 has gone up by over 35ppm. I’m wondering if the dollar increase in grant money might be the missing factor here.
Reuters is one of the chief propagandist media enablers: let’s recall Sir Cripsin Tickell is on their board. Of course when AR5 first draft leaked, Reuters was quite discreet. Not one article on low sensitivity or models’ fail. But facts are not the business these people are into. This selective release by Reuters is no coincidence. In France for instance, glaciologist masquerading as a climatologist Jean Jouzel who is supervising the sea level chapter in AR5, is once again touring TV sets with the most alarmist material yet, from increased droughts’ frequency and severity -no one told him that droughts are linked mainly with cold periods- to sea level rise: only the goal posts, once again have shifted since the impending 2012 doom did not happen.
From skeptics are uneducated, old farts to 97% of scientists believe in AGW, claims will now appear in the global media party with increasing frequency: that is no AGW prediction but the result of ABS. Thomson Reuters opens the ball…
This ought to be the battleground over the science in the AR5. As rgbatduke put it, if the IPCC writes this sort of nonsense, “there will be hell to pay”. I am going to be very interested to see how Judith Curry responds to this nonsense.
Jim Cripwell, Me too.
richardscourtney:
A more accurate statement might be “uncertainty is always greater than believed.”
Milodonharlani
Two things – no evidence? Mmm, do we agree there is no evidence for the later comment by Bruce Cobb that “The IPCC are nothing but a gang of criminals, guilty of crimes against humanity.” I know this is a different point but if you are going to call me out on lack of evidence then surely…
Second, if AW knows it, why not make that clear? He doesn’t because it is a stick in a wasps nest and, lo, the predictable comments are trotted out. Even you must be bored of reading them every day.
rabbit:
Thankyou for your reply to me at August 16, 2013 at 2:07 pm
If you have no objection I will adopt the use of your statement; i.e.
“uncertainty is always greater than believed.”
Richard
Mannian maths and similar dodgy analysis techniques are a pre-requisite for this sort of 95% certainty.
Natural climate cycles can be safely ignored as they are unquantifiable, however the impact of the increase in CO2 levels is 110% quantifiable. Why? Because we the IPCC say so.
On a more serious note, what does the guts of this document say? Note: That’s not the summary section written by spin doctors designed to impress/influence goofy politicians and the liberal media.
greg2213 says:
August 16, 2013 at 12:50 pm
There was an very slight error in the fix for the fix for the error in the quote by the U.N., so I fixed it for them. 😉
You should produce an additional GIF with future AR5, AR6 & AR7 arrows pointing at the same point the AR4 arrow points to (note, the AR6 arrow pointing straight up and the AR7 arrow pointing backwards)
Margaret, is sarcasm really that difficult for you to understand? Well, I’m not too surprised. Anyone that has fallen for the cAGW propaganda machine is several blades short of a nice lawn.
So they took 1950 !
This would exclude most of AMO/PDO effects and is quite a good startting point.
But did they also tell that HadCrut4 trend since then is only 0.1K / decade?
And, according to leaked AR5, forcing increase of CO2 during 1950-2011 is only 1.2 W/m2, while total anthropogenic forcing increased by 1.7 W/m2.
http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j237/hausfath/ScreenShot2012-12-13at43419PM_zps4a925dbf.png
Therefore CO2 contributed only about 1.2/1.7 * 0.1 K/decade = 0.07K/decade since 1950,
and this under doubtful assumptions of zero urban heat and zero non TSI influence from the sun.
The strategy may be to frighten with the strong increase after 1979, which is mostly due to AMO/PDO, but to connect high confidence with another date without conceding that we are now talking about a very little CO2 temperature effect.
Margaret Hardman says:
August 16, 2013 at 2:08 pm
There is abundant evidence in support of Mr. Cobb’s statement, although “all” might not be as robustly supported. There might still be some real scientists involved in IPCC, who haven’t yet given up all hope in its plainly anti-scientific endeavor.
OTOH, there is no evidence whatsoever to support the IPCC’s assertion that humans are mainly (whatever that might mean, presumably more than half) responsible for climate change (whatever that means today) at the 95% confidence level. Truly they are confidence-persons, or con-men for short.
If you believe that evidence exists to support this conclusion, I’d appreciate your presenting it. Thanks.
LOL.
In one paragraph they claim that 95% of scientists agree that humans are warming up the planet, and in another that explain that they don’t know why it isn’t. First the say the warming can’t be attributed to natural variation, then they claim the the lack of warming over the last two decades might be because of…. natural variation!
You just can’t make this stuff up.
Until you define what you mean by “main cause of warming,” it is quite impossible to assign any confidence levels. “Main” must be expressed as a quantity. I also note that even if man is the main cause of warming, it does not follow that we should be concerned. As always, the issue is “how much” are humans responsible for, not whether warming is occurring.
Bizarre, as more and more data has piled up ripping the theory that co2 is a major driver to shreds, the IPCC became more and more certain. This simply is NOT science or a struggle to find the truth.
As it becomes more obvious this theory was wrong, Im rather concerned it will have negative impacts on ACTUAL environmental causes. the boy who cried wolf and all that. Very sad.
“We have got quite a bit more certain that climate change … is largely manmade,”
And why, precisely … because it isn’t changing this century perhaps?
I can go one better–I’m 100% certain that since there’s been no statistically-significant warming in over 16 years, what the IPCC asserts is only correct if human activity has not increased in all that time.
Now, I believe the global economy has been slowing down, but it hasn’t leveled off–not for 16+ years!
And it doesn’t take a “panel of experts” to come to that conclusion.
“due in roughly equal measure” to natural variations in the weather and to other factors affecting energy reaching the Earth’s surface.
So, they are here for the first time admitting that “weather”, note not climate, can vary naturally. It is up to the IPCC to show that all
climate weather variation is not due to natural causes, including “factors affecting energy reaching the Earth’s surface”.These guys are juggling like crazy to keep their
grant fund receiving hairy balls in the air.Rats, formatting problem in the last post. This is how it was supposed to look:
“due in roughly equal measure” to natural variations in the weather and to other factors affecting energy reaching the Earth’s surface.
So, they are here for the first time admitting that “weather”, note not climate, can vary naturally. It is up to the IPCC to show that all
climateweather variation is not due to natural causes, including “factors affecting energy reaching the Earth’s surface”.These guys are juggling like crazy to keep their
grant fund receivinghairy balls in the air.Come on man….
“… or the possibility that the climate may be less sensitive than expected to a build-up of carbon dioxide.”
The planet has not warmed for 17 years. The gig is up. A lack of warming is only possible if the planet resists forcing changes (negative feedback) rather than amplifies forcing changes (positive feedback).
The IPCC is 95% sure that some of the warming in the last 70 years is due to AGW (primarily the increase in CO2 and CH4 in the atmosphere).
We are 100% sure that the IPCC is a rigging a process to cover up scientific evidence that the warming due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will be less than 1C as planetary cloud cover in the tropics increases or decreases to resist forcing changes, negative feedback.
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf
On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications
Richard S. Lindzen1 and Yong-Sang Choi2
….We again find that the outgoing radiation resulting from SST fluctuations exceeds the zerofeedback response thus implying negative feedback. In contrast to this, the calculated TOA outgoing radiation fluxes from 11 atmospheric models forced by the observed SST are less than the zerofeedback response, consistent with the positive feedbacks that characterize these models. …. … However, warming from a doubling of CO2 would only be about 1C (based on simple calculations where the radiation altitude and the Planck temperature depend on wavelength in accordance with the attenuation coefficients of well mixed CO2 molecules; a doubling of any concentration in ppmv produces the same warming because of the logarithmic dependence of CO2’s absorption on the amount of CO2) (IPCC, 2007). This modest warming is much less than current climate models suggest for a doubling of CO2. Models predict warming of from 1.5C to 5C and even more for a doubling of CO2. Model predictions depend on the ‘feedback’ within models from the more important greenhouse substances, water vapor and clouds. Within all current climate models, water vapor increases with increasing temperature so as to further inhibit infrared cooling. Clouds also change so that their visible reflectivity decreases, causing increased solar absorption and warming of the earth. Cloud feedbacks are still considered to be highly uncertain (IPCC, 2007), but the fact that these feedbacks are strongly positive in most models is considered to be an indication that the result is basically correct. …
So some of the ’cause’ was natural? So most of the ’cause’ of the other sharp rise between 1910 to 1940 were natural? With the 16+ year temperature standstill you have to wonder whether the main cause of the warming since 1950 is due to human activities.
Margaret Hardman says:
August 16, 2013 at 1:35 pm
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.
Margaret, you just failed the reading comprehension test.
“Just 2% short of the magic 97% number, I’m sure the SkS kidz will be devastated.”
“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.”
Are they really going to publish this nonsense? Are they going to explain to the world that the heat that might have warmed the atmosphere escaped to the deep oceans? Do they expect someone to believe that? Why did they not know about this ocean phenomenon before the seventeen year “pause” in warming? Are they going to explain the concept of “ad hoc” hypotheses (from Popper, Logic of Scientific Discovery) used to save a favorite hypothesis from falsification?
Are they really going to say that the climate might be less sensitive to CO2? Would the general public not understand that to mean that CO2 is less important than had been thought before the seventeen year “pause?” Do they expect that the public will not ask if the sensitivity could possibly prove to be zero?
The IPCC will try to wear a happy face but the best they can expect from this report is public ridicule.