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.
What about the AMO changing in that time frame…Noaa even says it exagerrates and masks the changes in temperature between its cycles. 95% certain it’s human caused when the AMO has a factor on temperature that is published and increased temperatures then……
Yes, probably should have said “Mans releasing greenhouse gases” (AGW) is the crime.
So as the temp has dropped when they predicted increase, and their models have failed to predict anything, their certainty in the correctness of their position has increased. Ya, makes perfect sense.
Well, there you go! Just a little editing, and I’m 100% certain they ARE the main cause of Mann-caused global warming since the 1950’s!
Why are any of you talking to Margaret Hardman in the first place? She’s a useful idiot, and completely beneath consideration. Second, when can we be done funding in any way this wretched pumping mechanism, the IPCC. They are a travesty, an embarrassment to science, and a criminal scam.
Margaret Hardman,
A simpleton was driving down a highway when he saw an apparently stalled car and motorist on the shoulder. Wanting to be of help, the simpleton pulled over and offered his assistance, whereupon the stalled motorist pulled a gun and forced him out of his car. The gunman scribed a circle in the gravel with his toe and instructed the simpleton to stand in it or be shot. Then the gunman proceeded to vandalize parts of the simpleton’s car. After each escalating act of vandalism, the gunman glanced at the simpleton, who each time beamed back at him from within the circle. Finally, the gunman put the simpleton’s car into neutral and pushed it off the road and down a steep embankment where it rolled over and burst into flames. Looking once again at the simpleton, the gunman was surprised to see him laughing uncontrollably! “Look,” said the gunman, “I just destroyed your car piece by piece and you think it is all a joke. Just what is so funny?” Well, answered the simpleton, while you were doing that, I stepped outside the circle five times!”
Margaret, you apparently don’t know when you’re “beat”. It’s looking more and more like CO2 climate sensitivity is low. Most WUWT readers think that is good news. Why don’t you?
Mike Maguire says: “Baffled how the confidence level can go up for something when evidence of it goes down.”
It’s worse than that, but you need to look a little more specifically at their findings. In 2007 the IPCC was 90% confident in the proposition that man-made CO2 caused most of the warming “since the 1950s.” Since 2007, temperatures have continued to be flat despite CO2 concentrations remaining at record highs. The IPCC expresses only “medium confidence” however, in their current explanation as to how natural effects have been counteracting the CO2 effect. In IPCC parlance “medium confidence” is significantly less than 90% – I forget the exact percentage.
My question is this – how can the confidence in CO2’s influence on temperatures go up from 90% in 2007 to 95% today, when the IPCC is less than 90% confident in the mechanism by which nature counteracted CO2’s supposedly near-certain effect so as to, in combination, produce the measured temperature trend since 2007? We’re talking about the same climate system here – your understanding of that system is what it is. If you only have “medium certainty” in it’s transient unforced response and/or it’s response to changes in “energy reaching the earth’s surface”, how can you have a greater confidence in the system’s response to CO2? They’re saying “well, when CO2 is the driver, we’re really, really certain how the climate responds, but when solar radiation is the driver or when there is no driver, we’re less certain what the climate does.”
It’s BS. Really, the expressed certainty that CO2 has caused most of the warming since the 50s is a dogmatic, logically unsubstantiated premise. Then they start speculating on what possible natural effects might square the data with their unproven premise, but nobody can really agree, so they come up with some compromise, really fuzzy language that most can kind-of agree to, rather than take the rational approach and simply admit that there is less certainty in that premise.
“Margaret” has always seemed to me to be pre-programmed.
It’s the Weather, Volcanoes, the Sun, deep oceans,
lack of emotional climate or a combination of stuff
like that, or…..a blip. SAY IPCC !
How many times have warmists shot down suggestions such as these.
And now in their hour of need, here they all are and more coming up again
at fast speed when they need them. What a lame bunch of head scratching,
foot kicking excuses are these for turning the world’s economies upside down.
15 years is just weather? Well maybe it is, but if they
had their full on warming I bet it wouldn’t be called that.
Margaret Hardman, if you’re in a position to arrange such things, I’ll be happy to come and present a seminar, of my own work, quantitatively showing that there is zero evidence that human GHG emissions have affected global climate.
If you’re interested, you can contact me at pfrank_eight_three_zero_AT_earthlink_dot_net, where the pfrank runs into the three numerals.
That offer goes for any other academic AGW-IPCC believers out there. I have a seminar demonstrating the total unreliability of climate models, a second one demonstrating the huge and neglected systematic errors in the surface air temperature record, and a third that’s a composite overview of both issues. All my own analysis.
I’m also in a position to produce a seminar showing that standard paleo-temperature reconstructions represent a descent into pseudo-science, but have not yet organized it.
From this last, I explicitly exclude Paul Dennis, and those like him, who have retained their critical wit and their scientific integrity, and continue the hard labor of real science, in relative obscurity, one might add, as the media limelight flatters the charlatans.
Let them have 95% certainty that the recent (lack of) warming is man made.
The oceans are absorbing 0.5 W/m2/year. The surface is absorbing 0.03 W/m2/year (effectively nothing).
In 100 years, the oceans will have warmed 0.2C. A slightly warmer ocean means that surface temps should be slightly warmer 100 years from now.
So, those (not clear to everyone) numbers means that we are warming between 18% to 33% of that previously predicted by the IPCC.
Welcome to the incorrect theory of global warming, number 1346 on the list of incorrect theories in human history, number 2 on the list of human resources wasted on a incorrect theory (communism being number 1).
“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.”
Well, yes, that is a bit of a sticky wicket. Time for some really creative BS.
Hello,
The recent ‘IPCC Draft’ might just be a ‘disinformation’ … fait accompli.
The Final Draft could borrow, i.e. plagiarize, the preferred IPCC mechanism, the AGU ‘Mission Statement On Anthropogenic Global Warming and up the % to 100.
After all, the #2 Principle of the IPCC already states that Humans ARE responsible for ‘Global Warming’.
Humans are the Raison d’être of the IPCC.
Kill All Humans, Eliminate Global Warming.
Simple logic.
False.
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.
They are right, because human activities to reduce black carbon, organic carbon and aerosol pollution from burning fossil fuels has been the largest contributor to warming over the last 60 years.
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.
As pointed out above, the 95% confidence has no statistical basis and is merely, some unknown person or persons estimate (that is, what they think), and hence directly comparable with the (dubiously derived) what 97% of scientists think. Although the latter has a somewhat firmer statistical basis.
I’ll suggest the lack of comprehension is yours, in not understanding the source of the IPCC’s 95% confidence.
“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”
……….well, you had better hope so.
If there has been anything else in the professional literature that could delay the onset of the next glacial, it has rarely been discussed for the past 2 decades.
If you have anything else other than CAGW to get us past the 1/2 precession cycle old Holocene, now would be a good time to spill the beans.
Otherwise, you are betting that things will not change for ___X___ tens of thousands of years.
Since I’m in it for the genus, not the species, my hope is that, as always, the low information types will simply not get this, until it is well beyond too late.
Given our dependence on fossil fuels, the possibility exists that this could be a speciation event………….
At the half-precession old, and several centuries change Holocene, this might be the only relevant question……
Climatewise
What if, it ain’t all about you ??
The CET temperature record over more than 300 years shows a linear (overall ) increase of 0.25 degree C per century that is 100 % certain. Since there where large temperature variations even before industrialisation (i.e CO2 emissions) during this period it is clear that there is no evidence that the more “recent” increase in temperature since 1950 ( not taking into account the last 15 years of no increase !! ) is due to man-made CO2. That is, the probability of this having occurred is not significant.
There. fixed.
“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.”
.
In other words, that is a number they pulled out of their rear ends with no calculation or real foundation involved.* They converted qualitative dogma to a random quantitative number so as to look more impressive.
.
Such is a perfect example of how the CAGW movement is utterly about convincing by style. For a harmless purpose in contrast, Star Trek TOS script writers would sometimes have Spock state probability guesses to many numerical digits. Actually experts in the truest reality-checked science (engineering) do not use more than a meaningful number of significant figures, but it was superficially impressive to much of the audience.
.
The Reuters article conveys the 95% number from “experts” (activists), tying it to many pages of IPCC reports which everyone knows few people in the public will ever read. So the intended implicit message that “this figure was derived in an ironclad manner through pages and pages of detailed quantitative calculations and analysis” is conveyed without explicitly stating the lie. There is no legal liability (not that the CAGW movement practically ever faces such), but effectively a lie is conveyed. People are to be so impressed by the implied appeal to authority, by the style of it, to avoid actual critical thought.
.
Likewise, computer models are utterly loved in activist climatology since GIGO looks impressive while covering up almost any amount of fudged inputs and false hidden assumptions, as the average person is never going to see, inspect, or verify lengthy code. (In fact, papers based on computer models can be submitted without even uploading all original code and data, knowing often nobody will ever bother fully verifying).
.
Pal review (“peer review”) in activist-dominated fields likewise enforces a formal, superficially impressive style of writing more than validity in content.
.
“That is up from at least 90 percent in the last report in 2007, 66 percent in 2001, and just over 50 in 1995”
.
That reflects increased ideological polarization / dishonesty over time (not reality down to global temperatures having been flat to declining since 1998), increased confidence in what they could get away with, and/or a feeling of less left to lose now.
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—————————-
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* (The primarily-AGW claim is contrary to what, unlike CO2, correlates well with changes in sea level, humidity, cloud cover, temperature, and glaciers over the past few decades and prior centuries as illustrated in http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif ).
Thousands of scientists don’t agree with the IPPC.The West owes the East $billions with no way to pay it back . The East is getting nervous and wants a payment plan .It must be new and it must be huge .Tax carbon was the solution and some scientists were to make it credible while promoting it through the (Strong) United Nations . The problem is there are just too many that question” the science is settled” BS . The West will default on debt obligations or give up dirt.that is likely someone elses just like they did when Germany started inhaling countries.
I heard in science it is a regular practice to estimate the most likely theory to have verification.
This allows the scientists to say they had multiple working hypotheses, but then, sad to say, the little contenders like solar input didn’t really have any statistical chance of working out in the real world.
So the paradigm is decided on because…statistically we can have confidence in this one theory over all of the others. And the paradigm somehow lines up with the political and cultic objectives – one of which is to destroy the use of fossil fuels by people who now rely on it.
You know what they say, candy’s nice but statistics are quicker.
Indeed.
==============
They’re in over their heads and they’re still digging!
The hole will make a handy grave, when the walls collapse.
Regarding conflating the infamous 97% consensus with the 95% certainty:
It seems that is the point here… Not that WUWT is conflating the two, but instead is pointing out the sheer “ludicrosity” of it all….
SkS et al are just trumpeting this type of “ninety something” made up numbers, in this particular case a study plucking 95% out of the air based on someones subjective opinion – not based upon any instrument reading, or objectively reproducible formula.
Why 95%? “Why not 97%” is what the headline asks… Heck, why not claim 99%? Come on, the global warming guys have had a good ride for over a decade — and billions of taxpayer dollars — they should have been able to pump up both the consensus AND the certainty by 2%. NOT lost 2% (after we spent all those billions?!?!)
Robert of Ottawa says:
August 16, 2013 at 2:51 pm thisisnotgoodtogo said @ur momisugly August 16, 2013 at 12:57 pm
… warming caused by human activity, AR5 is in conflict with itself.
All warming is AGW according to them, not “most” warming.
I now understand their climate/weather bait and switch. All climate warming is caused by human activity, but cooling and weather are caused by natural factors. A pretty piece of reasoning – just false in so many ways.
Does no one teach logic in universities any more?[/quote]It’s worse than you thought.
Not only all warming, but all change is warming, human caused.
Climate change is said to be Anthro. Global Warming is said to be Anthro. This also goes for WMO and anyone working under them
As well, the UN declares a body a scientific body and it is. then.
So when they day something totally irrational sounding, when you think about it, you can understand how if a study mentions cooling, since it mentions climate change, it means warming, AKA AGW.
At last we can make sense of what they’re saying…and that’s why it’s worse than we thought!