![ipcc[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/ipcc1.jpg?quality=83)
Guest Essay by Barry Brill
The timing couldn’t be worse.
On 23-26 September, scores of representatives of the world’s Environment Ministries are scheduled to meet in Stockholm to wordsmith the final draft of the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the key WG1 (physical science) portion of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC).
The draft SPM, sent to governments on 2 August, is a 22-page condensation of 14 chapters comprising 1,914 pages of material discussing scientific papers that were published between 2006 and 15 March 2013.
This SPM is (or could be) a document of world-shaking importance. As Bloomberg points out – “it is designed to be used by ministers working to devise by 2015 a global treaty to curb climate change”.
The timetable for the global treaty was deferred at the Durban COP because developing countries (particularly China and India) felt that the 2013 SPM was an indispensable input to the negotiations. Governments need an authoritative up-to-date assessment of both the extent and the causes of the climate change threat, present and future.
But the SPM has been sidelined by momentous climate change events that occurred after its March cut-off date – and even after the date the draft was circulated.
Climate sensitivity
The “extent of warming” issue turns on how sensitive the planet is to increasing CO2 concentrations. Equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) was crudely estimated by Charney in 1979 at 3.0 ±1.5°C and that range remained more-or-less constant through all four previous IPCC reports.
During 2012, several groups of researchers noted that recent data and modern diagnostics now showed that the 30-year old 3°C mid-point had been grossly over-stated. Peer-reviewed journal papers included:
• Ring et al: estimates of climate sensitivity ranged from 1.5 to 2.0°C.
• Van Hateren: millennium-scale sensitivity found to be 2.0 ±0.3°C.
• Aldrin et al: the 90% credible interval ranges from 1.2°C to 3.5°C, with a mean of 2°C
This, of course, led to great dissension and became the major challenge faced by the lead authors of WG1. Although we don’t yet know how they finally reacted, a leaked copy of the SPM draft suggests that they mainly held to the longstanding orthodoxy.
In January 2013, the British media reported that the UK Met Office was projecting a 20-year standstill in global warming by 2017. This ‘pause’ had not been predicted by climate models. In February, IPCC chairman Pachauri admitted that the temperature data had already been flat for 17 years, while opining that a standstill of 30 years would be required to rebut the previous consensus.
Both “cause” and “extent” issues are heavily dependent on the validity of climate simulations by the contemporary Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), as are all IPCC projections of future planetary temperatures and their impacts. Serious scientific doubts about either ECS-related inputs or the accuracy of temperature outputs would be fatal to the credibility of the AR5.
After the March cut-off date for WG1 papers, the following 2013 papers have strongly reinforced concerns regarding the exaggeration of climate sensitivity:
• Otto et al: the best estimate of sensitivity is 30% below the CMIP5 multimodel mean.
• Forster et al: analysis of CMIP5 shows that 2/3 are above the Otto ‘likely’ range.
• Masters: median estimate of ECS is 1.98°C.
• Lewis: improved methodology shows the mode and median to be 1.6K
In congressional testimony, Judith Curry cited the Hawkins graph depicting observed trends below 90% of CMIP5 projections, and notes that warming may not resume until mid-century. James Hansen attributes the ‘hiatus’ to a combination of natural variability and lower sensitivity but predicts “temperature will rise significantly in the next few years with the nex El Nino phase.”
Temperature standstill
The temperature standstill has been apparent in the data for many years, but the tribalism of climate science rendered it unmentionable until the public disclosures of early 2013. Once spoken, it demanded an explanation – and it then became clear there was a great dearth of research on the subject. By the time researchers were ready to fill this gap, the draft SPM had already been dispatched.
During August 2013, a flood of highly influential papers have appeared:
• von Storch & Zorita[1] found that observed temperatures 1998-2012 were not consistent with 23 tested CMIP3 and CMIP5 models, even at the 2% confidence level. The inconsistency increases rapidly with trend length and a 20-year trend (ie to 2017) would lie outside the ensemble of all model-simulated trends.
• von Storch & Zorita (the same paper) concludes that ‘natural’ internal variability and/or external forcing has probably offset the anthropogenic warming during the standstill. Overestimated sensitivity may also have contributed.
• Tung & Zhou[2] reported that the “underlying net anthropogenic warming rate has been steady since 1910 at 0.07-0.08°C/decade, with superimposed AMO-related ups and downs ..”. The sharply increased CO2 concentrations of recent decades has not caused warming to accelerate, as was predicted by the models.
• Yu Kosaka & Shang-Ping Zie[3] plausibly found that climate models have vastly under-estimated natural variation. La-Nina-like cooling in the Eastern Pacific throughout the 21st century (since the PDO turned negative) has conquered the projected greenhouse warming. The 0.68°C warming trend during 1975-98 (when the PDO was positive) would have been[4] 0.4°C natural and only 0.28°C anthropogenic.
• Katz et al[5] says the critical uncertainty measures used by the IPCC are “out of date by well over a decade”. Modern statistical techniques could improve assessments “dramatically”.
• Fyfe Gillett & Zwiers[6] focused on the extraordinary gap between the temperature simulations of 37 CIMP5 models and the observed outcomes. Due to a ‘combination of errors’, the models have overestimated warming by 100% over the past 20 years and by 400% over the past 15 years.
Come the revolution…
These new papers devastate the IPCC orthodoxy that current and future global temperatures are mostly driven by greenhouse gas emissions, and will reach dangerous levels later this century. On the other hand, all older papers are blindsided by their apparent failure to take account of the recent data (standstill).
The IPCC’s 2001 report cautioned[7]: In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles.
The “dangerous anthropogenic global warming” (DAGW) hypothesis is based on a clear difference between CMIP5 runs with natural plus anthropogenic forcing, versus natural variability only. That difference now disappears when ensembles are adjusted to reflect current empirical data. It is quite conceivable that natural variabilty (including natural forcing) has historically dwarfed anthropogenic effects and will persistently do so in future.
In his seminal 1962 work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn persuasively argued that science does not progress through the linear accumulation of knowledge but undergoes periodic revolutions or ‘paradigm shifts’.
In Kuhn’s view, no evidence that is incompatible with the current paradigm will be entertained during long periods of normal science. However, as anomalous results build up, science eventually reaches a crisis which drives the necessary acceptance of a new paradigm, which subsumes both the old and new results into a new framework. Kuhn calls this transformative point, revolutionary science.
2013 is ushering in a long-delayed revolution in climate science. A new paradigm is demanded which recognizes that AGW is but one non-determinative component in a ‘non-linear chaotic system’.
Dealing to the paradigm shift
All of this leaves the IPCC in a terrible bind regarding its September meeting. Should it:
• rubber-stamp a SPM that has been overtaken by events?
• add a major caveat to the state of play in March 2013, promising an addendum will be issued to cover post-cut-off papers? or
• adjourn the meeting to accomodate a crash program to re-write both the WG1 Technical Report and the consequent SPM?
The business as usual course is the worst option. With tense international negotiations riding on this document, it is far better that it be delayed than wrong – or indefensible. No government can make far-reaching policy decisions on the basis of a report which is widely believed to be obsolete before it is released.
An interim report suffers from a similar credibility deficit. Already[8], Environment departments from the USA and the European Union have formally sought more clarity on the “warming hiatus” and have asked the IPCC to include full information in the SPM.
“The recent slowing of the temperature trend is currently a key issue, yet it has not been adequately addressed in the SPM,” said the EU.
Although the draft says the trend has tapered off, the implications are unclear – causing the US to comment “a bunch of numbers are [left] up in the air without a concrete conclusion.”
Several countries, including China, seek information on the heat uptake of the oceans or other natural variances which might have depressed climate change data.
The draft SPM apparently fails to mention[9] that 30-year warming trends have declined each year since peaking in 2003. Or that the latest 10-year period (2003-12) is the coolest decade[10] since satellite records began in 1979.
WG1 has a track record of ignoring inconvenient research on grounds that it is ‘isolated’ or published in obscure journals. That can hardly be the fate of the August papers. All but one have been accepted by Nature Climate Change. Several of the authors are active contributors to IPCC reports, with Zwiers a current vice-chairman of WG1 and Fyfe a review editor.
Revolutionary climate science is under way. The question now is whether the IPCC is up to the challenge.
[1] http://www.academia.edu/4210419/Can_climate_models_explain_the_recent_stagnation_in_global_warming
[2] http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/01/22/1212471110.short
[3] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12534.html
[4] See http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/28/pause-tied-to-equatorial-pacific-surface-cooling
[5] http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n9/full/nclimate1980.html?WT.ec_id=NCLIMATE-201309
[6] http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n9/full/nclimate1972.html?WT.ec_id=NCLIMATE-201309
[7] 14.2.2.2 WG1 TAR IPCC
[8] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-29/global-warming-slowdown-data-sought-in-un-climate-report.html
[9] http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2013/08/if-warmists-would-only-tell-the-truth
[10] http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php
@- Rhys Jaggar
“I just think that after an hiatus of 20 years or so, climate science is returning to its roots of actually doing science.”
Does that mean that between Arrhenius in 1896, through Callander in the 1930s and up until the end of the 1980s you think climate research was doing ‘actual science’?
The key insight into how rising CO2 would warm the climate emerged after the radiative transfer of energy in the atmosphere was calculated as a result of military research into how the heat signature of missiles and aircraft could be detected. That was carried out in the late 50s and early 60s. Around the same time that the inability of the oceans to absorb and sequester all the extra fossil carbon which human activity generated was discovered.
AGW is a theory with a long scientific history, as a hypothesis since the 1900 it was subject to strong skepticism from the scientific community until all the objections that were raised over the decades to its predictions of a warming climate were refuted by better understanding of the physics and chemistry involved, as with the ocean buffering and radiative transfer equations. The measurable warming of the climate also helped to strengthen the scientific consensus behind AGW and is why it is no longer regarded in science as a hypothesis, but as a theory.
The last twenty years of climate science are not a transient aberration, they are the contingent result of over a century of scientific advances in the field. Darwinian evolution and the GHG effect were historical contemporaries and have garnered increasingly strong evidence in the century and a half since they were both first formulated. Throwing out the last 20 years of progress in either field would do little to change the underlying theory in either case, although it might lose some of the more accurate insights into both subjects which have been developed in the last two decades.
“It is quite conceivable that natural variabilty (including natural forcing) has historically dwarfed anthropogenic effects and will persistently do so in future.”
Conceivable? It’s bloody obvious!
I just want to see people go to jail.
Barry Brill wrote:
“No government can make far-reaching policy decisions on the basis of a report which is widely believed to be obsolete before it is released.”
My suggestion is that the statement should read “No government SHOULD make far-reaching policy decisions” etcetera.
However, governments have been taking decisions based on wishful thinking since time immemorial. Witness the weapons of mass destruction alarmism over Iraq perpetrated by Blair & Bush et al., in order for them to pursue their own agendas.
Therefore, governments will always continue to make far-reaching policy decisions on the basis of reports which are widely believed to be obsolete before they are released. It’s what they do & the fatal flaws within the SPM will be ignored by the elites.
Remember last March, Obama authorised the purchase of 1.6 billion rounds ammunition & 2,700 MRAPs. Forget whatever propaganda you hear, the Department of Homeland Security is preparing for civil unrest, when the US economy collapses.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/congress/item/14891-congress-seeks-answers-on-huge-homeland-security-ammo-contracts
Forewarned is forearmed.
“Pachauri admitted that the temperature data had already been flat for 17 years, while opining that a standstill of 30 years would be required to rebut the previous consensus.”
Sounds like our favourite railway engineer wants to keep his job for another 13 years.
@- Gamecock
“It is quite conceivable that natural variabilty (including natural forcing) has historically dwarfed anthropogenic effects and will persistently do so in future.”
Conceivable? It’s bloody obvious!
Natural variability is a description NOT an explanation.
If the last few decades of warming, sea level rise and ice cap melt are ‘natural variability’ then what is the physical mechanism that has caused this rapid rise in temperature, sea level and ice melt?
Science has reached a strong consensus over the cause, I recognise that many here reject that consensus, but without providing an alternative explanation for the cause of the observed increase in energy in the climate system those rejecting the consensus are left claiming that it is all too complicated for human understanding.
And all we can do is describe what happens with no chance of human intelligence finding actual causes.
With all the vested prestige the current IPCC will be very resistant to any input that would endanger their reason for beeing.
Only chance of considering/accepting much lower sensitivity would be a demand from pragmatic, pro-growth countries like Russia, China and India. Immune to Ludditism and facing net costs of CO2 reductions in any meaningful(as in the IPCC understandin) 2015 agreement they will refuse to act on uncertain science.
Some times there are advantages in being able to disregard NGOs and activists 🙂
Kuhn calls this transformative point, revolutionary science.
I’d say it was Pathological Science.
My expert review of the IPCC’s draft Fifth Assessment Report began with the following comment:
“Comment #1:
“To restore some link between IPCC reports and observed reality, the report must address – but does not at present address – the now-pressing question why the key prediction of warming in earlier IPCC reports have proven to be significant exaggerations.
“Reason: The IPCC’s credibility has already been damaged by its premature adoption and subsequent hasty abandonment of the now-discredited “hockey-stick” graph as its logo; by its rewriting its Second Assessment Report after submission of the scientists’ final draft, to state the opposite of their finding that no discernible human influence on climate is detectable; by its declaration that all Himalayan ice would be gone in 25 years; and by its use of a dishonest statistical technique in 2007 falsely to suggest that the rate of global warming is accelerating. But the central damage to its credibility arises from the absence of anything like the warming it had predicted.
“Example: In 1990 the IPCC’s central estimate was that warming would occur at 0.3 K/decade and that by now some 0.6 K warming would have occurred. Since then observations show warming has occurred at 0.14 K/decade and 0.3 K warming has occurred. There has been no global warming for 16 years.”
Have They paid any attention? As the French say, On verra. But I’m not holding my breath.
izen says:
September 1, 2013 at 2:56 am
The last twenty years of climate science are not a transient aberration, they are the contingent result of over a century of scientific advances in the field. Darwinian evolution and the GHG effect were historical contemporaries and have garnered increasingly strong evidence in the century and a half since they were both first formulated.
Oh, puhleeeze, izen. Give us a break. Straw man arguments? Really? That’s the best you can do? The question isn’t whether or not CO2 is a GHG, it is what effect the increased CO2 has had, i.e. the climate’s sensitivity to it. For the past 20 years, climate “science” just assumed the sensitivity was high, and dangerously so. True science doesn’t work that way, though. CAGW was and is just an ideology, with the patina of science slapped on.
Has the IPCC ever done science?
Vieras you write “Anyone wanna take bets on me being wrong?”
I, for one, will not, but that is not the issue. The issue is what happens if the IPCC takes no regard of the recent science, and as you suggest put out a report that is “just as alarmist as before”. What does the scientific community do about it? At the moment, the scientific community, let by the Royal Society and American Physical Society, have published statements which completely support the hypothesis of CAGW. Can these august bodies afford to continue the charade that is currently underway?
And probably most inportant. Will some heavyweight who now supports the warmist side, change “tribes” and openly, and publicly, condemn the scientific nonsense the IPCC will be putting out with it’s AR5? And might that person be Prof. Judith Curry?
izen says:
September 1, 2013 at 3:25 am
Natural variability is a description NOT an explanation.
If the last few decades of warming, sea level rise and ice cap melt are ‘natural variability’ then what is the physical mechanism that has caused this rapid rise in temperature, sea level and ice melt?
… without providing an alternative explanation for the cause of the observed increase in energy in the climate system those rejecting the consensus are left claiming that it is all too complicated for human understanding.
Agree with your initial statement. But the relevant question is, what has caused the rise in land surface temperatures, not reflected in satellite troposphere temperatures? Hint = increased solar surface insolation which can not be a GHG effect.
Sea levels have been rising for a millenium at least with no evidence of acceleration. Global sea ice is at the satellite era average, and global land ice measurements aren’t precise enough to say whether land ice is increasing or decreasing.
Do you have any evidence of ‘the observed increase in energy in the climate system’, because I am sure it doesn’t exist. Hence Trenbeth’s ‘missing heat’. And don’t give me ARGO. Free drifting buoys can’t produce reliable trend data.
The IPCC was never a sciemtific body, but a political one. That acquired lots of money with the fight for a better world, the general good against evil people, big oil etc.
It will be fun to read whatever comes out, one should never expect that they write
– the models were wrong,
– the supporting science was falsified inbetween
And as a consequence the party is over and we dissolve ourselves.
This will drag on a couple of years, and then go silently down after the key guys are retired with fat government pensions. Great to see Lord Monckton being to the point as always and is not expecting too much. Same to you Anthony – keep up the great work,
Rgds from Germany
As otherws have already noted, this seems a very unlikely statement. In addition, the reference given is to a page that has no mention of satelite records or 1979.
The IPPC authors have shown they are very good at writing …
.. “vague on factual evidence, spotlight on warming speculation”.
Probably just be more of the same.
In the last couple of years the climate science establishment has been forced to deal with the fact that there has been no net warming since 1997,that the warming trend peaked in about 2003 and that the earth has been in a cooling trend since then .- see Figs 1 and 4 in my blogpost at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2013/07/skillful-so-far-thirty-year-climate.html
Figs 1and 4 are but two examples of an ever increasing number, showing the growing discrepancy between model outputs and reality.This disconnect has been acknowledged by the establishment science community which is now busy suggesting various epicycle like theories as to where the “missing” heat went.Some say its in the oceans (Trenberth) some say its due to Chinese aerosols (Hansen) but the all main actors still persist in the view that it will appear Lazarus like at some unspecified future time.This is like the Jehovah’s witnesses recalculating the end of the world each time a specified doomsday passes.
In Britain , the gulf between the Met Office expectations for the last several years and the actual string of cold and snowy winters and wet summers which has occurred has made the Met Office a laughing stock-
to the point of recently holding a meeting of 25 “experts” to try to figure out where they went wrong.
The answer is simple.Their climate models are incorrectly structured because they are based on three irrational and false assumptions. First that CO2 is the main climate driver ,second that in calculating climate sensitivity the GHE due to water vapour should be added to that of CO2 as a feed back effect and third that the GHE of water vapour is always positive.As to the last point the feedbacks cannot be positive otherwise we wouldn’t be here to talk about it .
Ms Curry found a recent paper mind blowing.What is really mind blowing is that the IPCC – Met Office model outputs were ever accepted as having any useful connection to the real world.
Much of the the discussion on this site however still accepts the model outputs as a basic framework for rational discussion and policy guidance. They are not.
A completely different approach to forecasting is required.One such is outlined in the link above.Others have exposure mainly in the Blogsphere- eg Scafetta and Easterbrook.It is the forecasts of these type of approaches which should be the topics of discussion .The IPCC modellers can only advance by scrapping their basic assumptions and restructuring their models completely.For most of them this is psychologically and professionally impossible.
Here are the conclusions of my approach based on the recognition of quasi cyclic – quasi repetitive patterns.
“To summarise- Using the 60 and 1000 year quasi repetitive patterns in conjunction with the solar data leads straightforwardly to the following reasonable predictions for Global SSTs
1 Continued modest cooling until a more significant temperature drop at about 2016-17
2 Possible unusual cold snap 2021-22
3 Built in cooling trend until at least 2024
4 Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2035 – 0.15
5Temperature Hadsst3 moving average anomaly 2100 – 0.5
6 General Conclusion – by 2100 all the 20th century temperature rise will have been reversed,
7 By 2650 earth could possibly be back to the depths of the little ice age.
8 The effect of increasing CO2 emissions will be minor but beneficial – they may slightly ameliorate the forecast cooling and more CO2 would help maintain crop yields .
9 Warning !!
The Solar Cycles 2,3,4 correlation with cycles 21,22,23 would suggest that a Dalton minimum could be imminent. The Livingston and Penn Solar data indicate that a faster drop to the Maunder Minimum Little Ice Age temperatures might even be on the horizon.If either of these actually occur there would be a much more rapid and economically disruptive cooling than that forecast above which may turn out to be a best case scenario.”
These attempts to rationalize the IPCC science is futile. We can not forget that the IPCC is driven by political objectives, and science, is in the background just to justify the policy previously outlined. The aim of the report is “impact” on society. People will press politicians to “act now” and adopt policy measures that favor large corporations and banks that profit from the situation. The goal is to make people ask the measures they want to take. This is large-scale corruption. Remains the largest social construction already carried out against society and science. Then no. The IPCC can not do revolutionary science. Not even those who are behind the alarmism have your return on investment guaranteed. They have an agenda, they have a cause. They have power and money to take forward their agenda. And they will. The real world is just a small detail that, at the moment, is not helping their goals previously outlined. But they are doing everything to roll the reality, waiting that the temperatures start to rise again. At the moment, seems to be the strategy.
izen:
At September 1, 2013 at 2:56 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/31/can-the-ipcc-do-revolutionary-science/#comment-1405312
you make the assertion
No! At most AGW is a hypothesis with a long scientific history, and arguably AGW never became more than a conjecture. For AGW to have become a theory it would have needed to provide successful predictive ability, but it has completely failed in its predictions.
In other words, AGW of sufficient magnitude to be discernible is a conjecture which has been refuted by empirical evidence.
However, the conjecture was widely adopted as an article of faith by Lysenkoists and others who were duped by the Lysenkoists. Some of them still cling to their belief in AGW despite the reality of discernible AGW having been disproved.
Richard
Sorry about the egregious mistake regarding decadal temperatures. The sentence should, of course, have referred to TRENDS as follows:
“Or that the latest 10-year trend (2003-12) is cooler than any other decade since satellite records began.”
In fact, it is the only decade in 40 years to produce a cooling trend:
1973-82 0.295°C/decade
1983-92 0.256°C/decade
1993-2002 0.282°C/decade
2003-2012 -0.045°C/decade
The figures are from HadCRUT4. The periods are obviously too short to have statistical significance, but they do strongly suggest a change of direction.
Our Meteosat derived planetary temperature data show the earth surface (“skin”) temperature has decreased on average by 1 K/decade since 1982. We believe this to be due to increased cloudiness. The publication “Meteosat derived planetary temperature trend 1982-2006” may be downloaded from http://ears.nl/plantemp.php.
Izen continues to be in denial of oceans. You know, those big watery things tht cover 70% of our planet. As the recent Nature paper admitted, the current flat temperature trend cannot be explained without factoring the cooling from the oceans. Of course, the flip side of that admission is that the warming from 1975-2005, in perfect correlation with the +PDO, was also primarily driven by the ocean. That leaves only a small residual for GHGs. And, much of that residual is likely recovery from the LIA and UHI.
Sorry Izen, the gig is up. Better find another horse to ride.
Let us add to Barry Brill’s excellent list another paper that the IPCC will not wish to reference. Monckton of Brenchley (2008), in Physics and Society for July, concluded thus: “it is very likely that in response to a doubling of pre-industrial carbon dioxide concentration global mean surface temperature will rise not by the 3.26 K suggested by the IPCC, but by less than 1 K.”
The literature has been moving in the direction of low climate sensitivity ever since this trail-blazing, trend-setting paper. Yet the American Physical Society, furious that one of its journals should have dared to question the Party Line, sacked the editors who printed it and falsely stated a) that it had not been peer-reviewed, when its own review editor, a professor of physics, had reviewed it in detail; b) that the entire scientific community disagreed with it (they are now catching up with it); and c) that the APS Council disagreed with it (except that the Council had never met to discuss it).
If the APS and other organized-crime rackets masquerading as scientific institutions had done more science and less politics, the extremist projections of the IPCC would have been ridiculed into oblivion long ago. As it is, governments that were too credulous are now finding it hard to admit they were wrong. The sooner they admit it the better. The bankrupt nations of the West cannot afford the self-indulgence of subsidizing hopelessly uneconomic “renewable” energy any more.
Izen says: The key insight into how rising CO2 would warm the climate emerged after the radiative transfer of energy in the atmosphere was calculated as a result of military research into how the heat signature of missiles and aircraft could be detected.
The military research never claimed that exhaust from missiles or aircraft would rise in temperature because of CO2 in the atmosphere.
This is a good article and the author has correctly pointed out that the IPCC face almost insurmountable problems.
Of course, there inevitably has to be a cut off date to the research papers for inclussion in their publications (to use the word ‘reports’ may give the impression that their output is objective). There will always be new papers appearing after the imposed cut off date, and the IPCC would never be able to publish anything if it had to keep extending the date for publication of the final tome just to include new papers that have appeared since the draft.
That said, the author is correct to point out that there are a number of ‘new’ papers which strike at the very heart of AGW, namely Climate Sensitivity. If Climate Sensitivity is low, then there is no need to radically address ther CO2 issue, and the response would be to adapt locally as and where there was a particular local/regional issue. There would be no requirement for global solutions. AGW is only a real problem if Climate Sensitivity is high. So these new papers are about as fundamental as it gets.
The problem that the IPCC has is that the negotiations are not going to take place until 2015. So there is much time before these negotiations to take in this new line of research. If warming continues to stay on hold, one can expect a growing body on this theme and the longer the standstill to the temperature anomaly, the more likely it is that future papers will suggest low and lower Climate Sensitivity.
This might not be a problem for the IPCC if all countries sing from the same hymn sheet. But they are not, and will not. The choir is in practice in discord. It is clear that many of the developing countries are not going to go along with curbs on CO2 which adversely curb their development, at least not without being paid substantial sums. But presently, the developed countries have not got spare cash to give to the developing countries so an impasse is almost a certainty.
To add to the problems, the financial cost of the surge towards renewables is just beginning to dawn on countries (Germany is very concerned about the effect of this on thier industry and its competitiveness) and consumers are just beginning to wake up to higher energy bills which bills are going to rise rapidly over the next few years and all of this puts pressure on the politicians to justify the position that they are taking.
At one time, this change in world governance was happening without anyone noticing. People were sleep walking towards it, but people have become aware that warming seems to have stopped, and they will certainly notice should the globe begin to cool. Governments can no longer expect that their plans will slip unnoticed under the radar. Insead, one can expect more MSM scrutiny of energy policies (we have already seen some articles appearing in respected MSM outlets), and this scrutiny will question AR5 if it is out of step with the latest research. In the UK we have already seen one TV interview of the UK energy minister that focused on the recent pause in temperature anomaly and the lack of prediction thereof. I expect to see more of this type of interview and AR5 will quickly become discredited if it fails to address the ‘new’ papers that the author has identified.
In the 2015 negotiations some countries will wish to undermine AR5 and will seek to tear it apart. They will do this by suggesting that it is out of date, there is a substantial body of new research that suggests that Climate Sensitivity is lower than claimed, that the models are not reliable etc. So I fully agree with the author when he states; “The business as usual course is the worst option. With tense international negotiations riding on this document…” and IMO it will quickly fall apart should it simply close its eyes, covers its ear etc and ignore the papers that have been published in the last 6 months or so, on the basis that they came in too late. AR5 cannot be allowed to be so out of touch if it is to play a serious part in the 2015 negotiations. It needs to at least address these issues, and put its spin on them, failing which it will have no weight in the forthcoming negotiations.
I am far from convinced that the 2015 negotiations will achieve anything of substance since I seem to recall reading (at around the time of the Rio jamboree) that China indicated that it would do nothing before 2020. China is of course, the biggest CO2 emitter so if China will niot play ball, everything tumbles. I cannot recall whether China was alone in this. If China kicks the ball into touch (ie., out to 2020) then matters could become very interesting if there is no return to rising temperatures before 2020. And, what if global temperatures begin to fall slightly as we head to 2017 and beyond?
The game is far from over, but it does appear that the players are running around the field rather out of breath with a game plan that is beginning to fall apart as their opponent, nature, seems to be playing a rather more subtle and sophisticated game,