![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
“Sensitivity” is the key fudge factor in the what if models. Why not put different sensitivities into the models and pick the one that best fits observation? I would expect that the best fit would be closer to zero than 3 degrees. CO2 follows temperature and is not a controlling force.
Perry says:
In 2003, a major flood of transport trucks, tankers, and missile trucks were captured by satellite imagery heading into Syria. A fascinating set of claims regarding this and other conjectures regarding Saddam’s WMDs, or his belief that he had WMDs, or his lies about having them, is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WMD_conjecture_in_the_aftermath_of_the_2003_Iraq_War
In actual fact, there is no possible way for any of us to KNOW what really happened in 2003,. Your claim that the WMDs were “alarmism” simply made up by Bush and Blair is ridiculous and cannot be ignored. You’re wrong. However, what the actual truth is neither I nor you will really know until decades from now when someone credible writes the “what really happened” book.
Meanwhile, Syria has now used a chemical agent to kill about 1400 civilians, and the dimwitted powers that be are blindly fumbling around for guidance regarding a proper reaction. Here you go. Syria has used the WMDs that you don’t think ever existed or were to be used. There’s no way for the left to chastise or punish Syria for using something that they’ve been hollering for a decade don’t even exist.
But they do exist. And Assad is as willing to use them as Saddam was.
Sounds like a bit of a pickle for you guys, hey? But it’s okay, a complicit and left-leaning media will continue to cover up the facts for you.
fhhaynie says:
September 1, 2013 at 6:11 am
“Sensitivity” is the key fudge factor in the what if models. Why not put different sensitivities into the models and pick the one that best fits observation?
=====
because it will still be wrong….
Past temps have been adjusted to show more warming…a steeper slope
When you hindcast to tune the model….it will always show faster warming
“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. ”
Ain’t that all a bunch of big words for the simple discarding of one theory and the appreciation of a new one. I see how it was very fashionable in the 60ies to call everything “revolutionary”; or rather how a generally cultural marxist media would give amplification to anyone who uses the R-word; but it means nothing; not even the violent death of 30% of the old scientists like in any real revolution.
As opposed to that; consider a real scientific revolution; Lysenkoism in the USSR, which entailed the violent death of all geneticists who wouldn’t hide.
If what is being leaked is going to be stated in the final SPM document that they are now 95% sure that human activity contributed with most of the warming since the 50ties then one can only conclude one thing. And that is that in this era of post modern science that they now are applying an inverse type of logic.
They become more certain the lesser empirical evidence there is for the conclusion that they make.
For all of you with objections to Hansen’s El nino comment: It apparently does not matter to them when they speak to the media. If there is an El nino they will be alarmist about atmospheric temperatures and if it does not warm in the atmosphere, they will find some other “hot spot” to be alarmist about.
Can The IPCC Do Science? Yes to the same level a kitten can fly a plane to, but without the humour element.
The four fundamental flaws in AR4 were knowable at the time, not just with hindsight. They all arose from classic selection bias in what is the IPCC meta analysis.
1. Biased data. (UHI, faulty and undocumented homogenization)
2. ‘Constant UTrH’ isn’t, likely because of Lindzen’s adaptive iris hypothesis. So Positive water vapor feedback os overstated.
3. Cloud feedback is likely neutral or negative, not positive as assumed. And clouds inherently cannot be accurately modeled with today’s supercomputers at GCM grid scales.
4. Independent of pause revisions, the ECS estimates were biased high. This is apparent from the text itself ( likely range 2-3, most probable 3). And the Baysian methods were faulty; using only uninformed priors.
All documented in last years book chaper.
The reason there is little hope for the SPM is not only mementum and ‘religious’ fervor inside the AGW community. It is that AR5 WG1 leaked SOD perpetuated all four errors. Foe example, the executive summary to Chapter 7 (clouds) said feedback was positive (most likely 0.46 w/m2) despite great inherent uncertainty, their confidence based on ” unknown contributions from factors yet to be identified”. They said it with a straight face. And that says it all.
Perry says:
September 1, 2013 at 3:11 am
Halabja. ‘Nuff said.
First poster Brad has it right.
Boil and Brew a tempest in a Teapot is not new. We toil to decide how to divide the riches inside. Double, double your efforts science for governmsnts must decide.
Perry says:
September 1, 2013 at 3:11 am
////////////////////////////
I agree with your observation, but this only holds true whilst there is a common agenda. As soon as players emerge with different interests/agendas, then whitewashes begin to crumble.
I hope you are mistaken on the civel unrest point.
dp says:
August 31, 2013 at 8:29 pm
I wonder if the writing on the wall was first seen in the tranche of information still hidden from all but a chosen few (and leaked here and there) in Climate Gate 3. Hopefully Mr. FOIA will try again to loose those hounds.
—–
Can we not ever get a status update on what is going on with Climate Gate 3? Or, have the lawyers so completely shut down discussion of this topic that I’m in legal jeopardy for even asking about it?
This isn’t revolutionary science at all. It is a crowd of opportunistic gullible scientists so in love with their shadows they are willing to talk up a gravied shaky premise. No hard science need be done. No hard statistics need be completed. Significance is no longer required to publish. Controlled studies no longer essential to get funding. We will not learn something new here. We will learn yet AGAIN that for the public, it is buyer beware.
Why, exactly, do they call this a Summary for Policymakers? Corporations have policies. Hospitals and fraternal organizations have policies. Nation States, however, have laws. Why don’t they call this thing exactly what it is: a Summary for Lawmakers? Let’s take the flower off the rose and show the thorns. I really think SPMs should forever more be referred to as Summaries for Lawmakers. There’s no deceit to that, no slander, no invective. In the end it’s the unarguable truth. And it paints the true picture.
Tom J says:
September 1, 2013 at 7:28 am
“Why, exactly, do they call this a Summary for Policymakers? Corporations have policies. Hospitals and fraternal organizations have policies. Nation States, however, have laws. Why don’t they call this thing exactly what it is: a Summary for Lawmakers? ”
Because marxist nations have a problem with the word Law. Law is an old anglo saxon concept derived from Natural Law. Marxism holds that all such law serves to protect the capitalist powers; and that in socialism, no laws are required.
izen says:
September 1, 2013 at 3:25 am
You wrote:
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.
We don’t have to provide any alternative explanation. The onus is upon the warmists to prove their hypotheses, not upon us to prove them wrong.
“No gov. Can make far reaching policy decisions…..” They already have….ask a builder about the new energy codes. Windfarms,total joke caleb you are right on .imo this was and always will be political..
The IPCC really are in a hole. I predict they’ll keep on digging!
Why all this noise? There are already papers out which say that the human-made warming will begin again when the cooling (caused by the decreasing insolation) is over. Don’t underestimate the faithful.
@- Richard M
” 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.”
the problem with that idea is why the PDO has never in the past caused a similar rapid warming as seen at present. Its the same problem Bob Tisdale has with invoking the ENSO cycle, why in the last 6000 years ahs the PDO or ENSO cycle not caused rapid warming for decades, and if they are the ’cause’ at present, when will the warming stop?
@-“That leaves only a small residual for GHGs. And, much of that residual is likely recovery from the LIA and UHI.”
The observed and theoretical pattern of the climate since the Holocene optimum ~8000 years ago is gradual cooling as in all the other interstadial periods. If there were no other factors in play then there is no reason to expect any ‘recovery’ from the LIA, the climate should have continued to cool. The only way it could warm is if more energy is retained by the climate system, and that requires a causal explanation.
There is one very obvious source for this extra energy in the rising CO2. You need to both find an alternative explanation for the source of the energy, AND an explanation for why the energy from CO2 is NOT a factor if you wish to reject AGW theory.
@- Philip Bradley
“… 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.”
I am not sure what satellite data you might be referring to here. Both the UAH and RSS data sets show lower troposphere warming that matches the surface warming with a transition from warming to cooling as the altitude increases from lower troposphere to the stratosphere as predicted from AGW theory. And satellite data on solar insolation shows no increase, in fact there is a significant decrease in TSI since the 1950s. As you may be aware we are at present in a solar minimum comparable with the Maunder minimum, but without any sign of an accompanying LIA.
“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.”
Could you provide any links to substantiate these claims?
There is very strong evidence from geology and archaeology that there was very little sea level rise after the main melt period during the transition from glacial to interstadial ~9000 years ago. The recent rise is almost certainly an order of magnitude greater than anything in the last six thousand years. Otherwise historical records of solar and lunar eclipse times would be affected.
@-“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 rise in sea level is very difficult to explain without invoking thermal expansion and melting ice-caps. You would have to hypothesis that additional water is being added to the oceans frrom some unknown source. A postulate as ridiculous as claiming that water is disappearing from the oceans as has been suggested here in another post.
But there are also direct measures of the energy imbalance made by ground based observations of the downwelling LWR and satellite measurement of the outgoing LWR.
P.S. – I had included links to papers substantiating my replies, but several tries at posting were blocked until I removed the links. Please ask if you want the published research that supports my claims here and I will try to post them again.
How come the IPCC is still getting a lot of attention when it is shown to be a contrived set of papers grey and published that are not meeting the forecast still needed to follow the scientific method with?
@climatologist
I agree. The only way the “faithful” will be come faithless, is when the global temperatures start to decline, and decline dramatically in the next 10 to 15 years. The terms given to the temperature trend in the last 15 years, “pause” or “stall,” imply that the temperatures will rise again as atmospheric CO2 levels keep climbing.
This truly is a religious mentality that the warmists have wrapped themselves in. Their prophets are anticipating the potential scenarios and are preparing for them.