Guest essay by Christopher Monckton
As soon as the BBC/Maslowski forecast of no sea ice in the Arctic summer by 2013 has been disproven (see countdown on right sidebar), WUWT will need another countdown. May I propose the Santer countdown?
On November 17, 2011, Ben Santer and numerous colleagues, including researchers from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), published a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres) that, as his press release said,
“shows that climate models can and do simulate short, 10- to 12-year “hiatus periods” with minimal warming, even when the models are run with historical increases in greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosol particles. … tropospheric temperature records must be at least 17 years long to discriminate between internal climate noise and the signal of human-caused changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere.”
In an earlier posting I demonstrated that for more than 17 years (now 17 years 7 months) the HadCRUt4 monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly dataset had shown no global warming distinguishable from the combined 2 σ measurement, coverage, and bias uncertainties published together with the data themselves.
However, there were those who said that, nevertheless, the HadCRUt4 data appeared to show some warming (albeit less than 1 Cº/century). Well, the first of the five principal datasets to show no warming at all for 17 years is likely to be the RSS dataset of Santer’s own colleagues. Today the data for August 2013 were made available:
The least-squares linear-regression trend on the data from the RSS satellites since November 1996 shows there has been no global warming at all for 202 months (16 years 10 months). In a few more months, unless an el Niño comes along in January, its favorite month, RSS may be the first dataset to show 17 full years with a zero global warming trend.
The NOAA’s 2008 State of the Climate report said 15 or more years without global warming would indicate what was delicately described as a “discrepancy” between prediction and observation.
Fifteen years without warming duly came and went: indeed, Professor Jones of the University of East Anglia was the first to admit this, in response to a question I had suggested to Roger Harrabin of the BBC (who had thought I was daft to suggest that there had been no statistically-significant warming for as much as a decade and a half).
So Santer moved the goalposts.
Taking the mean of all five principal global-temperature datasets (GISS, HadCRUt4, NCDC, RSS, and UAH), since the new millennium began on 1 January 2001 there has been no global warming at all for 152 months (12 years 8 months):
Therefore, those who are anxious to believe that the long pause in global warming is what the models expected, or at least allowed for, can take a crumb of comfort from that.
Two important caveats. First, linear trends are not predictions. They are only one way of representing the trend (if any) that has already occurred over a chosen period in a stochastic dataset such as the global mean surface or lower-troposphere temperature anomalies.
Secondly, a strong el Niño, or a resumption of stronger solar activity, or simply some hitherto-unexplained factor in natural climate variability, could cause a resumption of global warming at any time. The central consideration, then, is not whether there have been x years without global warming, vexing though this embarrassing statistic is to the true-believers and their models. It is the extent and the persistence of the discrepancy between predicted and observed global warming.
The monthly Global Warming Prediction Index keeps track of this discrepancy. The index number for September 2013, published today, is 0.22 Cº. That is how much the IPCC’s central projection of global warming over the 8 years 8 months from January 2005 to August 2013 has overshot the observed temperature trend.
Today’s index graph shows 34 models’ projections of global warming since January 2005 in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report as an orange region. The IPCC’s central projection, the thick red line, is that the world should have warmed by 0.20 Cº (equivalent to 2.33 Cº/century) since that starting date.
The mean of the RSS and UAH satellite measurements, in dark blue over the bright blue trend-line, shows global cooling of 0.02 Cº (–0.22 Cº/century). The models have thus over-predicted warming since January 2005 by 0.22 Cº (2.55 Cº/century).
The 18 ppmv (202 ppmv/century) rise in the trend on the gray dogtooth CO2 concentration curve, plus other ghg increases, should have caused 0.1 Cº warming, with the remaining 0.1 ºC from previous CO2 increases. No warming has occurred.
On its own, the CO2 increase since 2005 should have caused a radiative forcing of 0.24 Watts per square meter, or 0.34 W m–2 after including the influence of all other greenhouse gases. Even without temperature feedbacks, according to the IPCC’s methods this forcing should have caused 0.1 Cº warming. Adding in the IPCC’s temperature estimates of temperature feedbacks and of previously-committed global warming should have caused up to 0.3 Cº warming since January 2005. None has occurred.
Note how the temperature has failed to rise since 2005, notwithstanding that the CO2 concentration has risen quite rapidly. The usual suspects like to display what they call an “escalator graph” with many of Santer’s “hiatus periods” of 10-12 years without any global warming, but an overall rising trend nonetheless.
However, previous periods free of global warming did not occur while Man was putting more CO2 in the air anything like as rapidly as he is today. Now that CO2 concentration is rising, so should temperature be rising, if the IPCC were correct about how much warming we should expect as CO2 concentration increases.
The “escalator graph”, then, is meaningless, except to the extent that the frequency with which the “hiatus periods” occurs suggests that the probability of seeing anything like the 2.8 Cº warming this century that is the IPCC’s central projection is not very great.
Though the IPCC projects that the world should have warmed by 0.20 Cº (2.33 Cº/century) since 2005, the mean of the RSS and UAH satellite datasets shows cooling of 0.02 Cº (0.22 Cº/century). The predicted and actual trends are visibly diverging. Solar physicists expect significant cooling in the coming decades. If they are right, the divergence will become more than merely embarrassing.
Even as things stand, if the IPCC overshoot over the past 104 months were to continue for 100 years the IPCC’s prediction would exceed the measured trend by more than 2.5 Cº.
If Jeffrey Patterson’s harmonic decomposition of the past 113 years’ temperature records is correct, the world may actually be cooler in 2100 than in 2000.
A shame we shall not be there to see the baffled faces of the profiteers of doom.
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More great Lord Monckton. Do keep it up.
Bingo!
@ur momisugly Monckton of Brenchley
I dips me lid to you, good sir. 🙂
At risk of stating the obvious, might it not be an idea to show these graphs in context? Set the temperature scale to 0-25°C, and let people actually see the ranges of temperatures that they are being terrified with. You know and I know that all that would be displayed is a slightly wiggly line, but this is not what is being portrayed to the unthinking sheeple (e.g. politicians) out there – at the moment, all they see is scarily steep slopes!
Lord Monckton
In your post at September 12, 2013 at 1:10 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/11/rss-global-temperature-data-no-global-warming-at-all-for-202-months/#comment-1414935
you say
With respect, the IPCC has itself set such a deadline; i.e. 2020.
I explain this (with citation, quotation and link) in my post to Bill Illis at September 12, 2013 at 12:46 am.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/11/rss-global-temperature-data-no-global-warming-at-all-for-202-months/#comment-1414929
Another 7 years may seem a long time, but not so. As I explain in my post to Bill Illis (linked from this post above) it is already very probable that the falsification criterion SET BY THE IPCC has already been met. And each month which passes without discernible global temperature rise moves that probability nearer to 100%.
Richard
Radical Rodent says:
September 12, 2013 at 2:27 am
I tend to agree. If every paper or essay about climate change was put into the correct context – I am sure every person reading (and understanding the relative position) would dismiss the arguments over tenths of a degree of warming as pointless BS!
e.g.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png
(yeah, it’s wiki, but since it’s probably been ‘approved’ by Connolley, we’ll use it! LOL)
Bill says:
September 11, 2013 at 11:17 pm:
You seem to be under an illusion that weather should not be “weird”. It has always been weird: look at the “weird” mid-western dustbowls of the 1930s; the several “weird” tropical storm floodings of New York in the 19th century; the “weird” UK winter of 1962/3; the “weird” annual floods of York (the original York) in the 1960s. Forest fires are not exactly unusual, either – indeed, there are many ecosystems that require fire for propagation of the plants. The only forest fires that are unusual are those of the rain forests of Brazil or Indonesia; but they don’t count, as they are being set to grow “green” crops.
Climates change, and I doubt there are many on here who would dispute that. What is disputed is that the present changes in climates (if any) has been caused by humans (other than on the micro scale – much like termites, do, I suppose…) , or that humans could have any effect upon reducing or “mitigating” the change.
Richard Courtney is of course right that the IPCC has made various near-term predictions.. Its forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report is going to say that warming at a rate of 0.233 K/decade will occur from now to 2050 – slightly up on the values in teh Fourth Assessment Report. However, the purpose of a prospective clinical trial is that the yardstick for success or failure is agreed by all parties at the outset, and all parties agree to accept that if the result falls short of the yardstick then the regimen under trial has failed. At present, there is no agreement by the IPCC and the modelers that if warming fails to match certain stated predictions by a stated date then they are wrong. There now needs to be exactly the formal approach that Bill Illis suggests.
More positive news following the Australian election – Monckton gets a mention:
Climate sceptic MP Dennis Jensen wants to be science minister
Date
September 12, 2013 – 11:20AM
Coalition MP Dennis Jensen, who is a vocal climate science sceptic, has called on Prime Minister-elect Tony Abbott to appoint him as science minister. “At the moment to be honest I’m feeling under-utilised,” said Dr Jensen, the member for Tangney in Western Australia, who has a master’s degree in physics and a PhD in material science. “I think that I’ve got a lot to offer,” he added. “I’ve got some unique attributes.”
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Mr Abbott was expected to give the science portfolio to Victorian MP Sophie Mirabella, but she may lose her seat of Indi to the popular independent Cathy McGowan.
Dr Jensen suggests he would be better qualified than anyone to take charge of science.
“I’m not aware of any other scientist [in the Parliament],” he said.
Dr Jensen has made headlines by questioning the scientific consensus that humans are contributing to global warming.
Dr Jensen believes carbon dioxide is contributing somewhat to global temperatures, but not as much as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is suggesting.
Moreover, Dr Jensen does not think governments should be taking urgent action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
“In the climate area there is appeal to authority and appeal to consensus, neither of which is scientific at all,” Dr Jensen told Fairfax Media on Thursday.
“Scientific reality doesn’t give a damn who said it and it doesn’t give a damn how many say it.”
It was wrong to accept the view of the 97 per cent of climate scientists who agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely caused by human activities, because “the argument of consensus . . . is a flawed argument,” Dr Jensen said.
The colourful Englishman, Lord Christopher Monckton, who toured Australia to debunk the “bogus science” of global warming, was closer to the mark, Dr Jensen suggested.
“Most of the stuff [Lord Monckton] says is entirely reasonable,” Dr Jensen said.
“Some of it I don’t agree with but on the whole a lot of what he says is in my view correct.”
—end
Monckton of Brenchley:
Thankyou for the reply to me which you provide at September 12, 2013 at 3:14 am.
I copy it here in full so the context of my response is clear.
I do not agree that “There now needs to be exactly the formal approach that Bill Illis suggests.”
I disagree for two reasons.
Firstly, realism and practicality.
There is no possibility that the IPCC will agree to such a formal definition because it would preclude the ‘goal post moving’ which is one of their preferred tactics. So, sadly, there is no realistic possibility of obtaining agreement on the “formal definition”. Hence, effort would be expended to no purpose in attempt to obtain the agreement, and that effort could be spent on other things.
Secondly, necessity.
There is no need to seek the unobtainable agreement of the IPCC when the IPCC has already published a falsifiable statement. The only need is to accept that statement and to hold them to it.
The IPCC made the statement so the only needed agreement is ours.
Please note the nature of what the IPCC has stated. I provide a link, quotation and reference together with my explanation in my post in this thread at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/11/rss-global-temperature-data-no-global-warming-at-all-for-202-months/#comment-1414929
So,
The IPCC predicted that global temperature would rise at an average rate of “0.2°C per decade” over the first two decades of this century with half of this rise being due to atmospheric GHG emissions which were already in the system and GHG emissions have been as predicted.
We need to ‘hold their feet to the fire’ about that because basic assumptions used to construct the models are wrong if that warming does not occur.
The only possibilities are
(a) GHG emissions do not have as much warming effect as the models assume so the AGW-scare is grossly exaggerated.
or
(b) Natural climate variation induces change in global temperature of at least 0.2°C per decade and, therefore, warming and cooling of that magnitude occurs naturally so NONE of the global warming over the twentieth century can reasonably be attributed to anthropogenic GHG emissions.
or
(c) A combination of (a) and (b).
The models are useless for indicating future climate change whichever of those possibilities is true, and those are the ONLY possibilities
So, in conclusion, I argue that the now needed pressure is to publicise the missing ‘committed warming’ and what it indicates. Campaigning and/or negotiating to obtain an unobtainable agreement would distract from the needed publicity.
Richard
Projections or Predictions: Dictionary definitions say,
To Project-. an estimate or forecast based on present trends.
To Predict – state that (a specified event) will happen in the future.
It used to be projections, according to Professor Mike Hulme, founding director of the Tyndall Centre at UEA
“Representing Uncertainty in Climate Change Scenarios and Impact Studies”
Proceedings of the ECLA T-2 Helsinki Workshop , 14-16 April, 1999
Mike Hulme (Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia), and Timothy R. Carter, (Finnish Environment Institute, Helsinki.
“Climate change is an inexact field of science. It has long been recognised, by researchers and decision makers alike, that uncertainties pervade all branches of the subject. However, as the science of climate change has progressed, the effectiveness with which uncertainies have been identified, analysed and represented by scientists has abjectly failed to keep pace with the burgeoning demand for usable information about future climate and its impacts (Shackley et al.., 1998; Rotmans and Dowlatabadi, 1998; Jaeger et al,1998; Jones, 1999).”
Uncertainty is a constant companion of scientists and decision-makers involved in global climate change research and management. This uncertainty arises from two quite different sources – ‘incomplete’ knowledge and ‘unknowable’ knowledge. ‘Incomplete’ knowledge affects much of our model design, whether they be climate models (e.g. poorly understood cloud physics) or impact models.
Unknowable’ knowledge arises from the inherent indeterminacy of future human society and of the climate system. Human (and therefore social) actions are not predictable in any deterministic sense and we will always have to create future greenhouse gas emissions trajectories on the basis of indeterminate scenario analysis (Nakicenovic et al.., 1998). Uncertainties in climate change predictions arising from this source are therefore endemic.
The climate system, as a complex non-linear dynamic system, is indeterminate and even with perfect models and unlimited computing power, for a given scenario a range of future climates will always be simulated. It is for this reason that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have always adopted the term ‘PROJECTION’.
Climatologists commonly describe the present-day climate using observations from a recent thirty-year period (e.g. 1951-80 or 1961-90). The performance of GCMs at simulating present climate can be tested with reference to such information, although measurement errors, interpolation errors and sampling errors lead to considerable uncertainty regarding the true baseline climate (e.g. New et al.., 1999).
Climate is also known to vary naturally on multi-decadal (e.g. 30-year) time scales and for reasons that have nothing to do with anthropogenic forcing.
Determining what is the true level of natural climate variability on 30-year timescales is not therefore straightforward. Observational data are limited to at most usually 100 years or so (and in any case may already contain an anthropogenic signal).”
Only five years later, “the science” had become “settled”, with this 2004 statement from the Hadley Centre: (although Professor Bob Watson, IPCC head before Pachauri, said at Kyoto in 1997, that it was already settled).
“Recent research on climate change science from the Hadley Centre, December 2004”
“Complex climate models with detailed representation of the atmosphere, ocean and land surface are the only tools that can independently PREDICT changes in climate averages and extremes over the planet.”
Hi Steve in Seattle
Are you still looking for the url for the data for the graph. ?
You can find it at
ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/monthly_time_series/rss_monthly_msu_amsu_channel_tlt_anomalies_land_and_ocean_v03_3.txt
By running your cursor over it, you can select the whole data set, and then do a copy and paste into Excel. Within that, there’s a function to convert text to data in columns, and then you can play with it to your heart’s content.
Regards
Richard
Richard Courtney is right that we should draw attention to the missing warming that was supposed to be in the pipeline but is embarrassingly absent. However, there is also value in persuading governments, several of whose more sensible representatives read Watts Up With That, to put pressure on the IPCC to lay down some clear criteria against which their predictions will be weighed in the balance at a specified date. If the IPCC had known all along that governments were going to impose upon it the discipline that is automatic in the preparation of clinical trials, its reports would not have been so exaggerated over the years.
It is entirely possible that governments will begin to set standards which the IPCC’s predictions must meet, and we should encourage sensible governments to do just that.
As this is all based on the initial Santer’s Scam, why continue to play their game of data manipulation and changing goal posts – there is no reason to take any of their predictions seriously. No scientist would.
http://www.amlibpub.com/essays/ipcc-global-warming-report.html
“The research de Frietas refers to which used only a portion of the available data was by Santer, et al. The illustration below shows the differences compared to the full data set used by Michaels and Knappenberger, as explained by Dr. Arthur Robinson in Access to Energy (July 1997): “The solid points inside the oval in Figure 1 are those reported by Santer, et al. The open circles in Figure 1 are those added by Michaels and Knappenberger, who looked up the data. Since Santer’s paper was published in 1996 and was used prior to publication to influence the IPCC report, there can be little doubt that he and his co-authors deliberately omitted data points to create the trend they reported. It is inconceivable that even the most incompetent scientist finding such a pronounced trend to support his hypothesis in the data between 1963 and 1987, would not, when writing in 1995 (published in 1996), look at the data between 1987 and 1995 to see if the trend continued. These data do not support the hypothesis. So, Santer clearly faked the result, circulated it during IPCC proceedings in order to influence world global climate policy, and later published it in Nature. Michaels and Knappenberger caught him, but their paper was published several months after his—long after the correction could undue [undo] the bias introduced by Santer into the IPCC report.”
DennisA:
Allow me to clarify your post at September 12, 2013 at 4:15 am.
The IPCC AR4 WG1 Glossary is at
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/annex1sglossary-a-d.html
where it provides these definitions
Clearly, the IPCC itself says it makes Climate predictions at “at seasonal, interannual or long-term time scales”. And it has made one such prediction which is obviously wrong.
The importance of this prediction being wrong is explained in my post at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/11/rss-global-temperature-data-no-global-warming-at-all-for-202-months/#comment-1415005
The IPCC also says it makes projections which “depend upon the emission/concentration/radiative forcing scenario”. Clearly, after the event a projection becomes a prediction when its “emission/concentration/radiative forcing scenario” matches the reality that subsequently happened.
In summation, all arguments about projections and predictions are obscurantism which hides the undeniable reality that reality has shown IPCC predictions are wrong.
Richard
Monckton of Brenchley:
Thankyou for your post at September 12, 2013 at 4:30 am.
I support you in your endeavour to encourage governments to “set standards which the IPCC’s predictions must meet”. I consider your endeavour to be doomed to failure, but I hope you can prove me wrong about this.
Richard
justaknitter says:
September 12, 2013 at 12:41 am
How about Prof Peter Wadhams, of Cambridge University?
“Given present trends in extent and thickness, the ice in September will be gone in a very short while….. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/jul/24/arctic-ice-free-methane-economy-catastrophe
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
He really really needs to have his eyes checked and to take a good course in statistics before he embarrasses himself further.
Nelson says: September 11, 2013 at 2:35 pm
I understand that the President of The Flat Earth Society is in fact a believer.
Lord M, at 4.30am, said, “However, there is also value in persuading governments, several of whose more sensible representatives read Watts Up With That, to put pressure on the IPCC…”
It is reassuring to know that WUWT is read by ‘sensible representatives’. Are these ministers, civil servants or MPs? Whoever they are, they can continue to read the civilised discussions on WUWT, so ably moderated by Anthony and his mods.
Thank you one and all.
“Taking the mean of all five principal global-temperature datasets (GISS, HadCRUt4, NCDC, RSS, and UAH)”
Isn’t an average of datasets that are based primarily on the same raw data essentially meaningless? All you’re getting is an idea of the difference in applied adjustments to that raw data.
Nigel S
Don’t you just love Scientists making those bold predictions with ‘could, may, might, and perhaps’ qualifiers all over them?
“Given present trends in extent and thickness, the ice in September will be gone in a very short while, perhaps by 2015. In subsequent years, the ice-free window will widen, to 2-3 months, then 4-5 months etc, and the trends suggest that within 20 years time we may have six ice-free months per year.”
I’d say, in response, that the trends perhaps might possibly not suggest anything of the sort and ice in September may not be gone in a very short while.
Any chance we can get these charts with different scales to show how flat both CO2 and Temps are?
One thing I disagree with, this line “the world may actually be cooler in 2100 than in 2000”. With both the PDO and AMO in cool mode, I expect the world will do exactly what it did in the seventies, and get noticably cooler very soon (reletively speaking, a decade or two). Thus, we won’t have to to miss this “A shame we shall not be there to see the baffled faces of the profiteers of doom”.
As for the influence of the sun, I think people are missing something. The one and only time we see in records of a noticable cooling associated with a quiet sun was during the little ice age. The sun had gone quiet before then, yet there had been no noticable cooling, which suggests that it takes a while for the cooling to manifest (if it is even the suns fault at all). Then along came a quiet sun period twice as lomg as any previous one, and there was still no noticable global cooling. Then there was a period of ‘normal’ sun activity (since the sun goes ‘quiet’ every once in a while, what really is “normal’?), followed by a period of quietness twice as long as the previous record beaking one, and only then did the earth get cool. This suggests that, if a quiet sun really does make a cool earth, that it takes a very quiet sun for 100+ years or more to make that cool earth. Thus, a few decades of a semi-quiet sun does not seem to be something to worry about. The PDO plus AMO both in cool phase is a lot more certain to cause noticable cooling.
There is a set of connected observations that disproves the extreme AGW hypothesis. The lack of warming for 17 years is only one of the fundamental issues with the extreme AGW hypothesis.
If an idea, a theory is repeated enough, it is natural to assume that the theory is fundamentally correct. The past and present observational data supports the assertion that the CO2 mechanism saturates and the majority of the warming in the last 100 years was caused by solar magnetic cycle changes.
The planet has cyclically warmed and cooled in the past; with the warming and cooling occurring in the same regions that warmed in the last 100 years. The past cyclic warming and cooling periods were not caused by atmospheric CO2 changes. Past solar magnetic cycle changes correlate with the past warming and cooling periods. Something in the past that correlates with solar magnetic cycle changes caused the planet to warm and cool, cyclically in the same regions; high Northern latitudes and Greenland Ice Sheet.
There are multiple periods in the paleo record when planetary temperature does not correlate with atmospheric CO2. What is the physical explanation for past periods warming and cooling periods when there was no correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and planetary temperature?
Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) warming and cooling cycles (1450 year cycle plus or minus 500 years) and atmospheric CO2 gradually increases.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
http://www.climate4you.com/
The following is a paper that provides a prediction as to how much cooling to expect in response to the abrupt solar magnetic cycle 24 change.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3256
Solar activity and Svalbard temperatures
The long temperature series at Svalbard (Longyearbyen) show large variations, and a positive trend since its start in 1912. During this period solar activity has increased, as indicated by shorter solar cycles. The temperature at Svalbard is negatively correlated with the length of the solar cycle. The strongest negative correlation is found with lags 10 to 12 years. …. ….These models show that 60 per cent of the annual and winter temperature variations are explained by solar activity. For the spring, summer and fall temperatures autocorrelations in the residuals exists, and additional variables may contribute to the variations. These models can be applied as forecasting models. …. …..We predict an annual mean temperature decrease for Svalbard of 3.5 ±2C from solar cycle 23 to solar cycle 24 (2009 to 2020) and a decrease in the winter temperature of ≈6 C.
in response to @Gail Combs September 12, 2013 at 12:07 am:
“It is called the Jet Stream going from Zonal to Meridional flow. Meridional flow gives you blocking highs leading to floods, droughts very cold or very hot for a long time.”
Yes, that is what I heard from Jeff Masters, along with his scientific colleagues – in their view it is related to the loss of seasonal sea ice in the Arctic – creating Meridional flow. And that the pattern will be more stalled weather systems that create climatic events like the flooding rains we have seen in southeast Asia in June. It is just not weird weather in California, it is the general pattern throughout the globe that is creating exceptional events. Just the fact that there has been a great loss of sea ice is definitely exceptional.