Update: the IPCC edifice is crumbling, see The state of climate science: ‘fluxed up’
See also Willis’ article One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, and Lomborg: climate models are running way too hot
This post will be a sticky for awhile, new posts will appear below it. – Anthony
Dialing Back the Alarm on Climate Change
A forthcoming report points lowers estimates on global warming
by Dr. Matt Ridley
Later this month, a long-awaited event that last happened in 2007 will recur. Like a returning comet, it will be taken to portend ominous happenings. I refer to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) “fifth assessment report,” part of which will be published on Sept. 27.
There have already been leaks from this 31-page document, which summarizes 1,914 pages of scientific discussion, but thanks to a senior climate scientist, I have had a glimpse of the key prediction at the heart of the document. The big news is that, for the first time since these reports started coming out in 1990, the new one dials back the alarm. It states that the temperature rise we can expect as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide is lower than the IPPC thought in 2007.
Admittedly, the change is small, and because of changing definitions, it is not easy to compare the two reports, but retreat it is. It is significant because it points to the very real possibility that, over the next several generations, the overall effect of climate change will be positive for humankind and the planet.
Specifically, the draft report says that “equilibrium climate sensitivity” (ECS)—eventual warming induced by a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which takes hundreds of years to occur—is “extremely likely” to be above 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), “likely” to be above 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and “very likely” to be below 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 Fahrenheit). In 2007, the IPPC said it was “likely” to be above 2 degrees Celsius and “very likely” to be above 1.5 degrees, with no upper limit. Since “extremely” and “very” have specific and different statistical meanings here, comparison is difficult.
Still, the downward movement since 2007 is clear, especially at the bottom of the “likely” range. The most probable value (3 degrees Celsius last time) is for some reason not stated this time.
…
Most experts believe that warming of less than 2 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels will result in no net economic and ecological damage. Therefore, the new report is effectively saying (based on the middle of the range of the IPCC’s emissions scenarios) that there is a better than 50-50 chance that by 2083, the benefits of climate change will still outweigh the harm.
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Above are excerpts of an article Dr. Ridley has written for the Wall Street Journal, who kindly provided WUWT with a copy.
Read the entire story here
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The equilibrium climate sensitivity (TECS) is the ratio of the increase in the global equilibrium surface air temperature to the increase in the logarithm to the base 2 of the atmospheric CO2 concentration. As the equilibrium temperature is not an observable, when the IPCC claims that TECS has a particular numerical value, this claim is insusceptible to being tested. It follows that TECS is not a scientific concept.
Also, knowledge of the change in the logarithm to the base 2 of the CO2 concentration provides a policy maker with no information about the change in the global equilibrium surface air temperature by the definition of “information.” Thus, as a concept, TECS is useless for making public policy on CO2 emissions. TECS is one of the several blunders on the part of global warming climatologists by which they have stuffed the 200 billion US$ that were entrusted to them by taxpayers for global warming research down the proverbial rat hole.
I still think that the most pertinent analysis of the IPCC fictional physics was done here (without using any physics other than stuff everyone agrees with) …
http://knowledgedrift.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/why-the-co2-greenhouse-gas-debate-doesnt-matter/#more-999
Terry Oldberg:
Your post on this thread at September 14, 2013 at 4:24 pm provides more of your irrational sophist nonsense which has disrupted several WUWT threads in the past.
In hope of encouraging you to desist, I can do no better than to quote a reply to your blather which p@ur momisugly Dolan provided a few hours ago on another WUWT thread; i.e. the thread at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/11/rss-global-temperature-data-no-global-warming-at-all-for-202-months/
I especially like his phrase “a limaceous slubberdegulion”.
Richard
richardscourtney … agree very much with your comments.
All I can say is the actions of those writing ARS appear to be very much lie my chickens.
Today I let the chickens out … but this time through a smaller side door. An hour of so later I saw one of the chickens trying to get back into the pen. It could see where it wanted to go but however hard it tried it could not get through the barb wire. For about 10 minutes it walked back and forth unable to understand how it could get to the place it could see so obviously but to which it was barred. Eventually having tried all other places several times it finally walked just that bit further so that it was around the corner where the door was … and now when it tried to get into the pen, its way was not barred.
At no time did this chicken show the slightest sign of “problem solving” … it was just shear dumb luck and random probing without any clue or insight to the problem which finally brought it to a position where the problem very much solved itself.
Likewise I think the IPCC will constantly try to find a way to get its model to work and constantly be thwarted … and it will try more and more variations of the same theme … swinging back of forth with ever more wilder models … until it finally … by shear dumb luck, picks a new parameter to fit into the equation and which by shear dumb accident … actually has some basis in reality.
And then, slowly, without any real understanding of how or why the new parameter seems to work … it will gradually come to dominate the models.
You can always count on the weather…to ruin a perfectly good game
===
Dr Norman Page says:
September 14, 2013 at 8:12 am
This new sensitivity estimate is merely a minimum tweak to a hopelessly faulty process.The climate models are incorrectly structured because they are based on three irrational and false assumptions.
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Norm, there’s four….
The climate models have been tuned/backcast to past temps that have been jiggled to show more/faster warming…..
Even if someone designed the perfect climate computer game…..they would never be right
That is the one most important factor that will always make them fail……….
More like a tempest in a peepot.
Things are getting serious now for the alarmists, they are already planning their exit strategies.
Even Gavin at Real Climate is starting to prepare the ground for the abandonment of the models as the underlying reason to have faith in CAGW.
Just look at this thread on there and his numerous comments. Looks like he is distancing himself from the model results.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/on-mismatches-between-models-and-observations/#more-15652
Alan
@Lil Fella from OZ
Of course they weren’t wrong. They’re scientists; they’re experts. They weren’t wrong in the past, they aren’t wrong now, and they won’t be wrong in the future. Even when they are saying something completely different from what they said in the past.
equilibrium climate sensitivity … that’s a new one.
Message: “OK but we were within 100% error bounds and we got the direction right. Now, quake and shake in fear of Planetary Doom! (unless you keep funding us)
Lanny says @ur momisugly September 14, 2013 at 12:23 am
So basically the whole “Global warming thing” has been a tempest in a teapot.
Yes, but a very superheated tea-pot.
“So basically the whole “Global warming thing” has been a tempest in a teapot.”
— No. They’re not going to say that yet. First they have to dial it back a little bit. Then later they’ll have to dial it back a little bit more. Then they’ll incorporate “new findings” and a new general consensus will build on what should be said in the speech about how “science” works.
“Yeah, we update models all the time. It’s part of the normal process. Sorry about trying to get everyone to decimate the global economy. Our bad. We’re cool though, right?”
…Hansenkoism is put in the dustbin
I like the term but Hansenkoism is part of the Great Leap Forward, don’t you know …
Alan Millar , in response to your post at @ur momisugly September 14, 2013 at 5:44 pm
Yes, I read his post and you are right. Suddenly he poses scientific and logical, rather than ideological, arguments.
Yes, Gavin is preparing his exit from the bus.
Steven Mosher says:
September 14, 2013 at 12:32 pm
The IPCC is offically granted membership in the lukewarmer camp
=======================================================
We could be approaching a time when the low-information warmist true-believer mob attacks the (supposedly) hi-information CAGW “team member” turn-coats. It’s bad news to take away an evangelical, unknowledgeable, politically active mob’s reason for existence (especially while they still have pitch-forks).
Maybe this will make the French revolution look like a company picnic.
Of course, not that I would actually enjoy (chuckle) this carnage (heh heh).
Lets see 114 of 117 climate models grossly over forcast global warming many by 200% .The IPcc
climb down is underway and they will use whatever weasle words are needed to keep their funding ,jobs and scam going for at least 5 years then most of them will bugger off.
Can we expect a Christmas book from the IPcc chair or maybe a nice glossy hard cover coffee table book from Big A. …This scam is over .
So let me get this straight….
The IPCC wishes to destroy the world economy and starve the world of energy and food at a cost of $76 trillion over the next 40 year’s (UN estimate), to keep global temps below 2C, when even their wildly pessimistic and disconfirmed projections (formally known as predictions) now suggest that climate sensitivity could be as low as 1.5C, without spending a dime.
And so it goes….until sanity and freedom is restored….
So we’re not as doomed as we should be?
What are the mechanics/physical components for this downgrade in hysteria?
Is the supposed + feedback still in cloud formation and do they use the function of nearly X3 in the feedback loop?
Alan Millar says:
September 14, 2013 at 5:44 pm
//////////////////////////////
Further to the point raised by Alan, Gavin when discussing the performance of models suggests that “The first thing to note is that any climate model-observation mismatch can have multiple (non-exclusive) causes which (simply put) are:
1. The observations are in error
2. The models are in error
3. The comparison is flawed”
I particularly liked the first point he makes when discusssing observational errors since his denial of the true culprit brought a wry smile.
Gavin states: “These errors can be straight-up mistakes in transcription, instrument failure, or DATA CORRUPTION…”(my emphasis). He is then in denial regarding the most stark data corruption, namely that contained in the land based thermometer record. He mentions the satellite data and says: “These assumptions can relate to space or time interpolation, corrections for non-climate related factors, or inversions of the raw data to get the relevant climate variable. Examples of these kinds of errors being responsible for a climate model/observation discrepancy range from the omission of orbital decay effects in producing the UAH MSU data sets” and yet he does not mention the effects of UHI, poor siting isssues and station drop outs, nor the endless bastardisation of the thermometer record via endless adjustments/homogenisation (the need and correctness of which is moot to say the least) which has significantly corrupted the thermometer record.
One reason why models perform so badly, is that they are tuned to a bastardised thermometer record. If the record was more accurate with past temperatures not cooled so much and recent temperatures not warmed so much, when tuning via hindcast, the models would have had to have used a lower climate sensitivity figure so as to reasonably accord with the past temperature record. That would have helped the model going forward and the projections would not have been as extreme.
Gavin’s article, whilst on realclimate, a site that I do not like linking to or recommending, is worth a read.
These people at IPCC have to be knocked off their high horse. That they put so much value in the language they use in their reports is insulting to me. The the language they use will have billions of taxpayer dollar paid implications is at the heart of the matter. To change a simple word costs them billions is at the heart of the insult. Screw them.
The planet is getting colder because of the new Grand Solar minimum [trimmed], get over it. No more tax payer dollars for you.
If I’m a conduit to celestial powers, that has been praying for no Sun spots because I want to screw over the man-made global warming carbon dioxide tax crowd, then so be it. Probably just a coincidence but I’m still praying for no sunspots to teach certain people a lesson they will never forget.
Yikes, the alarmist trolls will be going nuts over this one:
new David Rose article
Eric Simpson says:
September 14, 2013 at 3:36 pm
//////////////////
If one looks at the satellite record, the only long term temperature variation is a one off and isolated ENSO event not in anyway coupled to CO2. There is simply a one off step change temperature, not some broadly linear increase correlating in some way to the broadly linear increase in CO2.
The data is only 33 years in length, but based on that data, there is no first order correlation between temperature and CO2 during its 33 year period and this suggests that then signal to CO2 (ie., Climate Sensitivity) is so low that it cannot be measured within the sensitivity, resolution and errors of our best current temperature measurements. In short, we cannot presently seperate the signal of CO2 from the noise of natural variation. This suggests that Climate Sensitivity (if indeed such a concept exists) is at this stage of the Holocene with aprroximately 360ppm of CO2 (and over) is extremely low and may well be zero. It is unmeasurably small using current best observational data.
If there is no further warming for the next 10 or so years the case for low sensitivity will become ovewhelming.
Given that the Chinese in Rio suggested that they would do nothing before 2020, the battle ground may lie not in 2015 but in 2020. If no warming between now and then, what will the IPCC be forced to concede with respect to Climate Sensitivity. My guess (and it is only aguess) that they will roll back to a position that it is unlikely to be above 2degC and probably within the 1 to 1.5degC range. That will probably be too high when viewed against what will then be 40 years of satellite data, but even with that claimed sensitivity AGW will have withered on the vine. Regrettably at a wasted cost of several trillions of dollars and having left much of the developed world with a deficient energy production system and handed industrial soverienty over to the developing nations. What a price to have paid for all this madness. How the politicians allowed themselves to get so divrced from reality will be the question of the day.
If this is true, the IPCC run a serious risk of being labelled as deniers by the climate Taliban.
“You make an interesting point and you may well be right, but historians will debate such matters for years to come.”
When I realized that people like Al Gore, Gro Harlem Bruntland and other leftists where behind or backing UNFCCC and IPCC I instantly became Sceptical
Stephen Rasey says:
September 14, 2013 at 11:44 am
////////////////////////////////////////
Stephen
I would appreciate you expanding on this.
K&T suggest that incoming solar is 342w/m~2 of which some 77w/m~2 gets reflecting upwards by clouds and other aerosols such that it never reaches the surface ground below. A further 87w/m~2 is absorbed by the atmosphere (presumably heating the atmosphere) and it too never reaches the surface ground below.
Accordingly of the incoming 342w/m~2 of solar energy only some 198w/m~2 makes it to ground level of which some 30w/m~2 is reflected (presumably predominantly by the oceans and ice) such that only 168w/m~2 is absorbed and goes to heat the surface of the Earth.
Now are you saying that clouds (their underside) reflect back to Earth some of the 30w/m~2 which has been reflected from the surface and not absorbed by the surface such that the surface receives 198w/m~2 plus a component reflected from the underside of clouds (and possibly also aeroslos in the atmosphere) consisting of some part of the 30w/m~2 which had originally been reflected off the surface, or are you suggesting that an even greater quantity of energy (not DWLWIR) is reflected downwards?
Stephen, I would appreciate you going through your figures again in relation to the K&T budget.
Finally, do you have any views on whether some part of the DWLWIR is simply reflected and not absorbed? As you know, K&T give a figure of 342w/m~2 for DWLWIR and suggest that all of this is absorbed by the surface. However, does the surface reflect any part of this DWLWIR. Since DWLWIR is omnidirectional, much of the DWLWIR is impacting at a low grazing angle (about some 11% must be impacting the surface at an angle of 10 or less degrees), and I wonder whether water, ice, sand, or other highly reflective surfaces reflect some element of DWLWIR impacting upon them at low grazing angles without absorbing the DWLWIR.
I know that water is a very good absorber of LWIR, so perhaps it will not reflect much LWIR even if the grazing angle is low. However, I have never seen data on the reflectivity of LWIR on different surfaces in relation to the grazing angle.
This is material since if only 2 or 3% of DWLWIR were to be reflected and not absorbed by the surface then the entire K&T energy budget would not balance and if the budget does not balance then the entire fundamentals are thrown into doubt.
I look forward to reading your further comments.,