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.
==============================================================
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
Daily Mail have a copy of the leaked report and gone in hard on the IPCC calling for it to be disbanded: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2420783/Global-warming-just-HALF-said-Worlds-climate-scientists-admit-computers-got-effects-greenhouse-gases-wrong.html?ico=home^editors_choice
Sorry have not read the 200 plus comments. Quite likely it has been mentioned in this thread already.
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/radio/program/pacific-beat/scientists-criticise-reporting-of-ipcc-leak/1191262
Straight from the mouth of Johnny Cook himself.
regards.
JMurphy:
I read your comment. Please tell nurse that you have forgotten to take your meds.
Richard
nevket240 says: September 16, 2013 at 12:45 am
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/radio/program/pacific-beat/scientists-criticise-reporting-of-ipcc-leak/1191262
Straight from the mouth of Johnny Cook himself.
Well, this (below) is Johnny Cook in response to the interviewer’s question:
POPE: Take us through the main point of the article. It says that the IPCC’s 2007 Assessment Report claimed that the planet was warming by 0.2 °C every ten years and that this leaked update says that it’s only 0.12 °C, which is a reasonable difference. Are those figures accurate?
COOK: I find that actually quite extraordinary that they say that. I went straight to the 2007 report this morning to have a look at what the IPCC actually said and they say that the warming trend over the last 50 years was 0.13 °C per decade, which is almost exactly the same as the accurate value that the Australian is talking about. So they just seem to have made up this 0.2 °C per decade number.
Below From Barry Woods | September 15, 2013 at 10:32 am (Climate etc)
pg 12 SPM AR4
Projections of Future Changes in Climate
“For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES
emission scenarios. Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would be expected. {10.3,10.7}
• Since IPCC’s first report in 1990, assessed projections have suggested global average temperature increases between about 0.15°C and 0.3°C per decade for 1990 to 2005. This can now be compared with observed values of about 0.2°C per decade, strengthening confidence in near-term projections. {1.2, 3.2}”
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf
Matt
I wouldn’t get too excited by this admission by the IPCC. Personally, it looks like more obfuscation and ambiguity in order to downplay the lack of success. If they have pdf of model outputs from which they’re deriving their likelihoods, then they’ll also have a most likely, if not most probable, outcome.
Probably already been linked to but the SMH has an article denying any dial back:
“Australian scientists have rejected claims a multi-national climate change body is set to revise down its previous warnings about the rate of global warming.
The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is preparing to hand down the first part of a major report on the updated science of global warming in Stockholm next week.
But a series of apparent leaks has sparked media speculation the IPCC’s highly-anticipated assessment could contain an admission it overstated rising temperatures.
It’s a claim that’s rattled Australian scientists, who say such a finding is hard to believe given it contradicts decades of data and the draft version of the report hasn’t even been finalised yet.
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In particular, they’re furious at suggestions the IPCC will admit it got its numbers wrong and that over the past 60 years the world has been warming at half the rate stated in its previous 2007 report.
“That is complete fiction,” Professor David Karoly, a review editor of the IPCC report at the University of Melbourne, told AAP on Monday.
He said the observed global average warming of surface air temperature over the last 60 years was 0.12 degrees per decade – almost identical to the 0.13 value reported in the IPCC report of 2007.
That assessment was backed by Dr John Cook from the University of Queensland, who warned such statements misrepresented the findings of the IPCC.”
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/scientists-slam-claims-of-cooler-climate-20130916-2tv7w.html
tobyglyn:
Your post at September 16, 2013 at 3:56 am quotes a falsehood reported by “SMH” to have been provided by David Karoly and also by John Cook.
The truth of the matter is stated – with quotations from the 2007 IPCC Report (AR4) – by markx at September 16, 2013 at 2:08 am. This is a link to his post
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/14/breaking-ipcc-ar5-report-to-dial-back-climate-sensitivity/#comment-1418340
In addition to the quotes from the Summary For Policy Makers (SPM) provided by markx, the body of the AR4 Scientific Report says
In other words, it was expected 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 the emissions have been as expected but there has been no discernible rise in global temperature since 2000.
I suggest that Australian readers of this thread may care to write to the “SMH” to provide rebuttal of the falsehood it has reported from David Karoly and from John Cook.
Richard
tobyglyn:
In my post addressed to you at September 16, 2013 at 4:10 am I failed to provide a precise reference to the quotation I provided.
I apologise for that oversight and write to correct it.
The quotation is from IPCC AR4 WG1 (2007) Chapter 10.7 which can be read at
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-7.html
Richard
Thank you Richard
jeremyp99
Hi
It was not my intention to suggest that the world was in a good place.
Only that it was relatively better.
Like you I am appalled by the state of the world at the moment which
is why I look for crumbs of comfort like those I listed.
J Martin says:
September 15, 2013 at 1:44 pm
/////////////////////////////
The Climate Change Act is the second most expensive piece of peace time legislation (after the setting up of the welfare state) and yet only a few MPs could be troubled to debate and scrutinise the Act and its impications. If ever there was a case for gross deriliction of public office/public duty, surely this must be it. Quite an extraordinary state of affairs, but then given the system of government majority, do ordinary MPs have any substantial role to play in the democratic system. perhaps the Syria vote suggests that they might, but that is a far too rare example.
Can you imagine a private company embarking on the second mosts expensive piece of capital expenditure in its history without a very thorough and extensive board review, and possibly even an extraordinary general meeting so input could be had from the shareholders and investors. yet MPs sign us up to this without even a cursory scrutiny of the Act and its implications on energy, and the quality of life of its citizens.
they say that the warming trend over the last 50 years was 0.13 °C per decade,
====
so, 100% of their prediction….is from jiggling the temp history…..so show faster warming and make it look scarier
to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change
What a con job…. Cook and Karoly switch to observed temperature when the discussion is about predicted temperature…. That’s what they are paid to do… perpetuate the con… “Scientists” like Cook & Karoly are a cancer in the Australian scientific community…. Fairfax Media is the host. Thankfully the cancer is killing the host.
At the very least it seems to me that any climate change that is occuring due to increased CO2 is so slow and at such safe levels that we can sit back and take some proper measurements over the next 30 years or so before working out if we really need to do anything about it. And if we do find we need to do something about it, we will have a further 30 years or so in which to set about doing it.
So can we please now go back to “business as usual”, close down the IPCC, thanks to all concerned, yoiu’ve all set our minds at rest but please keep an eye on those thermometers and let us know if anything changes.
A thirty to fifty year trend of statistically significant cooling occurring in the face of continuously rising CO2 emissions will be needed before the Climate Science Industrial Complex admits that something might be wrong with their basic CO2-controls-climate narrative.
In the meantime, with assistance from the mainstream media, the climate science community will hang tough in finding ever new and creative ways to explain away the lack of warming.
Millions of people make their living from government-funded anti-CO2 careers, and they are not going to give up their livelihoods just because someone on the Internet has demonstrated conclusively that the climate models are not making accurate predictions.
The National Post Online have this story as their headline article at the moment. Yes, I know the NP has not been a died-in-the-wool alarmist paper for a while with Lawrence Solomon and Terence Corcoran writing for them, but to have the lead story is a bit of a coup:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/09/15/climate-agency-accused-of-cooling-on-global-warming-as-new-report-lowers-predicted-temperature-increase/
This is probably follow up to the reports over the weekend rather than original reporting, but it doesn’t do any harm at all to have that headline on your desktop.
Well while they are “dialing back” their estimate of “Climate Sensitivity”, that legacy of presumably the late Dr Stephen Schneider, they might also consider the claim that:-
” The mathematical relationship between mean global surface or lower troposphere Temperature; and the atmospheric CO2 abundance, is a logarithmic one. ”
That might possibly be true; based on the actual real measured Temperature data round the world for the last 150 years; but the belief has one serious flaw in it.
The experimental data seems to say the logarithmic relationship, is equally good either way round.
That is; it doesn’t matter whether you take the log of the Temperature, or the log of the CO2. Or you could take the log of both as well, or the log of neither one.
Well the data can be fit to the form:- y = exp (-1/x^2) about as well as any other equation..
And from a modeling theoretical point of view; the Beer-Lambert Law, that seems to be the theoretical foundation for the logarithmic claim, is a law of ABSORPTION OF RADIATION as a function of material thickness, or absorbing species concentration.
Unfortunately it IS NOT a law of TRANSMISSION OF EM RADIATION ENERGY.
Beer’s law assumes that absorbed radiant energy stays dead, instead of being transmitted under new ownership.
Greg says:
September 14, 2013 at 9:27 am
Until the recent recession, CO2 output was actually above the “business as usual” scenario.
So essentially, it’s “dialing for dollars”, since ultimately that’s what CAGW is about.
Maybe this AR5 chapter 11 “Near-term Climate Change can be of use here. To me it very much looks like they predict 0.4 – 1C warming 2016-35 (page 11-4 line 22) which looks to me rater stunning range after their last 0.2/decade didn’t fulfilled itself at all.
So does anyone have a link to this “leaked” Summary for Policymakers? Or did I miss it.
I was reading elsewhere that the report was using 1951 as the benchmark date for the warming trend? Is this just a new date they conjured up to show at least some warming of 0.12 C per decade? What was the date/year they were using before?
THE ipcc IS STILL WORTHLESS.
Global temperatures will be in a down trend as this decade proceeds.
richardscourtney says:
September 14, 2013 at 2:33 am
Friends:
The AGW-scare was killed at the failed 2009 IPCC Conference in Copenhagen. I then wrote on WUWT and elsewhere
The AGW-scare is dead but it will continue to move as though alive in similar manner to a beheaded chicken running around a farmyard. It continues to provide the movements of life but it is already dead. And its deathly movements provide an especial problem.
Nobody will declare the AGW-scare dead: it will slowly fade away. This is similar to the ‘acid rain’ scare of the 1980s. Few remember that scare unless reminded of it but its effects still have effects; e.g. the Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD) exists. Importantly, the bureaucracy which the EU established to operate the LCPD still exists. And those bureaucrats justify their jobs by imposing ever more stringent, always more pointless, and extremely expensive emission limits which are causing enforced closure of UK power stations.
Bureaucracies are difficult to eradicate and impossible to nullify.
As the AGW-scare fades away those in ‘prime positions’ will attempt to establish rules and bureaucracies to impose those rules which provide immortality to their objectives. Guarding against those attempts now needs to be a serious activity.
I stand by everything I wrote in late 2009, and I consider the need to guard against “rules and bureaucracies” to be growing in importance.
The reduction to asserted climate sensitivity is part of the ‘fading away’ of the AGW-scare.
As the scare fades those who want the “rules and bureaucracies” can see they are running out of time to obtain their desires so they can be expected to increase their pressure to get what they want.
Richard
Absolutely correct. This is now a political movement hurrying to put in place irrevocable rules and regulations that will cripple industries and push many more individuals into energy poverty. They will proceed as if the science is completely settled. As I have said before this is the raison d’etre of the EPA now the EPA will not cease their activities to limit CO2 emissions even if the IPCC completely folds now. The same goes for the European Commission where similar anti- industry bureaucrats are enforcing regulations to close down functioning modern power generation based on the same non-science. They are also still pushing the entire world airlines, through the UN International Civil Aviation Organization to come to an agreement on carbon credits; despite the AGW ‘science’ being discredited. They know that once these bureaucratic regulations and taxes are in place they are in a ‘job for life’.
It will take political upheavals in the US and Europe equivalent to those in Australia to reverse this bureaucratic vandalism. Unfortunately, almost all politicians in the US and EU have their snouts firmly in the AGW trough and are pushing just as hard to put their money laundering schemes in place before the population gets too restive. Only one thing will prevent these schemes becoming permanent and that is the climate cooling that is happening despite the spin and the fiddling of figures. Yet even there, the UK politicians did not even raise a question when the numbers dying of cold in fuel poverty went up by more than 5000 a month last winter – their wallets will have priority until the people start getting really angry. I am concerned that some may even want that anger so it can also be used for the imposition of even more regulation.
I went on a liberal forum and they 100% absolutely deny that there’s been no warming in the past 17 years. I was amazed. There’s a whole host of issues that are WAY past defending and they’re still at it. They’re now at the stage where they’re just making stuff up to validate their world view.