Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
David Rose has posted this , from the unreleased IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5):
‘ECS is likely in the range 1.5C to 4.5C… The lower limit of the assessed likely range is thus less than the 2C in the [2007 report], reflecting the evidence from new studies.’ SOURCE
I cracked up when I read that … despite the IPCC’s claim of even greater certainty, it’s a step backwards.
You see, back around 1980, about 33 years ago, we got the first estimate from the computer models of the “equilibrium climate sensitivity” (ECS). This is the estimate of how much the world will warm if CO2 doubles. At that time, the range was said to be from 1.5° to 4.5°.
However, that was reduced in the Fourth Assessment Report, to a narrower, presumably more accurate range of from 2°C to 4.5°C. Now, however, they’ve backed away from that, and retreated to their previous estimate.
Now consider: the first estimate was done in 1980, using a simple computer and a simple model. Since then, there has been a huge, almost unimaginable increase in computer power. There has been a correspondingly huge increase in computer speed. The number of gridcells in the models has gone up by a couple orders of magnitude. Separate ocean and atmosphere models have been combined into one to reduce errors. And the size of the models has gone from a few thousand lines of code to millions of lines of code.
And the estimates of climate sensitivity have not gotten even the slightest bit more accurate.
Can anyone name any other scientific field that has made so little progress in the last third of a century? Anyone? Because I can’t.
So … what is the most plausible explanation for this ludicrous, abysmal failure to improve a simple estimate in a third of a century?
I can give you my answer. The models are on the wrong path. And when you’re on the wrong path, it doesn’t matter how big you are or how complex you are or how fast you are—you won’t get the right answer.
And what is the wrong path?
The wrong path is the ludicrous idea that the change in global temperature is a simple function of the change in the “forcings”, which is climatespeak for the amount of downward radiation at the top of the atmosphere. The canonical (incorrect) equation is:
∆T = lambda ∆F
where T is temperature, F is forcing, lambda is the climate sensitivity, and ∆ means “the change in”.
I have shown, in a variety of posts, that the temperature of the earth is not a function of the change in forcings. Instead, the climate is a governed system. As an example of another governed system, consider a car. In general, other things being equal, we can say that the change in speed of a car is a linear function of the change in the amount of gas. Mathematically, this would be:
∆S = lambda ∆G
where S is speed, G is gas, and lambda is the coefficient relating the two.
But suppose we turn on the governor, which in a car is called the cruise control. At that point, the relationship between speed and gas consumption disappears entirely—gas consumption goes up and down, but the speed basically doesn’t change.
Note that this is NOT a feedback, which would just change the coefficient “lambda” giving the linear relationship between the change in speed ∆S and the change in gas ∆G. The addition of a governor completely wipes out that linear relationship, de-coupling the changes in gas consumption from the speed changes entirely.
The exact same thing is going on with the climate. It is governed by a variety of emergent climate phenomena such as thunderstorms, the El Nino/La Nina warm water pump, and the PDO. And as a result, the change in global temperature is totally decoupled from the changes in forcings. This is why it is so hard to find traces of e.g. solar and volcano forcings in the temperature record. We know that both of those change the forcings … but the temperatures do not change correspondingly.
To me, that’s the Occam’s Razor explanation of why, after thirty years, millions of dollars, millions of man-hours, and millions of lines of code, the computer models have not improved the estimation of “climate sensitivity” in the slightest. They do not contain or model any of the emergent phenomena that govern the climate, the phenomena that decouple the temperature from the forcing and render the entire idea of “climate sensitivity” meaningless.
w.
PS—I have also shown that despite their huge complexity, the global temperature output of the models can be emulated to a 98% accuracy by a simple one-line equation. This means that their estimate of the “climate sensitivity” is entirely a function of their choice of forcings … meaning, of course, that even on a good day with a following wind they can tell us nothing about the climate sensitivity.
Pamela Gray says:
September 15, 2013 at 6:39 pm
“Here is a hint about searching behind paywalls for articles. If you cut and past the name of the article immediately followed by lowercase pdf in your search engine’s window, you can often find the researcher’s personal copy posted publicly.”
______________________________-
Thank you.
Pamela,
I’ve re-read my earlier comment. Let me say that I regret the strength of my words, which were out of all proportion to any exception I might have had with your commentary on this thread. I sincerely apologize for my uncalled-for, loutish behavior and assure you it will not happen again. I hope you will accept my apology.
I’m almost entirely a “lurker’ on this blog and the passive beneficiary of the lively conversation and instructive insights contributed by this blog’s participants. And, may I say, Pamela, that includes your own considerable contribution to WUWT’s discussions. I look forward to your future comments.
Again, I was “out of line” with my last comment and, again, my apologies and assurances that there will be no further repeat of such a comment . In the meantime, I’ll retreat to my comfortable, “lurker” perch to profit from and enjoy the back-of-forth of the “first-stringers”, like yourself, Pamela, “duking” it out in the “climate wars.”
richardscourtney says: September 15, 2013 at 6:18 am
…
Soon to be even more irrelevant given the Australian change in political direction !
mike says:
September 15, 2013 at 11:45 pm
I thought your vignette was clever and amusing. I see no need to apologize.
Commenting on public forums can be a blood sport, although not usually on WUWT. If your ego can’t take the responses (fair and unfair), then don’t do it.
Like others, I am not 100% sure of Willis’ use of a cruise control analogy. I get it, but I don’t think it is ideal.
In respect of climate mechanisms, I prefer to think of the old steam engine type governors – the little balls on cantilevered arms that swing out as the speed increases and drop when it slows, thus adjusting the engine speed, etc..
In theory, these governors are thus ‘fixed’- ie. they are defined by the weight of the weights, length of the arms, gravity, denisty of air, etc, etc and they have no ability to ‘adjust’ or ‘readjust’ on their own. In a model situation they would be considered as a straightforward linear analysis?
Contrast this to the cruise control, which is able to adjust according to whether the car is on a hill, up or down, or has a headwind, etc, etc. i.e. it’s mechanism is not really linear?
My further argument would be that the governor ‘can’ do the same thing but it is as a result of physical feedback rather than a computed effect within the electronic box of a cruise control.
Consider the governor to be in a closed ‘box’ or system, and lets assume gravity is constant and our engine is a perpetual one. In reality, unless the mass of the weights change, e.g. due to corrosion, impact with foreign objects (eg. moths/flies?) etc, the action of the governor would remain the same……..But, of course if the density of the air changes this could also have an effect, or if a varying circulation pattern is present (let’s call this ‘wind’ LOL).
IMHO, the underlying mechanism for a climate ‘governor’ would probably be more like this – whereby the physical mechanism for the governors action is essentially ‘fixed’ by physical principals (i.e. not variable electronic design!).
Taking the imaginary effects on this governor to the extreme, let’s imagine it gets covered in dead flies and this then allows the engine to run slower, this reduces the heat output into the system, which causes the flies to die, and then rain washes the dead flies off the governor and hence an up/down cycle is inherently generated….
It doesn’t take much to then imagine that gravity is not actually constant (think of an orbiting moon for example) and we can have a little ‘variation’ from such an effect. Thus we can demonstate that ‘feedback’ effects act upon the ‘fixed’ governor process?
My point being that from this analogy – which is different in its mechanism from a cruise control – is that a relatively stable ‘physical’ process can easily be demonstrated to NOT be ‘fixed’ at all! I respectfully suggest that this kind of ‘governor’ is a better analogy for basic climate governing mechanism than the ‘internally adjustable’ cruise control used – but that’s just my personal view.
regards
Kev
@Brian H
You seem to have got as much out of it as I did. It’s a great talk.
willis said;
Can anyone name any other scientific field that has made so little progress in the last third of a century? Anyone? Because I can’t.
===========================================
ummm. Psychology?
KevinM:
Thankyou for your recent post in reply to my post at September 15, 2013 at 6:03 am which rebutted your earlier comment.
I understand your recent post to be acknowledgement that you agree everything I said in my rebuttal so – to aid others finding it – I provide this link to that rebuttal.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/15/one-step-forward-two-steps-back/#comment-1417677
Richard
Pamela Gray says: September 15, 2013 at 11:25 am
“Allan, Science is a bloody sport. Lots of casualties of the white and black hat wearing practitioners. Always has been….”
Hello Pamela,
I again I must disagree with your above comments, which trivialize the deceitful, disgraceful and even criminal behaviour of the leaders of the warmist camp.
I said above, in part:
“The response of the global warmist gang was thuggish and imbecilic – they deliberately ignored all criticism, declared “the science is settled”, intimidated the editors of climate journals, and viciously attacked scientists who honestly pointed out the obvious flaws of their catastrophic global warming hypothesis. Global warming acolytes send death threats to climate skeptics, and some skeptics were victims of actual violence. The global warmist gang is akin to a “cargo cult” religion – they have clearly failed to pursue an honest, objective quest for scientific truth.
At a minimum, the warmist gang have systematically misled the people and their governments, damaged or destroyed the academic careers of their betters, and squandered over a trillion dollars of scarce global resources.
To be clear, honest, competent science does NOT “seem to work this way”.”
I suggest to you that an impartial investigation would find leaders of the warmist camp guilty of criminal offences such as fraud. These individuals and their institutions would also be liable for civil damages for negligence, fraud, defamation and intimidation. You may soon see class action lawsuits launched against these parties, which they truly deserve.
You have received much personal criticism here today, and I disassociate myself from these personal comments against you.
However, I must object to your attempt to trivialize these vicious attacks by warmist thugs. Several of the victims of these attacks are my friends, and I remain outraged by the disgraceful way they were treated. The academic careers of brilliant individuals have been destroyed by thuggish imbeciles.
I am also outraged by the needless waste of a trillion dollars in scarce global resources, that should have been devoted to easing real societal problems, but instead was squandered on the global warming boogeyman. Perhaps the ultimate victims of these warmist thugs are the fifty million little kids who died from bad water since this global warming nonsense began.
The history of this period, a “New Dark Ages” for science, will ultimately be written and these thugs and their victims will be recorded for all time.
To be very clear: “Honest, competent science does NOT work this way.”
Regards, Allan
bit chilly:
Thank you for your kind comments of September 15, 2013 at 4:56 pm.
Regards, Allan
RC Saumarez says:
September 15, 2013 at 5:51 pm
I’m sorry if I have come over as arrogant
If you are then you’re in good company round here. If you get smart people posting then egos get bruised and then the knives come out.
In normal academic exchanges, this would be unacceptable.
Quite the opposite for the reason given above.
Nevertheless I have been told that I am an ignorant troll and been told to go away.
Just the blood boiling. Personally I think the thread would be poorer for your absence.
I have challenged my most vehement critic to tell us what papers he has published in order to establish his expertise in the subject of mathematical modelling.
Perhaps ask them to make a number of clear arguments rather than the need to affirm qualifications in a given field.
My own personal view is that if you make posts time and again, putting quite a bit of effort into them only for others to dismiss them out-of-hand, then you’re well within your rights to get annoyed and dismiss commentators that don’t address specific points made in the article – dare I say it the Cambridge philosophy. I think Willis gets this quite a bit. I have no doubt you would behave differently but then you don’t post here as often. It would certainly piss me off.
Just for point of interest, cruise control doesn’t control the fuel, it controls the air. The engine controller adjusts the fuel to match. A small difference, but significant from an engineering standpoint. And a governor is generally considered to be a limiter. For example, a governor is what keeps some cars from exceeding 85 MPH, as soon as you reach that it uses either soft or hard controls to slow it down.
Also, “hot things emit more heat” is not quite accurate either. Things that are hotter than their surroundings shed heat into their surroundings at a rate dependent upon the differential (and the material, but that’s another discussion). For example, if you were to chart the temperature of your coffee as it sits on your desk you would see a curve that begins dropping steeply before leveling off at ambient.
I fail to understand how hostility ever escalates in this forum.
Important point Willis.
The use of a single number “climate sensitivity” is loaded with assumptions that are probably wrong.
richardscourtney says:
September 15, 2013 at 2:28 pm
…
So, your question as to whether the models using FDA being good or bad does not have an answer (it is like asking the name of the Pope’s wife) because it depends on the model, how it was formulated, and the processes coded into it. If a process is incorrectly formulated or is not included then it cannot be known if the effect of that is significant or not because nobody can know what the model actually does in achieving stability through its iterations (just as the name cannot be known of a person who is not known to exist).
I think the correct mathematical term for such a question (i.e. FDA model good or bad, name of pope’s wife) is an “ill-posed” question or problem. Related to an inverse problem where the answer – or variants of the answer – are known but the question is not. (e.g. the answer is 42 – now what’s the question?) Mathematic approaches to solving such inverse problems often refer back to (as so often) a seminal work by a Russian mathematician, in this case Andrey Tikhonov, back in the USSR:
Tikhonov, Andrey Nikolayevich (1943). “Об устойчивости обратных задач” [On the stability of inverse problems]. Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR 39 (5): 195–198.
This is the basis of modern inverse methods including image superresolution, now finding its way onto mobile phones.
phlogiston:
Thankyou for your post addressed to me at September 16, 2013 at 5:04 am.
Yes, I agree all you say. It adds detail to what I said, but I am not convinced that – in the context of this thread – it adds information or clarity to what I said.
Richard
johnmarshall says: @ur momisugly September 15, 2013 at 4:16 am
….the K&T (AR4) graphic is so wrong, flat earth, 24/7 sunlight etc., using that to evaluate energy flow takes completely the wrong turn into stupidity and theories that cannot work.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This is another one of the BIG LIES. By using a “flat earth, 24/7 sunlight” they get rid of the very critical time factor.
If you look at water, it becomes clear that more H20 in the atmosphere (without clouds) still moderates temperature by making daytime temperatures lower and night time temperatures higher. This is seen in the difference between deserts and tropical jungles. link
An engineer, John Kehr, goes into the actual problems with the K&T cartoon. (He calls it FT08, the updated version.)
More HERE
Julian in Wales says: @ur momisugly September 15, 2013 at 4:46 am
…..I fear another cooling period far more than warming, I would like to be optimistic that it will not re-occur in my lifetime. The thought of mass starvation and food shortages during my old age is something I do not want to see.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, if you want to fear something cooling has a much larger negative effect on humans than warming especially since the Holocene has certainly been warmer than it is now and mankind flourished.
pesadia says:
September 15, 2013 at 5:19 am
“Can anyone name any other scientific field that has made so little progress in the last third of a century? Anyone? Because I can’t”
Not much has happened in physics….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That is because all the physicists have jumped onto the very lucrative CAGW gravy train instead of doing ‘Real Science’ /sarc…. well maybe.
DaveS says: @ur momisugly September 15, 2013 at 6:01 am
….As a taxpayer, I have to say that, given the amount of public money ‘climate scientists’ have burned up since 1979, your collective failure to improve this range doesn’t look good….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Depends on who is looking at it. It has been three and a half decades since 1979….
From the September 2012 International Monetary Fund Report:
Expect the scam to drag on while “the top 1 percent” moves their money into the next big bubble (Probably FOOD )
GCMs don’t work = IPCC does not work
Wow, that got heated. It was not a pleasant read.
Strange how the disupte over how and why the models are wrong is so intemperate when almost everyone agrees that they are wrong somehow.
Willis. I thought you were on holiday, with your ladies, in Scotland.
Is the weather really that bad?
Pamela Gray says: @ur momisugly September 15, 2013 at 3:26 pm
Folks, it is 99 degrees here in NE Oregon….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
SO? it was 39F in mid North Carolina yesterday on the 15th. (BRRrrrr)
bit chilly says: @ur momisugly September 15, 2013 at 4:56 pm
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Agreed. All RC Saumarez has to do is write up his points and submit it to Anthony. RC does not need a gold plated invitation. It is already right there at the top of the page.
Here is the submit button if he missed seeing it:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/submit-a-story/
***
Nick Stokes says:
September 15, 2013 at 5:14 pm
But the Earth, too, globally averaged, responds to forcing with a lag. eg Lucia’s lumpy, or Tamino’s two-box model.
***
Do you think shortwave forcing is the same as longwave (GHG) forcing? SW penetrates water where it is stored as heat, so yeah, there’s a time-lag. LW can’t penetrate water significantly, can’t be significantly stored, so any time-lag is insignificant. IOW, no heat-in-the-pipeline directly from GHG effects & what you get from CO2 or any GHG is what you have right now. Earth’s significant climate time-lags come from SW changes affecting water (land has little heat-storage).
If you want to extrapolate that GHGs change SW (by changing albedo), go ahead. Good luck.