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.
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Allan MacRae says:
September 15, 2013 at 9:23 am
“Hence, at most only one of them emulates the climate system of the real Earth because there is only one Earth.”
I wouldn’t be too insistent on that point. It is an at-least somewhat chaotic system, and may randomly switch from one trajectory to another. That they all run hot is the key damning point.
As for the arbitrary aerosol fudge, it’s kind of like those experiments in high school chemistry class where your experiment didn’t quite work out right, (because say, you stashed some of the chemicals in your pocket for later experiments of your own) but you know the answer so you write it up as if everything went perfectly. They just knew what the answer had to be, and so felt justified taking shortcuts to arrive at it.
David Riser:
Thankyou for your post addressed to me at September 15, 2013 at 9:36 am.
Yes, what you say is right. And the issue you raise goes to the nub of Willis’ article.
As you say, the GCMs were developed from weather forecasting models. But an F1 racing car is developed from Daimler’s invention. As Willis says
In other words, the modellers have spent much effort developing an F1 racing car from a basic form when they should have been developing to obtain an F1 fighter plane.
The only reasonable conclusion is that there should be a fundamental rethink about how to model climate.
Richard
The video ad started playing automatically. When an ad starts playing audio without you clicking on it, it is REALLY annoying. Please see if there is any way to stop this from happening.
Riser,
So you suggest that we tolerate traffic jams and speed limits due to “regulations?” Noise, expense, required skills, many factors dictate that a ground vehicle stays on the ground. Moeller has gotten close, and the FAA does give him trouble, but the requirement for over one thousand HP for VTOL says we probably need an entirely new fuel and power source to ever make these practical. Helicopters are another matter entirely, not safe, very noisy, and difficult to pilot.
Climate “science” is another matter entirely. These people seem to think that they will be able to show us all that the lifestyle of the 18th century will be required so that we do not perish. And why, oh why does anyone care if the polar bears survive or not? Savage, nasty creatures, if it could prevent one baby from starving I would cheerfully consign all of them to extinction…
Nick Stokes says:
September 15, 2013 at 4:49 am
“That’s hardly relevant to the provenance of this “canonical” equation. But there are about 3000 gigatons of CO2 in the atmosphere now, and we’re emitting over 30 gigatons a year. That emission is rapidly increasing.”
Right, it’s “hardly relevant”, but then you immediately conjure up the very same Fear Factor Stacey’s question referred to, but which you’ve simply chosen to adopt, when you can’t be seriously worried about It by now – especially as compared to, say, the next time you choose to drive down the road. It’s amazing how some people choose to pass off their neurotic fear of life onto an imaginary Satanic Force which they also think they can avoid if they can just Force the rest of us to do what they want us to do, in order to appease It = You, eh Nick?
Bart:
At September 15, 2013 at 9:49 am you quote my having said
and you comment
Actually, both points are key in that they each demonstrate the models don’t do what they are purported to do.
But the individuality of the models is the more important point. It also means that averaging outputs of different models is inadmissible because average wrong is wrong .
Richard
Richard I draw your attention to AR4 chapter 8. Their description of climate models appears to differ from both yours and Willis’. It may be useful to read it and to speculate on what this section may look like in AR5.
http://ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-8-1.html
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter8.pdf
Pamela Gray says:
September 15, 2013 at 9:29 am
Pamela, when you respond to me and say “you must be” this and “you want” that, that’s not a “vignette”.
That’s an accusation about me, and in this case a very ugly and unpleasant accusation that had nothing to do with me.
So I’m sorry, but your “explanation” doesn’t hold water. An apology is in order, not a justification of your unwarranted attack.
w.
Pamela Gray:
I write to say I fail to understand your comment at September 15, 2013 at 10:01 am.
It says
Please state the difference you think exists because I’m darned if I know what it is.
Richard
Pamela Gray says:
September 15, 2013 at 10:01 am
Huh? What is my “description of climate models”? Some specificity would be very useful, at present I haven’t a clue what “description” you’re talking about.
w.
PS—Citing an entire Chapter of an IPCC report? Is that your idea of a proper citation? My high-school chemistry teacher would have thumped me with her red pencil if I tried that nonsense. If you have a point you wish to back up, you need to cite chapter and verse.
As it stands, you’re no better than the Bible-thumpers of my childhood, who would stand up in the tent and when someone asked a question would hold up the Bible and shout “The answer’s right here” … perhaps the answer is somewhere in the entire chapter you just cited, but I’m not going to try to guess just which paragraph you’re talking about.
Having revisited the “cold equations” , I have to agree with Pamela Gray.
All your equations are is a linearisation of the SB effect, which results in a simple ARMA difference equation, This can rougly emulate teperature, as is well known and has been pointed out by many workers, including Mann, McIntyre.
The point of a GCM is that it encapsulates mechanisms. If A happens the B will follow that will precipitate C and so on. This means that in such a model parameters that relate to details of climate can be examined for their effects in the future (Note: I am not saying that they do this with any particular accuracy).
Therefore I think you are wrong in your assertion that your “model” performs as well as GCM. Your model isn’t a model – it is a curve fitting exercise, while GCMs attempt to capture mechanisms.
As an aside, if you are dealing with distributions of variables, as you discuss in you “cold Equations”, it seems to me that your mathematics does not capture this.
RC Saumarez:
In your post at September 15, 2013 at 10:24 am you say
You think a GCM “encapsulates mechanisms”?
If you really think that then you have been duped. All, yes, ALL the major climate mechanisms are fudged or contain parametrisations in the GCMs.
Each GCM is nothing more than a gigantic curve fitting exercise. And none of them fit well: e,g, a good temperature fit provides a poor precipitation fit, a good … etc.
Richard
Willis here is what I said,
“Here is a model of someone who wants what they want now and if they don’t get it, someone is wrong. You want someone to project what you want for breakfast. You want them to be right the first time. And you want it served at 6:00 AM sharp. If it doesn’t happen, the breakfast provider is wrong and they should lose their job.”
If you want to, place yourself in “someone”‘s shoes in my vignette. I didn’t do that but be my guest. I suppose I should have used the pronoun phrase, “A person” instead of “you” so you wouldn’t get your knickers in a twist. But the phrasing of the vignette would have been torturous. Goodness you are sensitive to criticism.
I stand by my vignette. Many here want the models to be right. Some want them to be right related to oceanic-atmospheric oscillations (that’s me along with some others). Some want them to be right related to solar drivers (quite a few). And many want them to be right from the beginning and all along the way. But because they are not, all manner of tar and feathering is the right way to proceed. Yet if we had done that in the past, so many things we now enjoy, because they EVENTUALLY got it right, would not be our daily pleasure.
So I stand by my suggestion and what I actually search for and read. Models are here to stay, they are complicated, and we have a loooong way yet to go. Sooooo, how should they be improved, and is there anybody out there focused on that right now, and what have they published on it? The model discrepancies are fascinating to me. The two steps back fascinate me. Which leads me to also deliciously wonder, who will be in on this chapter of AR5 and who will not be included this time around? What weaknesses identified in AR4 have grown less of a concern and which ones are bigger? Which ones were researched in this interim and which ones were ignored? Why?
So many questions, so little time. But I do love following the story! If folks, as is implicitly and sometimes explicitly, suggested here many times in comments and sometimes in posts, chuck the baby out with the bathwater, my hobby will be far less interesting to me!
RC Saumarez says:
September 15, 2013 at 10:24 am
Here we go again with vague claims … you have to agree with Pamela Gray saying WHAT?
You (and Pamela) seem to have totally misunderstood the idea of a “black box analysis”. Here are three posts that will give you a better idea what I’m talking about.
Zero Point Three Times the Forcing
Life is Like a Black Box of Chocolates
Climate Model Sensitivity Calculated Directly
Ummm … come back after you’ve read the three posts, and you’ve understood the idea of a “black box analysis”. At present, we’re talking on entirely different levels, and that doesn’t work.
I’m sorry, but could you be a bit more vague? That’s almost meaningful …
w.
Pamela Gray says: September 15, 2013 at 8:33 am
“But in reality, Science just seems to work this way. It takes too long and wastes too much money before they get it right. Yes it makes us mad and we want to throw the bums out. Good thing we weren’t successful in the past.”
_______________
Pamela, I reject your above apologia. You try to ignore the facts, specifically the incompetent and disgraceful behaviour of the global warming alarmist camp. For example:
The fatal flaws in the climate models (GCM’s) regarding fabrication of aerosol data were pointed out more than a decade ago and should have been dealt with at that time. Instead, these flaws have been deliberately ignored to this day. As a result, the GCM’s employed by the IPCC are worse than useless. (ref. Courtney R.S., “An assessment of validation experiments conducted on computer models of global climate using the general circulation model of the UK’s Hadley Centre”, Energy & Environment, Volume 10, Number 5, pp. 491-502, September 1999).
The existence of the Medieval Warming Period (MWP) was deliberately suppressed by the global warming alarmists and the climate skeptics who demonstrated the valid existence of the MWP were attacked and slandered. In the April 2003 issue of Energy and Environment, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and co-authors wrote a review of over 250 research papers that concluded that the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were true climatic anomalies with world-wide imprints – contradicting Mann’s hockey stick and undermining the basis of the Kyoto Protocol. Soon and Baliunas were then attacked in EOS, the journal of the American Geophysical Union.
In the July 2003 issue of GSA Today, University of Ottawa geology professor Jan Veizer and Israeli astrophysicist Nir Shaviv concluded that temperatures over the past 500 million years correlate with changes in cosmic ray intensity as Earth moves in and out of the spiral arms of the Milky Way. The geologic record showed no correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentrations and temperatures, even though prehistoric CO2 levels were often many times today’s levels. Veizer and Shaviv also received “special attention” from EOS.
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”.
Richard, you said, “Of course, GCMs are numerical models with the purpose of hindcasting and forecasting climate. But Willis’ model is mathematical (n.b. not numerical)…”
In the frequently asked questions linked document about AR4 issued by the IPCC we read that:
“Climate models are mathematical representations of the climate system, expressed as computer codes and run on powerful computers. One source of confidence in models comes from the fact that model fundamentals are based on established physical laws, such as conservation of mass, energy and momentum, along with a wealth of observations.”
Could you clarify your description of GCMs being numerical?
Folks, since this is a discussion on the models, I found it useful for me to re-visit what the AR4 said about them. I linked upstream to a Q and A as well as the actual chapter. You might find it useful too?
Pamela Gray says:
September 15, 2013 at 10:37 am
Pamela, when you address a post directly to someone, and you go on about “you want” this and “you want” that, people will assume that you are talking about them. Just as in this comment. When I say “you are talking about”, do you think I mean someone other than you?
Here’s what you said, including the part immediately previous to what you quoted (emphasis mine):
Your specious claim is that in the first paragraph the “you” clearly refers to me, but in the second paragraph it doesn’t?
Hogwash.
Clearly, you are referring to me all the way through, and now, rather than apologize as a decent human would, you’re trying to weasel out of it with that bogus excuse?
You don’t seem to get it, and yes, I do mean “you”. Here’s a protip—that’s why people use the word “you”, because they mean the person they are addressing. Otherwise they say “him”, or “someone”, or “her”, because “you” means … well … you.
You have insulted me, whether deliberately or not, and now you want to justify it on some bogus excuse, that it would have hard to phrase your “vignette” so that it wouldn’t be insulting … really?
That’s your reason for insulting me, that it would have been too difficult for you not to insult me?
Piss off, lady. You’ve crossed the line. You can stop with the justifications and apologize, and we can continue the discussion. Otherwise, all you’ll get from me is contempt.
w.
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 15, 2013 at 7:39 am
Thanks Willis. I must have read most of these posts, Big whoops if you’ve already answered the question. I look forward to reading or rereading.
J
Michael Moon says: September 15, 2013 at 9:58 am
“…if it could prevent one baby from starving…”
Here is a relevant comment from 2009, when global temperatures had temporarily declined, arguably to ~1940 levels:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/06/dealing-with-climate-change-in-the-context-of-other-more-urgent-threats-to-human-and-environmental-well-being/#comment-128055
stumpy (21:27:41) :
The money spent on Kyoto IN A SINGLE YEAR is sufficient to bring clean water and sanitation to every person on earth AND OPERATE THESE SYSTEMS FOREVER; these two factors alone would massively extend the lives of those in the third world and considerably reduce deaths, particularly infant.
***********************************************
If i recall correctly, the source for this statement was Bjorn Lomborg, several years ago, at the time of his first Copenhagen Consensus.
I’ve added significant corrections in CAPS.
Good comments Stumpy – thank you.
***********************************************
To put this issue into perspective, in the decades that we have been obsessed with the false crisis of Global Warming, as many as 50 million children below the age of five have died worldwide from contaminated water – equal to ALL the people who died in the Second World War.
Catastrophic Humanmade Global Warming is the BIG LIE of our time, and speaking the truth on this issue is an ethical and professional obligation.
I think we know enough from the satellite and surface data to state that Earth’s climate is insensitive to recent increases in atmospheric CO2. There has been no net global warming since 1940 – a full PDO cycle – in spite of an 800% increase in humanmade CO2 emissions.
We do not even know for certain that humanmade emissions are the cause of increased atmospheric CO2. We do know that at time scales ranging from years to hundreds of thousands of years, CO2 trends LAG, do NOT lead, temperature.
We also know that the only significant measured impact of increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations is increased plant growth and drought resistance.
Furthermore, in all probability a slightly warmer world would reduce human mortality, not increase it.
These are my honest opinions, based on several decades of study.
Regards to all, Allan
“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:…
“
You are spot on.
And if I correctly remember Salby showed what the true relationship between temperature and CO2 is.
However, in my humble opinion, I see another issue too:
Not only the models – the data too. What is the quality of the data?
If one uses models to “estimate” or “prepare” the data (what other reason can be for continuously cooling the past and warming the present?) they introduce the error in the data that they input to the models.
With such data prepared for the input:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/data-tampering-at-ushcngiss/
Going backwards, a biased model can backcast close to that data, but will not be of any use to forecast, what we continuously see happening.
The more data tampering, the more inaccurate the historical record, the worst the performance of the models based on that data will be.
So they do not have a way of finding out what the real drivers are.
Pamela Gray:
At September 15, 2013 at 10:51 am you ask me
I answer, yes.
Oh, and I will include a clarification when discussing the difference between
(a) my description of GCMs
and
(b) the AR4 Chapter 8 description of GCMs
which you claimed exists (in your post at September 15, 2013 at 10:01 am).
I am awaiting your answer to my request for information on whatever you think that difference is because I requested that information from from you at September 15, 2013 at 10:10 am and Willis also asked you for it at September 15, 2013 at 10:13 am.
Richard
Allan, Science is a bloody sport. Lots of casualties of the white and black hat wearing practitioners. Always has been. I couldn’t handle it. Way too much backdoor wheeling and dealing. I was a weak one-hit wonder then quit. But I’m older now and I let stuff roll off my back so that I have more time to fish and hunt. But it sure is fun to watch science from the seats.
I watched a very good facsimile of it this morning while on my coffee-in-hand stroll about the farm I am visiting. The bulls were having a major conflagration. They have been at it every morning. Newcomers were added to the pasture and an old king-of-the-hill bull is loosing ground. So everybody was fighting with everybody. There isn’t a better way to do this folks. Sometimes your prize bull gets hurt and you have to start all over again. That’s the way it goes. Sometimes the worst of them gets weeded out right from the beginning and everybody claps and gets to have the not-so-good bull over a BBQ pit. Eventually though a lead bull proves himself to be most capable of getting the herd pregnant, and impregnates most of the herd. And all the while entertaining the heck out of a little redheaded country girl. That is why I love the current state of climate modeling and am not too upset about the way it is going. Yes, it costs me tax dollar money watching them make mistakes or duke it out. But I still like it. Some say a little too much. (Don’t ask me which “game” I am referring to above. Too close to call.)
So sometimes I am going to question everybody and every thing regardless of which side of the fence a post sits. Sometimes I will add my tar and feathering efforts to the group effort. Sometimes I get to pump my fist in the air cuz I was right. And sometimes the score is 4 to 1 and I have to concede. Now that’s fun right there!
But it is still just an [admittedly expensive and waste-filled publicly supported arm of research] arm-chair adventure for a lot of us and so I don’t take myself as seriously as others do here. However, I do try…and have to remind myself…to think and reason as much as I can while having fun.
Meanwhile, back at the post…
I don’t like the cruise control analogy either. Obviously if you set the cruise control for 60mph it will burn more gas than if you set it for 40mph. So, speed is still closely tied to gas use. And if the warmists were stuck with the cruise control analogy, they’d say the more CO2 we emit than the higher will be the “MPH” cruise setting on earth’s temperature.
So, I would think CO2 in a car would be more akin to oil or paint, not gas. Clearly gas is the main “driver” of the car’s motion. So the cruise control analogy suggests that CO2 for the climate is like gas for the car, that CO2 is in fact the main and virtually sole driver of the climate. That’s ludicrous, if you consider the evidence, that for this 17 year temperature stall out that we’ve seen temperature & CO2 ae “decoupled” (CO2 rising fast, temps flat), and in the low CO2 first half of the 20th century and the higher CO2 second half of the 20th century the rate of temperature increase appears to be virtually identical, despite a much higher CO2 level in the later part of the 20th century… so here CO2 is also “decoupled” from temperature, there is no discernible signal for CO2… !
Finally, we know that there is evidence that temps affect CO2 levels, but there is no actual evidence (only a probably faulty theoretical model) that CO2 affects temperature: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_WyvfcJyg&CO2Lag
“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.”
Origin of life.