This is a bullet point collection of reactions as they come in, it will be updated throughout the day by adding new items to the list. It is also a sticky post – new stories will appear below this one.
My first reaction was: That IPCC had a golden opportunity, and blew it due to being unable to adapt to reality.
My second reaction was due to a tweet from the vice chair of the IPCC, who was so tired, he couldn’t even get the website right:
There’s nothing like sleep deprived group think under deadline pressure to instill confidence, right?
My third reaction after reading the SPM is this: Looking at claims, it strikes me that the damaged credibility of the IPCC remains intact.
When you still push increasing confidence in predictions while the IPCC referenced models fail to model reality, and this has been pointed out worldwide in media, it becomes a “jump the shark” moment where the advocacy speaks far louder than the science.
Here are other reactions:
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Marcel Crok: AR5 gives no best estimate for climate sensitivity; breaks with a long tradition; good news is hidden from policy makers
One of the most surprising things in the just released SPM is the absence of a best estimate for climate sensitivity. The SPM now says this:
The equilibrium climate sensitivity quantifies the response of the climate system to constant radiative forcing on multi-century time scales. It is defined as the change in global mean surface temperature at equilibrium that is caused by a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5°C to 4.5°C (high confidence), extremely unlikely less than 1°C (high confidence), and very unlikely greater than 6°C (medium confidence)16. The lower temperature limit of the assessed likely range is thus less than the 2°C in the AR4, but the upper limit is the same. This assessment reflects improved understanding, the extended temperature record in the atmosphere and ocean, and new estimates of radiative forcing. {TFE6.1, Figure 1; Box 12.2}
16 No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies.
So from a footnote we have to learn that no best estimate “can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies”. How strange this is. Climate sensitivity is one of the most important parameters. It determines largely how much warming we can expect. If there is lack of agreement between different methods/studies, we want to know all about it. However, apart from this footnote, the SPM is silent about it. Hopefully the full report, which will be released on Monday, will give all the details.
http://www.staatvanhetklimaat.nl/2013/09/27/ar5-gives-no-best-estimate-for-climate-sensitivity-breaks-with-a-long-tradition-good-news-is-hidden-from-policy-makers/
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Andrew Montford at Bishop Hill:
Ducking, diving, bobbing and weaving are the general themes of the Summary for Policymakers, just released this morning.
You would imagine that the document would review what was said last time round and how things have changed since that time, but you’d be wrong. This is, after all, the bureaucracy at work: difficulties have to be brushed under carpets and stones left unturned.
…The general theme of obscurantism runs across the document. Whereas in previous years the temperature records have been shown unadulterated, now we have presentation of a single figure for each decade; surely an attempt to mislead rather than inform. And the pause is only addressed with handwaving arguments and vague allusions to ocean heat.
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/9/27/thoughts-on-the-spm.html
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Donna Laframboise:
9,000 Nobel Pretenders | NoFrakkingConsensus
The unadorned truth was door number one. Cringe-worthy exaggeration was door number two. The IPCC made the wrong call.
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Bob Tisdale at WUWT:
Regarding the cause of the warming, still living in fantasy world, they write:
Greenhouse gases contributed a global mean surface warming likely to be in the range of 0.5°C to 1.3°C over the period 1951−2010, with the contributions from other anthropogenic forcings, including the cooling effect of aerosols, likely to be in the range of −0.6°C to 0.1°C. The contribution from natural forcings is likely to be in the range of −0.1°C to 0.1°C, and from internal variability is likely to be in the range of −0.1°C to 0.1°C. Together these assessed contributions are consistent with the observed warming of approximately 0.6°C to 0.7°C over this period. {10.3}
They’re still misleading the public. Everyone knows (well, many of us know) their models can’t simulate the natural processes that cause surface temperatures to warm over multidecadal timeframes, yet they insist on continuing this myth.
Sorry IPCC – How You Portrayed the Global Temperature Plateau is Comical at Best
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Apart from the usual climate-fixated organs of the MSM, it’s being barely reported. Looks like a dead cat bounce to me …
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/armageddon-report-no-5/
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Jimbo says:
We can’t explain the increase in Antarctic sea ice extent. We have improved models that predict a decrease in extent. We don’t really know why but we will simulate it and create a scary scenario anyway.
D.1 Evaluation of Climate Models
Climate models have improved since the AR4…………..
Most models simulate a small downward trend in Antarctic sea ice extent, albeit with large inter-model spread, in contrast to the small upward trend in observations……
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There is low confidence in the scientific understanding of the small observed increase in Antarctic sea ice extent due to the incomplete and competing scientific explanations for the causes of change and low confidence in estimates of internal variability in that region
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5-SPM_Approved27Sep2013.pdf
Let’s all hope this is the last IPCC report. There is nothing useful here.
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Dr. Judith Curry:
The IPCC has officially (and anti-climactically) issued the AR5 WG1 Summary for Policy Makers. I haven’t had time to go through the report in detail, I mainly looked for these two statements. Note the changes in these two statements from the final draft discussed last week:
“Models do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10 –15 years.”
“It is extremely likely that human influence on climate caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951−2010.”
These changes as a result of the ‘conclave’ this week totally dissonates my cognitives. Well, IPCC has thrown down the gauntlet – if the pause continues beyond 15 years (well it already has), they are toast. Even though they still use the word ‘most’ in the attribution statement, they go all out and pretty much say it is all AGW: ”The best estimate of the human induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.”
In case you haven’t been paying attention, ‘extremely likely‘ in the attribution statement implies 95% confidence. Exactly what does 95% confidence mean in this context?
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Douglas Fischer – The Daily Climate What we’re seeing now: Climate scientists get Swift-boated
Six years after the IPCC’s massive Fourth Assessment Report was excoriated for a handful of errors, four years after the uproar over leaked emails put scientists on the defensive, the climate denial camp still controls the message.
http://www.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2013/09/swiftboating-climate-scientists
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Patrick J. Michaels and Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger – Band-aids Can’t Fix the New IPCC Report
The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) today released the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the physical science volume of its Fifth Assessment Report. The SPM is the most widely-read section of the IPCC reports and purports to summarize and highlight the contents of the thousand-odd pages of the full report. The SPM is agreed to word by word by the international attendees of the IPCC’s final editorial meeting which concluded as the SPM was released.
The Humpty Dumpty-esque report once claiming to represent the “consensus of scientists” has fallen from its exalted wall and cracked to pieces under the burdensome weight of its own cumbersome and self-serving processes, which is why all the governments’ scientists and all the governments’ men cannot put the IPCC report together again.
http://www.cato.org/blog/band-aids-cant-fix-new-ipcc-report
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Climate panel: warming ‘extremely likely’ man-made
By KARL RITTER
Associated Press
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Scientists now believe it’s “extremely likely” that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming, a long-term trend that is clear despite a recent plateau in the temperatures, an international climate panel said Friday.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used its strongest language yet in a report on the causes of climate change, prompting calls for global action to control emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
“If this isn’t an alarm bell, then I don’t know what one is. If ever there were an issue that demanded greater cooperation, partnership, and committed diplomacy, this is it,” said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_CLIMATE_CHANGE?SITE=VANOV&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
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Models of misinformation — climate reports melt under scrutiny
A last-ditch effort to refute climate “skeptics”—people unconvinced that we need to spend trillions to reshape our economies to halt or slow “climate change”– has failed.
Last week, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a study by 13 prestigious atmospheric scientists that supposedly provides “clear evidence for a discernible human influence on the thermal structure of the atmosphere.”
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/09/26/dont-be-fooled-latest-attempt-to-discredit-climate-skeptics-flops/
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Stefan Rahmstorf – Man’s role in global warming is rock solid, and natural variability’s role is close to nil.
“Natural internal variability and natural external forcings (eg the sun) have contributed virtually nothing to the warming since 1950″
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/the-new-ipcc-climate-report/
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Simon Donner
“It is probably the largest, most comprehensive scientific assessment in history. Not just of climate change, but of any scientific subject”
http://simondonner.blogspot.ca/2013/09/the-pause-in-public-understanding-of.html
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Brenda Ekwurzel, UCS
Warming has slowed in the last 15 years, but not stopped. (If the slow down in warming persists, it would suggest a problem with the models.)
“The global average surface temperature trend of late is like a speed bump, and we would expect the rate of temperature increase to speed up again just as most drivers do after clearing the speed bump.”
(Kenji asks: so, when then?)
http://blog.ucsusa.org/hot-topics-for-ipcc-release-surface-temperature-speed-bump-and-the-latest-on-extreme-events-253
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Dr. Roy Spencer: IPCC: “We don’t need no stinking climate sensitivity!”
The newly-released Summary for Policymakers of the IPCC’s Working Group I for the AR5 report reveals a dogged attempt to salvage the IPCC’s credibility amidst mounting evidence that it has gone overboard in its attempts to scare the global public over the last quarter century.
The recent ~15 year lull in warming is hardly mentioned at all (nothing to see here, move along).
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It’s been six long years of relentless torment inflicted by Neanderthal skeptics. Worse, the public was even starting to become hopeful about the future once again, and were becoming less afraid of climate. For the climate catastrophe everything had been looking so bleak as the pesky real observations kept glaringly contradicting the modeled catastrophes 15 years long.
But happy days are back again – the catastrophe is coming, the UN reassures the world. The 15 years of model failure are not significant after all. In fact the UN now says the models are better than ever and the climate scientists are now 95% confident that the climate catastrophe is coming and that our living standards are responsible for it. Never before have scientists been more confident.
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Climate skeptics have seized on the fact that the rate of warming over the past decade or so has been less than climate scientists predicted given the continued increase in carbon emissions. The IPCC report address the warming “hiatus,” as it’s been called, raising a number of possible explanations—the ocean absorbing the warmth, changes in the solar cycle, volcanic eruptions that cause cooling—without pointing the finger at a single one. Which just underscores how complex the climate system remains, even as we keep experimenting on it. The scientists will keep working on those questions and others…
Climate Scientists Issue Their Report. Now It’s Our Turn | TIME.com
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MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen Rips UN IPCC Report:
‘The latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence’ — ‘It is quite amazing to see the contortions the IPCC has to go through in order to keep the international climate agenda going’
Updates will follow, readers are welcome to point out other reactions in comments.
What am I missing? 3 decades of record warmth, 15 years of pause. Isn’t that the last half of the record warming has done nothing? I hate it when tipping points and talking points collide.
Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any
preceding decade since 1850 (see Figure SPM.1). In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983–2012 was
likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years (medium confidence). {2.4, 5.3}
“What am I missing? ”
A proper timescale?
Over the past 10,000 years the current Holocene epoch has been progressively cooling since the early “climate optimum”. Overall in the 10,000 years the world has cooled gradually by about 1.0 °C. There were however well documented temperature high points during the period, including the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods.
The most recent period of 1000 – 2000 AD is the coolest millennium of the whole epoch
As for this (short) 30-yr period, the Earth experienced it’s 2nd and 3rd strongest solar cycles since 1715, marked the end of the strongest 63-yr string of solar cycles in 11,400 years, FIVE El Nino events including the largest Super El Nino ever recorded, a 30-year PDO warming cycle and the start of a 30-yr AMO warming period….
And the CAGW ‘scientists also want us forget that there hasn’t been ANY statistically significant global warming trend since 1995, despite 1/3rd of ALL CO2 emissions since 1750 were made since 1995….
I just read a comment on the SMH website on an article about the SPM. The person claims that warming from CO2 is caused by emissions from developed countries. The person then went on to say that emissions of CO2 from developing countries, such as China and India, haven’t taken effect yet. I nearly chocked on my cranberry juice!
Many of the commenters are reading the announcement and publishing of the SPM as the actual IPCC report.
“bushbunny says:
September 27, 2013 at 10:31 pm”
I think you will find it was stromatolites, about 3.5 billon years ago via photosynthesis that kicked off “oxygenation” of the planet. Which caused the shallow iron rich water they lived in to “rust”, depositing it in the crust eventually forming iron ore.
Anthony,
Matt Ridley responds.
Not a scientist, but definitely a long term observer over my 75 years.
Was at Balmoral Beach on Sydney Harbour this morning. Lovely warm sunny day, water calm and crystal clear. Happy to report that the water level is unchanged since the days of my boyhood.
My take on the IPPC and its reports?
Pfft!
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James at 48,
Thank you for looking at the historical perspective on where our culture may be.
If the IPCC’s fate is the litmus test of your thought then I think we will know if you are right within a couple of years.
My ‘glass-is-half-full-view’ is that the last ~4 years it has not been looking good for the anti-science irrationalists of the IPCC Bureau and their ‘pseudo-scientific’processes. So I think science is a still a major player in our culture, but vigilance is needed more than ever to keep it that way.
John
Grey Oz, seems to me you have fallen for the catastrophic climate change driven by emissions of CO2 from human activities (That’s annually estimated, and accepted by the IPCC and scientific community, to be ~3% of 400ppm/v) and ONLY those emissions making life on this rock impossible boondoggle hook, line and sinker. Well, got news for you. The ONLY thing (Excluding asteroids, mega volcanoes etc) in this solar system that has the power to do that is the Sun. By the time the Sun has consumed all it’s fuel, it will have swollen to a red giant and have consumed all or most of he inner planets. Before that however, it would have burnt off ALL life on the ENTIRE surface of this rock effectively returning the Earth to a state similar to a time before an atmosphere formed. Sterile! This is not a question of hypotheses or theories or If’s, it’s a question of when.
In the meantime I suggest you throw another shrimp on the barby and crack open a few tubes of the amber nectar and enjoy your life and what fossil fuels brought you while you can.
Unlikely. See my guest thread here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/16/notes-from-skull-island-why-skeptics-arent-well-funded-and-well-organized/
That’s a suggesto falsi you’ve been fed. It suggests, falsely, that a further 70% increase would neutralize the oceans. In truth, it would take an over-10,000% increase in acidification measured by that method (number of a certain molecule, IIRC) to neutralize the ocean. The “30%” figure barely moves the needle on the PH scale.
Please don’t scare Grey Oz off. This has been the funniest reading I’ve done for a while. I get all these arguments from my friends who, like Grey Oz, have fallen hook, line and sinker for the alarmist lies. Your succinct answers, I’m filing away to bring out when I next get into an argument with them.
“bushbunny says:
September 27, 2013 at 10:08 pm
Petrol is burned and does not create CO2 it creates poisonous carbon monoxide.”
I think you will find petrol, refined from oil, is a fossil fuel and requires AIR at ~21% O2 to burn oxidising the carbon (Because petrol is a hydrocarbon fossil fuel) forming CO2, as well as, CO and other toxic gases like NOX and SOX.
In any case it is rather sad to learn you lost your son this way.
“Grey Oz says:
September 27, 2013 at 9:37 pm
…(and planes) powered by solar and wind will be eco-friendly.”
How would that work on a commercial scale and at night with solar? I can understand how solar panels can be applied to the air surfaces of an aircraft which many would not be fully exposed to the sun all the time, but not sure how you’d attach a suitably powerful wind turbine given their limited operation capability is high wind speeds. What about storage when there is no sun/wind? What’s the take off speed of a commercial sized aircraft and how would that work with a wind turbine fitted? Remember the Spruce Goose? It’s was a poor design, made of wood, which flew only once and when it did was barely able to manage a few meters (Ignoring some of the useful technology that was installed).
Really turned into an entertaining Saturday night!
Blackbird says:
“All of this evidence points to the continued strong warming of the Earth…”
You are as nuts as Grey Oz:
http://suyts.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/image266.png
If it was possible for either one of you to think for yourselves, it would be obvious to you that there is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening with current global temperatures. Everything observed now has happened before, repeatedly, and at times when CO2 was much lower. What does that tell you? THINK!!
But you cannot think for yourself. The IPCC is your religion. It fills a hole in your otherwise meaningless lives, so you cling to their pseudo-scientific nonsense like a drowning man clings to a stick. Pathetic.
If you could only think for yourself, the scales would fall from your eyes. But religious Belief is so much easier than thinking…
“Grey Oz says:
September 27, 2013 at 8:05 pm
So, dozens of governments are paying scientists all over the world to falsify results, and scientists are risking their careers to do this?”
Here’s an analogy I like to use to describe Govn’t “scientists” of the climate type.
“Govn’t “scientists” are like consultants. You hire a consultant to tell you the time. They ask to borrow your watch. You hand it over. They read and tell you the time (Accurate? Well you didn’t ask for an ACCURATE time did you?). They keep the watch. A few days later, you receive an invoice for services rendered.”
I am not going to make any more posts in reply to Grey Oz because s/he is just TOO FUNNY! I hope you don’t live anywhere near a library because you will find plenty of books that will deflate/disprove every single one of your points, statements, questions and arguments.
“Grey Oz says:
September 27, 2013 at 8:05 pm
So, dozens of governments are paying scientists all over the world to falsify results, and scientists are risking their careers to do this?”
Unfortunately, scientists who don’t [toe] the line are risking their careers.
Google Lysenko or Lysenkoism.
Peter Ferrara writes in Forbes about the similarities between Lysenkoism and Global Warming.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/04/28/the-disgraceful-episode-of-lysenkoism-brings-us-global-warming-theory/
Though those so-called “scientists” who ARE paid by the governments to support global are towing that line as well. Mod]
@Patrick Guinness Yes, the Aussie MSM has been suffering from verbal diarrhea with regards to this latest IPCC SPM. A fact left out is it’s NOT the actual AR5 report. It’s covered by ALL news outlets, it even takes top place in front of AFL grand final coverage.
Correction: 1979-1987. Eight years, darling. It was at the 4th World Wilderness Congress in September 1987 in Denver Colorado where Maurice Strong and Baron Edmund de Rothschild declared we had to overcome the “chilling, doom-laden prognostications of Dr. Irving Mintzer’s greenhouse effect” caused by CO2.
Dr. Mintzer has a BA from Berkeley in Art and Letters (the real title is cornier), a MBA (Berkeley), and a PhD in Energy Resources (Berkeley). He got his PhD in 1983 and by 1985 was working for Rothschild’s World Resources Institute in Washington DC (Rothschild funded it, he didn’t run it, or ‘found’ it officially). Mintzer wrote his “chilling, doom-laden prognostications” in August 1987 in a document I don’t have at hand, meaning it’s not beside me. There were eight or nine scientists, but I think it was eight, who were churning out the ‘CO2 is going to cause the temp to rise to fire alarm levels by 2100 AD’ papers based on models. Stuff straight out of Mother Goose.
At the end of this talk, Rothschild said he was going to get the WWF, Gro Harlem Brundtland, and UNEP (of course, his boys Mr. UNEP Maurice Strong and I. Michael Sweatman, former Chairman of the Royal Bank of Canada, were on stage with him while David Rockefeller was in the audience) to get on it. They called it “Global Climate Change.” Rothschild referred to it as a Second Marshall Plan to implement what he wanted.
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‘Shoes & Feel’,
I have similar ideas as yours about not discouraging the kind of dialog Grey Oz has politely offered in this venue.
Grey Oz is an asset for this venue because:
1. He/she is going down a list of talking points that looks uncannily like the ones @ur momisugly Cook’s IPCC centric blog, so he/she gives us a refresher without needing to go to Cookland. And he/she gives us personalized statements of the bureau-speak of the IPCC assessments.
2. His/her participation enhances the public perception that skeptics encourage both debate and an open marketplace for scientific discourse.
3. He/she gives skeptics an opportunity to refine our logic and expand our evidence.
4. We get to know more people in the community of those interested in climate. That is perhaps the most important asset that people like Grey Oz give us at this venue.
Welcome Grey Oz.
John
More hysterical reactions coming in.
“IPCC: 30 years to climate calamity if we carry on blowing the carbon budget”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/27/ipcc-world-dangerous-climate-change
“Climate change? Try catastrophic climate breakdown” [Monbiot]
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2013/sep/27/ipcc-climate-change-report-global-warming
The concept “climate change” is a flaw one until unequivocal demonstration that irreversible alterations on climate are scientifically supported. Until, now the only evidence are successive cycles of warming and cooling, and this defines “climate variation”.
Similar variations in climate as we are observing now have occurred in the middle age warming period without any interference of human activity. A present antropogenic effect, if any, is yet to be demonstrated.
[snip. Labeling others as “denialists” violates site Policy. — mod.]
“Black Sheep says:
September 28, 2013 at 5:35 am”
Are you trying to suggest you stand out in a herd? Your posts suggest you are just as “white” as all the other sheeple.
Black Sheep:
In your bloviation at September 28, 2013 at 5:35 am you assert
Really, you know that?
OK. Please state examples – or merely a single example – of climate behaviour which is now occurring and is known to be unprecedented.
We wish to be enlightened by this great and secret knowledge you claim to have. Is it really asking too much for you to share it with us? Or is this secret of unprecedented climate behaviour only available to the High Priests of the cult of AGW and their acolytes?
Oh, and I should add that fact-free pseudo scientific statements like yours don’t fly on this blog so if you want your assertion to take wing here then you need to share the secret.
Richard
Black Sheep says:
September 28, 2013 at 5:35 am
“I would suggest that it is you who needs to learn to think for yourself and try to escape the religious dogma of denialism..”
And you should learn about the Scientific Method. For 16 years there has been no warming. The Null Hypothesis – that the climate is doing exactly what it did all through the milennia – changing by itself – is sufficient to explain that. No CO2AGW hypothesis is needed. Occam’s razor leads us to discarding the CO2AGW theory.
The mispredictions by the climate models furthermore falsify the CO2AGW theory. The warmist scientists have produced 2700 papers about their theory? Too bad – they’re all falsified now it seems to me.
Take your issues of Nature and use them in one of the coming cold winters as heating material. That is their value.