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.
1850 is used as a datum point. Curiously, it is about 4.8 billion seconds ago, so approx one second for every year in the life of the planet. Not a great length of time to measure the health of the planet, is it? Doctor: “How have you been, Pat?”. Me: “Great for the last 59 seconds, Doc!”
In the Sacramento Bee :
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/09/28/5776593/poll-voters-turn-against-california.html#storylink=cpy
This isn’t news. In fact Jerry Brown’s bullet train is exactly as unpopular as it was last year.
The interesting thing is this was posted on the day of the AR5 release. A poll sponsored by the Los Angeles Times reported in the Sac Bee, both of which are unapolgetic Democrat mouth organs.
So what does it mean? Jerry Brown can be moved from the bullet train, and by extention his position on global warming is in flux.
That’s what it means.
Pat Condell on left wing students who refuse to accept reality. Also applies to quite a lot of older folks, many of them climate scientists… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85q6BOnwIAQ
“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.” I would like to see the evidence this scientist has to confidentaly state it is a “speed bump.” Alternative hypotheses would be: (1) “It is the start of a long term secular decline in temperature.” or (2) This could be a really long period of level termperatures; or (3) This was a really bad speed bump that took out my shock absorbers and my tranny.
Now that the summery for policy makers has been published, does any one know when the actual report itself will be available.
From the information I’ve seen this weekend the IPCC AR5 report has not yet been published???
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
The button marked Full Report is not responding
@ur momisugly Messenger September 29, 2013 at 12:07 am
They are right, only a loony would chase a unicorn:
Isidore of Seville [7th century CE] (Etymologies, Book 12, 2:12-13): The Greek word rhinoceros, meaning “with horn in nose,” refers to the same beast as the names monoceros or unicorn [Isidore does not distinguish between them]. This is a four-footed beast that has a single horn on its forehead; it is very strong and pierces anything it attacks. It fights with elephants and kills them by wounding them in the belly. The unicorn is too strong to be caught by hunters, except by a trick: if a virgin girl is placed in front of a unicorn and she bares her breast to it, all of its fierceness will cease and it will lay its head on her bosom, and thus quieted is easily caught.
Just so you know how to counter this charge in future
I agree with Judith Curry, put the IPCC down. And cancel the UN Climate Change Fund, that Oz was giving 660 million a year too. We could do better, reenforcing levies in flood areas, dealing with forest or bush fires, and building more dams to offset drought. And providing solar panels to pensioners free.
Lindzen as usual hits the nail straight on the head:
“They are proclaiming increased confidence in their models as the discrepancies between their models and observations increase.”
“Finally, in attributing warming to man, they fail to point out that the warming has been small, and totally consistent with there being nothing to be alarmed about.”
Ross McKitrick says:
September 27, 2013 at 5:32 am
SPM in a nutshell: Since we started in 1990 we were right about the Arctic, wrong about the Antarctic, wrong about the tropical troposphere, wrong about the surface, wrong about hurricanes, wrong about the Himalayas, wrong about sensitivity, clueless on clouds and useless on regional trends. And on that basis we’re 95% confident we’re right.
Thanks, that sums it up in a sentence.
Bill Illis says:
September 27, 2013 at 5:35 am
…The graphic showing observed change in temperature relative to the climate models shown in earlier drafts is not included in the report anymore.
Hm, wondering if this has anything to do with the fact it is not supporting the affirmations?
Gary Dean says:
September 27, 2013 at 4:59 am
My reaction is it’s all very depressing. By that I mean mankind’s inability to collectively face such important issues.
Right Gary. Even unable to face and clearly state the facts, before getting into action, that is even more depressing.
Stephen Rasey says:
September 27, 2013 at 7:41 am
“Hide the Decline” of the Best Estimate.
Yes, it is how “the science” works … not science.
Every now an then an alarmist appears. Now we have Grey Oz. It is interesting to see that alarmists usually posts by the dozen in one thread and then vanish for ever in the internet nirvana.
Grey Oz says:
September 27, 2013 at 4:37 pm
97% of the worlds scientists agree that the world is warming and that mankind is responsible for most of it.
Grey, when parroting something, did it ever occur to you to check what you say? Where the 97% comes from? This might be an easier exercise then talking about science. Just look this time on skeptics sites, or stay here at WUWT. Or if you want come with the alarmist information and have it trashed by us here, as we know the info.
Grey Oz says:
September 27, 2013 at 4:42 pm
Arctic sea ice reached its smallest extent ever recorded by satellites at 1.32 million square miles (3.41 million square kilometers). That is about half the size of the average extent from 1979 to 2010.
Yes and? It was completely ice free some 6000 years ago and there was no catastrophy related to that. All previous interglacials were warmer than this one and? What does the ice minimum of 2012 prove?
Grey Oz says:
September 27, 2013 at 5:01 pm
Each decade is warmer than the last and when the arctic melts, the carbon and methane trapped in ice, permafrost, ground stores… will enter the atmosphere and double the amount of greenhouse gas concentration we currently have.
See my above question. It was warmer before, why did the catastrophy not happen then?
See also Latitude’s question to you:
Latitude says:
September 27, 2013 at 6:12 pm
uh no, can you read a NOAA ice core graph?
http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/histo4.png
Oz, why is it that at the one point that CO2 levels should have had the most effect…
…temperatures went down?
Also db answered above:
dbstealey says:
September 27, 2013 at 8:46 pm
and finally Gary:
Gary Pearse says:
September 28, 2013 at 10:59 am
Grey, I think by now you are gaining some understanding of where you have ill-advisedly strayed.
well potentially that was for our Grey. He either will duck and ran to the alarmist sites or might start to think for himself?
The article about Swift-boating was unintentionally accurate.
Some on the left have tried to push the term to mean inaccurate smearing of a subject, in the original, Kerry, and now, the climate change machine.
However, while there were excesses and mistakes by the Swift boaters in the original, the message was largely accurate, and served to correct a misleading message propagated by the Kerry team. Then, as now, the side desperately trying to maintain a fiction, not just insist that their side is right, but the objections to their side are motivated by hate and partisan rancor rather than facts. They are trying to obscure the message by tying it to another failed campaign, inadvertently missing that the public knows that Swift-boating is the marshaling of facts, not smears.
Watching the MSM coverage on this latest rancid piece of tripe, one has to accept that the “journalists” are past their sell by date.
It seems the only place we can find in depth analysis of this and other issues is online. Time the MSM completed their suicidal excercises and went broke, sparing us the reams of propoganda!
“The Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) is being released in four parts between September 2013 and November 2014.”
http://www.ipcc.ch/activities/activities.shtml#.UkgRqBRwaM8
A summery for a report that has not been completed yet??????
Lars P says:
September 29, 2013 at 4:58 am
Grey Oz says:
September 27, 2013 at 4:42 pm
“Arctic sea ice reached its smallest extent ever recorded by satellites at 1.32 million square miles (3.41 million square kilometers). That is about half the size of the average extent from 1979 to 2010.”
Yes and? It was completely ice free some 6000 years ago and there was no catastrophy related to that. All previous interglacials were warmer than this one and? What does the ice minimum of 2012 prove?
I’m sure that anyone living on ‘Doggerland’ 6,000 years ago would disagree with you about a catastophy!
http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/archaeology/research/projects/title_89282_en.html
Those living around the Black Sea might well agree with them!
From Bac Pierre
I am neither a sceptic nor a warmist, I just follow what is going on; I am an old physicist with experience in nuclear, particle, condensed matter and astro-physics (I mean I have published >12 papers in each of these fields, >200 all together). I share your criticisms of AR5, I dont share your claims that we shall have global cooling. I do believe (I mean believe, a non-scientific behaviour) that we should be careful not to throw much more CO2 in atmosphere than what there is already, just a precaution in view of the fragility of the equilibrium in which we survive. But we should not panick as IPCC invites us to do (more via those who speak in its name than via what is actually written). Just for you to know that I am not Grey Oz…
But my point is different. I am impressed by the similitude between the public perception of the climate problem and that of the nuclear problem. In both cases irrationality, mythology and emotion have taken over, there is a complete split between advocates and ennemies – including among scientists! – alarmists are overdoing their brain washing up to a point where irreversible bad decisions are being taken: some countries have banned nuclear energy, some people are contemplating spreading the atmosphere with aerosols, the oceans with iron sulfate, not to mention the million square kilometres of space mirrors… Gigantic waste of money in electric cars (the most inefficient use of fossil energy one can dream of), some renewables, etc… It seems to me that there is a 95% probability (to use the jargon now common in climate circles) that we shall end up the same way in climate policy as we did in nuclear policy, a plain irrational disaster. I am curious to know how you react to these thoughts, you seem to never mention this aspect of the question.
BBC Radio 4, Tuesday 1st October 2013 at 15:30 BST
( or in other words 2013-10-01T14:30:00Z )
Costing the Earth 5/11:
“Tom Heap analyses the latest findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, investigating what has changed since the scientific (sic) body’s last report in 2007.”
A real opportunity for the BBC to demonstrate impartiality for 30 minutes. I’m holding my breath…
Addendum;
http://drtimball.com/2013/17-year-warming-hiatus-causes-panic-cover-up-ipcc-duplicity-continues/
If the IPCC were clever they would have admitted the plateau and said that global warming has actually peaked because CO2 has reached it’s saturation point. Then they should have went on to say, from here on increased levels of CO2 will cause global cooling as it replaces other more effective greenhouse gasses such as water vapor and methane.
Why should they have done this?
It is still a crisis, man is still the cause, we still need carbon taxes, we still need funding to study it and we still need a one world government to solve it because global cooling is actually worse than global warming.
Then flip-flop again when the earth starts to heat up again in 30 years.
I find it curious that melting of the arctic ice is causing such fear. Let us grant that it would wipe out the polar bears (I don’t believe it). Other than that, what harm would it cause? All that ice is useless. A warmer arctic region might actually be habitable and useful. There are all sorts of mineral wealth in the arctic: oil, diamonds, gas, metals. Boreal forests might grow better. Horrors! A frozen useless place with little life might become useful? Can’t have that!
If the IPCC were clever they would have admitted the plateau..
exactly…..you have to keep your eye on the ball
They didn’t predict the lull in temps..at the exact same time that CO2 levels should have had the most effect
they didn’t predict the warm hiding in the deep ocean
they didn’t predict Arctic ice and Antarctic ice increasing this year
and they didn’t predict tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, floods……extreme weather events
…going down at the exact same time CO2 levels should have had the most effect
They have predicted nothing…….
In political terms, AR5 was actually the incoherent and rambling suicide note of the IPCC.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/in-the-aftermath-of-ar5/
Pointman
The Summary for Policy Makers is exemplary in its honesty in labeling products of global warming research as “projections” and “evaluations.” Having done so, it fails to honestly admit that projections and evaluations are of no earthly use to a policy maker in making policy. What a policy maker needs for this purpose are the predictions and validations that are not products of this research. It compounds this error by expressing a high level of statistical confidence in AGW when one can have no statistical confidence at all due to the rampant methodological errors.
Phil. says:
September 29, 2013 at 7:02 am
I’m sure that anyone living on ‘Doggerland’ 6,000 years ago would disagree with you about a catastophy!
http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/archaeology/research/projects/title_89282_en.html
Those living around the Black Sea might well agree with them!
Well Phil, thanks for the answer, interesting points, however the Doggerland and Black Sea events happened before the 6000 years ago timescale.
Doggerland was submerged about 8500 years ago until about 7000 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
Also the Black Sea deluge hypothesis is putting it at about 7500 years ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_theory
My point was that even with the greenhouse gases increasing in the atmosphere, the thawing of the arctic, with all that CO2 and CH4 released, what happened 6000 years ago was not further increase of the temperature but gradual cooling which led to the formation of the Sahara desert:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data6.html
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No. There’s been exaggeration at all points.
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It seems they are good at proposing taxes based on hot air.