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……
—–
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.
Richard Barnes:
Your post at September 27, 2013 at 9:53 am says
Science certainly does NOT have anything to do with it.
This is not a matter of opinion: it is a result of the “Role” the IPCC has and is tasked to provide.
Please read my above post at at September 27, 2013 at 8:59 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/27/reactions-to-ipcc-ar5-summary-for-policy-makers/#comment-1428543
What amazes me is the reluctance of people to accept the specified function and purpose of the IPCC despite the function and purpose being published in the public domain by the IPCC itself.
Richard
I predict that AR6 will find the IPCC, led by Professor John Cook, is 97% confident that climate change is caused by humans..
Jimbo says:
September 27, 2013 at 9:57 am
A warmer world would mean a wetter Sahara, as during the Holocene Climatic Optimum (see below) & previous hot spells, such as the Eemian Interglacial:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Subpluvial
Colder means dry, windy conditions, as shown by evidence supporting the Sahara Pump hypothesis.
Ar4 Summary for Policymakers = 18 pages
Ar5 Summary for Policymakers = 36 pages
How many pages until it stops being a summary
“The online debate is not reaching the consciousness of the general public.”
This comment by Peter Ward above is the only one here that counts. Every popular MSM is screaming the doomsday message, and its the only message people will hear. They won’t read the report, they won’t check out the debate, and they lack sufficient education to understand the discussion in any case. And they vote. Tony Abbott is a lonely man. None of his peers in the western world will do or think what Tony thinks – not Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, socialists or Conservatives. Welcome back to the future.
Note to climate activists: please don’t call me a “denier”. I prefer the more politically correct nickname “non-alarmist”.
I just love how they can release the summary before the report itself it released. Is somebody rewriting the body of the report to match the summary, or are they hoping nobody notices?
Today the IPCC Bureau issued the AR5 WG1 Summary for Policy Makers to a much more critically skeptical audience than the AR4 audience and a more scientifically prepared audience.
The IPCC Bureau has a obvious self-confidence crisis. It knows after >20 years and 5 assessment reports that hard physical science knowledge does not reasonably and unambiguously support their ‘a priori’ (posited before the the IPCC was chartered) premise of net harm to the Earth-Atmosphere System (EAS) from burning fossil fuels. They only have left a pseudo-scientific irrationalism in support of their premise. Their premise was not a guess in Feynman’s scientific process sense, instead their premise was a strategic tool for activism. They now know their premise can no longer serve to promote activism in any meaningful scientific context, this is their self-confidence crisis.
The IPCC Bureau has only one option to restore their self-confidence. The option is a new extremely over-the-top and radical MSM crusade on the Bureau’s behalf in support of their premise and activism. A new crusade that supports the IPCC at a much much higher capacity than it previously supported the them in the past >20 years.
So far the MSM hasn’t shown signs of willingness to do so. Oops.
Leading politicians are keen in their abilities to smell subtle shifts in politically useful winds. Downwind of the IPCC’s AR5 its smells of decayed political usefulness.
John
“”””””……..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……..”””””””
Well with high confidence they admit they don’t know the “equilibrium climate sensitivity” to better than three to one, and it might be as much as a 6″1 unknown. But fear not, because they are able to break down the detail contributions to this Wild Arse Guess estimate into its constituent parts, but for the natural forcings and the internal variability they are 100% uncertain as to even the direction of the effect; they could be as big in one direction as in the opposite direction. Now that is real information you can bank on.
You can take a left turn or you can take a right turn and we are absolutely sure that the left turn choice is as likely to be as wrong as the right turn choice is.
And for sure, the weather is never going to be in equilibrium, since the earth rotates on its tilted axis, besides going around the sun in an elliptical orbit.
So just when was it the last time the earth’s climate was in equilibrium ??
And by the way, just what is it that the official definition of “Climate Sensitivity” is Today ?
Is it the “s” in any of these equations ??
1/……T1 – T2 = s. log2(CO2,1/CO2,2) Where Ti is mean global surface Temperature.
2/……Same as #1 where Ti is mean global lower tropospheric air Temperature (say 2m altitude)
3/…….CO2,1 – CO2,2 = s. log2(T1/T2) ; where Ti same as #1
4/…….Same as #3 where Ti same as #2
5/…….T1 – T2 = s. (CO2,1 – CO2,2)
6/……..CO2,1 – CO2,2 = s. (T1 – T2)
7/……..Your favorite math function; eg y = exp (-1/x^2)
Now remember we know that the “climate Sensitivity” is the “s” in one of these equations, and the data is good enough to confirm which one, yet we don’t know the value of “s” in that equation to better than 3:1 uncertainty, and maybe only 6:1
Yes this really is robust science we are talking here.
When NIST starts to publish the USA official Government approved value for “s” for all USA commerce to use, then I will start to believe they know what they are talking about.
Now I understand that these equations sometimes are translated into different languages, and CO2 translates into Watts per square meter; which really is a bizarre transformation; and for extra credit the student can determine whether these are the raw climate sensitivity numbers and formulas, or maybe they are the ones with water vapor feedback factored in; or not, or perhaps they have cloud feedback included.
There’s not a lot of real world experimental data, in existence, that was observed with water vapor, and or cloud feedback turned off while the data was gathered.
But we are confident that the science is quite robust; even unequivocal !
How many trees did they kill writing this thing up?
Bjorn Lomborg writes
Lower Temp on Climate Change Hype
“””””……Jimbo says:
September 27, 2013 at 8:30 am
Scenario:
A group of the world’s top butterfly experts project with a 90% confidence level that Bermuda will see an increase in the total number of butterflies over the next 15 years. Fifteen years later there is no increase. The butterfly group issues a report and says that they are 95% confident and it is unequivocal that there will be an increase in the number of butterflies in the next 15 years. It’s like a Zombie.
The jig is winding down, the fat lady wants to sing, the ref is putting the whistle to his lips, the game is into stoppage time, the parrot is almost dead…….””””””
May I remind you that when the fat lady finally does sing (for a whole 18 minutes non stop), it is the end of the twilight of the gods; and those scoundrels are finally sent to their well deserved destiny.
May the IPCC follow them to the ashes of Valhalla.
Do liepards change their spots?
If not, why is everyone so surprised that the political summary doesn’t relfect the report, the report doesn’t reflect the data, and the hope that something might change doesn’t reflect years of denialist experience.
william astley says
….supports the assertion that planetary clouds in the tropics increase or decrease to resist forcing changes (by reflecting more or less sunlight into space, negative feedback) as opposed to the
IPCC’s assumed amplification of forcing (positive feedback) due to increased water vapour in the troposphere with no increase or a reduction in low level clouds (depending on general circulation model).
Henry says
wake up
the climate IS changing
NATURALLY
just live with it
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/27/reactions-to-ipcc-ar5-summary-for-policy-makers/#comment-1428431
Just watched the BBC news. They said that Global Warming had now been proven, because snow and ice levels are decreasing, and droughts are increasing.
Err, did they ever look at the data?
Snow INCREASING:
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/images/nhland_season1.gif
USA and world drought – no change or DECREASING:
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/images/indicator_figures/drought-figure1.gif
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7424/full/nature11575.html
Antarctic sea ice INCREASING:
http://suyts.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/image_thumb348.png?w=594&h=360
etc: etc: etc:
The IPCC is in the world of DENIAL. It is only going to get worse as this decade proceeds and the temperature trend takes on a definitive down trend, which is very likely to happen due to the prolonged solar minimum which is currently in progress ,along with all the secondary effects which will come about as a result.
I want the IPCC, to stick to their agenda ,so when the time really comes(very soon) they will fall even harder flat on their faces and people like myself and others will be able to say; I TOLD YOU SO.
The IPCC is clueless ,or are liars or both and future data is only going to serve to prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
LOOK FOR THESE SOLAR PARAMETER AVERAGES TO BECOME THE NORM AS THIS DECADE PROCEEDS AND WATCH THE TEMPERATURE TREND IN RESPONSE.
They are;
solar flux avg. sub 90.
cosmic ray count avg. north of 6500 per min.
solar irridiance avg. off .015% or more.
solar wind avg. 350 km/sec. or less.
ap index avg. 5.0 or lower 98+% of the time.
e10.7 flux avg. 100 units or less.
The above following a period of sub-solar activity in general which started in earnest in year 2005.
From my understanding of the work of Donna Laframboise, the IPCC:
1. Does not comply with its charter / framework basis.
2. Does not follow its own guidelines
3. States publicaly what is factually incorrect, including in its assessment reports.
4. Has significant staff that are activists and also, unjustifiably, significant staff that are low experience scientists.
Corollary=> Since it is a part of the UN, it is not what the UN says it is either.
John
And yet, for AGW and the UN-IPCC That Beat Goes On, And On, And On….
UPDATE 1-U.S. backs market scheme for aviation emissions from 2020
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/26/aviation-climate-idUSL2N0HM1ZF20130926
If it is available, now might be a good time to release the final emails from Climategate 3. Perhaps someone from the Maldives is willing to stick out his neck?
Getting old, grey and decrepit, perhaps I should summarize my own thinking on this global warming stuff.
1) From available data, increase in world temperatures since 1850 is about, say .09 C;
2) Thanks to Hansen, New Zealand data, Iceland data, Columbia data, Darwin data etc. etc. etc. were “adjusted” to suit his purposes, therefore deduct .05;
3) Homogenization of the temperature records have had a lamentable tendency to “adjust” upward.
Being a nice fellow, deduct .05;
4) Taking a couple of thousand monitoring stations off-line to aide the global warming scare…..
still being nice, deduct .05;
5) Urban Heat Island effect: still being nice: 0.05
Doing the math on a calculator…………….I end up at .07 degrees increase over (say) 163 years, which is about 0.5 degrees per century.
Coming out of the LIA, where is the problem? It would take till 2250 for a 2 degree rise!
– – – – – – –
more soylent green!
Astute comment!
The WG1’s scientific leadership team could potentially face a supreme test of their integrity. Do they or do they not change the ‘science’ in the WG1 science report, if requested by the IPCC Bureau, to match the revisions made over the last 4 days in the draft SPM that became this final SPM for WG1?
I think the WG1 science leadership team was selected by the IPCC Bureau using a strictly confidential selection criteria ( see IAC report and Laframboise’s books). The WG1 team could have been selected on a basis of being supportive of changing science when needed for a greater social purpose.
Based on CG1 and CG2, if it occurs in the AR5 process, then it would not be entirely unprecedented.
John
Pointman says:
“Apart from the usual climate-fixated organs of the MSM, it’s being barely reported. Looks like a dead cat bounce to me …”
Check google trends for “Global Warming”. There is indeed a very small bounce from a recent all time low in interest since 2005.
The public obviously has other problems.
But, what about the poley bears? I have looked in vain through the report for information about the fate of the poley bears. Yet, they have been the mascots of CAGW for years. Oh, well.
The SPM seems to be a damp squib. The inability to deal with sensitivity makes it look like a recommendation to go to war even though we don’t know whether the other party has any hostile intentions whatsoever. Policy analysts around the world who advise governments will not be slow to point this out.
To save face, there will still be huffing and puffing and rhetoric by politicians. But the rivers of cash will quite likely slow down to a trickle.
Bbould says at September 27, 2013 at 9:25 am
I wish.
They are proven wrong… for their previous predictions.
But I think it is worth looking at the lower limits of their current predictions for global temperature rise.
It looks like they are putting the sceptic (no discernible impact) scenario into the mainstream of climate science.
Therefore sceptics should be invited to every public debate on the science. That is an opportunity.
Ross McKitrick says:
September 27, 2013 at 5:32 am
Perfect!
Stuart B says:
September 27, 2013 at 9:11 am
“I’m just getting so angry with these people – they had a chance to climb down gracefully, save their careers, and incidentally do the rest of the world a favour, and they blew it!”
They are very successful parasites leading very wealthy parasitic lifestyles. They blew nothing. They serve the system; the system rewards them for pretending to be objective scientists, when everyone who cares to look sees them for the fat leeches they are.
Let’s look where the next climate junket will lead them. Last one was in the Al Qaeda-funding slaveholder state of Qatar; .
Next one? In November in Warsaw.
Oy vey.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference
Let’s see how many screaming Greenshirts the EU carts there this time.