There’s so much to talk about in the IPCC AR5 report, and I have other obligations this weekend. So, it seems time for an open thread on the subject.
A few starting thoughts:
1. It seems news coverage is rather muted. Google News says there are 1087 news media articles that use the phrase “IPCC AR5” as of this writing. That’s low. Typically a major story will get from 2000-4000 stories. Many of the 1087 are blog posts from new media outlets like Huffington Post. The typical outlets like NYT and the Guardian have their obligatory boilerplate coverage, but it doesn’t seem to have much trickle down. The phrase “It doesn’t play in Peoria” might be an apt description of the news coverage.
2. It seems the climate skeptics have landed and have obtained a beachhead. Many stories I’ve viewed contain skeptical opinions, far more so than in 2007 with AR4. Even the NYT in this story U.N. Climate Panel Endorses Ceiling on Global Emissions mentioned the Heartland Institute’s opinion about how many degrees of warming might be expected.
3. The science is apparently not settled at all. The failure of the IPCC to give a “best estimate” number for climate sensitivity, which breaks with tradition in the previous four reports, is remarkable. In a footnote at the bottom of page 11 of the SPM, it seems that there is dissension in the science, and in the ranks:
![nobest-estimate-sensitivity[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/nobest-estimate-sensitivity1.jpg?quality=83)
So much for the much ballyhooed “consensus”.
Dr. Roy Spencer sums it up:
A best estimate for climate sensitivity — unarguably THE most important climate change variable — is no longer provided, due to mounting contradictory evidence on whether the climate system really cares very much about whether there are 2, or 3, or 4, parts of CO2 per 10,000 parts atmosphere.
YET…the IPCC claims their confidence has DOUBLED (uncertainty reduced from 10% that 5%) regarding their claim that humans are most of the cause behind the warming trend in the last 50 years or so:
“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.”
4. The things that we saw with the leaked SPM draft that suggested a more moderate approach, seem to have been disappeared. For example, Bob Tisdale has done a before and after comparison here: Side-By-Side Comparison of Draft and Final IPCC AR5 SPM on Warming Plateau and Attribution and noted that “It appears the politicians agreed to delete the attribution discussion of the warming plateau.”
You can do your own comparisons with the two documents:
the final draft (7Jun2013) and the approved final version (27Sep2013)
5. Dr. Richard Lindzen has made a statement, via Climate Depot, that sums up what many of us think, and why AR5 SPM is a credibility train wreck:
I think that the latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence. They are proclaiming increased confidence in their models as the discrepancies between their models and observations increase.
Their excuse for the absence of warming over the past 17 years is that the heat is hiding in the deep ocean. However, this is simply an admission that the models fail to simulate the exchanges of heat between the surface layers and the deeper oceans. However, it is this heat transport that plays a major role in natural internal variability of climate, and the IPCC assertions that observed warming can be attributed to man depend crucially on their assertion that these models accurately simulate natural internal variability. Thus, they now, somewhat obscurely, admit that their crucial assumption was totally unjustified.
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. It is quite amazing to see the contortions the IPCC has to go through in order to keep the international climate agenda going.
6. On the plus side, contrary to ongoing claims from that alarmist media mill side there are no mentions of tornadoes and hurricanes in the extreme weather events section. They give low confidence to tropical storm activity being connected to climate change, and don’t mention mesoscale events like tornadoes and thunderstorms at all. Similarly, they give low confidence to drought and flood attribution.
They’ve only talked about heat waves and precipitation events and being connected. From Page 4 of the SPM:
This is consistent with what was reported last year in the IPCC SREX report ( IPCC Special Report on Extremes PDF)
From Chapter 4 of the SREX:
- “There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change”
- “The statement about the absence of trends in impacts attributable to natural or anthropogenic climate change holds for tropical and extratropical storms and tornados”
- “The absence of an attributable climate change signal in losses also holds for flood losses”
Let’s hope this lack of attribution of severe storms to “man made climate change” in AR5 finally nails the lid shut on the claims of Hurricane Sandy, tornado outbreaks, and other favorite “lets not let a good crisis go to waste” media bleatings about climate change.
Now with two IPCC reports making no connection, and with Nature’s editorial last year dashing alarmist hopes of linking extreme weather events to global warming saying:
Better models are needed before exceptional events can be reliably linked to global warming.
…we can finally call it a dead issue.
There’s simply no connection between droughts, hurricanes, thunderstorms, flash floods, tornadoes and “climate change”. Note to Brad Johnson of “Forecast the Facts”, and Bill McKibben of 350.org, both of whom daily try to link weather events to climate change: IPCC says STFU.
There are many more things of interest to discuss, but this should provide a good primer. – Anthony
It’s going to be a long & winding road toward scientific reality:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/27/8-damning-facts-from-the-u-n-s-climate-change-report.html
On the hidden heat. One assume it got there starting at the top layers of the ocean and then going down. If this is the case, would there not be a pattern from the Argos readings of temperatures increasing and then decreasing as far down as the buoys go.
Layman alert. Is that so stupid, what I posit above?
Missing heat hiding in the deep ocean….hiding the decline…what’s with these folks & their proclivity to want to hide things? Oh, wait, I think I get it….
One of the best things to happen out of this controversy is the dismantling of the saw “The science is settled.” The IPCC folks used to scoff at solar influences on climate….now they gladly embrace a quiet sun as evidence for a pause in warming. Rather duplicitous….. I think it is safe to say that the science is far from being settled.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m enjoying this spectacle immensely!! The Hockey Team and Al Gore got away with murder for years, costing the world’s consumers massive sums spent on ill-advised schemes of dubious value. Won’t get fooled again. Open the windows and let the light in.
Jabba Le Chat (@ur momisuglyJabbaLeChat) says:
September 28, 2013 at 9:39 am
@ur momisugly Neil Jordan
> Try using Tinyurl and your mega link shrinks to http://tinyurl.com/k5e9xv9
Or he could have followed it through Google and gotten to http://www.1000misspenthours.com/posters/postersh-m/monsterthatchallengedtheworld.jpg
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Again this is addressed to the community interested in the history of Western Philosophy – this is installment #2.
NOTE: This one is . . . . very complicated because the source philosophy’s concepts are famously convoluted.
Lindzen quote above mentions the IPCC assertions of model merits and its reluctance to clearly state there is any significance in observations that can discredit the model assertions.
Is there a philosophic root in the IPCC’s epistemic priority of climate models over observational knowledge? Can you see the IPCC Bureau’s intellects using the irrational epistemology of Kant’s ‘analytic-synthetic dichotomy***’ to justify giving more ‘scientific’ weight to models (analytic propositions) over observations based knowledge (synthetic propositions)?
{ *** I will very very simply paraphrase the extremely convoluted and diffuse Kant source. The A-S dichotomy is that if something is real (synthetic) it cannot be true (analytic) and if it is true then it cannot be real.}
Kant found the analytic more of a source of human idealism / creativity / inspiration, not so much with synthetic.
It appears the IPCC finds more scientific significance and / or epistemic value in models (analytic), not so much in observational (synthetic) knowledge.
Coincidence or not wrt Kant epistemology versus IPCC bias toward models over observations?
John
Three Mile Island, Global Warming and the CIA
http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/three-mile-island-global-warming-and-the-cia/
It’s over for the alarmists. The media will turn on them sooner rather than later. The concepts are fairly easy to understand, even for a dummy like me.
In Germany and Switzerland the majority of reader comments, even in leftist papers, have turned against climate alarmism – a first. On liberal TV programs you can learn about the damage wrought by “climate measures” like bio-fuel production. The tide has turned.
The SOP on sensitivity and on models has gutted the IPCC as a useful source for policy makers.
Why would you institute a carbon tax or cap and trade if you have no idea what effect, if any, the resulting reduction in CO2 emissions would have on temperature? And why would you be alarmed by model based scare stories if the models they are based on have been discredited by the IPCC in its frantic attempt to explain “the pause”.
More policy stuff at my site: http://jaycurrie.wordpress.com/2013/09/28/the-divergence-problem/
Once more with feeling. Can anyone answer this?
On the hidden heat. One assume it got there starting at the top layers of the ocean and then going down. If this is the case, would there not be a pattern from the Argos readings of temperatures increasing and then decreasing as far down as the buoys go.
Layman alert. Is that so stupid, what I posit above?
jeremyp99:
re your question at September 28, 2013 at 1:59 pm, viz
Probably but not certainly. There are not many buoys and the ocean is big. And that is why the myth of heat hiding in the ocean depths is possible although improbable.
But, as you imply, nobody knows how the heat could have got down there, and if it did it must have done it where there are no Argo buoys.
Richard
Calm, model Ptlomeu was completely wrong in concept. But it worked reasonably. and with acceptable accuracy.
Beyond the current climate models.
Conclusion: The assertions of IPCC5 can take me to extreme reactions.
How did CO2 know that is was time to stop warming the air and start warming the bottom of the sea?
I just posted the following comment @ur momisugly Judith Curry’s blog in the thread “IPCC diagnosis – permanent paradigm paralysis”
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Judith,
I endorse explicitly your call for the IPCC to be disbanded.
And I recommend to the broader climate science community to do preliminary pre-planning for an international inter-university consortium to provide a non-governmental way to achieve professional guidance and auditing and assessment of climate science. Please participate in its leadership and formation.
Although I agree with your comprehensively negative assessment of the IPCC, I do not agree with your thinking on the fundamental causes of the manifold IPCC failures and missteps and irrational myopias. I think the fundamental causes are very profoundly at the epistemological basis of reasoning and science in the areas radically influenced by post-modern philosophy.
John
John Whitman says:
September 28, 2013 at 12:48 pm
“Is there a philosophic root in the IPCC’s epistemic priority of climate models over observational knowledge? Can you see the IPCC Bureau’s intellects using the irrational epistemology of Kant’s ‘analytic-synthetic dichotomy***’ to justify giving more ‘scientific’ weight to models (analytic propositions) over observations based knowledge (synthetic propositions)?”
Kant’s denial of cause and effect was useful for the Prussian state to form their mindless desindividualized/dehumanized soldier. Basically just a replay of Plato’s cave allegory.
Climate models are similar – only now the prisoners in the cave don’t watch shadows of the real world; they get a computer animated movie via a video beamer.
could someone please inform the science advisor to the uk government that individual weather events cannot be attributed to global warming.
within the last 3 days mark walport (i point blank refuse to use his title of sir) has implicitly stated on the bbc
” we can now say that certain extreme weather events can be attributed to climate change”.
it would appear he is either a liar,or a fool.
richardscourtney;
But, as you imply, nobody knows how the heat could have got down there, and if it did it must have done it where there are no Argo buoys.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
As improbable as it is, it seems to me that if it were true, it further boxes the IPCC into a corner. The heat capacity of the oceans is what? 1200 times that of the atmosphere? If the missing heat is going into the oceans, then it will take 1200 times as long to get an increase of a single degree as first thought, and that is assuming they got everything else correct, which they clearly have not.
When I see this claim of heat going into the oceans, it is usually accompanied by some hand waving raising the spectre of this trapped heat all coming out at once and lighting the atmosphere up with ten’s of degrees of heating all at once. Which in turn would defy the laws of physics by an order of magnitude more ludicrous than anything we have seen to date out of the IPCC.
davidmhoffer:
Thankyou for your post addressed to me at September 28, 2013 at 2:57 pm.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/28/thoughts-on-ipcc-ar5-spm-discussion-thread/#comment-1430090
Yes. I very strongly agree.
Richard
John Whitman says:
September 28, 2013 at 2:42 pm
“Judith Curry wrote,
Fortunately much of the population seems to be immune, but some governments seem highly susceptible to the disease. “”
That’s stupid. The IPCC was made to order BY the governments to have a pretense for confiscating more of the assets of the citizens. Doesn’t she know this?
GLOBE international has infiltrated every party in the Western “democracies” and controls the energy policies of that party. The goal is to have a scientific pretense to establish biofuel production and wind/solar to better buffer the next oil price shock.
It is not even a terribly nefarious goal; but the perversion of science was unnecessary. A rational debate of the goal is not possible because they have from the start operated with deception.
Re milodonharlani says: September 28, 2013 at 11:56 am
You drilled into a nerve on the future of the LA Times. At one time, the new prospective purchasers were considered to be none other than the Koch Brothers:
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/15/business/la-fi-koch-oaktree-protest-20130515
“Unions protest over potential sale of L.A. Times to Koch brothers
“Demonstrators protesting the potential sale of The Times to the politically conservative Koch brothers march outside Oaktree Capital Management headquarters.”
Last month, that alternative was dropped.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/356590/koch-brothers-will-not-purchase-la-times-not-profitable-venture-eliana-johnson
“During an in-house awards ceremony in April, roughly half of the staff of the L.A. Times signaled their intent to quit the paper if the Koch brothers purchased it; three Los Angeles City Council members introduced a motion calling for the council to pull investments by the city’s pension funds from the paper if it is sold to buyers who did not support “professional and objective journalism.” The source adds that, “While they respect the right of the protesters and politicians to rail against the Kochs’ owning newspapers, they had no impact on the decision.””
Keitho,
the “scientists”, activists, politicians and snake-oil salesmen are so heavily committed to this scam, that they cannot, ever, back down. There will always be another excuse.
The SPM says,
The SPM’s claim that volcanic eruptions and a reduced TSI during 1998 to 2012 could cause the pause in warming was fabricated and is false. NASA publishes satellite data that show a large reduction in the amount of volcanic aerosols during the recent period. Blogger Lucia Liljegren reports that the average forcing from the lack of volcanic eruption during 1998 to 2012 is 0.28 W/m2 more than the period [1951] to 2012 as shown in the graph.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/VolcanicAerosols-500×500.png
(For comparison, the carbon dioxide (CO2) forcing increase during the period 1998 to 2012 was 0.43 W/m2.) There were no volcanoes since 1992 that could have caused a cooling effect.
The TSI solar forcing is a trivial 0.018 W/m2 less during 1998 to 2012 than 1951 to 2012. The volcanic and solar forcing is 0.26 W/m2 greater in the recent period, which would have cause increased warming, not a pause.
…It seems the climate skeptics have landed and have obtained a beachhead. …
Here is a communique from the front:
There is still widespread fighting in the hinterland, and our troops have yet to obtain all their primary objectives, though there is active fighting in the comment columns of major newspapers. The enemy is, however, woefully short of scientific ammunition and fuel as a result of limited but very accurate bombardment with paper rebuttals, so we expect that there will be a general retreat to prepared defensive positions over the next few weeks. These will probably be of the “Even if Global Warming isn’t happening it’s still a good idea to cut back on CO2” type.
On other fronts the enemy alliance of green activists and businessmen/politicians is showing increasing strain, and it seems likely that a flank may be exposed before too long. If this happens, of course, we will expect to overrun their positions in a matter of days….
Correction: “1915 to 2012” should be “1951 to 2012” in the previous post.
@John Whitman
…Although I agree with your comprehensively negative assessment of the IPCC, I do not agree with your thinking on the fundamental causes of the manifold IPCC failures and missteps and irrational myopias. I think the fundamental causes are very profoundly at the epistemological basis of reasoning and science in the areas radically influenced by post-modern philosophy…
Um. I think that the fundamental cause was that the IPCC was commissioned by activists and scam merchants with a message to push and a profit to make respectively. As time went by it became increasingly staffed by them. Senior staff and administrators were then bamboozled into acquiescence by preying on their ignorance and desire to appear important and not to lose face, while junior staff were browbeaten into compliance.
If that’s another way of saying what you have just said above, then I agree with you…