The 2013 IPCC AR5 Report: Facts -vs- Fictions

Brilliant summation. It’s a good idea to address the big flaws in the claims and theories of the alarmists. Too often people are drawn into technical minutia regarding localised precipitation events or obscure papers full of maths and measurements trying to reveal small anomalies and get confused by the barrage of information coming out.
I’m wondering if it’s possible to have links to all the graphs provided tracing them back to the measurement source because if you show one of these graphs the alarmists will claim it’s made up.
Anthony, I’m also wondering if perhaps you might release the equivalent of ‘The skeptic’s handbook’ a comprehensive compendium of all the evidence against CAGW for the layman. Dr David Evans has done a phenomenal job summarising the case against CAGW but perhaps a more in depth version also debunking the IPCC reports might be required.
I apologise for my laziness if it already exists in some form on your site (no doubt the entirety of articles is precisely this). I believe a well-resourced, centralised, structured knowledge-base is essential in addressing the views of alarmists.

Outstanding point by point rebuttal!

Meanwhile back in Australia, the now defunct climate commission (now crowd funded and rebadged as The Climate Council) has produced a report on the latest IPCC report which is even more alarmist than the original report:
http://www.climatecouncil.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/CC.report.1.2.pdf

Pippen Kool says:
October 3, 2013 at 6:25 pm
“After all these years, IPCC still doesn’t get it—we’ve been thawing out from the Little Ice Age for several hundred years but still are not yet back to pre-Little Ice Age temperatures that prevailed for 90% of the past 10,000 years.”
But isn’t this complete BS? Based on the recent Marcott paper, we should be heading for another ice age many many many years ahead. But actually , what with present temps as high as anything in the last 8000 years……
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Still trying to FOOL people?
Since the peak summer energy levels in the Northern Hemisphere started dropping 9,000 years ago, the earth has started cooling. This is shown in all of the Greenland and Vorstok ice core data. GRAPH
Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) ca 11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes. The extra energy elevated early Holocene summer temperatures throughout the Arctic 1-3° C above 20th century averages, enough to completely melt many small glaciers throughout the Arctic…
A 9% drop in solar energy beats the crap out of what ever piddling little weak infrared energy a trace amount of CO2 manages to reflect back at the earth.
The only surprise is that the earth’s climate has managed to stay so darn stable for the last 10,000 years. To put it bluntly I find it completely astonishing that anyone with a half a brain could fall for the CAGW propaganda.

Jeff Alberts says: @ October 3, 2013 at 6:59 pm

In Fig. 1, the IPCC report purports to show warming of 0.5°C (0.9°F) since 1980, yet surface temperature measurements indicate no warming over the past 17 years (Fig. 2) and satellite temperature data shows the August 13 temperature only 0.12°C (0.21°F) above the 1908 temperature (Spencer, 2013).

Whether or not there has been warming [of] .5c since 1980 is not answered by “yet surface temperature measurements indicate no warming over the past 17 years”.
And you’re comparing the temp of a single day (august 13th) against some non-specific 1908 temperature?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You are correct It is not well written. He would have been better off with three separate paragraphs.
Use Dr Lindzen’s favorite comparison to show the temperature trend before and after CO2 rose are nearly identical. A second paragraph showing no statistical warming in the last ~15 to 17 year meets the falsification criteria

NOAA:
“The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/climate-assessment-2008-lo-rez.pdf
American Geophysical Union:
“A single decade of observational TLT data is therefore inadequate for identifying a slowly evolving anthropogenic warming signal. Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature. ”
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011JD016263.shtml
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:
“The LLNL-led research shows that climate models can and do simulate short, 10- to 12-year “hiatus periods” with minimal warming, even when the models are run with historical increases in greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosol particles. They find that tropospheric temperature records must be at least 17 years long to discriminate between internal climate noise and the signal of human-caused changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere.”
https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2011/Nov/NR-11-11-03.html

Last I think that was August 2013, the most current month at the time this article was written.

Chad Wozniak says: @ October 3, 2013 at 8:28 pm
…. There is more than enough there to prove those periods happened even without any physical science. No amount of pseudoscience can erase this record, Michael Mann’s denials to the contrary notwithstanding. Somehow, I doubt that even he would attempt to go to the libraries preserving this documentation and attempt to destroy it…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If Mann did he would run into Tony (ClimateReason) who haunts libraries ferreting out all those records and Tony already has information up on the internet.
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
Besides, destroy a BOOK? in a LIBRARY? You would be lucky to make it out alive!

Janice Moore says: @ October 3, 2013 at 8:50 pm
….Aaaand, that may not be too far from the truth; China would LOVE it if the rest of the world’s nations shanghaied their own economies….. guess who will be there to pick up the pieces.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Lately I have been suggesting to my little customers and their parents they should start studying Mandarin instead of Spanish…

Dr. Easterbrook,
After you have your draft run the gauntlet here at WUWT, it should be submitted to a major publication like the WSJ.
As far as the spring vs winter ice records, seems like the IPCC is cherry picking so both should be pointed out. (The fall/winter NH snow records are also interesting)

Gail the fact that both should be pointed out is fine, but totally irrelevant. Mr Easterbrook used one to debunk the other, different entirely. Run the gauntlet here? lol you all just cheer him on staring fatal schoolboy errors in the face, then make rubbish excuses for them.

Nick Kermode says: @ October 3, 2013 at 11:37 pm….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I should also mention that I think Dr. Robert Brown (Duke Univ.) has the best criticism of the IPCC that I have seen but unfortunately it is not all that good for those without science and math backgrounds.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/02/ipcc-climate-a-product-of-lies-damn-lies-and-statistics-built-on-inadequate-data/#comment-1433981
Curiously, I just posted a list of four statistical “sins” committed in AR5 with regard to figure 1.4 (and in AR4′s SPM as well), on CA in the thread Steve just opened on statistical problems with this figure. They are a bit more specific than the general essay above:
* Cherrypicking (presenting single model runs without telling us how those particular model runs were selected or constructed, permitting them to be selected out of an ENSEMBLE of runs from slightly variable initial conditions per model).
* Data Dredging in the worst possible way and concealing the fact in a plateful of spaghetti.
* Applying the concept of the statistical mean of an ensemble of models as if it has any meaning whatsoever, especially when the models individually fail or do very poorly on an ordinary hypothesis test compared to the actual data, once you remove the illusion of the plate of spaghetti and display the results, one model at a time, compared to the actual data.
* Applying the concept of the statistical variance/standard deviation to the results from an enemble of models as if it has any meaning whatsoever. This is the only rational basis for statements such as “95%” confidence or “high confidence” and is based on the central limit theorem, which does not apply to ensembles of model predictions because the general circulation models used in the ensemble are not randomly selected independent and identically distributed samples drawn from a probability distribution of correct general circulation models.
Steve also added the fact that they cherrypicked and shifted the start date for figure comparison to maximize the overlap of their spaghetti with the actual climate data, certainly compared to the earlier AR5 draft. I’d add another feature of 1.4 I pointed out back in the originally leaked draft — the error bars shown on the current temperatures are utterly meaningless — somebody just made them up at plus or minus 0.1C. HADCRUT4 doesn’t even claim to be accurate to better than 0.15C across the contemporary time frame. As usual, the graphic adds an error bar onto individual points that are what they are (conveying a false sense of precision beyond that represented by the data itself) and omits any sort of error estimate or analysis of fluctuations in the individual GCMs represented in the spaghetti. Finally, one should really look AT the fluctuations in the spaghetti — in particular, how does the autocorrelation of the GAST produced by the GCMs compare to the observed climate autocorrelation. Hmmm, not so well, not so well.
I’d add further that performing the most cursory of fits of the form T(t) = a t + b sin(ct) + d to the 165 year HADCRUT4 data, one obtains a result with vastly smaller a (the linear rate of warming), b around 0.2 C, c around 1/70 inverse years, and d set by the need to optimize the slope and oscillation relative to the data. This curve explains almost all of the visible variation in the data remarkably accurately, including the rapid warming of both the early and late 20th century and the “pause/cooling” in the middle and end of the 20th century, as WELL as a similar cycle visible even in the 19th century data with its presumably large uncertainties. In fact, I think I could pretty easily make up a stochastic function such as:
T(t) = a t + b sin(ct) + d + F(t)
where F(t) is trendless, exponentially correlated or power correlated noise and produce temperature curves that are ALMOST indistinguishable from the HADCRUT4 observed 165 year temperature series, and could do even better if I cherrypicked a different start and (say) threw out all data before 1880 or whatever as being too imprecisely known.
If this curve (which is pure numerology — I have no idea what the physical basis of a and d are beyond mumblings about Milankovitch cycles that add up to “I don’t really know”, might GUESS that c is the inverse of the PDO period with b an empirical amplitude, and of course F(t) is noise because, well, the climate system is empirically noisy as all hell in ways we cannot predict or understand) has any meaning at all, it is that making egregious claims about the “unprecedented” nature of the warming trend in the late 20th century is ridiculous — no trend explainable by a four parameter sinusoidal fit is “unprecedented”, and as Dick Lindzen has shown, no audience that is shown early and late 20th century temperature variations at the same scale and asked to pick which one is with and which without CO_2 can do this unless they are enormously familiar with the data and can pick out individual FINGERPRINTS in the data such as the late 20th ENSO/Pinatubo bobble. The curves are qualitatively and quantitatively identical to within this sort of feature specific noise. What isn’t appreciated is that the curve actually extends decently back into the 19th century as well, at least as far as HADCRUT4 is concerned.
Personally, I’d like to see AR5 criticism be a little less general and a little more specific, and think that one can pick figure 1.4 completely to pieces in a way that is most embarrassing to the IPCC. I’d start by simply separating out the contributing GCMs, one at a time, from the spaghetti. Look at the one in orange near the very top! It doesn’t come within MILES of the empirical curve. To hell with it, it fails an INDIVIDUAL hypothesis test regardless of how you massage starting points and so on. Remove it from the contributing ensemble as a falsified model. Look at another. Yes, it dips down as low as the empirical curve — for less than 10% of its overall values — and it has UTTERLY incorrect autocorrelation, showing wild spikes of warming that really ARE unprecedented in the data. To hell with it — remove it from the contributing ensemble.
In the end, you might have a handful of GCMs that survive this winnowing not because they are CORRECT, but because they at least spend SOME significant fraction of their time at or below the actual temperature record and have at least approximately the right autocorrelation and heating/cooling fluctuation range. Better yet, run entire Monte Carlo ensembles of runs per model and see what fraction of the models have EXACTLY the right mean and autocorrelation behavior. If the answer is “less than 5%” chuck the model. Even fewer of the GCMs would make the cut here.
When you are done, don’t present a pile of spaghetti and don’t data dredge a conclusion. The non-data dredged conclusion one SHOULD draw from considering the GCMs as if they WERE iid samples would be “throw them all out”, because one has to apply MUCH MORE STRINGENT STATISTICAL REQUIREMENTS FOR SIGNIFICANCE if you have many jars of jellybeans you are trying to correlate with acne, and commit even more grevious sins that mere data dredging if one PIECES TOGETHER regions where individual models HAPPEN to descend to barely reach the data in order to be able to claim “the models embrace the data”.
Of course, if one does this one ends up with the conclusion that the rate of warming is highly exaggerated in AR4 and AR5 alike by any of the ensembles of GCMs. You might even end up with a rate of warming that is surprisingly close to a, the slope of the linear trend in my numerological fit. That’s order of a half degree per century, completely independent of any presumed cause such as CO_2.
rgb

Pippen Kool says: October 3, 2013 at 7:44 pm
Which means we are warmer now than then? And much quicker? and we are finding things that have been frozen for 6000 years in the siberian arctic or in the alps?
Pippen, you need to read a little more, perhaps:

An ancient forest has thawed from under a melting glacier in Alaska and is now exposed to the world for the first time in more than 1,000 years.
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/still-standing-ancient-alaskan-forest-thaws-melting-glacial-tomb-4B11215106
Canadian researchers from the University of Alberta were exploring the area around Teardrop Glacier in the Canadian Arctic when they found plants that had been frozen for over 400 years during the period known as the Little Ice Age (1550-1850).
Regeneration of Little Ice Age bryophytes emerging from a polar glacier with implications of totipotency in extreme environments
Catherine La Farge, Krista H. Williams, john H. England
Melting glaciers in Western Canada are revealing tree stumps up to 7,000 years old where the region’s rivers of ice have retreated to a historic minimum,
http://www.livescience.com/4702-melting-glacier-reveals-ancient-tree-stumps.html
Die Welte, Nov. 14, 2005
Stone Age trade routes yield spectacular finds on alpine pass – clothes, weapons and devices also from Roman time and the Middle Ages
A glacier near Berne releases finds from the Stone Age – remnants of a forgotten alpine pass…..
……..they discovered a birchbark arrow-quiver. A dating with the archaeological service of the canton Berne showed that the birchbark is nearly 5000 years old.

The leveling off of sea level rise in figure 9 is very significant. It points to a large scale thermal change in the ocean. It also directly contradicts claims of continued OHC increase in the oceans. Instead, there appears to be a downward trend in ocean thermal energy. It could signal an oceanic regime change of long term significance.

Guest essayist Dr. Don J. Easterbrook said,

From the IPCC Report
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia.

There just isn’t any nice way to say this—it’s is an outright lie. A vast published literature exists showing that recent warming is not only not unusual, but more intense warming has occurred many times in the past centuries and millennia. As a reviewer of the IPCC report, I called this to their attention, so they cannot have been unaware of it. . . .

– – – – – – – – –
The IPCC intellectuals have done something profoundly worse than just lying with that AR5 statement.
The IPCC intellectuals are openly flaunting their irrational thought systems before those of us with rational thought systems, and they are doing so in the name of our rational thought systems; they are being epistemically irrational in the name of our epistemically rational physical science systems.
An irrational world view with plenty of support within academia, but not outside of academia. That is the weakness which skeptics can exploit, namely few normal rational members of our generally rational culture would accept the irrationality if clearly pointed out to them.
John

Mark Twain popularized the saying “There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians.”
http://www.twainquotes.com/Statistics.html
Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics .”
– Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review
First thing to do is check your sources Don. Maybe you should do that for the GMSL graph.

Roger Pielke Sr shows all 3 fall, winter, spring snow charts here.
I think there is a criticism to be made of the IPCC’s lack of focus on the bigger picture, but their claim isn’t wrong per se.

A good piece from Don Easterbrook – and a perfect illustration of the IPCC and the warmistas abject failure to look at the data properly and honestly. Worse, the IPCC are not even ‘hiding the decline’ anymore, but have moved onto simply ‘ignoring the facts’ in their assessments.

richardscourtney says:
October 4, 2013 at 2:00 am
Hi Richard, this post is pretty indefensible. Defending it, in my opinion, spoils your credibility for when you are defending something that may be worth while defending. Calling this a “powerful and cogent scientific destruction of the latest piece of political propaganda from the IPCC.” is ridiculous bordering on hilarious. I mean where have you got to go with the hyperbole when RGB or Willis etc chimes in with something actually worthwhile?? There have been some good pieces here, this is not one of them. It has SEVERAL catastrophic flaws that completely undermine the whole point of the piece.
Calling me a troll for merely pointing out an error and including me in with “they” “citing” “Marcott” is childish and then dishonest. I never have or would site Marcott, and I don’t troll I quietly read and observe only make a rare comment or two when I think I see an error or have a question. I’ve seen the others you mention make more comments in a day here over several articles than I have made here, ever. So grow up and cop a bit of criticism on the chin, hey it’s not even aimed at you.

The GREENLAND thermageddon is unprecedented.

Abstract
….The record indicates that warmer temperatures were the norm in the earlier part of the past 4000 years, including century-long intervals nearly 1°C warmer than the present decade (2001–2010). Therefore, we conclude that the current decadal mean temperature in Greenland has not exceeded the envelope of natural variability over the past 4000 years, a period that seems to include part of the Holocene…..
[Takuro Kobashi et. al.]
——-
Abstract
An aerial view of 80 years of climate-related glacier fluctuations in southeast Greenland
…………the recent retreat was matched in its vigour during a period of warming in the 1930s with comparable increases in air temperature. We show that many land-terminating glaciers underwent a more rapid retreat in the 1930s than in the 2000s,……
[Anders A. Bjørk et. al.]
——-
Abstract
“…the rate of warming in 1920–1930 was about 50% higher than that in 1995–2005….”
[Petr Chylek et. al.]
——-
Abstract
“…The annual whole ice sheet 1919–32 warming trend is 33% greater in magnitude than the 1994–2007 warming….”
[Jason E. Box et. al.]
——-
Abstract
“…The warmest year in the extended Greenland temperature record is 1941, while the 1930s and 1940s are the warmest decades….”
[B. M. Vinther et. al.]
——-
Abstract
The State of the West Greenland Current up to 1944
“….It is found that warmer conditions existed during the decade of 1880, followed by a colder period up to about 1920, when the present warm period began. The peak of the present warm period appears to have been reached in the middle 1930’s,…..”
[M. J. Dunbar]

An ice free Arctic is thing of the past. Children won’t know what an ice-free Arctic is.
The Arctic Warm Period – 1920s to 1940s was caused by man-made greenhouse gases released after 1950. It’s unprecedented.

2 Oct: Guardian: John Ashton: The BBC betrayed its values by giving Professor Carter this climate platform
How can letting a geologist appear as a legitimate climate scientist to ridicule the IPCC report be in the public interest?…

OR

2 Oct: Guardian: John Ashton: The BBC betrayed its values by giving Dr. James Hansen this climate platform
How can letting an astronomer appear as a legitimate climate scientist to ridicule the NIPCC report be in the public interest?…

LOL, LOL, LOL.

Ken Kermode at 5:55 am says: ” [I am] merely pointing out an error”
The word “merely” sounds too innocent for a post where you use words like “smugly”, “foolish and “epic fail”. And, in passing, you claim there are “SEVERAL catastrophic flaws” whereas you just said you were “merely pointing out AN error”. Please substantiate!

ikh says:
October 3, 2013 at 7:02 pm
…………
Much more interesting, was that summer Artic sea ice extent has been flat since 2007.

No it hasn’t been flat.
As for Pippen Kool Aid I want him to go to Germany and pick olives grown outside. Can Pippen do this? What about fig trees? Does Pippen realise that retreating NH glaciers are revealing old forests? First the IPCC 1990.

[Medieval Warm Period]
“This period of widespread warmth is notable in that there is no evidence that it was accompanied by an increase of greenhouse gases”
…….Thus some of the global warming since 1850 could be a recovery from the Little Ice Age rather than a direct result of human activities. So it is important to recognize that natural variations of climate are appreciate and will modulate any future changes induced by man……
IPCC WG1 Report 1990 (p202)
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf

Medieval Climatic Optimum
Michael E Mann – University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA
It is evident that Europe experienced, on the whole, relatively mild climate conditions during the earliest centuries of the second millennium (i.e., the early Medieval period). Agriculture was possible at higher latitudes (and higher elevations in the mountains) than is currently possible in many regions, and there are numerous anecdotal reports of especially bountiful harvests (e.g., documented yields of grain) throughout Europe during this interval of time. Grapes were grown in England several hundred kilometers north of their current limits of growth, and subtropical flora such as fig trees and olive trees grew in regions of Europe (northern Italy and parts of Germany) well north of their current range. Geological evidence indicates that mountain glaciers throughout Europe retreated substantially at this time, relative to the glacial advances of later centuries (Grove and Switsur, 1994). A host of historical documentary proxy information such as records of frost dates, freezing of water bodies, duration of snowcover, and phenological evidence (e.g., the dates of flowering of plants) indicates that severe winters were less frequent and less extreme at times during the period from about 900 – 1300 AD in central Europe……………………
Some of the most dramatic evidence for Medieval warmth has been argued to come from Iceland and Greenland (see Ogilvie, 1991). In Greenland, the Norse settlers, arriving around AD 1000, maintained a settlement, raising dairy cattle and sheep. Greenland existed, in effect, as a thriving European colony for several centuries. While a deteriorating climate and the onset of the Little Ice Age are broadly blamed for the demise of these settlements around AD 1400,
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/shared/articles/medclimopt.pdf

But…. Kermode is right in pointing out this error because SPRING snow cover loss between 2008-2012 period is shown to exceed even the climate model projections. Paper in GRL by Derksen and Brown (2012). However, the fact that the increase in winter snow cover is not mentioned by the IPCC reeks of cherry picking, don’t you think so Ken?

Isn’t it odd that the IPCC mentions the decline in Spring snow extent, yet does not mention the period commonly associated with snow – Winter. Does this look like cherry picking? If you are going to mention declining Spring extent then why not inform policy makers that Winter and Fall snow extent has remained unchanged since 1967?
PS: Does anyone know the CAUSE of the Spring extent decline since 1967?

A very good assessment. The source is hard to read in some of the figures and would be helpful if clearly noted.
A couple of errors:
“…temperature only 0.12°C (0.21°F) above the 1908 temperature (Spencer, 2013). IPCC shows a decadal warming of 0.6°C (1°F) since 1980 but the temperature over the past decade has actually cooled, not warmed.”
The 1908 should read 1980.
However, I would still not go along with that as it seems too much of a cherry pick. The period 1979 to Sept 2013 would show an increase of about 0.65 oC which is (Spencer 2013) more in line with the IPCC total increase.
I think the IPCC decadal warming should read about 0.2 oC rather than 0.6 oC which is the total increase rather than decadal.

yet surface temperature measurements indicate no warming over the past 17 years (Fig. 2) and satellite temperature data shows the August 13 temperature only 0.12°C (0.21°F) above the 1908 temperature
I know that issues with this have been pointed out by others. As we now know, the UAH went up by about 0.2 from August to September and if RSS does likewise, the report would look out of date extremely quickly. You obviously meant 1980, but the range during that year was about 0.3. It is not clear if you were comparing the average for all of 1980 with the single month of August 2013. The average for 1980 on RSS was 0.015. The average to date for January to August 2013 on RSS is 0.235 although this may go up when when the September number comes out. So considering the above, my suggestion would be to reword the above to say:
RSS satellite temperature data shows the average temperature anomaly for 2013 to the end of August is only 0.22°C (0.40°F) above the average 1980 temperature anomaly. This anomaly average for 2013 to date happens to be lower than the average for the period from April 1997 to March 1998. In fact, RSS has been flat for almost 17 years.

so now, Nick Kermode, do you still claim that snow is disppearing from the planet earth?

Prof Easterbrook, In the paper of Derksen and Brown (2012) on spring snow cover reference is made to the April to June period as opposed to your March/April period. I assume that the April June period is of more significance with respect to the albido effect.
Could I respectfully remind you of my question whether you could give me any reference to sea level data spanning the MWP?

Ha, ha. “albido” I must be confused with albino. So read “albedo” please.

A 9% drop in solar energy beats the crap out of what ever piddling little weak infrared energy a trace amount of CO2 manages to reflect back at the earth.
Gail, there hasn’t been a 9% drop in global insolation. You are misinterpreting the article. The article refers to the variation of the insolation OF THE ARCTIC, due to Milankovitch stuff, where simply the precession of the equinoxes causes different parts of the arctic to be heated/cooled at different points in the calendar year. I downloaded the whole thing (having the good luck to be associated with an institution that can get through the paywall) and will read it later, but actual insolation of the Earth doesn’t vary by anything like 9% on this kind of timescale, and where the arctic might be getting less energy, some other part of the planet might be getting more.
It’s also important to note that the energy CO_2 reflects back to earth is not piddling or weak, and the fact that it is a “trace” is irrelevant compared to the fact that the atmosphere is optically opaque in its absorption bands. Trace or not, look at the spectrographs in e.g. Petty, figures 8.1 to 8.3, and tell me that it is piddling or weak. It is actually quite important.
What is at issue is not the total average power in backradiation from the atmosphere at the Earth’s surface per se, what is at issue is how it varies with CO_2 concentration around its current values, where most of the effect is already saturated. Opaque is opaque, you can’t really get much “opaquer”, and the direct effect of increases in CO_2 at this point is logarithmic at best. The other thing at issue is feedbacks and natural variations in things like circulation patterns or albedo that could completely or mostly cancel the CO_2 linked warming or could, as the IPCC and its many GCMs assert, augment it.
Figure 1.4 of AR5, either version, is pretty much direct evidence that the GCMs overestimate this feedback from all sources. It makes it IMplausible that any of the higher climate sensitivities are correct, and indeed “sensitivity” is in free fall and will continue to fall as long as the GASTA stubbornly refuses to rise or exhibit any of the OTHER traits the GCM curves have that the real climate record does not.
I think it is sufficient unto the day to pitch out the GCMs that do not, in fact, individually pass a perfectly reasonable hypothesis test when compared to the actual climate post the date that they were run. I’m planning to replot the AR5 1.4 data one strand of spaghetti at a time (when I have time) and then perhaps we can judge the performance of each model, one at a time, and decide which ones ought to be summarily rejected not because they somehow failed to account for arctic insolation correctly (unlikely given the simple physics formulae implemented in all of the GCMs that includes this) or because they have too much “greenhouse effect” as if there is a knob that controls that, but because they get the wrong answer in half a dozen ways INCLUDING GASTA (but hardly limited to it) when compared to reality.
And by “reject” I don’t even mean throw in the trash can. I mean fix. If it weren’t for the politics here, the figure in AR5 would be used as wry proof that the climate community has work to do before their models can be taken seriously. That’s a reasonable part of real science. Yes they do.
It’s just a shame that they didn’t have the honesty and guts to state that clearly in AR5, and weather the inevitable pitchforks and torches that might have come their way. All they’ve done is put off the day of reckoning on the prayer that GASTA is about to spike up 0.5C this year or next year to put it back on the track they predict. Personally, I think that is really unlikely. I suspect that they think so too. But one more year, two more years, that much closer to retirement, I suppose.
rgb

Mickey Reno says:
October 4, 2013 at 5:02 am
I’m so glad to see geologists discussing climate change.
=========================================================================
I live near this – http://www.esta-uk.net/tedbury_camp_carboniferous.html ; we walk the hounds of Hades up there, there are ancient woods around it and the very overgrown ramparts of an old Iron Age camp, there; Tedbury Camp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tedbury_Camp).
There are two layers of limestone at this quarry; the higher one from the Jurassic, the lower one some 200 million years earlier. Nothing in between them . Consequently, there are a lot of geologist’s field trips there, as it is so special, and every couple of years a gang turn up and clear the rapidly growing vegetation (Silver Birches). Talking to them a few days back; they explained the above to me, so I said to them – “So I guess you guys take a much longer term view of planet earth than some do?” – they said they did, and were to a man and woman (four of them), sceptical that what has happened to planet Earth since the LIA is anything out of the ordinary.
By the way, there’s a fantastic book about the guy – from near here – who mapped the geology of the UK. Simon Winchester’s “The Map That Changed The World”. Yet to read it, but his books on the SF earthquake and Krakatoa are fascinating and both cracking good reads. He’s a Geology Grad himself.
As you were.

Greg Goodman on October 5, 2013 at 12:20 am

John Whitman said,
Greg Goodman,
The English language just became more conveniently dynamic with your redefinition of ‘popularized’ as being ‘created’.
One less thing to worry about in the dark watches of the night . . .

My point was that he completely misquoted as well as attributed to who (allegedly) “popularised” rather than who actually said it.
The thing about checking your his sources. Like checking the source of the graph which has a spurious unexplained, unattributed red line fitted.
It looks like he got that second hand too and the he’s playing chinese whispers with the data like he is with the citation.
One more thing to worry about in endless back and forth of data misrepresentation.
Thanks for missing the point.

– – – – – – – –
Greg Goodman,
Thanks for your response to my rejoinder. Always appreciated.
There is no doubt that Twain said what Easterbrook quoted, but there is apparently reasonable doubt about Twain’s claim later in his autobiography that he was paraphrasing a similar phrase of Disraeli.
‘Popularized’ is a quite reasonable word for Easterbrook to use and he does not appear to be claiming Twain created the idea or style of the phrase.
And it was quite reasonable for Easterbrook to apply it for introducing the problem of falseness in AR5 .
John

Don, Thank you for the reference: http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/07/sea-levels-higher-during-medieval-warming-period-research-shows-current-sea-level-rise-began-by-1750.html
The graph covering the MWP has a caption with 3 references. I checked them all out but none appear to carry that particular graph. It would be nice to know from which proxies this graph was derived.
Chris

“BETTER CHECK YOUR DATA BEFORE MAKING CLAIMS LIKE THIS. ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR HAS ACTUALLY DECREASED SINCE 1947”
Dr Easterbrook what is your opinion on this article here, which states that water vapour has increased
http://scienceofdoom.com/2011/06/05/water-vapor-trends-part-two/

After reading the back and forth about the significance of the human artifacts uncovered by retreating glaciers, I think this is a fact best left out of a “it used to be just as warm as it is, now”. It looks like a fact that could support the warmists or the non-warmists, depending on assumptions about the rates of snow accumulation and melting. All it says to me is that humans were there before the snow became a year-round feature of that particular landscape.

Don J. Easterbrook says:
October 5, 2013 at 10:03 am
“ATTEMPTING TO MEASURE TEMPERATURE BY LOOKING AT SPRING SNOW COVER WOULD BE A NONSTARTER BECAUSE LOW SPRING SNOW COVER COULD JUST AS EASILY BE DUE TO A LOW SNOW WINTER.”
Whether the snow cover is thick or thin it thaws when the temperature is above 0C. It takes a bit longer of course if it is thick.
“ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR HAS ACTUALLY DECREASED SINCE 1947,”
I think you are talking about global values here, whereas areas with snow cover are mainly found in high latitudes. In Arctic regions warmer temperatures in autumn and winter keep sea and lakes free of ice longer, thus increasing evaporation and precipitation in the form of snow.

wrecktafire says:
October 5, 2013 at 2:35 pm
“All it says to me is that humans were there before the snow became a year-round feature of that particular landscape.”
Quite right and it WAS warmer in the mid Holocene, at least by 2C. There’s no question about that. The point is that if it had been warmer than now during the Roman Warm Period and MWP these artifacts and the 5000 year old Otsi would have been exposed and decomposed. There have been 9000 year old pieces of birch bark found in a thawing glacier in the Swedish Scandes. Why weren’t they exposed during earlier warm periods?

Climate Agnostic, you say: “In Arctic regions warmer temperatures in autumn and winter keep sea and lakes free of ice longer, thus increasing evaporation and precipitation in the form of snow.” But a post later you say: “Quite right and it WAS warmer in the mid Holocene, at least by 2C. There’s no question about that. The point is that if it had been warmer than now during the Roman Warm Period and MWP these artifacts and the 5000 year old Otsi would have been exposed and decomposed.”
Why would the artifacts be exposed if warming arctic regions (as you say) have more precipitation due to increase evaporation? Aren’t you contradicting yourself?

Chris Schoneveld says:
October 5, 2013 at 11:09 pm
“Why would the artifacts be exposed if warming arctic regions (as you say) have more precipitation due to increase evaporation? Aren’t you contradicting yourself?”
We are discussing two different things here. Snow which falls in winter and melts during spring and summer vs. glacier melt. Otzi and many artifacts have been exposed in melting and receeding glaciers, especially in the Alps. These glaciers are not affected by more precipitation in Arctic regions. Glaciers were formed by snow which didn’t melt for thousands of years due to colder conditions. When the climate warms the glacier ice melts. Otzi was well preserved in glacier ice for 5000 years and had it been warmer since then he would have been exposed.

No wonder the IPCC didn’t want to focus your attention on winter snow extent.

Climate Change 2001:
Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
Milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms but could cause an increase in freezing rain if average daily temperatures fluctuate about the freezing point.
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg2/569.htm

Since then the Northern Hemisphere has had five of the six snowiest winters on record.

I don’t really care if Climate change is real – I just want to begin investing early on into the carbon-trading market. While you guys are busy arguing, I’m going to get rich! suckers!
Besides – if the world cleans itself up and treats the environment better as a result of a possible lie – who cares? The world needs to pollute less and this is a good way to get people to do it.
Now excuse me while I exhale some carbon and pay for a licence for the right to do so.