Guest essay by Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, Professor of Geology, Western Washington University
Mark Twain popularized the saying “There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians.” After reading the recently-released [IPCC AR5] report, we can now add, ‘there are liars, damn liars, and IPCC.” When compared to the also recently published NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change) 1000+-page volume of data on climate change with thousands of peer-reviewed references, the inescapable conclusion is that the IPCC report must be considered the grossest misrepresentation of data ever published. As MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen stated, “The latest IPCC report has truly sunk to the 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.”
From the IPCC 2013 Report
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. Warming and cooling has been going on for millions of years, long before CO2 could have had anything to do with it, so warming in itself certainly doesn’t prove that it was caused by CO2.
Their misrepresentation of data is ridiculous. 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). 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.
Fig 1. IPCC graph of temperatures. Fig. 2. Measured surface temperatures for the past decade (modified from Monckton, 2013)
From the IPCC Report
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. For example, more than 20 periods of warming in the past five centuries can be found in the Greenland GISP2 ice core (Fig. 3) (Easterbrook, 2011), the Medieval and Roman Warm Periods were warmer than recent warming (Fig. 4), and about 90% of the past 10,000 years were warmer than present (Fig. 5).
Figure. 3. More than 20 periods of warming in the past 500 years. (Greenland GISP2 ice core, Easterbrook, 2011)
Figure 4. Temperatures of the Medieval and Roman Warm Periods were higher than recent temperatures.
Figure 5. ~90 of temperatures during the past 10,000 years were significantly warmer than recent warming.
(Cuffy and Clow, 1997; Alley, 2000).
Not only was recent warming not unusual, there have been at least three periods of warming/cooling in the past 15,000 years that have been 20 times more intense, and at least 15 have been 5 times as intense. (Easterbrook, 2011)
Figure 6. Intensity of warming and cooling in the past 15,000 years. (Easterbrook, 2011)
From the 2013 IPCC Report
As shown by the figures above from peer-reviewed, published literature, this statement is false. No one disputes that the climate has warmed since the little ice age 1300-1915 AD—we are still thawing out from the Little Ice Age. Virtually all of this warming occurred long before CO2 could possibly have a causal factor.
From the 2013 IPCC Report
This is a gross misrepresentation of data. The Antarctic ice sheet has not been losing mass—the East Antarctic ice sheet, which contains about 90% of the world’s fresh water, is not melting–it’s growing! The same is true for Antarctic shelf ice. The only part of Antarctica that may be losing ice is the West Antarctic Peninsula, which contains less than 10% of Antarctic ice. Temperature records at the South Pole show no warming since records began in 1957.
Some melting has occurred in Greenland during the 1978-1998 warming, but that is not at all unusual. Temperatures in Greenland were warmer in the 1930s than during the recent warming and Greenland seems to be following global warming and cooling periods.
Arctic sea ice declined during the 1978-1998 warm period, but has waxed and waned in this way with every period of warming and cooling so that is not in any way unusual. Arctic sea ice expanded by 60% in 2013. Antarctic sea ice has increased by about 1 million km2 (but IPCC makes no mention of this!). The total extent of global sea ice has not diminished in recent decades.
The statement that Northern Hemisphere snow cover has “continued to decrease in extent extent” is false (despite the IPCC claim of ‘high confidence’ is false. Snow extent in the Northern Hemisphere shows no decline since 1967 and five of the six snowiest winters have occurred since 2003 (Fig. 7).
Figure 7. Snow extent in the Northern Hemisphere since 1967.
From the 2013 IPCC Report
Sea level rise over the past century has varied from 1-3mm/yr, averaging 1.7mm/yr (7 inches/yr)from 1900-2000 (Fig.8.) Sea level rose at a fairly constant rate from 1993 to about 2005 but the rate of rise has flattened out since then (Fig. 9). What is obvious from these curves is that sea level is continuing to rise at a rate of about 7 inches per century, and there is no evidence of accelerating sea level rise. Nor is there any basis for blaming it on CO2 because sea level has been rising on for 150 years, long before CO2 levels began to rise after 1945.
Figure 8. Past sea level rise. Figure 9. Sea level rise from 1993-2013. (Note: SLR graph updated on 10/4/13 to reflect recent version 7 release from University of Colorado)
Conclusions
These are only a few examples of the highly biased, misrepresentations of material in the 2013 IPCC report. As seen by the examples above, it isn’t science at all—it’s dogmatic, political, propaganda.
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While not adding substantively to the science, I must correct the grammar of Pippen Kool.
Pippen Kool says:
October 3, 2013 at 6:34 pm
Oops.
Actually that should read:
Quoting you, your “misrepresentation of data is (sic)(sic) ridiculous.”
While it would be the data are ridiculous; the misrepresentation is ridiculous.
so now, Nick Kermode, do you still claim that snow is disppearing from the planet earth?
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?
Yes, ignorance is a problem, I agree. For thee, not for me.”
Pippen, do you realize what you have said? How did things that have been frozen in ice for 6000 years get there in the first place? It must have been a lot warmer then where they fell, apparently hunting (man) or grazing (wooly mammoth). If temp goes up further and more of these beasties appear, aren’t we just returning to the climate that they lived in? You see, when all you have is a fast lip you make these kind of slips.
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?
@Gail Combs –
Both as a history professor (PhD history, 1970) and then as a business executive (MBA finance, 1975) I learned very quickly to respect opinions of rank and file people. My experience with my colleagues in the universities where I taught was such as to convince me that they were the most profoundly ignorant people I ever came across. And then in business (I was an auditor for 1o years, then a CFO for 13 years) I always got the real scoop from the worker bees and first-line supervision – who almost always had a better idea of what needed to be done than the CEOs of their companies.
At least in business you couldn’t go too wrong, if you wanted to stay in business, but there is no such constraint in academia. There is nothing to stop academics from, for example, creating the AGW mythology.
Ha, ha. “albido” I must be confused with albino. So read “albedo” please.
“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?”
I couldn’t stop laughing at this. You don’t actually believe we’ve experienced warming at unprecedented speed do you? That is projected to happen but it certainly hasn’t happened yet. Many other issues with your posts, but this one had me laughing when someone who believes science backs their stance is under such a silly impression.
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
Jimbo says:
October 4, 2013 at 8:11 am
“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?”`
Snowboarding. With alpine skiers, snow has always enjoyed the gentle fluffing and scuffing you get from civilized schussing, but with snowboarders it’s all grind, pound and scrape. Snow got tired of it and went to Antarctica, where life for snow is much more sublime. Things are so good for snow there, I hear it’s reproducing prodigiously…
Snow and winter extent… seems to me that, like the abysmal tree-ring fiasco, these are pretty coarse proxies. Back to the weather vs climate thingy, with the uncontrolled variables very much in control of the results…
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.
Not 6,000 years, Pippen Kool.
http://archaeology.org/news/686-130321-norway-glaciers-organic-artifacts
Roman artifact, dated AD300.
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/swiss-glacier-finely-tuned-climate-changes
Swiss glaciers have been retreating for 150 years. Note Joerg Schaffer’s comments, very worried about the implications of that!
Schnidejoch Glacier,
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jq06XaBVeoFDw8ema5tW2JrEl1mg
“Some 5,000 years ago, on a day with weather much like today’s, a prehistoric person tread high up in what is now the Swiss Alps, wearing goat leather pants, leather shoes and armed with a bow and arrows”
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~phuybers/Doc/McCormick_RomanClimate2012.pdf
“Alpine glaciers were retreating and, in the ªrst and second century
a.d., relatively small, comparable probably to their extent
c. 2000 a.d.”
Gary Pearse, Adam Gallon, Jimbo and others own Pippen Kool in this thread. I don’t understand why someone like PK would want to keep coming back to display his ignorance of the planet’s history during and prior to the Holocene.
PK probably gets all his thoughts and talking points from alarmist blogs. That would explain his total misunderstanding of the ice core data.
We are fortunate to be living in a true “Goldilocks” climate. But it won’t last forever. And the threat is not from CO2, or warming. The real threat is another ice age.
The alarmist crowd has gotten everything wrong. Why should we believe anything PK predicts now?
Dr. Don J. Easterbrook,
I believe that:
(7 inches/yr)from 1900-2000 (Fig.8.)
is in error. You might want to correct it.
Dr. Don J. Easterbrook,
I believe that
(7 inches/yr)from 1900-2000 (Fig.8.)
is in error. You might want to correct it. The number I get is about .0669 inches a year – roughly 0.7 inches per decade and 7 inches a century.
Thanks to you folks who pointed out several typos–just goes to show that you shouldn’t proof-read your own writing!
Here are responses to a few direct questions:
Chad Wozniak says:
“I would add to Don’s excellent summary the substantial anecdotal evidence of past warm periods in the general historical record, for at least four prior warm periods, Egypt in the 3rd millennium BC, the Hittite-Minoan-Mycenean warm period, 1800-1400 BC, the Roman Climate Optimum, 100 BC-300 AD, and the Medieval Warm Period, 900-1300 AD, all of which were much warmer than the modern period, and each less warm than the one preceding it. 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.”
Chad—Your reference to anecdotal history is intriguing. Might be fun to compare this with the geologic record. Can you suggest a few references where I could read about the historic record?
Chris Schoneveld says:
“Prof. Easterbrook, I have been trying to find sea level data covering the Medieval Warm Period, but have been unsuccessful. Your long term sea level graph stops in the middle of the LIA. Is there any proxy data that would show that in the medieval Warm Period a similar sea level rise occurred as we have seen during the last centuries of warming? All I can find is that the sea level during the Roman Warm Period was about similar to the one today ( Roman Fish Tanks carved out in rocks)”
Chris—Yes, there is sea level data for the Medieval Warm Period. You could start with this post and follow the references therein.
http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/07/sea-levels-higher-during-medieval-warming-period-research-shows-current-sea-level-rise-began-by-1750.html
“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.”
The spring snow cover graph used by the IPCC on page 4-94 is labeled March-April. Other combinations of months can be found elsewhere, e.g. June, April-June, etc. As I pointed out in an earlier response, winter snow cover (Nov-April) is likely most affected by snowfall, whereas spring snow cove is likely most affected by melting rates.
Don
Otzi died around 3,000 B.C. at 3,500 m in the Alps.
Boy! They must have had a lot of Chevy Suburbans
and coal-fired plants
and stuff
back then…
Oh, dear, what if the earth keeps warming? WHAT WILL WE DO WITH ALL THE OTZIS?!! Where will we store them? This is a planetary emergency. Stop the CO2 factories, now!!! Wait a minute…….
Global CO2 rise lags temperature increase by a quarter cycle…. So…………………..,
there ain’t nothin’ we can do about it. LAUGH — OUT — LOUD, let’s jump in our pick-ups and head down to the ol’ barbecue pit for dinner (driving 10 over all the way)!
(I think that is exactly what Otzi would have done, too #(:))
Oh, knock it off, Al Bore. DON’T TELL ME OTZI CAME FROM OUTER SPACE. That one is getting old. Try something else.
John Whitman says:
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 J. Easterbrook says:
October 4, 2013 at 8:30 am
“The question is, if you want to judge whether or not snow is disappearing from the Earth, which would you choose, spring snow cover or winter snow cover?”
I think you misunderstand the point why IPCC is showing spring snow cover. They are discussing evidence of warming, i.e. higher temperatures.
Winter snow doesn’t say much about temperature (except in areas where it rarely snows). It is a measure of precipitation. Snow falls when temperatures fall below the freezing point and thaws when temperature rises above 0C. If we want a measure of temperature, spring snow is the thing to look at. The warmer the spring the more the snow melts.
Another point to mention is that warmer air leads to evaporation leading to more precipitation, so in fact we should expect more snow in winter in many Northern Hemisphere areas as temperatures rise.
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
Climate agnostic says:
“The question is, if you want to judge whether or not snow is disappearing from the Earth, which would you choose, spring snow cover or winter snow cover?”
“I think you misunderstand the point why IPCC is showing spring snow cover. They are discussing evidence of warming, i.e. higher temperatures.”
“Winter snow doesn’t say much about temperature (except in areas where it rarely snows). It is a measure of precipitation. Snow falls when temperatures fall below the freezing point and thaws when temperature rises above 0C. If we want a measure of temperature, spring snow is the thing to look at. The warmer the spring the more the snow melts.”
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. SPRING SNOW COVER DOESN’T TELL YOU ANYTHING ABOUT TEMPERATURE BY ITSELF, SO WHY WOULD YOU TRY TO MEASURE TEMP THAT WAY? YOU DETERMINE TEMPERATURE BY DIRECT SURFACE AND/OR SATELLITE MEASUREMENTS, NOT BY HOW MUCH REMAINS IN THE SPRING.
“Another point to mention is that warmer air leads to evaporation leading to more precipitation, so in fact we should expect more snow in winter in many Northern Hemisphere areas as temperatures rise.
BETTER CHECK YOUR DATA BEFORE MAKING CLAIMS LIKE THIS. ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR HAS ACTUALLY DECREASED SINCE 1947, NOT INCREASED. DATA ALSO SHOW NO SIGNIFICANT INCREASE IN PRECIPITATION. DATA SPEAKS LOUDER THAN ASSUMPTIONS!
“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/
adam.s,
As usual, the “Science of Doom” blog is putting out misinformation.
Both specific humidity and relative humidity have been flat to decreasing for decades.
Increasing humidity is yet another alarmist prediction that has not happened. In fact, none of the alarmist predictions have ever happened. Not one of them has come true. So why should anyone believe them now?
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.
Oops: at end of first sentence, insert, “argument”. Thanks.