Richard Kerr (Science) in 2009: Warming ‘Pause’ About to Be Replaced by ‘Jolt’
Guest essay by Robert Bradley Jr.
“Pauses as long as 15 years are rare in the simulations, and ‘we expect that [real-world] warming will resume in the next few years,’ the Hadley Centre group writes…. Researchers … agree that no sort of natural variability can hold off greenhouse warming much longer.”
– Richard Kerr, Science (2009)
That’s Richard A. Kerr, the longtime, award-winning climate-change scribe for Science magazine, the flagship publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The article, “What Happened to Global Warming? Scientists Say Just Wait a Bit,” was published October 1, 2009.
The article is important in the history of climate thought because it captures neatly the (over)confidence of the scientists who turn to models to justify their faith that past overestimation will soon be reversed. Judith Curry’s recent discovery of F. A. Hayek’s Nobel Prize Lecture in Economics, The Pretense of Knowledge, marks a new front in the mainstream climate debate. [1]
Secondly, today’s explanation for the “pause” (a term used in Kerr’s 2009 article) is not mentioned back then—ocean delay.
Third, Kerr frames the debate in political terms with Copenhagen just ahead—and fails to interview or include the contrary views about how climate sensitivity might be less than the climate models assume in their physical equations.
Here is the guts of the Kerr article as the 5th year anniversary comes this year:
The blogosphere has been having a field day with global warming’s apparent decade-long stagnation. Negotiators are working toward an international global warming agreement to be signed in Copenhagen in December, yet there hasn’t been any warming for a decade. What’s the point, bloggers ask?
Climate researchers are beginning to answer back in their preferred venue, the peer-reviewed literature. The pause in warming is real enough, but it’s just temporary, they argue from their analyses.
A natural swing in climate to the cool side has been holding greenhouse warming back, and such swings don’t last forever. “In the end, global warming will prevail,” says climate scientist Gavin
Schmidt of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City.
The latest response from the climate community comes in State of the Climate in 2008, a special supplement to the current (August) issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Climate researcher Jeff Knight and eight colleagues at the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, U.K., first establish that—at least in one leading temperature record—greenhouse warming has been stopped in its tracks for the past 10 years.
In the HadCRUT3 temperature record, the world warmed by 0.07°C±0.07°C from 1999 through 2008, not the 0.20°C expected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Corrected for the natural temperature effects of El Niño and its sister climate event La Niña, the decade’s trend is a perfectly flat 0.00°C.
So contrarian bloggers are right: There’s been no increase in greenhouse warming lately. That result came as no surprise to
Knight and his colleagues or, for that matter, to most climate scientists. But the Hadley Centre group took the next step, using climate modeling to try to quantify how unusual a 10-year warming pause might be.
In 10 modeling runs of 21st century climate totaling 700 years worth of simulation, long-term warming proceeded about as expected: 2.0°C by the end of the century. But along the way in the 700 years of simulation, about 17 separate 10-year intervals had temperature trends resembling that of the past decade—that is, more or less flat.
From this result, the group concludes that the model can reproduce natural jostlings of the climate system—perhaps a shift in heat-carrying ocean currents—that can cool the world and hold off greenhouse warming for a decade. But natural climate variability in the model has its limits. Pauses as long as 15 years are rare in the simulations, and “we expect that [real-world] warming will resume in the next few years,” the Hadley Centre group writes.
And that resumption could come as a bit of a jolt, says Adam Scaife of the group, as the temperature catches up with the greenhouse gases added during the pause.
Pinning the pause on natural variability makes sense to most researchers. “That goes without saying,” writes climate researcher Stefan Rahmstorf of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany by e-mail. “We’ve made [that point] several times on RealClimate,” a blog.
Solar physicist Judith Lean of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., and climate modeler David Rind of GISS reached the same conclusion in a peer-reviewed 15 August paper in Geophysical Research Letters. They broke down recent temperature variation into components attributable to greenhouse gases, pollutant aerosols, volcanic aerosols, El Niño/La Niña, and solar variability.
Combined, those influences explain all of the observed variability, by Lean and Rind’s accounting. But unlike the Hadley Centre’s model-based analysis, this assessment attributes a good deal of climate variability to variability in solar activity. That’s because most models can’t translate solar variability into climate variability the way the actual climate system can (Science, 28 August, p. 1058), Rind says.
Researchers may differ about exactly what’s behind recent natural climate variability, but they agree that no sort of natural variability can hold off greenhouse warming much longer. “Our prediction is that if past is prologue, the solar component will turn around and lead to rapid warming in the next 5 years,” says Rind.
Climate modeler David Smith of the Hadley Centre, who was not involved in the State of the Climate analysis, says his group’s climate model forecasts—made much the way weather forecasts are made—are still calling for warming to resume in the next few years as ocean influences reverse (Science, 10 August 2007, p. 746). Whether that’s in time to boost climate negotiations is anyone’s guess.
The ball is back in Richard Kerr’s court. Dr. Kerr, let’s have a five-year update for Science with a headline like “What Happened to Global Warming: Can Mainstream Climate Science Regain Its Footing?” His update might well take into account Judith Curry’s current post, IPCC AR5 weakens the case for AGW), that documented “several key elements … weakening of the case for attributing the warming [to] human influences:
- Lack of warming since 1998 and growing discrepancies with climate model projections
- Evidence of decreased climate sensitivity to increases in CO2
- Evidence that sea level rise in 1920-1950 is of the same magnitude as in 1993-2012
- Increasing Antarctic sea ice extent
- Low confidence in attributing extreme weather events to anthropogenic global warming.”
———–
[1] Curry cited this quotation from Hayek’s 1974 lecture: “I confess that I prefer true but imperfect knowledge, even if it leaves much indetermined and unpredictable, to a pretence of exact knowledge that is likely to be false.”
– See more at: http://www.masterresource.org/2014/01/kerr-science-2009-pause-jolt/#sthash.WL2iT5vI.dpuf
In 10 modeling runs of 21st century climate totaling 700 years worth of simulation, long-term warming proceeded about as expected: 2.0°C by the end of the century. But along the way in the 700 years of simulation, about 17 separate 10-year intervals had temperature trends resembling that of the past decade—that is, more or less flat
Help me clarify this, please. They did 10 runs for the 21st century. Each run gave a different result? By the end of each run of the model temp had reach 2°C above what norm (or the average end warming for 10 runs was 2°C)? Even though they did 900 years worth of runs (2010 – 2100 * 10) they got 700 years worth of simulation (90 years worth of simulationS) in those 10 runs they got an average of 1.7 10 yr flat intervals / run.? We have had 17 years of relatively insignificant warming / cooling (depending on whose adulterated numbers you use).
Is this what those clowns at the UK met off call science? My god, you poor people. Stupidity is so engrained in the psyche of British government scientists they don’t even recognise their stupidity when placed before their peers. God help us all.
The ball is back in Richard Kerr’s court. Dr. Kerr, let’s have a five-year update for Science with a headline like “What Happened to Global Warming: Can Mainstream Climate Science Regain Its Footing?”
______________________
Fat + Chance = HaHAAAAA
All this talk about running the models and so many simulations came out with pauses (hiatuses or whatever). So perhaps some smarter person than I can steer me in the right direction.
They do not have hundreds of models. Fortunately. They have but a few. So when they say that 17 out of x hundred showed a 10 year pause, that means something is not right.
It appears they are merely dice rolling. And the law of probability says that every once in a while, you can roll 10 successive rolls of snake eyes.
But while the science of probabilities is valid, this is not that science. basically, they are saying they are rolling dice (weighted of course) to find out how many chances they get to get it right. But they have no clue what the next roll is going to be.
“Predictions are hard, especially about the future.”, Yogi Berra, American philosopher
We all face the risk of outliving our predictions, except when the prediction period is a century long.
In this same spirit, it might be time to revisit the model scenario graphic used during the 1988 Hansen/Wirth “warm hearing room trick” presentation to Congress. (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/20/how-well-did-hansen-1988-do/)
An economists blog I read offers their opinion on climate science use of models and computer simms:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2014/01/14/computer-based-statistical-and-econometric-packages/
Just to quote I paragraph:
“This pathetic error-prone analysis has been the foundation of so-called ‘climate science’ which is riddled with basic analytical flaws such as mis-specification, omitted variables, multicollinearity, heteroskedasticity, measurement errors, autocorrelation, data mining to support prior conclusions, publication bias, and confusing causality with correlation.”
You guys got it all wrong – all their billions spent on mitigating AGW is finally paying off – we have the “pause” in warming. We just need to pay more to the third world and we get the next mini or full blown ice age! What can go wrong?
It would be interesting to see how many times and for how long they had to run the model they used back then to get a 17 year pause. It should be simple enough to do.
“The pause in warming is real enough, but it’s just temporary, they argue from their analyses.”
They are oblivious to the fact that is clear to the rest of us – they did not predict the pause and so we have no faith whatsoever in any of their other ‘get out of jail’ predictions for the future.
I wonder what the end temperature was for those model runs that had long pauses in them.
Warmists: “Since we’ve rolled 18 tails in a row, we’re now gonna have a jolt of heads in a row.”
So, they didn’t foresee the pause on their models, but now the same models predict a resumed warming after this pause?
How do i get a job like that?
“In the HadCRUT3 temperature record, the world warmed by 0.07°C±0.07°C from 1999 through 2008, not the 0.20°C expected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
David Rose at the Daily Mail said in a recent article that the IPCC had predicted the 0.2 C increase but that AR5 was ignoring this and using sleight of hand by referring to the 1951-2013 rise of circa 0.12/decade being little different from AR4. (Long time frame gobbles up the effect of the pause). After the article, alarmist blogs rounded on Rose saying the IPCC had never said there would be a 2.0 C rise from 1999. So who’s telling the truth? I’m sure I heard the 0.2 C claim being bandied about till they saw the temps stalling.
Armageddon cults with their dire predictions for the imminent end of the world – regularly updated, whenever the drop dead date passes without anything ever happening – bear a striking resemblance to those made by today’s climate science models.
The gullible have always been prone to falling for scary fantasy stories – so nothing new there.
“Pauses as long as 15 years are rare in the simulations, and ‘we expect that [real-world] warming will resume in the next few years,’ the Hadley Centre group writes…”
Wishful thinking so far.
For the past 17 years, global warming has stopped. They can accurately label it a “pause” — but only if it resumes.
Global warming has not resumed. It is still stopped, and for all anyone knows, temperatures could just as well decline. Therefore, calling it a “pause” is only wishful thinking. It is also known as: ‘spin’. But is that kind of ‘spin’ really science?
It’s all about sunspots. This man made global warming religion crusade is nothing but tributes to fools. May the next Nobel Peace prize go to some one one who earned it not some excuse for controlling Cap and. Trade.
I have the Euro nations come into my resort store complaining about Cap and Trade Tax on all their plane Tickets. I introduce them to Sunspot Activity. It is nice to see the Brite squirm when they know they have been lied to and taxed again by the Euro Union with the blessing of the Crown. Swift upper lip is a constant.
“A natural swing in climate to the cool side has been holding greenhouse warming back, and such swings don’t last forever. “In the end, global warming will prevail,” says climate scientist Gavin
Schmidt of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City.”
So Gavin implicitly admits the models are wrong (as they can’t even predict natural stuff) but also he has no basis for assuming that the warming previously was not mostly a natural swing. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Scute:
Your post at January 14, 2014 at 2:15 pm asks
The IPCC AR4 did make such a prediction, but it was for “0.2°C per decade” over the first two decades of this century.
The failure of this warming to occur falsifies the models and amendments to the models to “emulate” the pause do not alter this because half of the warming was said to be “committed” from the past.
The explanation for this is in IPCC AR4 (2007) Chapter 10.7 which can be read at
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-7.html
It says there
In other words, it was expected that global temperature would rise at an average rate of “0.2°C per decade” over the first two decades of this century with half of this rise being due to atmospheric GHG emissions which were already in the system.
This assertion of “committed warming” should have had large uncertainty because the Report was published in 2007 and there was then no indication of any global temperature rise over the previous 7 years. There has still not been any rise and we are now way past the half-way mark of the “first two decades of the 21st century”.
So, if this “committed warming” is to occur such as to provide a rise of 0.2°C per decade by 2020 then global temperature would need to rise over the next 6 years by about 0.4°C. And this assumes the “average” rise over the two decades is the difference between the temperatures at 2000 and 2020. If the average rise of each of the two decades is assumed to be the “average” (i.e. linear trend) over those two decades then global temperature now needs to rise before 2020 by more than it rose over the entire twentieth century. It only rose ~0.8°C over the entire twentieth century.
Simply, the “committed warming” has disappeared (perhaps it has eloped with Trenberth’s ‘missing heat’?).
This disappearance of the “committed warming” is – of itself – sufficient to falsify the AGW hypothesis as emulated by climate models. If we reach 2020 without any detection of the “committed warming” then it will be 100% certain that all projections of global warming are complete bunkum.
And amendments to the models to “emulate” the pause do not alter this because half of the warming was said to be “committed” from the past.
Richard
@ luysii Jan 14th 2013 at 1:57 pm
You got me thinking. These people use such weasel words that I wonder whether the 10 model runs were cherry-picked out of 100 or 1000 runs which showed no 10 year pauses (except the 10 cherry-picked). In my experience with wheedling out the truth behind their words, it is the omission of the truth over and above what is otherwise a true statement that tells us what they really did. The following quote from the article may well be true:
“In 10 modeling runs of 21st century climate totaling 700 years worth of simulation, long-term warming proceeded about as expected: 2.0°C by the end of the century. But along the way in the 700 years of simulation, about 17 separate 10-year intervals had temperature trends resembling that of the past decade—that is, more or less flat.” …..
but this statement doesn’t preclude the possibility that 1000 runs were done and 990 binned. Remember, these people have no shame in essentially telling big lies by omitting the truth e.g. at the AR5 SPM press conference and the Met Office’s grossly misleading response to David Rose’s first pause article in 2012.
I’m surprised I never thought to question the number of model runs before- I’ve heard of this study several times over the years. Despite having no trust at all in what they say, I still let that one slip through.
Sorry about the format error. This is a repost.
Scute:
Your post at January 14, 2014 at 2:15 pm asks
The IPCC AR4 did make such a prediction, but it was for “0.2°C per decade” over the first two decades of this century.
The failure of this warming to occur falsifies the models and amendments to the models to “emulate” the pause do not alter this because half of the warming was said to be “committed” from the past.
The explanation for this is in IPCC AR4 (2007) Chapter 10.7 which can be read at
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-7.html
It says there
In other words, it was expected that global temperature would rise at an average rate of “0.2°C per decade” over the first two decades of this century with half of this rise being due to atmospheric GHG emissions which were already in the system.
This assertion of “committed warming” should have had large uncertainty because the Report was published in 2007 and there was then no indication of any global temperature rise over the previous 7 years. There has still not been any rise and we are now way past the half-way mark of the “first two decades of the 21st century”.
So, if this “committed warming” is to occur such as to provide a rise of 0.2°C per decade by 2020 then global temperature would need to rise over the next 6 years by about 0.4°C. And this assumes the “average” rise over the two decades is the difference between the temperatures at 2000 and 2020. If the average rise of each of the two decades is assumed to be the “average” (i.e. linear trend) over those two decades then global temperature now needs to rise before 2020 by more than it rose over the entire twentieth century. It only rose ~0.8°C over the entire twentieth century.
Simply, the “committed warming” has disappeared (perhaps it has eloped with Trenberth’s ‘missing heat’?).
This disappearance of the “committed warming” is – of itself – sufficient to falsify the AGW hypothesis as emulated by climate models. If we reach 2020 without any detection of the “committed warming” then it will be 100% certain that all projections of global warming are complete bunkum.
And amendments to the models to “emulate” the pause do not alter this because half of the warming was said to be “committed” from the past.
Richard
Modellers standard answer is: yes, we accept that we didn’t quite get it right. The modelling you refer to was done x years ago when we had less data an less sophisticated methods, but….
Now we have data for additional x years and we have improved our modelling techniques, so you should trust us now!
And it’s working on the gullible.
dbstealey says:
January 14, 2014 at 2:25 pm
“Wishful thinking so far.
For the past 17 years, global warming has stopped. They can accurately label it a “pause” — but only if it resumes. ”
My thoughts exactly.
“In the end, global warming will prevail,” says climate scientist Gavin
Schmidt of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City.
This sounds like Gavin Schmidt is talking about a political war rather than science. It sounds like he is saying they will prevail no matter what they have to do to “win”. Why one would even suspect that he would use NASA to fudge the data records and would use government funds to help spread propaganda rather than truth.
Must just be my skeptical and suspicious nature.
Jolt is mere dysphemism for the familiar epithet JERK!
The greatest obstacle to progress is the illusion of knowledge.
Scute said:
“…alarmist blogs rounded on Rose saying the IPCC had never said there would be a 2.0 C rise from 1999”.
The WG1 report (and SPM) for AR4 in 2007 forecast warming of 0.2°C/decade for the following two decades. This was sharply reduced in AR5.
Because 2.0°C (from pre-industrial times) is the warming limit fixed at Copenhagen, there have been dozens of predictions by modelers, most of which spanned the period 2045-2075 as most likely. But it now appears this was all spin, probably generated by focus on the A2 and A1F1 emission scenarios, and the high end of the sensitivity range.
It’s clear from the Kerr article that mainstream science has never really believed the 2°C limit would be achieved before the end of the century.
If 2100 was the consensus date in 2009, it must now be well into next century – given that the IPCC has discounted the models by about 40% in their Stockholm non-expert assessment. And the whole expected process is lagging by at least 17 years.
The BAMS State of the Climate, 2008 referenced in the article is available here …
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/2008.php
@Steve January 14, 2014 at 1:53 pm: Steve, I agree that “climate science” is rife with a misuse of statistics. However, (at least some) climate models attempt to seriously solve the underlying physical processes. Unfortunately, even there a desire to get expected results sometimes trumps the honesty:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/28/open-thread-weekend-23/#comment-338257
Five years really isn’t a very long time span. Kerr might possibly be correct (though, if so, likely for the wrong reasons). As Yogi Berra reputedly said, “Predicting is hard, especially about the future”.
Richard Kerr has a long standing interest in declaring the empirical validation of AGW theory and of affirming modelling predictions. In the mid-1990s, along with NYT writer William Stevens, he played an avant guarde role in the promotion of the idea that AGW had been detected. They used leaking information from drafting documents of the IPCC 2nd Assessment to make the claims. Moreover, Stevens and Kerr can be seen as putting pressure on the IPCC to push though these claims that Ben Santer was trying to get up on the basis of his recent unpublished work (he was the coordinating lead author of the detection chapter). In Sept (?) 1995 Kerr wrote an article saying that detection had been agreed by the IPCC experts, but that this result was still ‘semi-official’. Then, after the Madrid plenary of the IPCC WGI, Kerr proclaimed: It’s official: the first glimmer of greenhouse warming seen [Science 8 Dec95, p1565]. Indeed, even then it was not official, as the IPCC meeting to accept the report began in Rome a few days later.
These guys have no shame.
They claimed that nothing could stop the relentless warming. Then they retrofitted the pause, which could well be a peak rather than a pause. Then they retrofitted natural causes to explain it, then they say they are not surprised, it is what they expected.
They have no credibility either.
When is the end?
Here is a little something from our Gavin of NASA. The people made up of the right kinda stuff.
Gavin must have missed the Circumpolar Vortex, melting Arctic making it colder and the missing deep sea heat.
Scute’s comment on “It would be interesting to see how many times and for how long they had to run the model they used back then to get a 17 year pause. It should be simple enough to do.” made me think a bit more.
So I looked at the Science article again — the longest period of stasis they obtained in the 700 years of model running was 15 years.
It isn’t clear to me how many years each run of the model cited in the paper can actually encompass. We do know the accuracy of weather prediction declines the farther out it gets.
It certainly should be possible to take the model used back then in the Science paper and run it over and over with today’s more powerful computers and see just how often the current period of stasis (17+ years and counting) occurs (assuming it can be run for 20 or more years at a stretch).
From google scholar
Science 8 February 2013: Vol. 339 no. 6120 p. 638 “Forecasting Regional Climate Change Flunks Its First Test” by Richard A. Kerr “The strengthening greenhouse is warming the world, but what about your backyard, or at least your region? It’s hard to say, climate researchers concede. Modelers have sharpened their tools enough to project declining grape yields in a warmer, drier California wine country and to forecast that the Mediterranean region will be getting drier in coming decades. But just how reliable such localized projections might be remains unclear. Now, a group of global, rather than regional, modelers has tested a widely used regional model by simulating climate change, not just static past climate. Preliminary results show that the model improved little if at all on the fuzzy view of future climate provided by a globe-spanning model.”
and
Science 22 November 2013: Vol. 342 no. 6161 p. 918 “Humans Fueled Global Warming Millennia Ago” by Richard A. Kerr “People were already pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere 5000 years before the Industrial Revolution, air bubbles in Antarctic ice suggest. The new evidence supports a paleoclimatologist’s provocative idea that humanity began warming the world early, as methane bubbled out of early rice farmers’ paddies.”
From Google:
“Science’s Richard Kerr Wins Planetary Science Journalism Award” 17 July 2013 “Richard Kerr, long-time reporter for Science, has received an award from the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) recognizing his broad coverage of planetary science research, including a 2012 article on gravity studies of the moon.”
Looks like a man avoiding the inconvenient truth of climate model failure.
Normally in science, when the models and reality diverge, it’s not reality that’s wrong.
When theory fails to predict real world results, it’s not the real world that’s wrong.
But apparently, when enough grant money is at stake, science can be quite flexible.
One might well question the intelligence of someone who admits that his model did not predict the current state but is still full of confidence that its predictions for the future are ironclad (although in this case very fuzzy – “a few years or so”). His “evidence” seems to bethat “all thescientists believe this will happen.” Of course, “all those same scientists” had formerly believed that a pause of this magnitude was “near impossible.” Gooney birds don’t look so inferior, by comparison.
bbc more interested in PERCEPTIONS than PREDICTIONS lately. a new meme is developing – scare people with crazy geoengineering stories & they’ll beg for carbon dioxide emissions reductions:
Andrew Luck-Baker still stuck in Antarctica, so his Discovery Programme yesterday was hosted by GAIA VINCE! the much-published Gaia:
Wandering Gaia: About Me (Gaia Vince)
This is a uniquely critical time in our planet’s history, in which climate change, globalisation, communications technology and increasing human population are changing our world as never before. The developing world is experiencing these impacts more obviously and sooner than the rich West – they are already feeling the effects of biodiversity loss, erratic weather patterns, glacial melt and forced migrations, for example – and I am documenting these impacts, talking to ordinary people, scientists and heads of state as I travel in the Anthropocene…
I am the opinion, analysis and features editor for the journal Nature Climate Change, which publishes the latest research in the field. I also write for a variety of different outlets, including the BBC, The Guardian, New Scientist, Australian Geographic, Science, Seed, and I do pieces for radio. Before I set off on this journey, I was the news editor of the science journal Nature. And before that, I was an editor at New Scientist magazine. You can see some of my recent work that’s relevant to this trip on the sidebar under ‘Me Elsewhere‘…
http://wanderinggaia.com/about-me/
listen from 12 min in, for Naomi Vaughan of UEA:
26:30: BBC Discovery: Geoengineering
Gaia Vince explores the process of putting chemicals in the stratosphere to stop solar energy reaching the earth…
Another idea is to spray seawater to whiten clouds that would reflect more energy away from the earth.
Gaia Vince talks to the researchers who are considering solar radiation management. She also hears from social scientists who are finding out what the public think about the idea and who are asking who should make decisions about implementing this way of cooling the planet…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01p2pf4
(PARAPHRASING NAOMI VAUGHAN: SOME OF THE PEOPLE WHO LEARN ABOUT GEOENGINEERING PLANS VIA NAOMI’S WORKSHOPS ON “PERCEPTIONS”, HAVE A PERCEPTION THAT, IF THIS IS WHAT SCIENTISTS ARE LOOKING AT, THINKING ABOUT, THEN THIS CLIMATE CHANGE MUST BE A REAL PROBLEM & I MUST DO MORE.
GAIA VINCE: SO IRONICALLY, TELLING PEOPLE ABOUT GEOENGINEERING MAY MAKE THEM MORE LIKELY TO USE LESS FOSSIL FUELS.)
Science Direct: October 2013: Messing with nature? Exploring public perceptions of geoengineering in the UK – (Elsevier’s) Global Environmental Change Vol 23, Issue 5
Authors: Adam Corner , Karen Parkhill, Nick Pidgeon, Naomi E. Vaughan
Participants raised serious concerns about the safety of SRM technologies, and a strong preference for more conventional, mitigation options over geoengineering techniques tended to be expressed…
3. Methodology
Following a pilot study in Cardiff, four one day deliberative workshops were conducted in four different cities in the UK: Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow and Norwich…
Each workshop was attended by 11 participants. Participants were recruited through a professional recruitment agency…
The workshops were facilitated by the authors and took place over the course of one day. There were several stages to the day including: (1) an overview of climate change involving a presentation by facilitators and a whole group discussion by participants; (2) World Café style small group discussion of responses (i.e. mitigation followed by adaptation followed by geoengineering) to climate change…
One unexpected aspect of the debates about geoengineering and nature was the particular salience of concerns about the increasing materialism of modern society. Perhaps, they represent a deeper expression of concern about the continuation of an industrial project that is now known to have had a significantly negative impact on many aspects of the ‘natural’ environment…
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378013001015
Matt McGrath building the meme a week ago:
8 Jan: BBC: Matt McGrath: Geoengineering plan could have ‘unintended’ side effect
However some researchers have questioned the experiment and the findings.
“I know of no serious scientist who would advocate introducing 100 megatonnes of sulphur dioxide in a four degree warmer world,” said Dr Matt Watson, from the University of Bristol, who was previously involved in a British project to test this concept.
( Prof Piers Forster, from the University of Leeds)”At present, these injection technologies do not exist, even on paper, and this precludes an evaluation of realistic effectiveness or side effects.
“If we want to suppress global warming the only game in town at present is reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25639343
OK, here it is again. Here is the list showing the history of global warming standstill angst. It starts with our dear Professor Phil Jones (the slippery snake).
I will have to add some for 2014, but I will have to wait a few months maybe.
“a pretense of exact knowledge that is likely to be false.”
Here is another quote they can mull over while they wait for the magic molecule to come to their rescue:
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
Sherlock Holmes Quote
-A Scandal in Bohemia
The model predicted that the airplane could take off from our 5,000 foot runway. I know it’s out in the weeds somewhere but it’ll be flying real soon now. Can I get you a cup of coffee while we wait?
“But along the way in the 700 years of simulation, about 17 separate 10-year intervals had temperature trends resembling that of the past decade—that is, more or less flat.”
They’d have to be negative at least .2C/decade to “offset” the supposed “accelerating” warming. If you assume accelerating warming, which is required for global warming to ever be faster than what is beneficial, we’d need to be looking for far longer periods than 10 years being flat, since it should be increasingly steep.
Here is why I create my lists. It shuts up persistent Warmists who insist on one thing or another. Rather than make claims and counterclaims I point them to what the climate scientists said or published – allowing Warmists an opportunity to challenge the climate scientists instead. It is a great strategy for me and save me time.
(I was referring to looking for evidence natural variability in the historical record.)
It does not really matter what happens in the next several years, warming, cooling or flat. The whole CAGW model is already broken. There was never any contention on the direct impact of increasing CO2, which is a moderate and uniform warming contribution. The C in front of AGW entirely hinged on amplification of the effects of CO2. To make that argument fly, it was necessary to demand that the albedo element in the earth energy balance equation to be essentially steady from other factors. Only CO2 induced warming can cause this to vary significantly (excepting of point events like volcanos). If albedo has natural variability, then the whole amplification argument evaporates. Since natural variability has already caused a hiatus in GW, the amplification element of AGW is no longer viable.
Global temps have not increased … but Arctic and sub Arctic temps have … what is going on? Even now the average temp above 80 degs north remains above the average (albeit a small data set).
We’ve been waiting….. 17 years.
Five years really isn’t a very long time span.
But add it to 12 years and it starts to get significant.
Thanks Robert, good article.
Only the future will tell. I’m watching for ENSO to resolve the hiatus into a peak (cooling follows) or a pause (warming resumes).
Thanks for the compilation Jimbo. Very useful. The number of people who like to say there is no pause seems to be increasing.
Jimbo says: January 14, 2014 at 3:49 pm
OK, here it is again. Here is the list showing the history of global warming standstill angst.
And I do agree with Joe Chang that “The whole CAGW model is already broken”.
But along the way in the 700 years of simulation, about 17 separate 10-year intervals had temperature trends resembling that of the past decade—that is, more or less flat.
But this is sleight of hand. We are now at 17 years. How many of the 17 had that long a period of more or less flat?
I’ve run a whole heap of models of stopped clocks. The ensemble can be used to statistically confirm global clock time, and appears to be completely accurate within natural variability.
When supplying the analysis suite with the current time derived from an atomic clock, it confirms that it is a valid time. It has never incorrectly rejected a valid time.
It can even predict what time it will be in the future.
It currently says ten past ten, and has done for the last 15 years, but that’s probably just a jolt. Actually, looking closer I think it may say ten to two.
Great list Jimbo! The internet never forgets, and neither do we thanks to your posts.
It’s hard to imagine a better illustration of what massive government funding has done to the field of climate science than recent events in the U.K.
The PM speculates that recent flooding is a result of AGW induced climate change and viola!
Two scientists pop right up and state that for 10 million pounds they will produce a model showing just that.
Even the most obtuse observer should be able to see through this charade.
RichardsCourtney
I copied your comment in its entirety and put it on Jo Nova to beat back a troll i hope you dont mind, thank you for your insightful comment
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/01/sydney-morning-herald-allows-a-skeptic-to-say-the-games-up-for-climate-hysteria/#comment-1371682
Comment #37
The difference between a peak and a pause is impossible to discern in the short term. This may not be a hiatus, a pause, a “no-warming in 17 years”. It could be a peak. That would suck.
Jimbo says:
January 14, 2014 at 3:49 pm
——————————————
Somebody buy that man a beer 🙂
Thanks for the list, Jimbo. Looking forward to the word “reversal” showing up in 2014 entries. Thank goodness that extra carbon dioxide is preventing an outright freefall.
Just watched Global News out of Vancouver reporting how AGW is melting the Arctic ice. This melting allowing the sun to warm the water, more melting. This slowing the jetstream causing it to meander bringing our “weird weather”. They even interviewed one of the rowers who tried rowing the Northwest Passage about the melting, but they left out the part the rowers failed because of ice and that 22 private yachts [that were] trapped.
Global is very biased on climate reporting.
Don’t worry about little things like the Pause…really nothing when you think about it. The Dem party is going to make sure the CAGW is addressed correctly
“Senate Democrats pledging to get more aggressive on climate change will soon pressure the major TV networks to give the topic far greater attention on the Sunday talking-head shows.
Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, are gathering colleagues’ signatures on a letter to the networks asserting that they’re ignoring global warming.
“It is beyond my comprehension that you have ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox, that their Sunday shows have discussed climate change in 2012, collectively, for all of eight minutes,” Sanders said, citing analysis by the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America.
Sanders mentioned the letter during a press conference with most other members of Senate Democrats’ new, 19-member Climate Action Task Force, and he elaborated on it in a brief interview afterward.”
Just relax…I’m sure they have our best interest in mind /s
http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/democrats-plan-to-pressure-tv-networks-into-covering-climate-change-20140114
the quality of the CAGW debate has gone up a notch or two in Australia. Newman weighs in again:
15 Jan: Australian: Maurice Newman: Mother Nature Suggests The Pary’s Over for IPCC
(Maurice Newman is chairman of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council)
GIVEN the low-grade attacks on me following my piece “Crowds go cold on climate cost” (The Australian, Dec 31) readers of Fairfax publications and The Guardian may be shocked to hear I believe in climate change. I also accept carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. The trouble is, I cannot reconcile the claims of dangerous human CO2 emissions with the observed record…
So when an internationally acclaimed climatologist like Roy Spencer from the University of Alabama at Huntsville dispassionately analyses climate models covering 33 years and concludes that both the surface and satellite observations produce linear temperature trends that are below 87 of the 90 models used in the comparison, he does not politically neutralise his findings. They are empirical fact…
In the meantime, childish personal attacks on those who point out flaws in IPCC reasoning and advice only increase scepticism. They are no substitute for empirical evidence and are well into diminishing returns. The party’s over.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/mother-nature-suggests-the-partys-over-for-ipcc/story-e6frgd0x-1226801761168#
GAZ says: January 14, 2014 at 2:37 pm
> Modellers standard answer is: yes, we accept that we didn’t quite get it
> right. The modelling you refer to was done x years ago when we had less
> data an less sophisticated methods, but….
> Now we have data for additional x years and we have improved our
> modelling techniques, so you should trust us now!
They’re nothing, if not persistent. Hey Rocky, watch me pull a global warming trend out of a hat…
The ball is back in Richard Kerr’s court. That’s true.
How about Richard Kerr and other start by explaining in details: Where have all the money gone? Not enough to put valid arguments for their assumptions. When ever a scholar use assumption instead of solid proof, the so called thesis is downgraded to an assumption. Thesis needs more than A -> B and B can -> C for assuming A -> C
That’s basic mathematic!
Cards on the table for the financial aspect of your assumption
Google Trends on “warming pause” and “global warming pause” have their own “jolts” in the graphs:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=warming%20pause
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=global%20warming%20pause
On the word “jolt” though nothing is happening (ie. no upward trend movement).
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=jolt
They should be careful what they wish for!
If Boeing and Lockheed had this quality of simulations on their computers, would you dare to get on one of their planes? The science is only settled because they can’t or won’t back up their claims.
rk says:
January 14, 2014 at 7:30 pm
“Senate Democrats pledging to get more aggressive on climate change will soon pressure the major TV networks . . . ”
One of the problems for these sorts of campaigns is that TV-watchers are not much interested in the topic and there are many sources of entertainment and news. I don’t know what the main networks do because I haven’t watched a program on TV for about 10 years because of the many minutes of commercials and the force-feeding of the news someone else thinks I should see. The “Sunday shows” mentioned always used to have politicians moving air over their lips and saying nothing. Why watch?
Al Gore tried a tv-network and it failed. Like minded folks have pushed web sites and they are failing or have failed.
Meanwhile, a dozen or so web-blogs, led by WUWT, CA, JoNova and so on, keep attracting readers. [for non-US ideas I read what Paul Homewood and Pierre Gosselin post.]
Folks such as Bernie Sanders and his President waste time and effort and billions of dollars on an odd assortment of things the Feds ought not to be involved in and ignore important things. Then when something goes wrong they can claim they were “out of the loop” or some parts of the government are so big as to to be unmanageable. Someone needs to tell these goons, sorry – the Senate Democrats’ new, 19-member Climate Action Task Force, where to stuff their letter.
crakar24:
re your comment addressed to me at January 14, 2014 at 5:20 pm.
That is fine. I would not have written it if I had not wanted people to read it.
But thankyou for attributing it: that is rare and appreciated.
Richard
What’s all this stuff about 2 degrees of warming this century? This is not what they are telling the politicians. When Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard introduced a Carbon Tax, she specifically quoted a figure of 5 degrees C by 2070 to justify it. This figure came from a CSIRO model, and in the real (political) world, this is what is driving the bandwagon.
I’d like to see how many “5 degrees by 2070” models have 10-year pauses, but no one has put such a question to the modellers.
When they tentatively enter the scientific debate, the modellers are saying one thing, but behind the scenes they are advocating outrageously exaggerated scenarios, to promote themselves and their influence. Watch the pea and thimble, as McIntyre might say.
Why play this Warmist game, endlessly wasting time-and-effort to refute conjectures –not even halfway decent hypotheses– which observation renders nonsense on their face?
As Moncton puts it, “ad verecundiam” Arguments from Authority are the very antithesis of objective, or even rational, scientific inquiry. All these lumpen academics do, all they have ever done or can do, is mouth polemics at taxpayers’ expense, promoting a Luddite sociopathic One World Government
bent on repealing every “bourgeois” advance since the Enlightenment.
Of course there is no “pause”– seventy years from now, say AD 2085, when our looming “dead sun” Grand Solar Minimum eventually reboots, not one Green Gangster extant will admit to anything in any wise. Against ranting Klimat Kultists no empirical evidence, no fancy analytical methodology, has any weight whatever. Like 19th Century anti-atomists, anti-“germ theory” activists, the only prospect is that such truly meretricious, genuinely schtoopid, Mutual Admiration Societies must eventually topple of their own weight– and good riddance to ’em.
But is it not said that increasing Antarctic ice extent is expected in a global warming scenario?
Hayek’s quote at the end of this post recalls the words of Francis Bacon ‘If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.’
Wait a minute, are these ‘pauses in the models’ the amended temperatures or the raw model run.
Also, I wonder if they are taking into account (in the future) when they have to adjust the current temperatures downward to get a rising trend in the future.
@Jimbo
Excellent list of quote.. One in particular got my attention, but there are many that echo the same sentiment.
—
Dr Doug Smith – Met Office – 18 January 2013
“The exact causes of the temperature standstill are not yet understood,” says climate researcher Doug Smith from the Met Office.
[Translated by Philipp Mueller from Spiegel Online]
__________________
So, they don’t know why the temperature hits a standstill, but they know with 97% certainty why it goes up?
hmmm
Due to the inconvenient lack of warming, some climatologists are already changing their game: during a UK Parliament committee hearing, David Kennedy of the U.K. Committee on Climate Change (starting at 10:20:20 in the video recording available at http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2014/1/8/deben-and-kennedy-sinking-fast.html) made a claim that the climate models do not involve short times scales under 50 years. He is trying to “play a blinder”, not too many of us will be here when the time is up for the model verification in Kennedy’s terms. In other words, Kennedy is telling us to forget the 15 Phil-Jones-year and 17 Santer-year periods for falsification, and to wait 33 more years, while in the mean time to trust him and the other “experts” in terms of policy recommendations. Too bad for Kennedy that his team-mate Kevin Trenberth lost his patience:
http://notrickszone.com/2014/01/10/oops-trenberth-concedes-natural-ocean-cycles-contributed-to-1978-1998-warming-after-all-co2-diminishes-as-a-factor/
by admitting that the latest warming period (before lack of warming) was “partly” caused by natural variations.
As a non-scientist but a pretty good student of economics (taking the Curry point) it has always seemed to me that the complexity of client science owes more to the social sciences than the physical sciences. Very little is truly measurable and much is logical conjecture. It could be that the main problem with all sides of the scientific debate is that it has been framed incorrectly and proofs are being sought when it is beyond our power to do this. So this is not hard “settled” science.
As a corollary, economics has a bad reputation for getting its forecasts wrong but is still a respected discipline because it acknowledges its limitations. And like client science it has become politicised. But you would have thought after 10 or 17 years or whatever of missed predictions some humility might occur. But like economics, expect the basic numbers to be massaged to fit the political agenda.
– – – – – – – – –
Jimbo,
The strategy you have for using your lists can be effective. Thanks for letting us know the why of your efforts. And thanks for your efforts.
Speaking of strategy, is there is a shift in strategy used by IPCC apologists particularly wrt the evolution of AR5? Some apologists are no longer able to avoid addressing independent (of the IPCC) critical skeptics; they are debating in absentia with critical skeptics. Is their new strategy what I would call indirection? Where the indirection is trying to take on the appearance of having been all along a skeptic of the IPCC just like the real critical skeptics are. It is indirection when they say, in response to critical skeptics, something like “we are adjusting to new observations”.
John
The lecture by Hayek seems to be a contradiction in abstract steps, if you will.
First, the point:
In some fields, particularly where problems of a similar kind arise in the physical sciences, the difficulties can be overcome by using, instead of specific information about the individual elements, data about the relative frequency, or the probability, of the occurrence of the various distinctive properties of the elements. But this is true only where we have to deal with what has been called, “phenomena of unorganized complexity,” in contrast to those “phenomena of organized complexity”
Would Hayek argue that climate models try to ‘explain’ a non linear, complex chaotic system, that is, a system that is unorganized complexity ? Then, it appears that he would support the climate model approach as valid ? Yet, later, the author pleads :
What I mainly wanted to bring out by the topical illustration is that certainly in my field, but I believe also generally in the sciences of man, what looks superficially like the most scientific procedure is often the most unscientific, and, beyond this, that in these fields there are definite limits to what we can expect science to achieve. This means that to entrust to science – or to deliberate control according to scientific principles – more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.
And, offers a glimpse of intended summary :
The conflict between what in its present mood the public expects science to achieve in satisfaction of popular hopes and what is really in its power is a serious matter because, even if the true scientists should all recognize the limitations of what they can do in the field of human affairs, so long as the public expects more there will always be some who will pretend, and perhaps honestly believe, that they can do more to meet popular demands than is really in their power. It is often difficult enough for the expert, and certainly in many instances impossible for the layman, to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate claims advanced in the name of science.
While arguing for the one take away:
A theory of essentially complex phenomena must refer to a large number of particular facts; and to derive a prediction from it, or to test it, we have to ascertain all these particular facts. Once we succeeded in this there should be no particular difficulty about deriving testable predictions – with the help of modern computers it should be easy enough to insert these data into the appropriate blanks of the theoretical formulae and to derive a prediction. The real difficulty, to the solution of which science has little to contribute, and which is sometimes indeed insoluble, consists in the ascertainment of the particular facts.
Concluding with a more general summary:
There is danger in the exuberant feeling of ever growing power which the advance of the physical sciences has engendered and which tempts man to try, “dizzy with success”, to use a characteristic phrase of early communism, to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will. The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in mens fatal striving to control society – a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization …
I feel that his initial apparent support for unorganized complexity to be ‘understood’ by ‘frequencies’ and/or ‘probabilities’ undercuts the value of his summary with respect to making this piece a critical argument in the ‘climate models are failing’ argument one might be tempted to bring forth. What am I missing here ?
Steve from Rockwood says on January 14, 2014 at 5:49 pm
The difference between a peak and a pause is impossible to discern in the short term. This may not be a hiatus, a pause, a “no-warming in 17 years”. It could be a peak. That would suck.
Sorry Steve – it’s probably going to suck.
Re-stating from 2002:
We knew decades ago that global warming alarmism was wrong. We confidently stated in 2002:
[PEGG, reprinted in edited form at their request by several other professional journals , the Globe and Mail and la Presse in translation, by Baliunas, Patterson and MacRae]
http://www.apegga.org/Members/Publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
On global warming:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
On green energy:
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
I suggest that our two above statements are now demonstrably true, within reasonable probabilities.
I also wrote in an article in the Calgary Herald published on September 1, 2002, based on a phone conversation with Paleoclimatologist Dr. Tim Patterson:
On global cooling:
“If (as I believe) solar activity is the main driver of surface temperature rather than CO2, we should begin the next cooling period by 2020 to 2030.”
Bundle up!
Regards, Allan
“If (as I believe) solar activity is the main driver of surface temperature rather than CO2, we should begin the next cooling period by 2020 to 2030.”
I cannot comment of the driver(s) for any proposed cooling. That is way above my pay grade.
I can observe that the temperature data to date (HadCrut4) says that we are over a peak in the 60 year cycle that is demonstrably present and may be experiencing a peak in the underlying 100+ year cycle as well.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:220/mean:174/mean:144/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:720
So the data now supports your prior observation.
RE “Science magazine, the flagship publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)”
http://www.aaas.org/
AAAS Mission
The AAAS seeks to “advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all people.” To fulfill this mission, the AAAS Board has set the following broad goals:
1. Enhance communication among scientists, engineers, and the public;
2. Promote and defend the integrity of science and its use;
3. Strengthen support for the science and technology enterprise;
4. Provide a voice for science on societal issues;
5. Promote the responsible use of science in public policy;
6. Strengthen and diversify the science and technology workforce;
7. Foster education in science and technology for everyone;
8. Increase public engagement with science and technology; and
9. Advance international cooperation in science.
AAAS Board of Directors
Officers 2013-2014
William Press (2014)
Chair of the AAAS Board
University of Texas, Austin
Phillip A. Sharp (2015)
AAAS President
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Gerald Fink (2016)
AAAS President-Elect
Whitehead Institute, MIT
Alan I. Leshner
AAAS Chief Executive Officer
Executive Publisher, Science
David Evans Shaw
AAAS Treasurer
Blackpoint Group
Other Members
Bonnie L. Bassler (2016)
Princeton University
May R. Berenbaum (2016)
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Claire M. Fraser (2017)
University of Maryland School of Medicine
Elizabeth Loftus (2017)
University of California, Irvine
Stephen Mayo (2014)
California Institute of Technology
Raymond Orbach (2015)
University of Texas, Austin
Sue V. Rosser (2014)
San Francisco State University
Inder Verma (2015)
Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Terms end on the last day of the Annual Meeting held in the year given in parentheses.
I suggest that the AAAS Board of Directors have failed badly in the Mission Goals 2, 4 and 5 above.
The censorship of the government.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/democrats-plan-to-pressure-tv-networks-into-covering-climate-change-20140114
You know they can’t report it honestly.
They think we all have short memories.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
JR says:
January 14, 2014 at 4:42 pm
Global temps have not increased … but Arctic and sub Arctic temps have … what is going on? Even now the average temp above 80 degs north remains above the average (albeit a small data set).
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yet all summer, the time when the temperature is above freezing, the Arctic temperature was BELOW average. http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php (click on year 2013)
I suggest you read the WUWT discussion on a paper published in the fall of 2012: Can we predict the duration of an interglacial?
Actual Paper (PDF highlighted)
Paper on the bipolar seesaw: Twentieth century bipolar seesaw of the Arctic and Antarctic surface air temperatures Petr Chylek, Chris K. Folland, Glen Lesins, Manvendra K. Dubey
I will also reprint RACookPE1978 comment that explains why the bipolar seesaw could be the beginning of a new ice age:
We may or may not be looking at a major ice age, the jury is still out on that, but with the summer insolation declining in the NH, ([s]olar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) ~11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes) and near the level for triggering glacial inception, we certainly are not looking at a “Tipping Point” towards warming. At least not for thousands of years.
This is the elephant that stomps all over CAGW alarmism.
Richard Briscoe says: @ January 15, 2014 at 12:13 am
Hayek’s quote at the end of this post recalls….
>>>>>>>>>>>>
This article Why Mises (and not Hayek)?
And of course bureaucrats and politicians who ALWAYS want to grow government and increase their power and wealth therefore much prefer Hayek to Mises.
Control knobs aside,
when the jolt becomes a juddering halt,
you get to feel
the steering wheel.
Steve in Seattle says:
January 15, 2014 at 1:55 am
“The lecture by Hayek seems to be a contradiction in abstract steps, if you will.
First, the point:
In some fields, particularly where problems of a similar kind arise in the physical sciences, the difficulties can be overcome by using, instead of specific information about the individual elements, data about the relative frequency, or the probability, of the occurrence of the various distinctive properties of the elements. But this is true only where we have to deal with what has been called, “phenomena of unorganized complexity,” in contrast to those “phenomena of organized complexity”
Would Hayek argue that climate models try to ‘explain’ a non linear, complex chaotic system, that is, a system that is unorganized complexity ? Then, it appears that he would support the climate model approach as valid ?”
We can’t ask Hayek but I would argue that weather is non linear, complex and chaotic and there fore not of unorganized complexity but of self-organizing complexity. As examples it suffices to point to convective fronts or soliton cloud systems like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_glory_cloud
But basically all macrostructures show self-organization. A statistical approach is only valid on a scale that is an order of magnitude bigger than the largest such structure.
Once at the Guardian one commenter lamented why people were claiming a surface temperature standstill. I showed him my list. This way they find it hard to call me the D word as I am simply quoting mostly Warmist climate scientists on their side. It also scrambles their brains.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/14/no-matter-if-its-a-climatic-pause-or-jolt-still-no-warming/#comment-1536057
I also grew tired of Warmist telling me “but it’s just one quote” or “the paper is an outlier” etc. So I go for as many as I can conceivably find and block such defences.
Now that the majority of ground based weather stations have migrated from Rural to Urban and airports we will see just how big a jolt we get after the pause, especially with satellites monitoring the ground stations.
Is this what those clowns at the UK met off call science? My god, you poor people. Stupidity is so engrained in the psyche of British government scientists they don’t even recognise their stupidity when placed before their peers. God help us all.
This is dead on the money. But look at the larger issue. It isn’t just “clowns at the UK met office”. This is a paper published in Science!. It contains only ten runs, and without actually getting TFA, I’m guessing ten runs with a single GCM. Ten runs is a pitifully small statistical sample, and isn’t improved by the fact that their conclusion is pure data dredging. The probability of ten year intervals for a given specific model isn’t obtained by looking for them in 10 runs that magically turns 910 years into 700 years without explanation, it would (possibly) be obtained by taking that model and running it 100 times for twenty years from the specific starting conditions corresponding to the model epoch, the point where one sets the initial conditions from actual emprical data to predict the probabilistic future.
If the paper actually uses ten different GCMs, the situation is far worse! In that case, all seventeen of the ten year intervals could have come from (say) three or four of the models, and those models — with multiple ten year intervals of flat temperatures — would very likely produce considerably less aggregate warming than models without them. Then there is the utter fallacy of averaging over GCMs, a fallacy I’ve discussed many times. The average over the results of multiple models is not a statistically meaningful quantity. One cannot justify its convergence to a true mean by the use of the central limit theorem. One cannot even assert that errors from model to model are likely to be symmetrically distributed around a true mean by some other means. The average over multiple models is quite literally a meaningless quantity, where at least the average of an ensemble of runs from a single model is a quantity subject to falsification of the model by means of a p-value generated by comparison to the actual future.
A test, by the way, that whatever model they were using has now egregiously failed. To be specific, the probability of starting the model in the epoch year of (say) 1998 and running the model 1000 times from those initial conditions with a small monte carlo spread for 16 years and observing one single instance of zero warming over all 16 years is probably under 0.5. At a guess, the model fails an honest hypothesis test (if it produced 2+ C of warming over 90 years in the first place) with a p-value order of 0.001 — a knee-jerk reject in most of science.
rgb
These snake oil sellers couldn’t predict the cessation of GW, but now they expect us to believe they know that it is just temporary – mind boggling delusionairies.
If natural variability can once overwhelm GHGs, it can potentially do so at any time. It is thus the ruling factor. As for A-GHGs, there is no real-world evidence of their effects whatsoever, despite Warmist hopes and claims.
I’d like to see how many “5 degrees by 2070″ models have 10-year pauses, but no one has put such a question to the modellers.
Sure they have. You can see the answer explicitly in AR5, in several distinct flavors. Steve McKintyre does a good job of deconstructing them here:
http://climateaudit.org/2013/10/08/fixing-the-facts-2/
Note well the changes made from the comparatively honest presentation in the AR5 draft and what they finally released. Don’t get me wrong — the AR5 initial draft was already misleading enough, as the grey envelopes are meaningless. But so is the spaghetti graph they replaced it with.
A proper treatment would have compared each independent GCM to reality, one at a time, and used the real-world result to reject pretty much all of the hottest GCMs (say, the upper third, the ones that are responsible for the upper part of the shaded grey in the draft report as failed models that should not be taken seriously any more. It would have flagged the middle third clustered around the presented centroid as being suspect models — egregiously/collectively deviating from reality, and given the requirements of avoiding data dredging, collectively weaker than one might even expect by individual comparisons. It would have presented the results from the coolest running models as being not egregiously in contradiction of reality, and weighted those models as being the GCMs most likely — in a statistically defensible sense — of being correct or having some predictive skill.
It might have then extrapolated the predictions of those coolest models to determine the likely warming to the end of the century while downgrading all of their confidences substantially, as basically every single statement made with “high confidence” in AR4 is proven false by time at this point, indicating that they need to back the hell off in their assertions of statistically unjustifiable confidence. Right now they are basically using “confidence” to mean “in the obviously highly biased opinions of the people who are writing the final AR SPMs”, not “based on a reliable statistical estimate derived from independent and identically distributed samples drawn from a common distribution after accounting for other sources of error”.
The former is confidence in the sense of confidence game, a.k.a. a con, a racket, the false presentation of a high degree of confidence that is in fact indefensible or that hides actual falsehood in order to advance some vested interest. The latter is what is usually used in science.
It is also extremely interesting that AR5 has “posthumously” backed way the hell off of their predictions for the mid-century mark even their final draft — but not in the SPM — in an addendum, to a rate that is actually dropping the end-of century warming to less than 2 C — contingent on all sorts of things people cannot predict, such as what Mr. Sun is doing in the latter half of this century, whether or not a few large volcanoes decide to start a decadal sustained eruption, what happens with human energy production, and just how important natural variability is, anyway.
I’ll just make my own prediction. In the real world, it is entirely possible that the warming will resume. Or not. Or it could cool. If at least some of the GCMs are even vaguely correct — something subject to extremely considerable doubt at this point, since some of the GCMs are almost certainly egregiously incorrect based on the comparison of their predictions with nature and since most of the GCMs are in substantial systematic disagreement with nature even where the disagreement is not so severe as to overtly falsify them, yet — at some point the warming will indeed resume. But ever year that it does not more severely constrains the Bayesian most probable values of things such as the climate sensitivity and the probable correctness of various implicit assumptions about climate dynamics in the models, even starting from initial priors with a probably absurd degree of initial confidence. In other words, the longer warming does not resume, the more likely it is that the long term warming will be substantially less than initially predicted, or if you prefer, the range of most probable future temperatures should monotonically decrease with every year of no meaningful warming.
In three more years, if no meaningful warming occurs — and given that we are going to be entering the downside of solar cycle 24 at that point, even the most die-hard warmist has to be worried that it will not, in fact, be warming by then and might even be cooling compared to a 1997-1998 Super-ENSO epoch — the Bayesian estimates will drop to where a catastrophe becomes actively improbable as opposed to actively probable. We’re well on the way there already. Recall that even as of a few years ago, the George Mason survey of climate scientists showed that over half of them thought that there would be warming, but only non-catastrophic levels of warming, by the end of the century. The recent AR5 “stealth modification” means that, if re-polled today, the numbers here would probably have risen to something like 2/3 of all climate scientists thinking there will be damaging but non-catastrophic warming , as few as 20% still believing in catastrophic warming, and a growing minority thinking that there will not even be damaging warming or no warming at all. This is reflected by the free-fall in climate sensitivity, down from order of 2.5 C in AR5 to many estimates under 2 C in late 2013. By 2017, with no warming, these will be falling to non-catastrophic 1.2-1.5 C, basically no water vapor feedback at all, and large uncertainties due to an obviously much larger role of natural variability.
AR6 could well be the final assessment report produced by the IPCC as they are being summarily disbanded and massively defunded. That’s on the far side of the 2016 presidential elections, and no matter who runs for either party, they are going to have to back off CAGW if there has been no meaningful warming by early 2016, two years from now or worse, if there is an actual weak cooling trend, regrowth of arctic ice, etc. By 2017, heads will be rolling. That’s why we are seeing AR5 backing off after the fact. The “cold” reality of the matter is that Trenberth, Schmidt, Jones, Hansen and all of the rest can see the writing on the wall. They are already hoist on the petard of their own egregious past predictions and words. They cannot artificially boost ground surface temperatures derived from UHI-maniplated thermometers as they are constrained by independent LTT measurements and ever better tools supporting truly global satellite measurements of surface temperatures. The trick of pretending that every extreme weather event is evidence of CACC (as opposed to CAGW) is played out — too many people are calling them this even in the scientific community.
If they cannot point to some published science that agrees with neutral warming over 20 year, their objectivity will be called into question, and not just on WUWT, this will be a mainstream event as everybody’s funding is going to depend on whether or not they were deliberately misleading the public. Expect to see a lot of publications this year where people who have for years unambiguously taken CAGW and high climate sensitivity as a given to subtly back off to a fence-sitting posture where they still call for AGW, but start to openly acknowledge that it could end up being only a degree plus, not two degrees or more plus. In other words, objectivity will break out all over so that researchers have a track record of some objective consideration of the possibility of non-catastrophic AGW with low climate sensitivity before the peasants arrive with pitchforks and torches, or before Republicans arrive with subpoenas and the threat of being found in contempt of congress in previous testimony.
In other words, climate scientists who have spoken out confidently for catastrophic warming are suddenly realizing that they might actually be held accountable for their conclusions, and not just in scientific journals. Those who live by the political sword die by the political sword, and the ivory tower quite rightly hold no protection for those who have used science as a cloak for making statements outside of the reasonable confidence that can be attributed to the predictions of unproven theories and unvalidated computational models. Which is “low”, in case there is any doubt.
The worst case scenario for them is actually the best-case scenario for the science. A number of recent papers are uncovering an actual scientific basis for errors in the GCMs, e.g. errors in the treatment of thunderstorms as vertical advection penetration of heat through the greenhouse layer to where one has regionally enhanced cooling at a globally significant level, the discovery that things like stratospheric water vapor can vary by over 10% on a remarkably short time scale for reasons unknown (with truly significant modulation of greenhouse warming, modulation that can actually be semi-permanent if the decrease in water vapor proves to be perisistent), with the discovery that aerosol physics and soot are almost certainly incorrectly treated in many of the GCMs if not most. If somebody writes, or rewrites, some of the GCMs so that they predict the recent temperature hiatus as being probable instead of improbable in their per-model ensemble runs, while still using physics-based models (just with improved physics) then the science itself will be rescued even as those who placed overmuch reliance in the results of early models are marginalized.
Hansen has already been marginalized. Jones has to be worried. Schmidt is vulnerable. Some of these folks actually HAVE a track record of being far more reasonable and conservative about what the predicted pre-1998, pre-Mann, when Hansen, the IPCC and the Green crowd took over the science and made it a global issue to replace war as a UN issue and to (very sadly indeed) displace global poverty, religious conflict, and ignorance as the most important issues facing the world. I think Jones has long since realized that he was wrong but has no way to say so publicly that isn’t committing seppuku, so he keeps praying for potentially disastrous warming to recommence even as he realizes that it probably won’t, at least not during his career lifetime. I think Trenberth is actively backing off as we speak — last I heard he was calling for only 35 cm or thereabouts of SLR by 2100 — far too much to support by direct evidence, but way, way down from Hansen’s TED Talks public assertion of five meters of SLR by 2100. Even as he looks for missing heat, he realizes that if he finds it in the deep ocean, it actually means that there will be no catastrophic warming in the next century — it is good news for the world, not the bad. And then he has to be just as aware as anyone else that climate sensitivity is probably a lot lower than the early GCMs predicted, the role of the natural decadal oscillations and the sun a lot larger than they account for even now, and that feedbacks from water vapor and clouds could even turn out to be net negative even as they very plausibly change the distribution of global temperatures and rainfall patterns.
Over the next decade ARGOS and improvements on CERES are going to tell us a lot, and do so in ways that completely resolve (prove or disprove) many of the assumptions concerning radiative balance. Everybody knows it, and is suddenly realizing that their “confident” assertions from the last two decades are about to be in the position of being falsified, in detail, not by sloppy things like incorrect predictions of upper troposphere warming, incorrect predictions of global warming, but by actual measured failures in the supposed heating of the ocean, in measured failures in the TOA variation of upwelling spectrally distributed intensity or (worse) albedo.
We are also reaching a point in many countries where personal weather stations connected to e.g. the Weather Underground achieve sufficient numbers and detail to precisely map the UHI effect, map it to where precise corrections become possible in at least much of the United States if not Europe. I actually suspect that they are already there, although collecting the data and processing it as a set of anomaly isotherms surrounding urban centers is probably still difficult. I’m pretty happy to bet that we are getting to where we can actually compute regional isotherms, corrected for geography, on top of smoothed population density maps and make quite accurate inferences, though.
rgb
Allan wrote in 2002:
“If (as I believe) solar activity is the main driver of surface temperature rather than CO2, we should begin the next cooling period by 2020 to 2030.”
RichardLH says on January 15, 2014 at 2:43 am
I can observe that the temperature data to date (HadCrut4) says that we are over a peak in the 60 year cycle that is demonstrably present and may be experiencing a peak in the underlying 100+ year cycle as well.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:220/mean:174/mean:144/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:720
So the data now supports your prior observation.
_________
Hello Richard,
I strongly prefer the satellite data (eg UAH) to the surface data. However, all datasets are showing the “pause” now.
My (our) 2020-2030 cooling prediction came from a conversation with Paleoclimatologist Dr. Tim Patterson at Carleton U. I queried Tim closely about the basis of this cooling prediction, since I favour the ~60-year PDO Cycle, but Tim was confident that the ~90 year Gleissberg Cycle was more likely to dominate the global climate system, based on his research.
IF the ~60 year PDO dominates, then cooling has probably already begun. However, any such cooling is still small and difficult to detect.
Yet another time — Piazza is a tool I use in teaching physics. It facilitates blog-like discussions of specific questions. It can correctly translate inline latex wrapped in $$ pairs, so that $$\vec{F} = v\vec{a}$$ is Newton’s Second Law. It has a built in preview — you can check your replies, including all rendered latex as well as trivially embedded graphics. Webassign (another tool I use) can handle tagged latex as well, and again there is ownership of individual posts so I can edit what I say even after it is posted. Goodreads is a reading blog — actual blog software — that permits previewing one’s post, editing one’s own post, and a lot more, all easily and conveniently. No latex, but then it isn’t a science blog tool.
There are things like http://www.mathjax.org/, javascript tools that permit the embedding and display of mathml and/or latex into rather generic blog engines. I pray for WUWT to aggressively pursue this sort of thing. It is a real pain in the ass to try to write in a science-related blog without either preview or a proper latex/mathml/mathematica interface. And this isn’t the only such tool. Surely something out there would enable graphics, math, previewing, after-post editing by the submitter (and moderator(s))?
rgb
So, we can expect Nuttycello to castigate Kerr and Schmidt for admitting that there IS a pause in “global” warming that isn’t global. Right?
rgb:
Thanks for the excellent summarization. I wanted to second your assessment of “unjustified confidence”. It is one of the most egregious violations of the scientific method to falsify the significance of the supporting evidence. Claiming a level of confidence, that is unjustified, is undermining the “level of confidence” the public has in its institutions. The difference between civil society and anarchy, is the level of trust, that the public maintains for the “ruling class”. If those at the top, are not punished for violations of public trust, you can be sure, the public is not going to abide by the behavioral norms, that make society function.
It will get worse, before it gets better. There are still a significant number, of otherwise intelligent individuals, with there eyes shut and there fingers in their ears, praying for a massive “El Nino” this summer. It will make a good thesis on “mass psychosis”, for some future dissertation.
I hate to think where we would be, without the numerous internet sites, that have weathered withering condemnation from the “climate aristocracy”.
It will at least be a lesson, to others, that want the celebrity that comes from setting off the “fire alarm” when you think, you might, smell a puff of smoke.
So, this is just a blip caused by other factors and warming will resume? Presumably then, there will be a snap-back effect and the warming will appear to accelerate dramatically as the blip reverses and adds to the underlying warming trend. So… why have warming projections been reduced and not increased?
1971 according to NASA, consensus man made climate change is absurd: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/15/1971-consensus-mann-made-climate-change-is-absurd/
In Australia, the recently setup climate council, headed by sacked Tim Flannery, is stating that warming is happening faster than ever now. Seems only to affect Australia though.
Allan,
I believe that it is possible to detect and demonstrate the 60 year signal in both the surface and satellite data sets. The satellite data set is not long enough yet to show the full 60 year cycle obviously. But the indications that it is that it is there are, I believe, clear.
This is using a very simple and well recognised ‘tool’ of Gaussian low pass filtering/smooth. Even Hansen uses this in some of his analysis. The question is what values to use to ‘see’ the 60 year signal if it is present.
In order not to predetermine the outcome we need to stay at least a octave or so away from any fundamental but not so far as to allow any harmonics of signal shape to confuse the picture.
I chose a period of 18 and a bit years which should suffice.
HadCrut4
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:180/mean:149/mean:123/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:720
UAH
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/mean:90/mean:74/mean:62/plot/uah
(For those who will point out that a Triple Running Mean is not a true Gaussian smooth then please note that sampling and range figures dominate above the differences in outcome.)
Oops, I accidentally included the 15 year rather than the 18.33… year I had used in my first post but the differences are tiny 🙂
Thank you Richard.
Some apparent warming bias in Hadcrut4.
I expect more significant global cooling to follow.
Best, Allan
Allan M.R. MacRae says:
January 16, 2014 at 11:13 am
“Some apparent warming bias in Hadcrut4.”
There may well be, but that will show up in changes in the magnitude of the 100+ year cycle. Until we get adjustments that iron out the 60 year cycle it will remain there for all to see.
Its there in GISS and BEST (in the later years – the early years appear to have massaged it away) and in many other sources of climate data, both land and sea.
If we are at the peak of the 60 year as the data demonstrates then it all comes down to the 100+ year cycle and if that has reached a peak or not.
Using just observations of the data, there is a good chance that it is occurring there as well. That is because the 30 year positive mode is ‘zero crossing’ too early at ~20 years. This could mean that the 100+ year has stopped rising and started to level out.
In that case the data will soon support the projected fall. Time alone will tell.
Hello again Richard,
Maybe you can find something of value in this data:
I have no Sunspot Number data before 1700, but the latter part of the Maunder Minimum had 2 back-to-back low Solar Cycles with SSNmax of 58 in 1705 and 63 in 1717 .
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/space-weather/solar-data/solar-indices/sunspot-numbers/international/tables/
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/solar/image/annual.gif
The coldest period of the Maunder was ~1670 to ~1700 (8.48dC year average Central England Temperatures) but the coldest year was 1740 (6.84C year avg CET).
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/data/download.html
The Dalton Minimum had 2 back-to-back low SC’s with SSNmax of 48 in 1804 and 46 in 1816. Tambora erupted in 1815.
Two of the coldest years in the Dalton were 1814 (7.75C year avg CET) and 1816 (7.87C year avg CET).
Now Solar Cycle 24 is a dud with SSNmax estimated at ~65, and very early estimates suggest SC25 will be very low as well.
The warmest recent years for CET were 2002 to 2007 inclusive that averaged 10.55C.
So here is my real concern:
IF the Sun does indeed drive temperature, as I suspect, then global cooling probably WILL happen within the next decade or sooner.
Best regards, Allan
The problem I have with temperatures before 1840 is that they cannot be considered to truly representative (to the accuracy required). They are either deficient in sampling in space or time (or both) as well as instrument/measurement accuracy.
I could take to observed minimum at around 1740 and subtract 60 years from it and come up with 1680 and note that it coincides rather well with the coldest period of the Maunder minimum as determined.
But that way madness lies. We are seeking a figure of only +-0.2C variation. Without a relatively high quality temperature instrument it is possible to ‘see’ it everywhere you look if so inclined. You can make the conjecture ‘fit’ but, to my mind at least, it can never be conclusive.
I do not know if it is the sun, the ocean or even little green men tweaking the thermostat. That sort of conclusion is way beyond my pay grade.
I can only be a ‘honest observer’. I CAN state that the measured temperatures have followed the trend/cycle observed in the period in which they have been recorded. I CAN state that there is a better than even likelihood that any such trend/cycle into the future.
Beyond that, we wait for more data.
I agree Richard – with for more data.
All I can see is the gross correlation that has been historically observed between low Sunspots during two significant cold periods – the Maunder and the Dalton,
I expect the Sun is the dominant factor, however, the ~90 year Gleissberg Cycle is in-and-out-of-phase with the ~60 year PDO.
I do expect global cooling in the next few years as stated above.
How much cooling? Not sure but probably significant enough to cause hardship for humanity in Northern climes. Hope to be wrong. Getting old and hate the cold.
correction: “wait for more data”
If you use an estimation of temperatures aka LOWESS or LOESS then you can get more than two cycles out of the data. And that can show a probability for a continued downward trend from here on for the next few years.
Again, though, that is an estimation, not a measurement.
As to the origin of what drives all this. There any many offerings as to that. Only when we get acknowledgement of the actual existence of the 60 year and 100+ year cycle will we then get serious research into what the drivers are.
So far, the first claim is, “you can’t do that to our lovely data” not “oh that’s interesting”.
I have a new slogan that I will use from here on out.
Null hypothesis = Scenario C
I was thinking of printing up cards and tee-shirts!
This observes that you can take Hansen’s Scenario C and change its wording slightly to be “any change in CO2 concentration from 2000 will not effect the GST. Only natural factors will influence the outcome”.
This is what happens if you turn all the greenhouse gas ‘knobs’ in the models down to zero effect. and run the models forward.
So far the data is agreeing rather well with that conclusion 🙂 Hansen may have been right all along, just not with the conclusion he drew.
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/screenhunter_1741-jan-14-09-31.gif
I rather like the idea of agreeing with the modellers. They may not like it though.
Agree again.
As I have written previously:
“I therefore suggest that the oft-fractious “mainstream debate” between warmists and skeptics about the magnitude of ECS is materially irrelevant. ECS, if it exists at all, is so small that it just does not matter.“
____________
ECS = Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity, the theoretical warming resulting from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from the alleged pre-industrial”” concentration of ~280ppm to 560ppm.
____________
More at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/07/watch-the-usa-in-polar-vortex-deep-freeze-live/#comment-1532442
A pause can only be a pause if it is preceeded and followed by identical behavior. It’s like a baseball player having a slump in hitting. If his batting average doesn’t resume, the “slump” was only the start of a different avarage. That’s what we have here with the climate models — we don’t know the future temperatures of years to come. It may be a pause or it may be a new temeprature pattern. I wonder just how long of a “pause” is required for the AGW crowd to admit it’s no longer a pause. If that cannot be established, all funding for such endevors should be carefully re-examined. Would you admit to surgery if upon new examinations you didn’t show any signs of a terminal illness? …. or would you just go along with the initial opinion and have it done anyway and incur the costs?