Note: This is a repost from Dr. Roy Spencer’s blog entry last Friday. I’ve done so because it needs the wide distribution that WUWT can offer. The one graph he has produced (see below) says it all. I suggest readers use their social media tools to share this far and wide. – Anthony
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
I’m seeing a lot of wrangling over the recent (15+ year) pause in global average warming…when did it start, is it a full pause, shouldn’t we be taking the longer view, etc.
These are all interesting exercises, but they miss the most important point: the climate models that governments base policy decisions on have failed miserably.
I’ve updated our comparison of 90 climate models versus observations for global average surface temperatures through 2013, and we still see that >95% of the models have over-forecast the warming trend since 1979, whether we use their own surface temperature dataset (HadCRUT4), or our satellite dataset of lower tropospheric temperatures (UAH):
Whether humans are the cause of 100% of the observed warming or not, the conclusion is that global warming isn’t as bad as was predicted. That should have major policy implications…assuming policy is still informed by facts more than emotions and political aspirations.
And if humans are the cause of only, say, 50% of the warming (e.g. our published paper), then there is even less reason to force expensive and prosperity-destroying energy policies down our throats.
I am growing weary of the variety of emotional, misleading, and policy-useless statements like “most warming since the 1950s is human caused” or “97% of climate scientists agree humans are contributing to warming”, neither of which leads to the conclusion we need to substantially increase energy prices and freeze and starve more poor people to death for the greater good.
Yet, that is the direction we are heading.
And even if the extra energy is being stored in the deep ocean (if you have faith in long-term measured warming trends of thousandths or hundredths of a degree), I say “great!”. Because that extra heat is in the form of a tiny temperature change spread throughout an unimaginably large heat sink, which can never have an appreciable effect on future surface climate.
If the deep ocean ends up averaging 4.1 deg. C, rather than 4.0 deg. C, it won’t really matter.
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Do the models all agree with eachother and with the observations exactly in 1983? No, so why plot them like that? Perhaps because if you baseline the models and the observations properly the result looks like this
http://www.realclimate.org/images/model122.jpg
Roy may be “growing weary of the variety of emotional, misleading, and policy-useless statements like “most warming since the 1950s is human caused””, but does it really help to replace them with rhetorical, misleading and policy-useless statements, such as “95% of Climate Models Agree: The Observations Must be Wrong”, based on a misleading plot of the model projections? No.
Note, I don’t think anybody is claiming that the observations are wrong, so that is a straw man. While they are not perfect, e.g. Arctic coverage, the apparent hiatus is well explained by processes such as ENSO.
My guess is that climateismydj is Katy Duke (Twitter @katyduke).
She has pointed to a post on hotwhopper.com (have to love that blog name! — http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/02/roy-spencers-latest-deceit-and-deception.html ) which indicates that the graph is wrong because it “shift[s] the CMIP5 charts up by around 0.3 degrees”.
Any comments on this critique of the work? I’d like to understand what’s going on here — hot air or a justified comment. Thanks!
Truer word have never been said. Barking defiance to the world from a pulpit isn’t science. It’s evidence of activity that is well known to be of the kind that is into hiding facts, and assassinating character.
—–
Roy Tucker says:
February 10, 2014 at 7:36 pm
The Scientific Method
1. Observe a phenomenon carefully.
2. Develop a hypothesis that possibly explains the phenomenon.
3. Perform a test in an attempt to disprove or invalidate the hypothesis. If the hypothesis is disproven, return to steps 1 and 2.
4. A hypothesis that stubbornly refuses to be invalidated may be correct. Continue testing.
The Scientific Computer Modeling Method
1. Observe a phenomenon carefully.
2. Develop a computer model that mimics the behavior of the phenomenon.
3. Select observations that conform to the model predictions and dismiss observations as of inadequate quality that conflict with the computer model.
4. In instances where all of the observations conflict with the model, “refine” the model with fudge factors to give a better match with pesky facts. Assert that these factors reveal fundamental processes previously unknown in association with the phenomenon. Under no circumstances willingly reveal your complete data sets, methods, or computer codes.
5. Upon achieving a model of incomprehensible complexity that still somewhat resembles the phenomenon, begin to issue to the popular media dire predictions of catastrophe that will occur as far in the future as possible, at least beyond your professional lifetime.
6. Continue to “refine” the model in order to maximize funding and the awarding of Nobel Prizes.
7. Dismiss as unqualified, ignorant, and conspiracy theorists all who offer criticisms of the model.
Repeat steps 3 through 7 indefinitely.
This is what happens when government employees and media trough feeders who simply want to draw crowds,
destroy real science.
Everybody knows they’re wrong. What anyone you know who is a government employee or a media alarm predator’s irrelevant.
dikranmarsupial says:
February 11, 2014 at 2:35 am
Prof Hans von Storch has something to contribute as well:
http://www.hvonstorch.de/klima/pdf/storch_et_al_recenttrends.pdf
In brief: forget the models.
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garymount says:
February 10, 2014 at 5:37 pm
I realized that I had just spent the previous couple of hours watching blooper out-takes from Star trek Enterprise. How I went from hamsters to Tribbles I’ll never know. 🙂 “where they will be no Tribble at all”, still my favorite line.
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Or another one, when Kirk & Spock went back in time thru the “Guardian”. At the episode’s end, Kirk muttered, at least for 1968, a risky “Let’s get the hell out of here”.
Paul Pierett says:
February 10, 2014 at 12:42 pm
Instead of in bracing what is going on the media and the US government is in goose step March right down the road to destruction with the hypothesis of Man-Made Global Warming.
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The Soviet Union did the same thing with their economy in the first half of the 20th century. It made no difference to the ruling elite. What’s a million peasants more or less.
richardscourtney says:
February 10, 2014 at 1:01 pm
In other words, “If the deep ocean ends up averaging 4.1 deg. C, rather than 4.0 deg. C, it won’t really matter” because it can’t.
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I expect Dr. Spencer was being generous. I’d also like to see a calculation because I suspect a 0.1C change in deep ocean temps represents something like a 10C or more change in surface air temps over a period of hundreds or thousands of years..
michaelwonders says:
February 10, 2014 at 1:08 pm
I mention this out of wonderment and not out of being contrary. I’d love an explanation of how people are saying the temp hasn’t changed and how we shouldn’t be worried about this continuing. Thank you!
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because when you average out long term temp increase it is no different than the temp increase over the past 300 or so years since the little ice age, which points to it being due to natural causes. and it would be foolish to try and prevent natural climate change, because it is beyond our control.
the worry was that natural variability in climate was low, and thus the increase in temp in the late 20th century must be due to humans and CO2. However, since CO2 is increasing rapidly but temps are not, this means natural variability must be much higher than previously thought, which means that there is little we can do about climate change even if we wanted to.
I love how ‘Science’ has been taken over by activists.
If you do not agree with the propaganda, you will be ‘punished.’
Keep up the work.
Wayne
Luvsiesous.com
NotTheAussiePhilM says:
February 10, 2014 at 1:07 pm
– IMO, publishing mindless drivel like this one
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I agree, your comment was mindless drivel
rgbatduke says:
February 10, 2014 at 1:32 pm
Although the remaining models would still very likely be wrong, the observed temperature trend wouldn’t be too unlikely given the models and hence it cannot yet be said that the models are probably wrong. And I promise, the adjusted for statistical sanity CMIP5 MME mean, extrapolated, would drop climate sensitivity by 2100 like a rock, to well under 2 C and possibly to as low as 1 C.
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Dr Brown makes a very good point. Why has the IPCC not simply dropped the models that are not consistent with observation? Any reasonably competent statistician would have done this, and said those models that remain cannot yet be rejected. And from this one could then provide a more informed estimate of climate sensitivity with increased confidence.
Instead the IPCC has kept all the models, even those that are clearly biased, and can be shown to be biased. They then compute an average that is clearly biased. And from this they conclude they have even greater confidence in the result. Scientifically this is fraud. There is no statistical basis for concluding increased confidence while the divergence is increasing.
Because the issue is not the “pause”. It is the increased divergence between observation and model mean that demonstrates there is no basis for increased confidence in the hypothesis that humans are causing the warming.
If one performs the statistical analysis correctly, then one can say with increased confidence that warming is likely to be much less than projected by the model mean.
” Why has the IPCC not simply dropped the models that are not consistent with observation? Any reasonably competent statistician would have done this, and said those models that remain cannot yet be rejected. And from this one could then provide a more informed estimate of climate sensitivity with increased confidence.”
Then there would be no more models left and the whole system implodes. The IPCC and its bondslaves know this. Btw, it makes an enormous impression having more than one hundred models. That they have all failed, who really cares? Not the IPCC!
ferdberple:
I concluded my explanation at February 10, 2014 at 1:01 pm saying
At February 11, 2014 at 6:50 am you reply saying
I would welcome an explanation of that, please because I do not understand how it is possible for the putative 0.1 deg C rise in deep ocean temperature to make any discernible difference to anything except polar radiative flux.
Richard
No time to go through all the comments (yet). But I want to ask about the start point. Is that a valid one or does it make better sense to start later, thus reducing the variance.
People will be asking me that. I would like to have a correct answer, however the chips may fall.
The real observations, above, may show a pause, but they are not properly adjusted for the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, in which case we are cooling.
It begs credulity that their adjustments for UHI are always to warm the non-UHI effected sites, thus raising the temperature average rather than lowering the UHI-effected sites and the average as they should.
But, then they would not be following their political agenda, would they?
She has pointed to a post on hotwhopper.com (have to love that blog name! — http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/02/roy-spencers-latest-deceit-and-deception.html ) which indicates that the graph is wrong because it “shift[s] the CMIP5 charts up by around 0.3 degrees”.
Which charts are those? I agree that there are several troubling things about the graph above, one of them being a lack of caption or legend, another being that HADCRUT4 is missing features (like the 1997-1998 ENSO peak) that are there, smoothed or not:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1983/to:2014/mean:12
It might be even more smoothed, of course, but only at the expense of the end point(s). However, it indicates 90 CMIP5 model runs as well, where only 36 distinct named models are similarly plotted in AR5. So, are these runs for a single CMIP5 model, runs from several, the independent means of many perturbed parameter runs for 90 different models (if so, which 90, and how many runs contributed to each), how was the mean of the CMIP5 models computed (weighted or not, PPE runs or not etc) and finally, how were they normalized/locked down in the first year on the graph (which is well back into the model reference period and hence is not really when the models were released into the wild).
However, none of these things save CMIP5 from the point he is making, although they are all valid questions for a peer review. At the very least the graph needs to be explained much better, and of course the BEST thing to do would be to analyze each contributing model one at a time relative to e.g. HADCRUT4, and only then (after e.g. 36 such analyses) make statements that are not argumentative but definitive and based on simple statistical analysis concerning the meaning and reliability of the CMIP5 MME mean as displayed in AR5 specifically.
rgb
Bruce C! (re: February 11, 2014 at 1:40 am)
THANKS for that kind response. I know this site isn’t Facebook (or whatever), but, it really gets depressing to have so MANY of my posts which are specifically addressed to an individual be ignored or unacknowledged or never read.
Re: the video malfunction — it’s happened to me several times. There’s no way (that I know of) to test ahead of time what videos have some kind of YouTube code that auto-blanks them when WordPress tries to turn them into a control window here. It is always SUCH bummer when that happens. Well, I pasted in your search term and watched that phenomenal 1978 Buddy Rich drum solo. Gene Kruppa v. Buddy Rich, really can’t say! Kruppa and Goodman win for music though, all the way. Andrews Sisters are fun, but their music is not nearly as good as Goodman’s or Ellington’s or Miller’s or LOTS of musicians. Wasn’t that truly the Golden Age for swing and dance music — wow.
Well, lest I be accused of being under the influence of the nearly full moon… (heh, if you have read my posts for any length of time, you will realize that the moon has NOTHING to do with it, lol)
.. I’ll stop.
Gratefully,
Janice
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@ur momisugly Gold Minor (er?) — Great linked comment of yours. Thanks for sharing. And, I agree.
[The “Test” thread on WUWT main page (Home page, right upper corner) can always be used if something kneads hands-on manipulation before posting. Mod]
I appreciate the message, which can’t be repeated enough, that the models of “settled science” have been spectacular failures, but I do have some technical qualms about the graph.
(1) Where’s the big temperature spike in 1998 (from a “super El Nino”, if I have the term correct)? This temperature history does not reflect the 15-20 year “pause”, in part because that is missing. The green data shows about a 10-year pause, and the blue just shows a low slope – no pause at all, really.
(2) The vertical axis is labelled “Departure from 1979-83 Average”. That’s fine, but how come ALL the curves start at zero? Did they ALL – INCLUDING THE REAL-WORLD DATA – just HAPPEN to be equal to that average? It’s just not credible.
(3) The real-world data is in the neighborhood of a handful of model results. Are we to conclude that these 5% of models might possibly be right!?! I kind of doubt it, myself, but you can’t see how those few compare with the data (it’s too “busy”), and there’s no discussion about what is special about their models. Probably, they don’t match very well early on, but from what you can see here you’d have to wait 5 or 10 years to throw away those models, too (assuming they don’t finally get a break from Mother Earth).
I’d really like to see what this would look like if these issues were addressed.
Optimizer says:
February 11, 2014 at 12:57 pm
Here are my best answers to some of your questions.
(1)Where’s the big temperature spike in 1998 (from a “super El Nino”, if I have the term correct)?
The mean of 60 months was taken so the spike got drowned out by the two La Ninas on either side of 1998 as seen below.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979/mean:60/plot/uah/from:1979/mean:60/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1979/mean:12
(2) The vertical axis is labelled “Departure from 1979-83 Average”. That’s fine, but how come ALL the curves start at zero?
It is easy to offset all curves to start a the same point at any given year for comparison purposes to easily see the differences from that point on. That does not affect the relative change in 20 years, but makes it easier to see.
(3) The real-world data is in the neighborhood of a handful of model results. Are we to conclude that these 5% of models might possibly be right!?!
That could very well be the case! However if they were ever to admit it, then CAGW would cease to exist. Would they ever admit that?
Dear Moderator,
Thank you, so much, for taking the time to tell me (and others) about the Test thread. I’ve wanted to use that for that exact purpose (video post test) before, but, every time (about 3 times) I accessed the thread, there was no comment box (or it was there, but tiny, and would not “open”). I didn’t want to bug you with a Q about it, so, I just figured it would get fixed someday… .
Hey! I just went back and tested the Test thread and THERE was the comment box — and it opened for me, this time.
Weird. Maybe, it just takes a long time to materialize and I wasn’t patient enough before… .
Well, anyway, thanks for helping us out, here!
AND THANK YOU, SO MUCH, FOR ALL YOUR WORK FOR TRUTH IN SCIENCE!
Take care,
Janice
[Ask not for whom the Mods toil, lest they troll for you. 8<) mod]
goldminor says:
February 11, 2014 at 1:20 pm
“… However, it wasn’t long before I noticed a few new warmist participants on WUWT, and sure enough my updates were knocked out again. …”
—-l
Paranoia on the net is a healthy survival trait, but in this case you might be reading too much into it. Using a different machine (if you can) would go a long way to testing your hypothesis 🙂
The CAGW Modeler’s Mantra: “I reject real reality and substitute my own.”
Is there a version of this with margins of error?
Oh, Gunga Din, I sure hope you check back here… .
Steve Garcia gave you such a fine answer re: brightness of Venus and Earth on the Mars photo thread, here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/06/stunning-photo-earth-as-seen-from-mars/#comment-1563141
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Thank you, dear Mod, for all your valiant toil on our behalf. If you troll for us…., however, (ahem) we fish are very canny and will not take the bait (smile).
#(:))