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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Re: “I am no “new theorist” in the climate field.” (V.P. again)
“Old error in new dress
is ever error, nonetheless.”
C.S.L, Screwtape Letters
Give it up, V.P. — with every post, you only confirm our suspicions about your incompetence.
Meh, on the other hand, KEEP ON POSTING — we can use a laugh.
In his humble opinion. LOL.
Isn’t the fact that the models show a spaghetti result an indication of the size of natural variability? Otherwise, what explains the large variability in the model results?
richardscourtney says:
February 11, 2014 at 7:18 am
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
============
Hi Richard, my meaning obviously was not clear. When I said I thought Dr Spencer was being generous, I meant he was being generous in the amount of warming one would see in the deep oceans. The more likely amount would be a small fraction of 0.1C.
To raise the deep oceans 0.1C would likely take a staggering increase in surface temps over a period of centuries. My interest in seeing a calculation was to see if we could get a handle on how much it would take.
However, the process is not reversible. You cannot use 0.1C warming of the deep oceans to warm the atmosphere in excess of 0.1C. If you could you could design all sorts of wonderful machines to extract free energy from the oceans.
It is important to remember that “global” warming happens only in the Nordic areas. Southern hemisphere and the tropics do not warm. The consequences of this are positive. Large areas in Siberia and Canada could become habitable. Maybe even Greenland would become green again. There is nothing to worry about if the weather in Northern Europe becomes similar than the weather in Germany now.
You mean beside the obvious conclusion that they have no clue what they are doing and the models are just churning out random crap that sort of indicates their might be warming in the future sorta maybe we think?
Global cooling says:
February 11, 2014 at 8:10 pm
There is nothing to worry about if the weather in Northern Europe becomes similar than the weather in Germany now.
———————————-
This is likely to be the interlude, before the next round of cooling for that region.
negrum says:
February 11, 2014 at 2:26 pm
————————————–
What would possibly cause ‘Cumulative security update for Internet Explorer 8’ to disappear about 20 times over the last several years, plus Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 SP2 on Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP x86 (KB2898856), Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework 4 on XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7, Server 2008 x86 (KB2898855),Security Update for Windows XP (KB2916036) , Security Update for Windows XP (KB2909210), Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 SP2 on Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP x86 (KB2901111), Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework 4 on XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7, Server 2008 x86 (KB2901110), plus several others. Is this normal for computers? Why did this mostly happen when visiting a post by Colorado Bob at Newsvine? until I stopped going to Newsvine. I pay attention to what happens around me. I do not believe that I am wrong in this matter, or I most certainly would not have stated my thoughts on the subject.
rgbatduke
Other than saying the models are all wrong, can you also say greenhouse gases have no detectable effect on climate, at least in the last 15 years? Or whatever effect it may have, it is indistinguishable from natural variability?
I hold that this is not only true for the last 15 years but also for the last 133 years. NOAA temperature anomaly data from 1880-2013 show no statistically significant warming until 1998. By statistically significant I refer to greater than two sigma deviation from the mean. This is the standard in all sciences to distinguish a real effect from noise.
However, the margin of error in the data is +/- 0.09 C. Taking this into account, there is no statistically significant warming at all since 1880. All warming (and cooling) in the data are indistinguishable from noise. There is no anthropogenic signature in the data. Not even a non-random natural signature. All the data are trivial and/or the measurements are too inaccurate to detect such a small effect that we’re looking for.
I also hold global temperature trend is a random walk function. The observed temperature graphs can be reproduced using the simplest random walk function with just one random variable. The point is random events can produce trend lines that appear to be deterministic.
The missing heat is being absorbed by the land not the sea. This has energized the continents and the speed of continental drift has increased dramatically. With carbon dioxide continuing to increase in the atmosphere it won’t be long before the continents are up to motor boat speed.
Eugene WR Gallun
rgbatduke
This is my random walk function:
Tn = T(n-1) + A X + B
Where T is the temperature anomaly; n is the year; X is a random integer; A and B are empirically-derived coefficients.
With this very simple function, I can reproduce all actual temperature graphs. The results are amazing! The real graph and the random walk graph look almost identical. Not only the magnitude of changes but also the sequence of events are consistent with what is expected from random processes.
Does anyone know of a procedure that is recognized by the IPCC by which an IPCC climate model or specified group of such models can be invalidated? According to Vincent Gray (“Spinning the Climate”) the IPCC stopped claiming to have validated its models after he complained to the management that these models were insusceptible to being validated.
snip – more CRAP from banned commenter Doug Cotton
Visiting Physicist,
Can we clear this up, please? Are you Doug Cotton?
@dbstealey No need to ask him, he won’t tell you the truth anyway.
Yes “Visiting Physicist” is same as the dishonest idiot known as Doug Cotton, who thinks his ideas are SO IMPORTANT AND REVOLUTIONARY that he has to keep coming back under various fake names and fake email addresses to get them across. He left an almost identical comment about lapse rate on 2012/11/21 from the same Telstra Internet connection near Sydney.
I’ve made it abundantly clear to Doug Cotton that his commentary is unwelcome, as are discussions on bigfoot, UFO’s, chemtrails, and other quackery. Yet, he keeps coming back.
So I’m going to add this iteration of his name and email fakery to the permanent troll bin. And I’m deleting all comments made under this most recent fake name and replies as well.
And it isn’t just me who’s having problems with him, see: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/doug-cotton-is-banned-admin/
goldminor says:
February 11, 2014 at 10:34 pm
” What would possibly cause ‘Cumulative security update for Internet Explorer 8′ to disappear about 20 times over the last several years …”
—-l
Possibly Micro$oft.
I believe you when you say that you do not believe you are wrong in this matter. I urge you to do the test I recommended for your own peace of mind, preferably using someone else’s machine. If you can demonstrate that warmists find you important enough to hack and are doing so by rolling back your Microsoft security updates, you will have performed a major service for seceptics everywhere 🙂
If you are in the mood for experimenting, try Firefox.
As Dr. Spencer reports, there is a great disparity between the computed and observed global temperatures. However, governmental policies continue to be made on the basis of the computed temperatures. A partial understanding of this phenomenon can be gained through consideration of the content of an IPCC-style “evaluation” of a model. In an evaluation, response functions are computed that map the time to the associated global temperatures.These response functions (the squiggly lines of Dr. Spencer’s graphic) are plotted along side one or more global temperature time series (the HadCRUT4 and UAH Lower Tropsphere in Dr. Spencer’s graphic).
That’s an evaluation. Notably absent from an evaluation is a decision on whether to retain or throw out any particular model. In legitimate science, a model is thrown out when falsified by the evidence and retained when statistically validated. A model is falsified when the observed relative frequencies of the outcomes events fail to match the predicted relative frequencies and validated if they do match. For the CMIP5 models, neither falsification nor validation can occur because neither events nor relative frequencies are defined by the methodology of the research. Those climatologists who were hired to design a scientific study of the global warming phenomenon blew their assignment!
Dr. Strangelove said in part February 12, 2014 at 1:02 am:
“. . . . .This is my random walk function:
Tn = T(n-1) + A X + B
Where T is the temperature anomaly; n is the year; X is a random integer; A and B are empirically-derived coefficients.
With this very simple function, I can reproduce all actual temperature graphs. The results are amazing!”
What you have is a discrete-time integrator (pole at z=1) which has as an input a scaled random integer (you don’t say, so let’s assume the integer is bipolar, and zero mean) plus a constant. For one thing, for non-zero B, this anomaly will always ramp to plus or minus infinity (actual temp to infinity or below absolute zero!). As for saying as you do “I can reproduce all actual temperature graphs”; only if B=0 and you believe in enough-monkeys and enough typewriters.
Did you mean to say that the results LOOK at times a lot LIKE actual temperature graphs? The integrated random number (assumed white) is red-noise (sometimes called Brown-noise after Brownian motion, or random walk, etc.) which is often a TEST signal for actual temperature series. That is what it is good for. But it is not meant to ever represent an actual series.
negrum says:
February 13, 2014 at 12:15 am
goldminor says:
February 11, 2014 at 10:34 pm
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Sorry for venting my problems, and thanks for the consideration.
I have used Firefox for several years now. Question, do I need IE8 security updates If I do not use IE8. I realize that this will be a moot point soon, as support for Win XP ends in April. I will have to move on to Windows 7, which sounds like the best choice. Also, I will buy the home version and not the Pro version.
May I ask a favor of you. I use this link, http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
, to view polar data. Recently, if I click on their interactive chart, then the chart that comes up no longer shows the full range of years on the right side. It cuts off at 2008. Then today it initially showed the years up to 2011, and on a refresh it only showed to 2008, once again. This just started 3 or 4 days ago. Would you check and see if you get the full chart with all years to 2013 on the right side of the chart?
goldminor says:
February 13, 2014 at 6:57 pm
—-l
Chart seems to display fine up to 2014 (yellow line.) I used opera 9.51 ( all features disabled, except cookies from site and javascript) on XP sp2, which seems to give the best speed.
The only Microsoft products I would recommend you to use is the operating system (slimmed, trimmed and locked) and Microsoft Office (If Open Office does not meet your needs.)
I have never installed any of the Microsoft security patches or updates. It probably does no harm to install them and might improve your security level. I strongly recommend having a separate machine from your network machine for all personal data, with the autorun features of the flashdrive disabled properly on both machines.
According to the MODTRAN Web utility, which is based on absorption spectrum data, the raw effect of CO2 on global temperatures seems to be just shy of one degree C for each complete doubling of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. It is my understanding that many of the IPCC models assume the presence of a dangerous positive feedback mechanism capable of increasing this effect to something like 2.2 to 3.3 degrees C per doubling. As the HADCRUT4 data published by the UK Met office seems to show that average temperatures have only gone up about 0.8 degrees C since 1920 while the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has gone up by almost a half doubling (square root of 2), it seems hard to justify more than 1.6 degrees per CO2 doubling; and that assumes that the increase in black carbon, urbanization, heat produced by human industry, deforestation, and all other anthropogenic chemicals introduced into the environment by man have had no measurable affect on global temperatures.
A useful exercise would be to compare and contrast the 5% of models that hewed relatively closely to observed reality vs those that did not, and look at what was so different about them.