UPDATE: a response to this paper has been posted, see below.
From McGill University , who blows the credibility of their science by putting the word “deniers” in it.
Statistical analysis rules out natural-warming hypothesis with more than 99 percent certainty
An analysis of temperature data since 1500 all but rules out the possibility that global warming in the industrial era is just a natural fluctuation in the earth’s climate, according to a new study by McGill University physics professor Shaun Lovejoy.
The study, published online April 6 in the journal Climate Dynamics, represents a new approach to the question of whether global warming in the industrial era has been caused largely by man-made emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Rather than using complex computer models to estimate the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions, Lovejoy examines historical data to assess the competing hypothesis: that warming over the past century is due to natural long-term variations in temperature.
“This study will be a blow to any remaining climate-change deniers,” Lovejoy says. “Their two most convincing arguments – that the warming is natural in origin, and that the computer models are wrong – are either directly contradicted by this analysis, or simply do not apply to it.”
Lovejoy’s study applies statistical methodology to determine the probability that global warming since 1880 is due to natural variability. His conclusion: the natural-warming hypothesis may be ruled out “with confidence levels great than 99%, and most likely greater than 99.9%.”
To assess the natural variability before much human interference, the new study uses “multi-proxy climate reconstructions” developed by scientists in recent years to estimate historical temperatures, as well as fluctuation-analysis techniques from nonlinear geophysics. The climate reconstructions take into account a variety of gauges found in nature, such as tree rings, ice cores, and lake sediments. And the fluctuation-analysis techniques make it possible to understand the temperature variations over wide ranges of time scales.
For the industrial era, Lovejoy’s analysis uses carbon-dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels as a proxy for all man-made climate influences – a simplification justified by the tight relationship between global economic activity and the emission of greenhouse gases and particulate pollution, he says. “This allows the new approach to implicitly include the cooling effects of particulate pollution that are still poorly quantified in computer models,” he adds.
While his new study makes no use of the huge computer models commonly used by scientists to estimate the magnitude of future climate change, Lovejoy’s findings effectively complement those of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he says. His study predicts, with 95% confidence, that a doubling of carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere would cause the climate to warm by between 2.5 and 4.2 degrees Celsius. That range is more precise than – but in line with — the IPCC’s prediction that temperatures would rise by 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius if CO2 concentrations double.
“We’ve had a fluctuation in average temperature that’s just huge since 1880 – on the order of about 0.9 degrees Celsius,” Lovejoy says. “This study shows that the odds of that being caused by natural fluctuations are less than one in a hundred and are likely to be less than one in a thousand.
“While the statistical rejection of a hypothesis can’t generally be used to conclude the truth of any specific alternative, in many cases – including this one – the rejection of one greatly enhances the credibility of the other.”
“Scaling fluctuation analysis and statistical hypothesis testing of anthropogenic warming”, S. Lovejoy, Climate Change, published online April 6, 2014. http://link.springer.com/search?query=10.1007%2Fs00382-014-2128-2
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Christopher Monckton has posted a rebuttal to this paper, see here
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You know what they ay about lies, damned lies and statistics. Lovejoy seems to have worked all three into his paper. Personally, I’m 99% confident that he pulled both his conclusion and his methodology from whence the sun doesn’t shine.
I sincerely appreciate the effort that the likes of Anthony, Bob Tisdale, Willis, etc put into debunking the CAGW hype. Unfortunately, public opinion is shaped by the headlines that a CAGW biased media feeds them. The headline from the study above is the only thing 99% of the public will see.
Has anyone been to the San Diego zoo recently? It’s littered with man-made-CO2-climate change propaganda. For example, my kids noticed a Goreish/Mann hockey stick near the polar bear exhibit. Thousands of patrons from around the world are indoctrinated each day. I asked my kids if they realized that there had been zero global warming in their lifetimes (last 15 years) even though CO2 continued to climb.
They thought I was joking.
Tit for tat arguments regarding natural vs man-made CO2 causes of global warming will not win the battle. The climate nazis control public education, public policy and the media.
Does anyone have a strategy to bend the policy curve away from the statists? If they control the media, the EPA, the IRS and Health Care, then liberty is lost.
“We’ve had a fluctuation in average temperature that’s just huge since 1880 – on the order of about 0.9 degrees Celsius,” Lovejoy says. “This study shows that the odds of that being caused by natural fluctuations are less than one in a hundred and are likely to be less than one in a thousand.
So a change of 0.9 C in 130 years is “huge” and almost cannot be caused by “natural fluctuations”. Yet GISS for March just came out and it jumped from 0.45 to 0.70 or a jump of 0.25 in one month. And this was presumably natural?
I remain skeptical of binning all of the warming as a linear function of greenhouse gas emissions (even as a surrogate the other forcings are on a different time scale). First other human contributors exist (e.g. black carbon; land cover/land use change).
More fundamentally, by blending in the in-situ surface observations at the end of the record introduces a systematic warm bias that compromises, in my view, the analysis. As we have shown there is a warm bias in the land surface part of the surface temperature trends; e. g. see
Klotzbach, P.J., R.A. Pielke Sr., R.A. Pielke Jr., J.R. Christy, and R.T. McNider, 2009: An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere. J. Geophys. Res., 114, D21102, doi:10.1029/2009JD011841. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/files/2009/11/r-345.pdf
Klotzbach, P.J., R.A. Pielke Sr., R.A. Pielke Jr., J.R. Christy, and R.T. McNider, 2010: Correction to: “An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere. J. Geophys. Res., 114, D21102, doi:10.1029/2009JD011841”, J. Geophys. Res., 115, D1, doi:10.1029/2009JD013655. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/files/2010/03/r-345a.pdf
McNider, R.T., G.J. Steeneveld, B. Holtslag, R. Pielke Sr, S. Mackaro, A. Pour Biazar, J.T. Walters, U.S. Nair, and J.R. Christy, 2012: Response and sensitivity of the nocturnal boundary layer over land to added longwave radiative forcing. J. Geophys. Res., 117, D14106, doi:10.1029/2012JD017578. Copyright (2012) American Geophysical Union. http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/r-371.pdf
I recommend that the 1979-onward lower tropospheric temperature analyses from RSS and UAH,
as well as the Levitus et al longer term and Argo (post 2003) ocean data be compared with the analyses used for the surface temperatures, to see how they correlate. If there are major differences in the trends using this different sets of data, it raises questions on his conclusions. While these do not permit the analysis of the longer time period as with the surface multi-proxy analyses, one should see how these data sets match with the in-situ surface analyses.
CO2 is currently raising the global temperature by 0.2 deg C per decade.
In this millenium the global temperature has increased by zero. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2000/plot/rss/from:2000/trend [not a cherry-pick, try 1998, 2002, 2004, eg.]
Therefore natural forces are decreasing the temperature at a rate of 0.2 deg C per decade.
Lovejoy’s paper says natural forces can’t do that much.
Therefore … CO2 can’t be raising the global temperature by 0.2 deg C per decade.
“This study will be a blow to any remaining climate-change deniers,” Lovejoy says. “Their two most convincing arguments – that the warming is natural in origin, and that the computer models are wrong – are either directly contradicted by this analysis, or simply do not apply to it.”
Ahhh, struck down by a powder puff.
He also seems to be saying that his methodology excludes the possibility of the output of computer models applying to it, so that the models being wrong is irrelevant.
Ah yes, the Pause That Refreshes. The Pause means with 99.9999 percent statistical certainty that natural “forcing” can at least equal “nastygas” (trademark applied for) “forcing”.
Argh! Another fine university’s reputation impugned by a cherry picking activist that doesn’t have the statesticles to provide honest analyses.
Sorry to step on toes here, Rhodes Scholars, funded by a trust originating from Cecil Rhodes, a thug and despot, an original Fabian socialist
Not much of a pedigree in my book, especially since the left seeks the economic destruction of the developed countries by means of CAGW scare tactics
Mike Wryley says:
April 11, 2014 at 9:08 pm
Cecil Rhodes was many things, but Fabian socialist is most assuredly not among them.
Milo D. Harlani
Rhodes Scholar
I have just read the paper. The model itself does not provide for auto-correlation of the time-series of data. Also, the model does not allow for non-stationarity of the variables.
The data represent time-series, so spurious correlation must be excluded. At the very least an ARIMA model would be advisable. Econometricians test for stationarity and if present apply the method of cointegration rather than correlation.
Since this is a statistical model and not a physical model, I would make the same suggestion that Professor Wegman made in reference to the “Hockeystick” model of Michael Mann and his colleagues: physical scientists should obtain the support and advice of statisticians while preparing papers that rely on statistics.
The relevant question is the following: Does CO2 concentration polynomially cointegrate with global temperature during the period 1880–2007 and thus support the anthropogenic interpretation of global warming during this period?
An Israeli group concluded, “We have shown that anthropogenic forcings do not polynomially cointegrate with global temperature and solar irradiance. Therefore, data for 1880–2007 do not support the anthropogenic interpretation of global warming during this period.”
The authors of this paper added a disclaimer,
” Also we have experimented with a variety of model specifications and estimation methodologies. This means that our rejection of AGW is not absolute; it might be a false negative, and we cannot rule out the possibility 25 that recent global warming has an anthropogenic footprint. However, this possibility is highly improbable, and is not statistically significant at conventional levels.”
Dr. Lovejoy has made the claim that human activity is more important driver of climate than natural variability and supported this view with statistical analysis. However, the statistical methodology that Dr Lovejoy has used to support this hypothesis is useless for this purpose. The paper should not have been accepted. .
Reference: Beenstock, Reingewertz, and Paldor Polynomial cointegration tests of anthropogenic impact on global warming, Earth Syst. Dynam. Discuss., 3, 561–596, 2012.
URL: http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/3/561/2012/esdd-3-561-2012.html
http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/3/561/2012/esdd-3-561-2012.pdf
I’d like to see the data that result in this 99% confidence figure? Flying pigs chance?
“This study shows that the odds of that being caused by natural fluctuations are less than one in a hundred and are likely to be less than one in a thousand.”
Based on just 500 years of climate reconstruction, the results of which have a greater margin of error than 1%? They’re just making stuff up!
—
“This allows the new approach to implicitly include the cooling effects of particulate pollution that are still poorly quantified in computer models,” he adds.
So I’m assuming that this study blames particulate pollution for the current decade and a half of zero warming. Is there any evidence that particulate pollution is much higher now than it was prior to 2000? If not, then why haven’t global temperatures continued to rise with the rise in CO2? Lovejoy is 99.9% certain that natural fluctuations are not powerful enough to do the job, so something else must have countered the effects of CO2. What was it?
lsvalgaard says:
April 11, 2014 at 5:05 pm
JimS says:
April 11, 2014 at 4:02 pm
Gee, if he went back 18,000 to 10,000 years, …I wonder how that happened
Jupiter did it: changed the Earth’s orbit just enough.
Leif, if Jupiter changed the earth’s orbit just enough to bring the earth OUT of an ice age, could it go the other way (Jupiter change the earth’s orbit so it goes back to an ice age). And where were the 2 planets (and all the rest too) in relationship to one another? is that something predictable by orbital analysis?
LOL ! Africa sure blows that right out of the water … FAIL !!
@ur momisugly Frederick Colbourne says:
April 11, 2014 at 9:25 pm
“Dr. Lovejoy has made the claim that human activity is more important driver of climate than natural variability and supported this view with statistical analysis. However, the statistical methodology that Dr Lovejoy has used to support this hypothesis is useless for this purpose. The paper should not have been accepted. .”
Except for the fact that it supported ‘The Cause.’ (Great reply to the Lovejoy article, Frederick….)
And I am not sure the reviewers read past: “This study will be a blow to any remaining climate-change deniers,”
This statement would have been enough for any warmer-mystic true-believer to give the paper a pass for inclusion in their publication. No need to ready any more of the paper.
Lovejoy says. “Their two most convincing arguments – that the warming is natural in origin, and that the computer models are wrong – are either directly contradicted by this analysis, or simply do not apply to it.”
Here all along I believed that the *measured* non-warming of the last 17+ years contradicted CAGW. How silly of me.
The problem I have with statements like this is that the warming from 1912 to 1937 is nearly IDENTICAL in rate and magnitude as the warming from 1976 to 2001. Human CO2 emissions could not possibly have been the cause in the former period. So we have two nearly identical periods of warming nearly 40 years apart. (NOTE: That was using HADCRUT3 which was what I had available when I did that comparison some years back, NCDC data can not be used for that comparison because they fiddle with the data and continually adjust the past colder so if you use NCDC’s data set, what might be true this year might not be true 5 years from now because the data will have changed. NOAA constantly re-adjusts their database and their data can not be relied on).
I should have said 65 years apart.
I have a particular rock which I studied by statistics. I learned that the particular arrangement of atoms in the rock is highly improbable. The one in a hundred they are talking in the article is hugely probable, almost certainty, by comparison.
So, using the same argument as the one in the article, I conclude that the rock is man made. Al Gore himself put the atoms in the rock in that particular arrangement.
you can see why they are so keen to decontextualise climate analysis from the ice age cycles
http://snag.gy/BztF1.jpg
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png
if he has proven co2 is THE cause of THE warming that changes climate and is the the driver of ice ages then he will be able to explain the rest of the charts and create models that recreate past climate and predict the current ‘pause’? If we are going in for meaningless quantification then i am 99% sure they cannot do that.
the warmers like to leaver out the term ‘inter glacial warming’ as if the ice age cycles do not exist.
To keep the taxation and grants going they have to link everything to man made co2 as the ‘control knob’. So we can expect a lot more of these decontextualised ‘proofs’. that can predict and explain nothing outside of their narrow parameters. One sees this sort of thing everyday in the world of financial markets but those who do it never become rich through it from placing bets on the predictions coming from their ‘correlations’ [unless they sell it to someone else dumber than they are].
if a system is 99.9% sure then it is rational for people to bet their house and wifes savings on it. No? why the hesitation? Do people need more confirmation? lol.
Any scumbag who would bet his wife’s savings on such a waterfront-property-in-the-middle-of-a-desert scam…
raided that account a looong time ago.
So, an inherent impossibility.
However, NEVER FEAR…. he will get the TAXPAYERS (or a teachers retirement fund) to fund it!
**************
Just having a little fun, Jaunty Cyclist — very good comment.
#(:)) (lol)
Note to self: spell “sc@m” like this. Grr.
If Michael Mann is the J***y S********y of Climate Science,
Shaun Lovejoy must surely be its Kanye West.
..this paper will be a good indicator of the state of belief in the theory of Global Warming. Lets see how quickly it is taken up as gospel by Politicians and Media.
…used “multi-proxy climate reconstructions” developed by scientists in recent years to estimate historical temperatures, as well as fluctuation-analysis techniques from nonlinear geophysics.
In other words they probably looked at the contaminated and selective proxy data that e.g. Mann and co and others have used. If you do an analysis on a hockeystick you will just get a hockeystick. Its the same thing over and over, they need to look at the hockeysticks again, they are invalid to begin with.