Love him or hate him, it is worthwhile to understand where he is coming from, so I present this video: The emergent patterns of climate change
According to TED:
You can’t understand climate change in pieces, says climate scientist Gavin Schmidt. It’s the whole, or it’s nothing. In this illuminating talk, he explains how he studies the big picture of climate change with mesmerizing models that illustrate the endlessly complex interactions of small-scale environmental events.
Video follows, comments welcome.
The transcript is here: http://www.ted.com/talks/gavin_schmidt_the_emergent_patterns_of_climate_change/transcript
Jo, that physical training really did pay for itself…but what did happen to your hair Al?
Re: “It’s the whole, or it’s nothing”
Looks like nothing then.
At the end of the day, we are talking about what we can reasonably expect and how we either mitigate or adapt. We are already adapted for principal effects. Ironically, the skeptics, likened to the creationists in lieu of addressing their arguments, are in line with the Theory of Evolution and the Alarmists simply are not. As with experimental design, data collection, data analysis and interpretation, they lack understanding in a profound way.
The absolute best predictor of future performance, especially in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, is past performance. We have a record of past performance hard-coded into our genes. Our genetic adaptations to climate tell us that fairly different climates have existed in the past and we have adaptations both sides, hot and cold that reflect that fact.
I want to see solid replicated data collection with sound analysis, interpretation and argument. I have seen nothing approaching this and it has been many years and billions of dollars during which planet earth has been running the live experiment and modelers have run model versions of the experiment and the model versions do not match experimental data available by looking out your window.
I have to write a policy statement on global warming that will be used in political debate and with luck that may actually inform public policy. I will watch the comments here and if somebody can point me to sound data and genuine scientific argument that supports either side of this debate, I would be obliged.
I was pretty certain that any evidence I trusted supported a clear argument against the traditional Global Warming narrative. However, I was looking at everything through the lens of a skeptic. That is fine for your drinking buddies, but not so (for me) as a foundation for a defensible political policy on ‘Global Warming’ (framed in the context of ‘Environmental Stewardship’). When I look for good stuff, I find nothing anywhere that I can attribute back to a source I am comfortable with.
I am a fan of Wattsupwiththat and ClimateAudit and JoanneNova. However, these are sources with clear biases. The bias are, in my opinion, honestly come by and I share them in many cases, but as a matter of public policy I would like to point to specific things that are a bit less a part of the heated debate. I would like to create a sober sensible public policy that is above reproach as far as its scientific underpinnings; one that steers a manageable public course through a contentious issue where both extreme sides are prone to hyperbole.
I did a BSc back when they were still teaching science reasonably. My kids are receiving Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming theory as something of a religious orthodoxy; teaching them both bad science and that bad science is science. Neither are good.
What I would really like to see is things like the multi-billion year CO2 profile data or some attribution for the graphs you see where CO2 obviously is being consumed out of existence by plant life and we are near the bottom.
I cannot find a reasonable trove of simple csv or tab delimited files of true raw data. The ‘value added’ stuff is suspect and therefore unacceptable when the analysis itself is under dispute. Particularly aggravating is that people who should have known better after graduating high-school use such patently biased methods of data collection that the whole data set is useless.
If this is settled science, where on earth is all the data?
Who is an honest broker? The nearest I seem to be able to find with any prominence is Judith Curry, but she is really still a ‘Climate Scientist’, all of whom have a vested interest in keeping their funding afloat. She seems to think that it is worthwhile public policy to fund continued massive research to be able to predict the Climate. As a matter of public policy we need to make hard decisions as to what is funded and what is not.
Clearly, something is horribly amiss with Climate Science and the continued prevailing Global Warming narrative. How do I express this plainly by pointing to sound research?
It is depressing that scientists as a community have not risen up and just put a bullet through the head of the CAGW zombie. It means, at this point, that they are either at least slightly unethical, incompetent, dishonest or both. A distant possibility is that they have evidence I have not. Where is it?
Gavin says
There’s a great phrase that Sherwood Rowland, who won the Nobel Prize for the chemistry that led to ozone depletion, when he was accepting his Nobel Prize, he asked this question: “What is the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?” The models are skillful, but what we do with the information from those models is totally up to you.
Henry says
what hogwash
what a load of rubbish
the ozone depletion was a natural process, mostly and the fact that it is now increasing is natural as well.
In fact, the increase in ozone (and others) at the TOA is what is causing the current cooling
So that was a red herring
The CO2 is not only a red herring, it is a green herring as well. More of it is better.
The climate is changing only because of natural reasons.
It is God who made it so.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
That was so sneaky. Gavin lists a great many “skillful” data sets and right in the middle “20th century multi-decadal trends.” The 20th Century data -as presented/reported- is highly suspect having been massaged beyond reliable.
Watching that piece of merde makes me sick. I cannot bring myself to do it.
Interesting how you can get to the end product with only four orders of magnitude out of fourteen. It’s like building a house from the roof down.
The establishment scientists need take on board the fact that the Modeling technique is inherently useless for climate forecasting because models with such a large number of variables simply cannot be computed or indeed even initialized with sufficient precision and accuracy.
Take the time to watch –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvhipLNeda4
The IPCC itself has been quite open about this and in practice the modelers have known for some time that their models have no skill in forecasting and have indeed said so in the WG1 reports. The IPCC AR4 WG1 science section actually acknowledges this fact. Section IPCC AR4 WG1 8.6 deals with forcings, feedbacks and climate sensitivity. The conclusions are in section 8.6.4 which deals with the reliability of the projections. It concludes:
“Moreover it is not yet clear which tests are critical for constraining the future projections, consequently a set of model metrics that might be used to narrow the range of plausible climate change feedbacks and climate sensitivity has yet to be developed”
What could be clearer. The IPCC in 2007 said that we don’t even know what metrics to put into the models to test their reliability.- i.e. we don’t know what future temperatures will be and we can’t calculate the climate sensitivity to CO2.This also begs a further question of what erroneous assumptions (e.g. that CO2 is the main climate driver) went into the “plausible” models to be tested anyway. This means that the successive SPM uncertainty estimates take no account of the structural uncertainties in the models and that almost the entire the range of model outputs may well lay outside the range of the real world future climate variability.
The key factor in making CO2 emission control policy is the climate sensitivity to CO2 . By AR5 – WG1 the IPCC is saying: (Section 9.7.3.3)
“The assessed literature suggests that the range of climate sensitivities and transient responses covered by CMIP3/5 cannot be narrowed significantly by constraining the models with observations of the mean climate and variability, consistent with the difficulty of constraining the cloud feedbacks from observations ”
In plain English this means that they have no idea what the climate sensitivity is and that therefore that the politicians have no empirical scientific basis for their economically destructive climate and energy policies.
In summary the projections of the IPCC – Met office models and all the impact studies which derive from them are based on specifically structurally flawed and inherently useless models. They deserve no place in any serious discussion of future climate trends and represent an enormous waste of time and money. As a basis for public policy their forecasts are grossly in error and therefore worse than useless
The entire IPCC output falls into the not even wrong category and provides no basis for serious discussion yet most anti alarmist bloggers and almost all the MSM pundits continue to refer to the IPCC forecasts as though they had some connection to the real world.
A new forecasting method must be used. For forecasts of the probable coming cooling based on the 60 and 1000 year quasi-periodicities in the temperature data and the neutron count and the 10 Be record as the best proxy for solar activity see several posts over the last two years at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
Schmidt draws his conclusion from an equivocation, an example of an equivocation fallacy.
Ira Glickstein, PhD says: “I want my twelve minutes of watching Gavin’s TED talk back.”
Thanks.
Since the hot, plasticky place called earth is largely unvisited except for what’s on top; since the hydrosphere, the asthensophere, core etc are still pretty mysterious, as are most possible climatic influences beyond earth…isn’t it a bit premature and even impertinent to talk of “climate science”? Can’t we sex it all down a bit? Kind of worrying that volcanism is underfunded while these trashy non-Kardashian models are determining the West’s economic and industrial future. Those whirlygigs and solar panels are going to look mighty comical in the event of some natural cooling or a major series of basaltic eruption like Laki. Climate science? If only.
When I read stuff like this on various blogs I tend to view people like Gavin Schmidt with more disdain. It is his kind of ilk that has people saying this.
“Direct observations find that CO2 is rising sharply due to human activity. Satellite and surface measurements find less energy is escaping to space at CO2 absorption wavelengths. Ocean and surface temperature measurements find the planet continues to accumulate heat. This gives a line of empirical evidence that human CO2 emissions are causing global warming.”
With link to skepticalscience.
Alarmists are certain there is a line of empirical evidence.
“Gerry Parker says:
May 3, 2014 at 12:12 pm
And despite these claims of model skill, they consistently over predict warming.”
#####################
Skill is not measured that way.
Here is how you measure skill.
In 1938 imagine two people were asked the following question.
How warm will it be in 2014.
One, a skeptic, said the climate is unknowable. My best prediction is the temperature will be unchanged.
This is a naive forecast.
The other a climate scientist using a model said: if we increase c02 athe current rate, temperature will be 1C warmer.
You then measure how much closer the the modelled answer is to the truth than the naive answer
http://climateaudit.org/2013/07/26/guy-callendar-vs-the-gcms/
Turns out if you consider c02 in your prediction you will do better than if you dont.
pretty simple
But your example infers a total falsehood to support your position.
The skeptic says ” I don’t know”, yet, you then pretend he knows by making a claim “of the same”.
No climatologist whatsoever makes this claim. Climate ALWAYS CHANGES, so you infer the fellow that knows this (by saying “I don’t know”) suddenly puts himself upside down and claim the climate doesn’t change!
Then, you make up a conclusion that those that pretend they know actually do – when, in fact, they are clueless.
Priest of all persuasion of religion held the same discourse: you can’t comprehend anything up until you get the big picture. The underlying message is “you’re just to imbecile to see the light”. Of course, they know the only light is the one shining on them, for power, fame and profit.
Exactly, Rob – he makes claims that “models display ‘closely’ reality” but they really do not – he shoves aside his own graphs that show how far his models are off – but to him, its “skillful” enough to make dire predictions.
Chuck Wiese says:
May 3, 2014 at 12:24 pm
Gavin: “The climate models are skillful.” Yeah…uh huh….and the Pope isn’t Catholic, either, is he Gavin?
How about…”The climate models are skillful” and “The Pope is God’s infallible rep on earth”. Both are a matter of faith.
Gavin’s Office must be just above the Soup Nazi’s stove in The Restaurant on the first floor.
The fumes have made him delusional again.
😉
Ha ha
“If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”- W.C.Fields
Models didn’t forecast 17 year pause, Rather than explain that we got the “skill” chant. That’s propaganda, not science.
Mosher said: “One, a skeptic, said the climate is unknowable. My best prediction is the temperature will be unchanged”
Uh.. did you allow the skeptic to add the unchanged warming rate of the last 200 years? If not, you are scamming the skeptic.
mosher~ please detail the qualifications of your ‘skeptic.’ That, for starters. Then explain how the ‘climate scientist’ has a computer model, or ANY model, of the climate based upon 1938 understanding of the science.
A skillful dart thrower makes bulls’ eye 9 times out of 10. How can the climate models be “skillful” if they score 1 in 100?
Mosh: that’s a dressed up “correlation equals causation” argument, although it may be true.
Because we don’t know what the cause of the warming is, the skeptic may still be closer to the truth and the warmist, if I may call him that, may be the beneficiary of dumb luck.
The best counter to Gavin’s claim that the models are skillful was given by Roy Spencer http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/10/maybe-that-ipcc-95-certainty-was-correct-after-all/
If you force the models to have a single common starting point rather than letting them reset to match periodically, they look a lot less than skillful, eh?
Mosh, I do not share the kneejerk antagonism to “models” of many commenters, but the CA post to which you refer doesn’t exactly support your assertion: it indicates that GCMs with positive feedbacks have no “skill” in forecasting global temperature relative to a “naive” no-feedback log relationship of Callendar 1938. I think that it’s entirely reasonable to criticize models on that point. As you and I have discussed, it’s unfortunate that the modeling community have failed to fully map the parameter space and left low-to-no feedback largely as a terra incognita, a mapping failure that seems to originate from a kind of academic stubbornness in the modeling community – it’s hard to contemplate similar behavior from commercial organizations.
If the skillful model relies on poor concepts and false correlations, is it really better than the naive forecast?