“The Models didn’t have the skill we thought they had…”
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Guardian, a prominent green UK daily newspaper, reports that scientists have given up on surface temperature as a measure of global warming:
Stephen Briggs from the European Space Agency’s Directorate of Earth Observation says that sea surface temperature data is the worst indicator of global climate that can be used, describing it as “lousy”.
“It is like looking at the last hair on the tail of a dog and trying to decide what breed it is,” he said on Friday at the Royal Society in London.
“The models don’t have the skill we thought they had. That’s the problem,” admits Peter Jan van Leeuwen, director of the National Centre of Earth Observation at the University of Reading.
Obviously if the surface temperature was still rising, as it was in the 90s, instead of inconveniently contradicting model predictions, then it would still be considered a valid climate metric.
Thankfully however, climate scientists have not yet run out of metrics which show an upward trend. The new measure of global warming is to be sea level rise – presumably because it is still moving in the right direction, and because it ties in nicely with the “deep ocean heating” narrative.
The inconvenient fact that sea level was around 6 metres higher during the Eemian Interglacial, and around 2 metres higher during the Holocene Optimum, 5500 years ago, was not mentioned in the Guardian article.
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/ericg/kap_paper.pdf
The European Union is supportive of the effort to find climate metrics which point in the right direction – The Esa Climate Change Initiative (CCI) is a €75m programme, active since 2009, to produce a “trustworthy” set of ECV (Essential Climate Variable) data that can be accessed by all.
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The guardian story is here: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jun/13/pause-global-warming-data-sea-level-rises
[note: there was an error in HTML coding that made the entire article look like a quote when that was not intended, that has been fixed – mod]
A wise, old psychologist was leading group therapy sessions for people suffering from an irrational fear of global warming and all the catastrophic results. He found it was difficult with just dry facts to overcome years of indoctrination by the government, the media, the UN and so forth. He racked his brain for a way to make a break through. Then he had an idea. He announced that the group would meet at the beach next time.
The next week they all met on the sand near the water’s edge. The doctor asked them to close their eyes and imagine they were traveling back in time 5500 years.
“Now open your eyes and tell me where the water level is. In case you don’t know at that time the sea level was 6 1/2 feet higher! We would all be floating. And yet look, the world is still here. The water subsided and life has gone on,” he said.
One more time he asked them to close their eyes. This time they were to imagine traveling back in time 120,000 years.
“Open your eyes,” he said. “Where are you now? I’ll tell you. We are all floating at sea in twenty feet of water! Yet here we are today and all is okay with the planet. Consider this: 20,000 years ago the ocean was far lower than now, as much as 300 feet lower. We would have had to walk miles to get to the water. Today here it is 300 feet higher and again everything is fine.”
That was the turning point for the group. They all began to show improvement.
To confirms reports posted above: The Guardian is censoring comments at a furious rate… total Stalinists… judging by comments the climate catastrophe set seems pretty demoralized… perhaps WUWT readers and kindred blogs are having a cumulative effect. The skeptic’s message gets huge credibility when the Insiders and High Priests start defecting and doing funny things when the cold hard truth of data (or lack of) starts bearing down.
While Greenie activist types can prattle on to the bitter end with no ramifications to themselves, the professionals have to worry about losing complete face and status. Thus we see the whole CAGW edifice crumbling before our eyes and watch the mandarins scramble for ad hoc fixes. The results are amazing. It’s like watching the die hard geocentric philosophers grasping at epicycles while the elegant case for a heliocentric solar system begins dominating the discourse.
In this regime, strange things happen. Watch Kevin Trenberth here (h/t to Bob Tisdale) completely undo the whole “CAGW driven by CO2 paradigm” by showing the “step wise” rate of warming are artifacts of El Nino and the PDO… which,of course, shoves the “AGHG argument” far to the side.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgCgsxPbAvk (at around 7:37… though the whole thing is interesting)
MikeB: “Compared to the Sun’s energy input, 342 watts per square metre (at Top of Atmosphere), human produced ‘waste heat’ is negligible.”
What if all the waste heat occurred near thermometers?
Ronald DeWitt on June 14, 2014 at 7:55 am
I suggest that we begin to use the yield per acre for corn crops. I read somewhere that it has been rising consistently and could well be an effect of climate change.
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Excellent metric for another reason: corn yield has never been this high since the planet’s birth. So any increase is actually and truly unprecedented.
The Grauniad article points to a strengthening of the Pacific trade winds over the last decade. While this is used as an excuse for the pause – ocean heat blown under the surface by downwelling, they neglect the much better established consequence of the trades – cold upwelling.
Vertical movement of ocean heat alone can explain climatic shifts in temperature locally and globally. These folks have cause and effect confused. Both the warming during the 70s-2000 and the current pause are due to natural ocean driven climate oscillations.
On the subject of ENSO – the current SST animtion shows a La Nina-like upwelling cold tongue:
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/GLBhycom1-12/navo/globalsst_nowcast_anim30d.gif
but in the Atlantic, not in the Pacific, of the west coast of Africa at the equator. The Atlantic has its own ENSO too, and this looks to be entering “La Nina” territory. How long before the Pacific ENSO follows suit?
How does the track record for climate change models compare to chicken entrails?
TAG says:
June 14, 2014 at 1:25 pm
Jimbo writes:
TAG says:
June 14, 2014 at 7:57 am
If sea level was two metres ( 6 1/2 ft) higher 5500 years ago then it could be two metres higher in the foreseeable future. The problem with global warming isn’t teh catastrophes and moral failure claimed by AGW zealots. The problem is that even a little warming can cause significant economic problems
Do you have any evidence for claiming that a “little warming” can cause “SIGNIFICANT” economic problems?
Well we now have an industrial civilization with major cities located at the sea coasts. Sea level rise could necessitate major investments in widespread areas. Increased temperatures in North America compel agriculture to move north and northern regions with the results of the last glaciation are not as fertile as land to the south. it is difficult to grow crops in the rocky ground of northern Ontario. Society must be aware of the consequences and only sound non-political science can provide that.
Since sea levels were two meters higher 5,500 years ago, then the situation had nothing to do with CO2 nor was it caused by man. In which case, why spend billions on limiting CO2? It’s a non-problem.
Also, sea level rise isn’t like a tsunami. Cities can adapt. There are thriving cities currently existing below sea level, after all. And in a warming world, agricultural regions would expand closer to the poles and up the slopes. That would mean more land under cultivation.
Finally, your examples aren’t evidence but so much vapor. Evidence would be actual catastrophes that have taken place as a result of the little warming.
Pamela Gray,
The expansion of the ocean with a temperature rise is instantaneous. It is the time needed to heat up the water that is sluggish.
“The Models didn’t have the skill we thought they had…”
No “climate scientists” YOU didn’t have the skill YOU thought you had. YOU didn’t have the evidence YOU thought you had. YOU didn’t have the AGW case YOU thought you had. What you did have was just arrogance and hubris when things fell your way for a while.
Why is sea level rise so localized over areas that might be rising up because of plate tectonics?
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/map-sea-level-trends
Regarding Sea Level, my wife and I used to own a waterfront house in England.
Unusually, our title included part of the tidal river bed, because the original land titles on which our property title was based, were granted when sea level was significantly lower than today. Part of the land covered by the original title was now under water.
If medieval people could adapt to substantial changes in sea level, then we shouldn’t have anything to fear.
The new owners of the house have raised the floor of the house by a couple of feet, which should eliminate the risk of flooding in their lifetime – less than $10,000 worth of renovation.
Regarding my comment that humans are producing 0.5 X 10^21 joules of energy per year right now.
This is mostly fossil fuels and nuclear. Energy sources that would not normally be released into Earth’s environment. Does it go into the environment? Or does it just produce work that is valuable to us. At the end of the day, energy is energy and it has to have residual joules entering the system.
It just so happens that the total land surface warming, ice-melt, atmosphere warming is almost exactly the same number at 0.5 X 10^21 joules/year.
Willis’ comment about the solar energy received by the Earth (my calculation) is 3864 X 10^21 joules/year is valid enough. But the Earth also emits to space each year 3859 X 10^21 joules/year. Only 5.35 X 10^21 joules is accumulating.
I think our energy production (from sources not normally available to the system) is about the same as the total land, ice, atmosphere warming. The total amount the oceans are absorbing is 10 times this level but one could say it is coming from the 3864 X 10^21 joules of solar energy received each year since humans are producing energy on land.
This is not an explanation for the warming but something that is a curiosity. Maybe it is something people should look into further.
I’m a bit confused about this:
“The new measure of global warming is to be sea level rise – presumably because it is still moving in the right direction, and because it ties in nicely with the “deep ocean heating” narrative.”
But this seems to suggest otherwise?
The rate of sea-level rise, Cazenave, et al. March 2014
“Present-day sea-level rise is a major indicator of climate change1. Since the early 1990s, sea level rose at a mean rate of ~3.1 mm yr−1 (refs 2, 3). However, over the last decade a slowdown of this rate, of about 30%, has been recorded4, 5, 6, 7, 8. It coincides with a plateau in Earth’s mean surface temperature evolution, known as the recent pause in warming
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n5/full/nclimate2159.html
What did I miss?
Paul
Several things in the Guardian’s theory don’t add up, IMO. I hear that the ocean is expanding because climate change is heating it up. The heat rise is going into the deep ocean where it can’t be sufficiently measured until we spend billions over such timescales that the scientists who say this is happening will be safely collecting pensions.
1) If it is true that 90% of the ocean’s volume is below 3000 feet, then isn’t most of the ocean below 4C, the temperature at which water shrinks in volume when heated? If so, how does a rising ocean indicate climate change in the deep ocean?
2) Why is the tropical deep ocean cold, anyway? Don’t tell me it is because the sun isn’t warming it, dig a 10000 foot deep hole in Sri Lanka and tell me how cold it is. Perhaps it is because the effects of the global currents past ice exceed the effects of top down diffusion? Wouldn’t you have to allege that surface waters were themselves heating in order to diffuse more heat to the depths?
3) Even if it was true that the deep ocean is warming, isn’t a more plausible explanation warmer water that was at the surface 800 years ago being carried to the depths by those currents and diffusing horizontally and up.
Did I misinterpret anything? How does *ANY* of this make even a lick of sense?
-Matt
@TAG … a nice article for your edification and delight:
Climate Profoundly Impacted Development Of Civilization…Cool Periods Brought On Plagues/Death
http://notrickszone.com/2014/06/14/climate-profoundly-impacted-development-of-civilization-cool-periods-brought-on-plaguesdeath/
Ahh I see. We should measure distance with a hygrometer not a tape measure, temperature with a aenomometer rather than a thermometer, weight with a barometer instead of a scale, stress with a scale instead of a strain gauge. How silly of me not to realise that, or maybe I just live in a different universe – one governed by common sense and rationality instead of religious idealism. How far does all this have to decend into utter obscene farce before it is called to account.
Arno Arrak says (June 14, 2014 at 3:49 pm) “I have said thus before and I will say this again: climate modeling does not work, it never did, and it should be abandoned. [and lots more]”.
Arno, everything you say is correct. The reason is that the models as designed cannot work, because they are trying to tune very small pieces of the globe over very small periods of time, in order to work out what will happen in the long term. Any mathematician and/or modeller can tell you that it can’t work – not in as complex a system as climate. As soon as a small error appeared in one piece, it would generate a slightly larger error in the neighbouring pieces in the next time slice, and very quickly the whole model would spin out of control. In reality, that’s only how the models are described, to make them sound really really impressive. The way they have dealt with the instability problem is to parameterise all natural factors so that over time their effect reduces to net zero. That way, the whole model remains stable, and actually tends to an unchanging state, apart from the one and only factor which is allowed to keep changing Earth’s temperature: CO2. The end result is that all model forecasts in the longer term match exactly the amount of CO2 warming coded into them. All the millions of lines of code and public money in the models has net zero effect on model predictions – by design!
Sea level change ??? They think they can accurately separate out tectonic , eustatic, variable ice melt & other hydrologic cycle variations , etc from thermal expansion ???
Good luck with that.
Hard to see where it will be any more accurate than surface temps
So if this is no longer about increasing surface temps, what will the alarmists call it ? … And still make it sound alarming ???
Catastrophic thermal expansion ??
Good luck convincing the average man on the street that he should be worried about that
“It is like looking at the last hair on the tail of a dog and trying to decide what breed it is,” – easily done with DNA testing
What we are talking about here is increasing carbon dioxide IN THE ATMOSPHERE, causing warming OF THE ATMOSPHERE! All the other metrics, like ocean warming, sea level rise, ice melting and weather changes, are potential effects of a WARMING ATMOSPHERE. If the atmosphere is not warming, changes in the other metrics cannot possibly be the result of increasing atmospheric CO2! If you say they eggs are coming from your chickens and you have no chickens, the eggs are obviously coming from someplace else!
Looking for other metrics (because there is no warming) in order to keep a climate change crisis on the radar is blatant, premeditated lying for the purpose of self-enrichment. It doesn’t take a science degree to see this. Only the kool-aid drinkers and politicians are still chanting about consensus and settled science. Everyone else knows it is a sham.
“””””…..Paul says:
June 14, 2014 at 6:12 pm
I’m a bit confused about this:…..”””””
Yes Paul, you are more than a bit confused about this.
FRESH (pure) water, does have a point of maximum density at about 4 deg. C (for some reason, I think it is 3.98 deg. C), BUT that is NOT TRUE for salt water, that contains a lot of salt, like ALL ocean waters.
Ocean salt water, continues to increase in density down to its freezing point, which is lower than zero deg. C.
So that “lake turnover” thing, simply does not happen in the ocean. The ocean salinity, is almost double the amount it takes to not expand before freezing.
You should giggle ocean salinity, and freezing, so that in the future you are NOT confused about this.
There are a lot of readers here who need to learn a few basic facts, and that is one of them.
Also it has been discussed on WUWT many times.
This is a question from a lay person: Is anywhere information about how much water humanity is throwing into the ocean via sewage into rivers, how much does that affect sealevel anywhere, and how much can be separated from normal flow and rain, real or imaginary “ice melting”?
I mean to ask about it, because in my country, A FREAKING LOT of fresh water (needed) is thrown into the sewage for the sea, at the same time that we are bombarded about no-more-water-apocalypse(and insane amounts of money and energy is used to bring water from other places), many menacing policies about water pricing for restriction are looming; and now they are telling that sea level (as tiny as it could be found somewhere) is a new way to measure “global warming”?!
Paul said (regarding a slowing of rising sea level):
“What did I miss?”
You forgot Obama was elected, waved his hands and said “whoa there!”
A really, really sad indictment of the pseudo-science of climastrology..
When I approached middle age and as the kids appeared set to leave home I reassessed my life and found it wanting. I had sacrificed achievement and fulfilment for security and money to pay the bills and educate my children. It was a good life, but quietly frustrating: there had to be more.
Since then I have turned down more work than I have accepted (costing me a fortune in the process), but now I have to see a worthwhile outcome for every assignment and task or I don’t do it.
What a sad unfulfilled life of lies and scams climastrologists live. When they get to the end of their careers, will they look back with satisfaction on how they spent their lives, or will they be depressed and regretful? Unfortunately, I suspect that many of them are they so devoted to the cult and the accolades of their fellow cultists they will never reflect that the rest of us simply regard them as being liars, cheats and scammers with the redeeming touch that some are too moronic to care about the truth when it is presented too them.