Guest essay by David Archibald
A couple of years ago the question was asked “When will it start cooling?” Of course solar denialists misconstrued this innocent enquiry. There is no doubt – we all know that lower solar irradiance will result in lower temperatures on this planet. It is a question of when. Solar activity is much lower than it was at a similar stage of the last solar cycle but Earthly temperatures have remained stubbornly flat. Nobody is happy with this situation. All 50 of the IPCC climate models have now been invalidated and my own model is looking iffy.
Friss-Christenson and Lassen theory, as per Solheim et al’s prediction, has the planet having a temperature decrease of 0.9°C on average over Solar Cycle 24 relative to Solar Cycle 23. The more years that pass without the temperature falling, the greater the fall required over the remaining years of the cycle for this prediction to be validated.
The question may very well have been answered. David Evans has developed a climate model based on a number of inputs including total solar irradiance (TSI), carbon dioxide, nuclear testing and other factors. His notch-filter model is optimised on an eleven year lag between Earthly temperature and climate. The hindcast match is as good as you could expect from a climate model given the vagaries of ENSO, lunar effects and the rest of it, which gives us a lot of confidence in what it is predicting. What it is predicting is that temperature should be falling from just about now given that TSI fell from 2003. From the latest of a series of posts on Jo Nova’s blog:
The model has temperature falling out of bed to about 2020 and then going sideways in response to the peak in Solar Cycle 24. What happens after that? David Evans will release his model of 20 megs in Excel in the near future. I have been using a beta version. The only forecast of Solar Cycle 25 activity is Livingstone and Penn’s estimate of a peak amplitude of seven in sunspot number. The last time that sort of activity level happened was in the Maunder Minimum. So if we plug in TSI levels from the Maunder Minimum, as per the Lean reconstuction, this is what we get:
This graph shows the CET record in blue with the hindcast of the notch-filter model using modern TSI data in red with a projection to 2040. The projected temperature decline of about 2.0°C is within the historic range of the CET record. Climate variability will see spikes up and down from that level. The spikes down will be killers. The biggest spike you see on that record, in 1740, killed 20% of the population of Ireland, 100 years before the more famous potato famine.
I consider that David Evans’ notch-filter model is a big advance in climate science. Validation is coming very soon. Then stock up on tinned lard with 9,020 calories per kg. A pallet load could be a life-saver.
David Archibald, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of Twilight of Abundance: Why Life in the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Regnery, 2014).
UPDATE:
For fairness and to promote a fuller understating, here are some replies from Joanne Nova
Then we all agree than solar activity does influence weather and climate? You should by now! But the orbit of the sun, constantly spinning in space with its satellites, ie. planets and asteroids, have influenced our climate and weather, between interstadials and seasons. This is the crux of the question, Greens don’t believe the MIA ever happened.
Stupendus says:
July 1, 2014 at 10:07 pm
The groupies around here are pretentious stupes, is why.
1. dp said to Leif July 1, 2014 at 9:38 pm
“That is an astonishing thing to write and an even more astonishing thing to read. In your opinion do we lay persons have a role or do we all just accept from on high the spewage you elitists choose us to consume? At your service, always,
dp – a devoted lay person humbled by your eminence”
*************************************
I think the two-way nature of the situation you are concerned with is perhaps unappreciated by yourself.
I have lived about 50 years in a college town where a lot of people who could have “pulled rank” intellectually nonetheless restrain themselves. Perhaps this is because most of us do recognize that within about a 1 mile radius there is almost certainly a person who is not only much smarter than us in general, but knows a lot more than we do about any one topic that might surface. It is unwise to take ourselves too seriously! We are ALL laymen, and almost certainly always will be. Personally, I find this reassuring. Thank goodness there is someone in reserve who knows more than I. With luck, and good sense, we won’t be annoying enough that we will need to be reminded of this fact.
Original:
Trivia questions: how did they get global average surface air temperature from UAH and RSS? How did they work CET into a global average?
Currently posted revision, changes bolded:
Trivia questions: There are two lines for TSI, one for temperature. Where is SIDC sunspots? They already have TSI.
Why are PMOD and ACRIM listed? ACRIM-I and ACRIM-II are already in PMOD. Were they using ACRIM-III?
Monckton of Brenchley says:
“I did get the date of the 1990 graph wrong by five years because the graph was sent to me by an eminent professor who had inadvertently misdated it, and I was not able to verify it directly because the IPCC reports in question were not then online and I was a very sick man, confined to barracks and quite unable even to travel to the nearest village, let alone to the nearest university library 150 miles away. It was not until two years later that I was cured, and by then the world had moved on.”
Too poorly to check a graph but well enough to write two lengthy articles for a national newspaper and forty pages of supporting material including references. Enough said.
SIDC unsmoothed June SSN=71.0, down on May (75.2). Second peak of SC24 is over, and looks like as the Max is over too, even if SC24 goes well beyond 11 years.
bushbunny says:
July 1, 2014 at 9:10 pm
Here in the US, if I said I was holding my piece, I’d either be referring to holding my gun, or holding my Johnson … I figured it was a typo on your part.
I believe it’s from the wedding vows, something about “If someone objects to this wedding, speak now or forever hold your peace”, in which context it simply means “speak now or forever remain silent on the subject”. Hang on, let me look it up … yeah, more info here.
All the best to my favorite Antipodean wildcat,
w.
you want drama? fine!
NJoY!
Willis: So in your view it is “reasonable” for Lord Monckton to threaten legal action over a scientific question, in a venue where the truth is not a defense against libel? And it’s “reasonable” for Lord Monckton to threaten to try to have Leif fired or demoted?
READ what I WROTE!!! You even quoted it for crying out loud! I said apart from over-reacting to the demonstrably ridiculous remark by Lief Svalgaard that Dr Evans was “almost fraudulent”.
How is this me declaring that Monckton’s postion on that was reasonable? It’s plain English. I said “apart from”. I do not think the tack Monckton has pursued in this regard was sensible. People say all sorts of stupid things on blogs all the time. Totally justified in calling him on it but after that, move on.
You are doing the very thing you most complain about – putting words into peoples mouths.
Worse you go on: Along the way, he’s gathered a host of less-than-inquisitive folks like yourself, who are defending his model despite never having seen one single test of his method, tests which Jo says have already been done, but which despite repeated requests have never been revealed.
WHERE have I defended his model? Quote exactly where I said his model was valid.
What is the difference between a “True Believer” and a “True Unbeliever”. Shall I start referring to you as Willis “Unbeliever” Eschenbach shall I? Not “Disbeliever” but “Unbeliever” – totally unable to believe anything anyone else but yourself says despite all evidence to the contrary?
Here is what I had hoped would happen; you would have followed Dr Evans’ posts to gain a rough idea about what it was he was trying to do with the model, reserving judgement or serious comment until you had seen ALL the data and code and were able to play with it yourself. I would have looked forward to it – a serious and unbiased examination by you, pointing out some potential mistakes and oversights, with interesting responses either justifying something or correcting. You know, science.
Instead what we have is both you and Leif shooting your mouths off and digging your heels in the face of very reasonable arguments to examine more closely and/or wait until you have had a chance to look at the promised data and code. Calling the fact that it has not yet been released as a “refusal” to release it is absurd. It’s perfectly reasonable to say “Look, until we have had a good look at how he’s done it I can’t be sure it’s not utter nonsense.” That’s good healthy skepticism. But you seem to assume that everything is all good to go, to be put out to public, that there aren’t last minute corrections, revisions, updates, bug fixes and that any delay is just withholding or refusing to share data and code.
Mate, can you really not see how absurdly unreasonable that is?
Now, when finally the model is published, and you deign to look at it, any criticism you may have of it I will likely suspect of being biased. That’s properly a shame.
I AM Agnostic – I have read up a bit on what he is suggesting and while I think it’s an interesting approach all round, I have no views either way as to whether he is right. I was hoping to see it kicked around once the model was published before coming to any sort of conclusion about it at all. You would have been one of the guys I would have thought would have done a good an unbiased and interesting analyses. But now…..
@dbstealey says
“Thus my point: your complaints are misdirection.”
And your attempt(s) to pull the thread discussion over to a completely unrelated topic is what?
The legal position is now clearer. A grave libel has been committed – not, as I had thought, by only one person here, but by several. It has been persisted in after warnings to desist. The libel is based on a failure to pay close attention to what has already been revealed of Dr Evans’ work, and on a failure to wait for the imminent full disclosure before making serious criminal allegations, which have already begun to be repeated by others. However, it is open to Dr Evans either to ignore the libel, on the ground that my rebuttals here may have done enough to avert damage to his reputation; or to sue; or to go to the court merely for a declaration that he did not deliberately use incorrect data and that he did not fabricate any data. The allegations that he did so are regarded as grave not only in the British-law sphere but also in the courts of the United States, and for the same reason. The allegations were circulated on the world’s most-read climate blog. Damages – on both sides of the Atlantic and in Australia – would be enormous.
So to the scientific point at issue. The courts, contrary to what Mr Eschenbach says, are a very good place to sort out disputes of this kind, where one side is making allegations of dishonesty and deception about the other. The courts would have regard to the following scientific considerations:
1. Motive. Dr Evans has nothing to gain and everything to lose by making a prediction that solar activity has been declining since 2003 at a rapid rate, and that within a decade the world will cool by not less than 0.1 K and perhaps as much as 0.5 K in consequence. The court would have particular regard to the fact that he has openly stated that if the expected cooling does not materialize his hypothesis will have been falsified.
2. Method. Dr Evans’ basis for saying a decline in solar activity began in 2003 or thereby is founded upon 11-year smoothing of the data. The court would have regard to the fact that Dr Evans had made that plain from the outset, but that those who had alleged that his conclusion was deliberately false had shown a graph of data with 27-day smoothing, which had been tampered with to extend the smoothing curve across a period of several months were there were no underlying datga. The court would have regard to the fact that those who have accused Dr Evans of having added bogus data to his system had themselves explicitly stated that if there were no data the analysis should stop there, and yet one of them had himself done, and can be proven to have done, exactly what he had condemned in Dr Evans. The court would take particular note of the fact that the 11-year smoothing produces similar results for the relevant recent period, whichever dataset is used, and that in any event Dr Evans has included multiple datasets with his model, so that the allegation that he had wilfully used an incorrect dataset must fail. The court would also place very considerable weight on the fact that, when the principal libeller had had the fact drawn to his attention that 11-year smoothing was the basis for Dr Evans’ contention that solar activity was in precipitous decline, and had had his attention drawn to a specific graph by Dr Evans showing the decline across multiple datasets, the libeller had sneeringly replied that 11-year smoothed data should be truncated for the last 5.5 years, implying that Dr Evans had not thus truncated it, when on Dr Evans’ graph to which his attention had been drawn the data had indeed been thus truncated. The court would also have regard to the fact that Dr Evans had made it plain that he had applied various smoothing periods to various datasets, so that criticism of him for focusing only on one dataset or for focusing only on an 11-year period is misconceived and would not impress the court.
The court would conclude that the attack on Dr Evans had been widely circulated, intemperate, unscientific, excessive, premature, unsoundly founded in logic, persisted in beyond reason and after repeated requests to desist and calculated to damage him in his calling as a scientist, and to do so at a moment when the libellers knew he was about to release the fruit of many years’ work, and that the principal libeller, having demonstrably tampered with a graph himself in a fashion not dissimilar to that of which he had wrongly accused Dr Evans, did not in any event come to the court with clean hands. Damages would be, as I suspected, substantial.
It is impertinent of Mr Eschenbach to say that I have paid my lawyers for the advice they are giving me on this matter. Whether or not I am paying them is a matter between me and them. I repeat that my purpose in consulting the eminent international arbiter well experienced in scientific cases who is assisting me, and in letting it be known that I am consulting him, is to help to expunge the libel – and, paradoxical though it may seem, to minimize the likelihood that an action will have to be proceeded with – by making it very plain that, however some commenters here may view the matter, and however sincerely they may feel that it is fair game to make and persist in public allegations of criminality against Dr Evans, the court would view all such allegations in a very serious light; would find them baseless in fact and repugnant in law; and would come unhesitatingly to the defense of the blameless Dr Evans against not only the four who have perpetrated and perpetuated the libel to date, but also against anyone else who might – but for my intervention here – have been tempted to repeat the libel or give it wider circulation.
To those who are joining in what they presumably think is the fun by accusing me of having fabricated a graph myself, I shall be hoping to offer a head posting here on that not uninteresting subject in due course. The startling extent to which that libel had been circulated and compounded only became apparent to me very recently, and it nicely demonstrates how important it is that the horse is apprehended before it bolts from the stable.
Cream Bourbon,
I responded to Margaret H. What is the topic of this article? If your unusual friend Margaret can discuss off-topic personalities, it is my opinion that she is misdirecting the topic away from the central knave of the entire runaway global warming scare.
I would prefer staying on-topic. And you?
gary gulrud says:
July 1, 2014 at 10:04 pm
Thus it begins. I have a book on my desk “Climates of Hunger” by Bryson and Murray describing how the area you are living in was abandoned by Indian corn-growing tribes during the LIA.
@dbstealey
Dragging in crticisms ofMichael Mann graphs? Suggesting debates between Monckton and Mann? That is your idea of on-topic?
Skeptics……. acting poorly…….. This behavior is not worthy of this site…….
From Monckton of Brenchley on July 2, 2014 at 2:02 am:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1979/mean:13
The world has cooled by the lower amount within only a few years many times. Thus it’s within natural variability.
HadCRUT4 land+sea global has a 0.754°C anomaly in 1998.08 (February), and 0.146°C in 2000.92 (December). That’s a drop of -0.608°C in just 2 years 10 months. Also 0.433°C in 1983.0 (January) and -0.274°C in 1984.92, so a drop of -0.707°C in just 1 year 11 months. Thus there are greater drops in less time than the upper amount without solar influence.
As Dr. Evans prediction is easily within natural variability, it cannot be concluded a drop of global average temperatures within that range is a consequence of a decline of solar activity since 2003.
Conversely, cooling less than the lower amount or even a small amount of warming cannot be said to definitively falsify Dr. Evans model, as an amount within the predicted range can be claimed to be hidden by natural variability.
If the model can’t be shown to rise above the noise, then what can it show?
Monckton of Brenchley says:
July 2, 2014 at 2:02 am
Do you realize that most readers by now have probably stopped reading your posts? Your continual beating of the same drum is boring. If you feel you haven’t made your point by now, perhaps you are not as good a communicator as you think. Time for you to go back to the House of Lords and speak on the important issues there.
I have been a regular viewer of wuwt for many years and have noticed both leif and Willis have aggressive tendencies. This blog how ever has shown them both to be bullies of a kind I would avoid like the plague. Australians tend to be very kind and tolerant people, this disgraceful attack shows them both in a much lesser light and totally unbecoming on a scientific site. Science is the endeavour to find the truth, it is not a blood sport, if some ones ideas do not fit yours it is best to listen and learn. Shame on you both.
Scotch mist and other stuff …
A Finer Malt – now with volcanoes and deltas the right way up!
Uncorrected SSN based TSI proxy versus CET monthly
Corrected SSN based TSI proxy versus CET monthly
I’ll go with Leif’s correction and leave a small part of David Evan’s speculation on the table for now. Very suspicious of the CET record, it’s a composite mish-mash churned out by you know who; may well be full of artefacts. Need to look at something a bit more vanilla when time allows.
Please quit the willy-waving it’s getting embarrassing. You all seem to be arguing at cross purposes over a smoothing algorithm. It probably goes something like this:
1. Differentiate the time series (i.e. deduct value n from n+1). You lose the first value.
2. Reintegrate (i.e. just do a running accumulation) to centre the [now virtual] start on the axis.
3. Differentiate again. You lose another value.
4. Now do a centred running standard deviation over the desired period, losing the ends obviously.
5. Reintegrate again and you’re done. Admire the knobbly bits where spikey bits should be!
Do you see how that works? Simple calculus with a slice of lemon.
And Monkton, do you see these Danish axes? Do stop throwing Eton Mess about the place man, the 4th of June has been and gone. Regardless of a detour via Normandy for a couple of centuries, watching a Johnny-come-lately descendent of some Victorian paper pulper trying to slag off a one-time fellow countryman I hold in the highest regard is unpleasant if somewhat amusing.
If you wish, I can knock on the old fella’s fake tomb and ask if he wants to join in. But I should warn you, he really was into blood-sports big time. Short legs and huge lungs (genes he seems to have passed on to me unfortunately); he could swing away all day. My 90-year old mother currently holds the tree. She’ll do as a surrogate if the old guy’s not in the mood but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone either. This and your sort of bollocks would last about 10s flat old son. Look, life’s a hoot … put your pompous ego out to grass and yet stuck in! Otherwise, as with my lot in times of yore, sooner or later one brother will hack another’s head off and what a sad waste of highly evolved water and carbon that would be.
Toodle Pip.
Mr Knoebel makes the elementary statistical error of assuming that a fluctuation over a decade is as likely as a fluctuation over a year or two. Except in rare circumstances, it is not. Over a decade, IPCC predicts around 0.2 K warming. Dr Evans predicts not less than 0.1 K cooling, and perhaps as much as 0.5 K. I do not recall his central estimate, but even his least estimate is a startling variance of 0.3 K compared with official predictions – well outside IPCC’s prediction interval.
Wassup Willis!! You are behaving like Gollum ,screeching for your precious ….data .
It is coming , nobody asked you to comment on the Nova site , you chose to do so in ignorance ,whereas a wise man would have waited for the full release of data as was intended .
You are in fact behaving like a very spoiled child “I want it !!!” Back in the day “I want !” got a smack.
Monckton of Brenchley in his recent posts has added a lie and (if he were an academic or serious researcher) revealed misconduct. We have a saying in America, when you’ve dug yourself into a hole the first thing you should do is STOP DIGGING!
The lie – Monckton now says:”The graphs did not purport to be the IPCC’s graphs and were not labeled as such:…” In his reference materials the caption on page 6 says, “Upper graph: Temperature history from UN 1996 report, showing the mediaeval warm period.”
The misconduct – Monckton now admits that he did not have the 1990 report. As Dr. John Mashey has explained, “In academe, this is called false citation, misrepresentation of a source, or falsification/fabrication. Such things can be academic misconduct, not because the curve [on the graph] is wrong, but because the different image (not labeled “after” or “derived from”, etc) strongly implies that the original source was not consulted.” No inference needed. Monckton has admitted he didn’t refer to the source material. Perhaps that’s why he never mentions the caveats in the original text of the 1990 report that apply to Figure 7.1.c. Shoddy research.
The graph Monckton used is NOT (as stated in the reference materials) from the IPCC 1996 report.
Not only is it not in the 1996 report, it isn’t the authentic 1990 graph either. It’s a fake. Compare the 1990 Figure 7.1.c graph with the one in Monckton’s reference materials – they are NOT the same graph.
It’s easy to lay blame on others (someone sent it to me – I was sick). Monckton’s name is on the article and his name is on the reference materials, but some unnamed source is at fault. Own up to your mistakes, Monckton. And quit digging deeper!
David Archibald says:
July 2, 2014 at 2:16 am
Last year corn effectively came in the average week of first frost. An August without rain was required to make it so.
This year we’ve 20+ inches over the last 60 days where 30 inches is our ‘normal’ total for the year. Two days have been warm and humid whereas 90 F has not been threatened. IA is also flooded, with rivers still rising.
David Evans proposes that TSI and global temperatures are related, that TSI has diminished and global temperature will follow it down. The mechanics of this relationship have been the subject of robust debate but the proposition is simple.
Evans claims that TSI has fallen. That can be checked.
In the near future average global temperature will either fall, rise, or remain steady. If the first of these, and TSI has fallen, then Evan’s proposition may be correct. If the others his proposition is wrong.
Time will tell.
GregK says:
July 2, 2014 at 6:38 am
Evans claims that TSI has fallen. That can be checked.
If one does, one finds that TSI falls to the same level at every sunspot minimum and rises to a maximum in each cycle simply depending on the sunspot number. The curves Evans show are at great variance with this [based as it is on obsolete reconstructions and wrong ‘splicing’ of recent data to the old reconstructions], so no need for ‘time will tell’. Evans’ ‘prediction’ is already falsified simply because it does not hindcast the temperature back in time, so cannot be expected to forecast any future temperatures. As simple as that.