Guest post by Alec Rawls (see part 1)
Ex-physics teacher Christopher Keating, who strongly believes that human activity is causing dangerous global warming, is offering $30,000 to anyone who can prove that “claims of man-made climate change” are not supported by the science. What claims? He gives as an example the IPCC’s central assertion that: “It is extremely likely (95-100%) that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” Easy money (if he would actually give it, but that is secondary). There are several grounds, already laid out by a variety of skeptics, why this claim of extreme scientific certainty is prima facie unscientific.
The climate models that give rise to the IPCC’s human-attribution claim also predicted that the rapid continued rise in CO2 would cause rapid continued warming. After 15+ years of no warming these models are on the verge, or past the verge, of falsification. That is the extreme opposite of certainty, and in a series of desperate attempts to stave off falsification the IPCC’s “settled science” now hinges on a parade of freshly concocted and highly speculative possible explanations for the “pause,” such as Kevin Trenberth’s hypothesis that the warming is hiding in the deepest oceans. Sorry, but if your theory fails in the absence of freshly concocted and highly uncertain further theories then it is not well established and highly certain.
The IPCC’s attribution claim was actually produced, not by a scientific evaluation at all, but by a political process, driven by the representatives of numerous governments that see the demonization and taxing of CO2 as a vast untapped source of tax revenue. As will be seen below, this political influence is well documented. The attribution claim is part of the Summary for Policymakers which has a long history of contradicting the findings of the scientific review. So of course the attribution claim is not scientific, when it is not even arrived at by a scientific process.
Beyond the prima facie case the IPCC “consensus” works deep and profound perversions of the scientific method that require more detailed exposition. That will be part 3, but the overt conflicts with scientific reason and evidence are sufficient in themselves to prove that, given the current state of knowledge, any attribution of most post 1950’s warming to the human burning of fossil fuels must be highly uncertain, the opposite of the IPCC’s assertion of extreme certainty.
Evidence against a hypothesis logically decreases the certainty that it is correct
As climatologist Judith Curry notes: “[s]everal key elements of [AR5] point to a weakening of the case for attributing [post-1950] warming of human influences.” She lists:
■ Lack of warming since 1998 and growing discrepancies with climate model projections
■ Evidence of decreased climate sensitivity to increases in CO2
■ Evidence that sea level rise in 1920-1950 is of the same magnitude as in 1993-2012
■ Increasing Antarctic sea ice extent
■ Low confidence in attributing extreme weather events to anthropogenic global warming
Yet in the face of this buildup of contrary evidence, documented in its own report, the IPCC increased its claimed level of certainty that post-1950 warming was human caused [emphasis added by Curry]:
■ AR4 (2007): “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely (>90% confidence) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gases.” (SPM AR4)
■ AR5 (2013) SPM: “It is extremely likely (>95% confidence) that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century .” (SPM AR5)
The change in AR5’s attribution claim runs opposite to the evidence it put forward. Going against the evidence is not science. It is anti-science.
The IPCC’s attribution claims are the product of a political process, not a scientific one
Judgments about science issued by a political process could happen to agree with sound scientific judgment. The political nature of the IPCC’s attribution claim does not itself prove that this claim is at odds with the science, but understanding the influence of politics is still very important to understanding the unscientific nature of the IPCC’s claims.
Believers (“consensoids” if one prefers), are often aghast that there are all these skeptics out there who don’t trust scientists. This is particularly true of believers like Keating who are not themselves familiar (see part 1) with the actual points of scientific debate . They are stumped by the “why” of distrust and think it has to be that skeptics are just anti-science. The political nature of the IPCC, and the politicized nature climate science in general, explain the “why.”
Not only is climate science close to 100% government funded but in the United States that government funding is all channeled through funding structures set up by Vice President Gore to finance only those who agreed with Gore’s CO2-centric views. Internationally funding is channeled by the funding structures put in place by Canadian leftist and IPCC-founder Maurice Strong. Is it really hard to understand how a research effort that is 100% politically funded could become politicized?
The IPCC is a politicized body that sits at the top of this heap of politicized science and bends its declarations in an even more politicized direction, especially in the Summary for Policymakers. As seen above, AR5’s increased certainty of human attribution runs directly counter to the evidence that it presents, but this is just the latest increment of political interference. Where did AR4’s “very likely” claim of human attribution come from, and TAR’s “likely” claim?
It all traces back to the first human-attribution claim in the Summary of the Second Area Report (1995), which ran strongly counter to the scientific report, which was then edited to conform with the politically negotiated Summary. This case was recently discussed here at WUWT by Tim Ball:
An early example of SPM increased alarmism occurred with the 1995 Report. The 1990 Report and the drafted 1995 Science Report said there was no evidence of a human effect. Benjamin Santer, graduate from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and shortly thereafter lead author of Chapter 8, changed the 1995 SPM for Chapter 8 drafted by his fellow authors that said,
“While some of the pattern-base discussed here have claimed detection of a significant climate change, no study to date has positively attributed all or part of climate change observed to man-made causes.”
to read,
“The body of statistical evidence in chapter 8, when examined in the context of our physical understanding of the climate system, now points to a discernible human influence on the global climate.”
As planned the phrase “discernible human influence” became the headline.
This scandal was first exposed in a June 1996 Wall Street Journal op-ed by Frederich Seitz:
In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report. A comparison between the report approved by the contributing scientists and the published version reveals that key changes were made after the scientists had met and accepted what they thought was the final peer-reviewed version. …
The following passages are examples of those included in the approved report but deleted from the supposedly peer-reviewed published version:
■ “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.”
■ “No study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate change observed to date] to anthropogenic [man-made] causes.”
■ “Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced.”
The reviewing scientists used this original language to keep themselves and the IPCC honest. I am in no position to know who made the major changes in Chapter 8; but the report’s lead author, Benjamin D. Santer, must presumably take the major responsibility.
That shook out information from inside the IPCC, as noted by Fred Singer in another WSJ op-ed:
“IPCC officials,” quoted (but not named) by Nature, claim that the reason for the revisions to the chapter was “to ensure that it conformed to a ‘policymakers’ summary’ of the full report….” Their claim begs the obvious question: Should not a summary conform to the underlying scientific report rather than vice versa?
Santer’s defense of the changes he had made to the peer-reviewed report is highly revealing. He pled that the IPCC rules were designed to allow and even require that the final report be changed in response to political input from governments and NGOs after the scientific report had been completed:
All IPCC procedural rules were followed in producing the final, now published, version of the Chapter 8. The changes made after the Madrid IPCC meeting in November 1995 were in response to written review comments received in October and November 1995 from governments, individual scientists, and non-governmental organizations. They were also in response to comments made by governments and non-governmental organizations during plenary sessions of the Madrid meeting. IPCC procedures required changes in response to these comments, in order to produce the best-possible and most clearly explained assessment of the science.
Okay, so the whole thing is designed from the outset to be a political document not a scientific document, resulting from a political process not a scientific process, and as we well know, politicians tend to have their own strongly preferred conclusions. The environmentalist component is overwhelmingly anti-capitalist (at a UN-backed conference in Venezuela this week: “130 Environmental Groups Call For An End To Capitalism”), and a much broader spectrum of politicians are eager for expanded government revenues and government control, both of which are served by the demonization of CO2.
These same politicians also control who gets scientific funding in the first place, but the IPCC, and in particular its Summaries, are markedly more unscientific still. The history of the IPCC’s attribution claims prove that these politicized judgments have not managed to comport with scientific reason and evidence but have worked persistently to overthrow it. AR5 fits squarely in that train, asserting increased certainty that humans caused most recent warming when the scientific evidence they put forward points to decreased certainty.
The actual scientific question at the present moment is whether the “consensus” climate models have been definitively falsified by the lack of 21st century warming
Even Ben Santer has had to admit that this is the case, putting off claims that the “consensus” models had already been falsified by offering in 2011 a falsification criterion of 17 years with no warming:
Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature.
Santer and his colleagues are leaving themselves some wiggle room by saying “at least,” but they are clearly admitting that at 17 years the models should be near falsification, which is where we are now.
In a 2013 interview with Der Spiegel German climate scientist Hans Von Storch summarized the difficulty that the “consensus” view is now facing:
Storch: If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models. A 20-year pause in global warming does not occur in a single modeled scenario. But even today, we are finding it very difficult to reconcile actual temperature trends with our expectations.
SPIEGEL: What could be wrong with the models?
Storch: There are two conceivable explanations — and neither is very pleasant for us. The first possibility is that less global warming is occurring than expected because greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have less of an effect than we have assumed. This wouldn’t mean that there is no man-made greenhouse effect, but simply that our effect on climate events is not as great as we have believed. The other possibility is that, in our simulations, we have underestimated how much the climate fluctuates owing to natural causes.
Both of these explanations are devastating to the IPCC’s attribution claims, and it pretty much has to be both. If late 20th century warming was not caused by CO2 it has to have been caused by something else, like the 80 year grand maximum of solar-magnetic activity that began in the early 1920’s and ended just about when “the pause” began.
Some solar scientists claim that 20th century solar activity was merely “high” without warranting the “grand maximum” label, but that is a distinction without a difference. Whether “high” or “grand,” since we don’t yet understanding all of the ways that living inside the sun’s extended corona might affect global temperature (and there is the rub, that this understanding is still very immature), 80 years of any high level of solar activity could very well account for most or all of the modest warming over this period.
There could also be purely internal sources of natural variation, unforced by external influences from either mankind or the sun. These could be merely oscillations in how much of the heat-content of the climate system is present in surface temperatures or they could be self-reinforcing processes that alter heat content (see Bob Tisdale’s theory of El Nino driven warming). The deeper problem with the IPCC is the unscientific grounds on which it has dismissed these competing theories.
It claims certainty for its politically preferred CO2-driven theory when the actual evidence points overwhelmingly in the other directions. CO2 is the least likely of the available explanations. There is actually no evidence that feedback effects are even positive. The proclaimed evidence is purely circular (climate sensitivity estimates that are based on the assumption that warming was caused by CO2), making it a classic petito principi, but that is part 3.
For the prima facie case it is sufficient to note that if natural cooling can be responsible for “the pause” it can also be “the cause” (to quote The Hockey Schtick) of late 20th century warming. Keating himself explains “the pause” as a result of natural cooling effects that must at least be similar in strength to the hypothesized human warming effects:
Christopher Keating, June 24, 2014 at 10:37 AM
What I believe I said is that we are in a natural occurring cooling period. In other words, if it wasn’t for us, the climate would be cooling right now. All of the warming above the average (actually, above what it would be without us) is due to the effects of our greenhouse gas emissions.
Somehow it doesn’t dawn on him that if ill-understood forces of natural temperature change can be at least as strong as the hypothesized human effects in the cooling direction then they could also be responsible for the two decades of warming that the IPCC is attributing to human effects, and there goes your certainty.
The two sides of Keating’s “option 1” are sides of a coin
In addition to challenging skeptics to prove that the lack of scientific support for the IPCC’s extreme certainty that most post 50’s warming was human caused Keating’s “option 1” also asks skeptics to prove the lack of scientific support for the IPCC’s climate sensitivity claim, that:
Climate sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5°C to 4.5°C and extremely unlikely (95-100%) less than 1°C.
These to halves of “option 1” are sides of a coin. What is driving falsification is the conflict between the high climate sensitivity necessary for the very small CO2 forcing to explain late 20th century warming and the low climate sensitivity necessary for the lack of 21st century warming to be consistent with the continued rapid increase in CO2. If these two sensitivity requirements can’t be reconciled then the theory of human caused warming collapses, and right now, they are very close to un-reconcilable.
“Settled Science” now stands on the strength of one newly concocted speculation after another
To save their CO2-driven climate models from falsification by “the pause,” “consensus” scientists have been offering a string of highly speculative rationales for how human caused warming could still be dominant, even though it is not showing up in surface temperatures. An early example was the 2010 “missing heat” paper by Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo, described in this UCAR press release:
“MISSING” HEAT MAY AFFECT FUTURE CLIMATE CHANGE
April 15, 2010
BOULDER—Current observational tools cannot account for roughly half of the heat that is believed to have built up on Earth in recent years, according to a “Perspectives” article in this week’s issue of Science. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) warn in the new study that satellite sensors, ocean floats, and other instruments are inadequate to track this “missing” heat, which may be building up in the deep oceans or elsewhere in the climate system.
“The heat will come back to haunt us sooner or later,” says NCAR scientist Kevin Trenberth, the lead author. “The reprieve we’ve had from warming temperatures in the last few years will not continue. It is critical to track the build-up of energy in our climate system so we can understand what is happening and predict our future climate.”
Nice, a falsification dodge that won’t be falsifiable until we build a more extensive ocean monitoring system, but four years later what little evidence there is about the deep oceans is pointing in the other direction: they are cooling, not warming. .
However that turns out, if the viability of the CO2-dominant theory hinges on a highly uncertain new speculation then the theory itself cannot be more certain than that new speculation. There have been a host of such rescue attempts: that Chinese coal burning is causing the pause, that the Montreal Protocol caused the pause, that volcanic aerosols caused the pause, that a slow down in Pacific trade winds caused the pause, and on and on.
All are highly speculative, thus none can confer any significant level of certainty on the otherwise now highly uncertain IPCC attribution claim. Von Storch again:
So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break. We’re facing a puzzle. Recent CO2 emissions have actually risen even more steeply than we feared. As a result, according to most climate models, we should have seen temperatures rise by around 0.25 degrees Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 10 years. That hasn’t happened. In fact, the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) — a value very close to zero. This is a serious scientific problem that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will have to confront when it presents its next Assessment Report late next year.
But they didn’t confront it. They ignored this “serious scientific problem” and pretended that their human-warming theory had been strengthened, not weakened, by developments since AR4. This fixed determination to ignore the available reason and evidence is the opposite of science.
The unscientific and anti-scientific nature of the IPCC’s attribution claims is unambiguous. They are asserting extreme and increasing certainty as the foundations of their CO2-dominant theory are on or past the verge of falsification. The only degree of certainty they can legitimately assess is very low. It is certainly not extremely high, and if Keating has any integrity he will admit it.
If you want to disprove the assertion that scientists are of the opinion that humans caused >50 of the 20th century warming you would surely need the scientific evidence on which they based the assertion. Without that evidence there is nothing to challenge. I agree with Mosh that it’s going to be difficult to prove it wasn’t humans who caused the rise in temperature because there is no scientific basis for saying they did. I don’t agree with him that they did, that’s simply an opinion and when it comes to opinions without scientific evidence each has equal value.
geronimo:
Your post at July 28, 2014 at 12:25 am says in total
Actually, your post makes a point which is a valid way to claim Keating’s prize.
Keating’s challenge is
Your response could be
There is no scientific basis for saying man-made global climate change is occurring because there is no empirical evidence that it is. Therefore, claims that man-made global climate change is
or is not occurring are merely unsupported opinions. The scientific method rejects unsupported opinions and, therefore, the default position according to the scientific method has to be that unless evidence to the contrary is obtained then man-made global climate change is
not occurring. This is because something only exists as a subject for scientific study when there is evidence for its existence: and if it does not exist as a subject for scientific study then it has no existence scientifically.
So, according to the scientific method, man-made global climate change is not occurring because man-made global climate change does not exist as a scientific reality.
Keatings “challenge” is NOT science. It is a political ploy. And failure to respond to it would offer him the political ‘win’ on a plate.
It is important to note that Keating is likely to claim a ‘win’ whatever happens because he is the sole arbiter of responses to his “challenge”. But his refuting reasoned replies can be ridiculed, while no replies would offer him – and other warmunists – the opportunity to proclaim that climate realists ‘cannot dispute the science’.
Richard
Keating and his minded people, if you have enough money, I offer solution and proof that climate change on our planet and on other planets, in general does not depend on the human factor. My proof is much more expensive than Keating’s offer because it is worth at least 4000 times more than its supply, plus evidence that the participating governments of America as financier and NASA as an organization that has all the technical and technological possibilities to carry it out. This is no auditorium or deception, because I have evidence of the true causes of climate change, which is not at all naive, but these are the consequences of natural law that Current science is not recognized. Who wants this solution fails, let’s come to discuss.
Ken Gregory points out the difference between Phil Jones’ old and new Climategate University temperature product now that Phil’s latest update to HadCRUT4 is attributed to his new Saudi Arabian university appointment, so that in 2012 climate sensitivity as measured doubled:
“The result is: Using HadCRUT3 surface temperatures, TCR = 0.38 °C [0.0 to 0.92 °C] and using HadCRUT4, TCR = 0.74 °C [0.20 to 1.29 °C]”
http://mpc.kau.edu.sa/Pages-Prof-Philip-Jones.aspx
CLIMATEGATE 101: “For your eyes only…Don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone….Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it – thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that.” – Phil Jones to Michael Mann
Whether you will win your $30k has nothing to do with science but all to do with contract law. IMHO Keating is only obliged to pay out if he and you have entered into a contract. Contracts involving a single entity and the public have been around for many years.
Typically, you can enter into such a contract by purchasing a product which states that you may win a prize if you succeed in achieving such and such outcome. Such contracts are called “competitions.” By advertising the competition and spelling out the ground rules in the terms and conditions, the competitor has entered into a contract with the vendor. But note, a consideration has taken place in the first instance.
The question is whether such a contract can exist without a consideration. It is my understanding of contract law that there can’t be a contract without consideration. So, for example, if Pepsi were to offer a prize for something but you didn’t need to purchase a product, and they refused to give the prize, I don’t think there would be any legal redress.
So Keating’s offer of a “prize” isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. He must know that since there is no legal redress to make him pay out, he can use whatever weasel words he wants to refuse payment. Therefore it isn’t a genuine offer at all but a cheap pr stunt.
If anyone feels they can muster the argument, then you must get him to enter a contract. Pay a fee to enter, get the contract drawn up and away you go. My guess is he’ll back down.
Vince Causey:
I am grateful for your legal explanation at July 28, 2014 at 7:38 am and I write to ask for a clarification.
Before asking, I want to make it clear that I don’t think there is a snowball’s chance in H*ll that anybody will win because Keating is the sole arbiter of whether anyone has won.
Despite that, I make my genuine request.
You say
I submitted my reply to his challenge saying in writing and in public
and Keating replied in writing and in public saying here
Hence, I would be grateful if you were to answer my question which is:
Does Keating’s reply constitute a contract?
Richard
Richard:
I submitted my reply to his challenge saying in writing and in public
That being the only valid scientific conclusion concerning AGW which accords to the scientific method is sufficient for you to pay the $30,000 to the charity of my choice.
and Keating replied in writing and in public saying here
I have your submission and will respond as quickly as I can. It is called “$30,000 Challenge Submission – Null Hypothesis” and you can follow my progress here:
http://dialoguesonglobalwarmin…
Hence, I would be grateful if you were to answer my question which is:
Does Keating’s reply constitute a contract?
That could get amusing – I would be very interested in seeing the result should someone submit a reasonable proof and follow up with a breach of contract suit when he doesn’t pay!
Hi Richardscourtney,
I should point out that I’m not a lawyer and it is my 2 cents worth that I didn’t think he is risking anything because no contract exists. Your correspondence with Keating is interesting but in my lay opinion, I don’t think it constitutes a contract because no consideration has been paid by yourself, either immediately or promised at some future time.
I do think it’s an important angle to look at because it exposes whether or not Keating is risking $30k. I was hoping that some readers with legal background, might add some more to this idea, and I would hazard a guess that Keating will back down if he felt his money was legally at risk, and therefore lose the pr battle.
Thanks
Vince
It seems Keating is censoring my comments
at least the one’s that refer to my final report on climate change, i.e.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
http://dialoguesonglobalwarming.blogspot.com/2014/07/30000-challenge-submission-henrys-pool.html
TonyG and Vince Causey:
Sincere thanks to each of you for your posts at July 28, 2014 at 9:19 am and July 28, 2014 at 9:40 am, respectively. I intend no disrespect to this single response which I provide for clarity because you were each replying to my question.
I genuinely consider that my submission to Keating is “a reasonable proof” according to the criteria established by Keating. However, what I consider – or anybody else considers – is not relevant because Keating has defined that only his opinion matters in assessing if a submission is “a reasonable proof”.
I apologise to Vince if my question provided embarrassment: that was not my intention. I am not an American and I am not a lawyer. Vince seemed to know something about pertinent American law and that was why I posed my question.
As I see it, this affair requires PR damage limitation. And that attempt at limitation is the real purpose of my submission because I don’t think Keating will pay under ant circumstances. If it were true that Keating had entered a contract with me then there would be ‘mileage’ to be made from his failure to agree my submission warrants his paying the $30,000.
Richard
Where is part 3?
When Mr. Rawls called this “Taking Keating Seriously”, I though he was. I was certainly mistaken. That was a childish submission, even for a contrarian. It would have been nice if he had included a little science in something that was suppose to use the scientific method. I responded to his submission ad you can read it here:
http://dialoguesonglobalwarming.blogspot.com/2014/08/30000-challenge-submission-taking.html
cfkeating says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:25 pm
“The first thing Mr. Rawls did was to go into how the rise in temperature has stopped. This is such a false argument that I am constantly surprised when anyone makes this claim. Any discussion of global warming means we are discussing the globe. The surface of the globe is not the globe and talking about the average surface temperature ignores 93% of the warming that is taking place – the oceans.”
After wading through your condescending comments about Mr. Rawls i came upon your first statement to validate your hypothesis and this is what you posted. Mr. Keating….we are discussing air temperature . If ” 93% of the warming that is taking place – the oceans” has affected air temperature then it has been a negative affect. What is your point?
cfkeating says:
August 8, 2014 at 12:25 pm
Ah, OK.
So, across the long many decades before man-released CO2 became important, the sea rose because it was getting warmer, but Keating can’t say why it became warmer at the same rate as it did between 1900 and 1935, and between 1980 and 1995, but did not change rates when air temperature increases stopped increasing. Yet all the while CO2 was steadily increasing from very low levels to today’s modest levels. Odd that.
Nor can he find a reason why the global air temperatures DID fall between 1940 and 1975, but why sea levels continued to rise at the same rate as they did before or after air temperatures rose during those periods, nor why air temperatures were steady between 1996 and 2014, or why they were steady at any previous times in history.
Nor can he explain why – if sea levels reflect deep ocean temperature increases, why those temperature increases are not measured with today’s few deep ocean instruments.
So, apparently there is no connection between global average CO2 levels, global average air temperatures nor global average air temperature anomalies, nor global deep sea temperatures nor deep ocean volume increases …….