The Hockey Schtick writes: A new paper published in a journal called “Climate Risk Management” claims a ridiculous degree of “certainty” of 99.999% that global warming over the past 25 years is man-made. The claim is made based upon climate models already falsified at confidence levels of 98%+.
According to the authors,
“there is less than a one in one hundred thousand chance of observing an unbroken sequence of 304 months [25.3 years] (our analysis extends to June 2010) with mean surface temperature exceeding the 20th century average.”
Fundamental problems with this claim [which is basically the falsified IPCC attribution claim of 95% certainty on steroids] include:
There is no statistical difference between the rate of warming over the 27 years from 1917-1944 and the 25 years from 1975/1976 to 2000:
- Not being able to address the attribution of change in the early 20th century to my mind precludes any highly confident attribution of change in the late 20th century.” – Judith Curry
- “climate models are not fit for the purpose of detection and attribution of climate change on decadal to multidecadal timescales.” -Judith Curry
- Statistically significant global warming of the surface stopped 19 years ago and in the troposphere [which climate models claim should warm faster than the surface] global warming stopped 16-26 years ago
- Over 40 excuses for the 18-19 year “pause” in surface warming indicate that natural climate variability is far greater than climate models simulate, and is capable of overwhelming any climate influence of CO2
- Much of the warming of the past 25 years may be artificial due to urban heat island effects and extensive up-justing of temperature records long after the fact
- The paper uses climate models falsified at confidence levels exceeding 98%, thus the assumptions and conclusions derived from models are invalid
- The models also did not predict the 18-19 year “pause” in global warming, thus are not valid to determine attribution to natural vs. anthropogenic causes
- Climate models are also unable to simulate natural warming during prior interglacials, which were warmer than the present, another reason why they cannot be used to rule out that the past 25 years of warming is unnatural or man-made
- Additionally, climate models do not properly simulate solar amplification mechanisms, ocean oscillations, convection, clouds, atmospheric circulations, gravity waves, etc. and thus cannot be used to exclude these natural factors as potential causes of warming
- The model used by the paper assumes only solar total irradiance adequately describes solar forcing of climate, ignoring large changes in the solar spectrum and solar amplification mechanisms. In addition, a simple integral of solar activity does explain most of the known climate change over the past 400 years.
“Why is the period 1940-1970 significantly warmer than say 1880-1910? Is it the sun? Is it a longer period ocean oscillation? Could the same processes causing the early 20th century warming be contributing to the late 20th century warming? Not only don’t we know the answer to these questions, but no one even seems to be asking them!” -Judith Curry
Thus, this new paper is not even wrong with 99.999% certainty
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| Assumed climate model forcings for CO2, solar TSI, Southern Oscillation Index [SOI] and volcanic. |
The paper:
A probabilistic analysis of human influence on recent record global mean temperature changes
Philip Kokic, Steven Crimp, Mark Howden DOI: 10.1016/j.crm.2014.03.002,
“mean surface temperature “…. doesn’t that mean there are the same number of temperatures higher and lower than this number ? But since that doesn’t say how much each temperature varies from the mean what does that really tell us?
The mean is the traditional average (add them all up, divide by the number), median is the one where there are as many points above as below, and for giggles, mode is the most frequently observed value.
Thanks, brain must have been on the upcoming football season.
One would have to be certain that the AMO is not a natural climate cycle.
But it is increasingly being recognized as such. The authors just decided to ignore it so they could pretend to themselves they are right and to get into the good books of the cook-the-books-types like John Cook.
Lamby, in that case, you should not venture anywhere near a road. But even more important, your bathroom and kitchen are deadlier by many percentage points than weather and climate. Yet, if you stay in bed, you are sure to fall so ill with contractures and weakened constitution you will become bedridden and die an early death. To be that afraid of life on Earth must be a difficult phobia burden to bare. How do you cope?
Bravo Pamela..
Now Lamby, you listen to Pamela. Because I am 99.999% sure that she knows a helluva lot more than you do.
@Pamela “To be that afraid of life on Earth must be a difficult phobia burden to bare. How do you cope?”
What? Perfect denier logic. How would you conclude that from my statements?
Scientists tell us smoking causes cancer – so most of us stop (in the face of big PR campaigns from big tobacco).
Scientists tell us CFCs caused the hole in the ozone layer – so stop using CFCs (in the face of big PR campaigns from CFC producers).
Scientists tell us that emitting greenhouse gases causes the earth to warm – so most of us want to do something (in the face of big PR campaigns from the fossil fuel industry).
I am not afraid of life – I am just not dumb enough to ignore Science. Why does the Scientific Method work for every branch of science (which has doubled our life expectancy and allowed me to write this post) but does not work for Climate Science?
Scientists told us blood letting was a great cure for many diseases.
Scientists told us continents were stationary.
Scientists told us stress caused ulcers.
Scientists told us many foods caused cancer.
Scientists told us the Earth was flat.
Scientists told us the Earth was the center of the universe.
Scientists told us a low fat diet was healthy.
Do I really need to go on?
BTW, the ozone hole is still there and hasn’t seen any statistically significant changes in the past 25 years.
Blaming opposition to “campaigns by fossil fuel companies” sure makes you sound like a conspiracy theorist. How can we be sure you aren’t in China working for a solar panel maker?
The only problem is that the Climate scientists don’t use the scientific method. If they did they would have scrapped the CAGW theory. By the way smoking doesn’t cause cancer it just increases your chance of getting it. Can you understand the difference? I haven’t seen any proof that one of the heaviest molecules we manufacture can float up to the stratosphere to effect the ozone. A more plausible explanation is that the winds around Antarctica isolate the atmosphere over Antarctica and the 6 months of darkness interrupt the production of O3 and the level falls as the O3 molecules decay.
But you give credence to climate science despite it not following the scientific method. This indicates a “BELIEF” not a study. HINT- if it has no falsifiable hypothesis, it is not SCIENCE. If there is no test I can perform, even with technology that does not currently exist, that will say “no this theory is not true”, it is religion not science. General Relativity is a theory that has passed several attempts at falsification and more are devised all the time, thus it is science. CAGW or CACC are “POLITICAL SCIENCE” not “Science” because of this lack.
Now has the climate changed?: YES
Will the climate change in the future?: YES
Has man caused a change in climate?: YES, (Anthropologists have shown this – we plant fields, we build buildings, we cut trees, we dam rivers – all of which causes local climate change)
Has the burning of “fossil fuels” caused an increase in atmospheric CO2?: YES (though the jury is still out on how much is from burning fuel and how much is outgassing of CO2 from warming oceans and other natural causes)
Has the increase in CO2 led to warming? Possibly, but probably not nearly as much as the IPCC political scientists have predicted.
Is warming bad? Probably NOT, the greatest diversity of life on the planet occurred when both temperature and CO2 were much higher than now.
Is increased CO2 bad? probably not, the decrease in water needs in plants during photosynthesis allows plant life to proliferate in currently uninhabitable areas of the world, leading to a greening of the planet.
The above summary is why I am a skeptic of the Catastrophic portions of the theory.
For this claim to be true, they would first have to prove that never before, in the entire history of the world, has it warmed up and then stayed warm for 25 years or more.
Does anyone else notice the same long term trend that I do. The Earth has been on a 8,000 year cooling trend ever since the Holocene Climate Optimum. There have been pauses where the earth grew warmer between Bond events about every 1400 years, also known as the Minoan Warm Period, Roman Warm Period and Medieval warm period.
What surprises me is that anyone did not expect it to grow warmer at the end of the Little Ice Age about 1850.
http://iceagenow.info/2011/10/real-unprecedented-warming-happened-industrial-age/temphistory2/
http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/v1003/lectures/abrupt_change/
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/lesezeichen-anzeige/teil-8-dynamisches-sonnensystem-die-tatsaechlichen-hintergruende-des-klimawandels/
Not 8000. More like 6000 if you think that the height of Holocene Climatic Optimum warmth was greater than the Minoan Warm Period, c. 3000 years ago, as it probably was. But in any case, the long term trend is cooling, whether for 5-6K or 3K years.
There was a sharp cooling event ~8200 years ago, which interrupted the HCO, probably caused by glacial meltwater, like the Younger Dryas.
Soooooooooooooooooooooo, statistically what’s the probability of hundreds of thousands of consecutive months with negative temp anomalies so deep that Manhattan (40N) is under a mile of ice occurring randomly? Anyone with a computer able to help me out with that one?
There is a lot off-track abt this statistically. The time-series comment is very damning. Additionally, I had this thought when reading this post: the analysis focuses on whether the temp in a time period is in one category – not above normal – or in another category – above normal.
Some type of stochastic model would be a fitting analysis.
Also, imagine the histogram of seasonally-adjusted daily temps for the recent 100, or 1000, years. The values for the recent decade are going to be somewhere in the range of long-term natural variability.
If they are all on the high side, then that supports the idea that there is a new normal.
Now, the task is to look across time even father back, and figure out how long a “normal,” prevailing period of normalcy is, then develop a distribution for changes in normal: normal is here, then it steps to there, either higher or lower.
The conclusion will be that the recent new normal – going back 50 years if you like, to cherry-pick, will not be that unusual or unprecedented.
Also, the weakness I noted in a comment in a recent WUWT post again applies: for all variable but one, you have values going both up and down – all have been free to vary, and those that covary are more likely to be causally related. CO2 has not been able to covary; it has only had one type of variance in recent history: directly up. The analysis is by default built to find CO2 as a predictor of ANY OTHER value that has been in a general increase across the time span of the analysis.
In this situation, you need to triangulate this theory-matching evidence with other types of evidence, such as Al Gore’s on-video demonstration of CO2-induced global warming, or a lack of a similar planetary temp ternd on other planets, etc.
There are just too many ways to look at genuine data and then scoff at this paper’s conclusion.
I have not read the paper yet, but am just familiar with the profile of planetary avg temps, as they have been estimated, over the recent several thousand years.
No doubt the statistical analysis assumed, without evidence, independent changes in annual temperature and no autocorrelation. There’s no evidence that these assumptions are valid. In fact, past patterns shows that these assumption do not hold for global temperature.
BTW note how weak their claim is: “There is less than 1 chance in 100,000 that global average temperature over the past 60 years would have been as high without human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.” In other words, they are claiming only that human activity caused an temperature increase greater than zero. This statement makes no claim that human activity caused a significant portion of the warming during the last 60 years.
I’m 99.9999% certain that the aforesaid publication is a pile of putrescent dingo’s kidneys.
The climate models are 99.999% certain that temperatures continued to rise after 2000. It is the thermometers that have it wrong.
Reading assorted newspapers over the past weeks it is amazing how many people have started to call climate science a fraud. What people are noticing is that every time a prediction of climate disaster fails to materialize, there is a new excuse given.
The average Joe and Jane on the street may not be a scientist, but they sure know that continued excuses signal BS. They will accept it the first or second time, but if it happens over and over again, they know they are being lied to.
Translation: “According to models, the stock market would not have gone up without cheap energy correlated with carbon dioxide emissions. And since a healthy stock market rejects our Marxist spiritualist agenda, we must now ration energy. It’s a matter of life and death, of our careers.”
So as Anthony says, if it can be shown there was a period in our history where anthropogenic factors couldn’t have impacted on the climate but there was 25 years of increasing temperatures then this paper confirms that there is a 99.999% certainty that the models cant simulate our climate.
Good work guys for giving us a measure by which the models can be falsified that you’ll agree with.
Why am I reminded of the Spinal Tap quote, “The numbers all go to eleven” when reading this? I guess I’m waiting for the first believer to ascribe >100% certainty it’s man-made GW (or has that already happened?)
They have by assuming that anthropogenic emissions is 100% of the cause in the long term rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
They don’t have a clue why they are getting such “statistical significance”. They could have gotten similar results using population or even the rising price of a particular stock.
Steely Dan made the timeless lyric in 1972 with “Reelin’ the Years:” “The things that pass for knowledge, I can’t understand.”
http://youtu.be/rBllejn5fVA
Thanks for mentioning my favorite group.
Shall we start an office pool to predict how long it is before Obama picks this up and uses 99.999% as the new 97%?
While there are plenty of reasons to ignore this paper, since this is based on a “statistical analysis”, I’m optimistic that McIntyre will weigh in soon and shred it ala the Hockey Stick.
Popcorn waiting…
From the hilarious “99.9999999%” abstract:
“Previous approaches to attribute change include qualitative expert-assessment approaches such as used in IPCC reports and use of ‘fingerprinting’ methods based on global climate models.”
In about 5~10 years, the only “fingerprinting” will be strictly procedural being done on climate modelers being booked for criminal malfeasance of public funds….
i see a correlation between the end of the warming trend,increase in arctic summer sea ice and visits to this blog from warmists .
I am 100% certain that global warming climate alarmists are getting very desperate, and it is worse than I thought.
You can see this is nothing but a propaganda paper.
– 1985 was a La Nina year
– 2010 was an El Nino year
– they ignore all historic data
– they misuse the mathematics
– they use falsified models
You’d think the authors would be to embarrassed to have produced pure drivel such as this. It will follow them wherever they go. If they were smart they would retract the paper and apologize.
You’d think the editors of the journal would be embarrassed.
But maybe they would be more embarrassed to have nothing to publish at all.
Well, I am 99.999% certain, that prior to circa 1980, when ocean buoys commenced simultaneously measuring ocean surface water temperatures, at -1.0 m AMSL, as well as lower troposphere air temperatures, at +3.0 m AMSL, at the same oceanic spot, that the entire global temperature data record, dating back to circa 1850, became, virtual junk numbers.
About Jan 2001, Prof John Christy, UAH reported on about 20 years of data from those buoys, and found that air and water temperatures are not the same, and moreover are not correlated.
So all of the previous recorded oceanic temperatures, from about 71% of earth’s surface, that measured temperatures from random depths in the water, on ships, is totally worthless as part of the lower troposphere total global temperature record.
Because they are not correlated, the earlier water temperature data cannot be corrected, so it is just noisy rubbish.
Also there are things called “Currents” in ocean waters, so you can go back to the identical GPS co-ordinates of a previous measurement, and be in totally different water from that which you last measured.
So nyet, on using ANY oceanic water temperatures, as proxies for oceanic lower tropospheric air temperatures.
@Lamby 9/4 6:05 am,
you have it backward.
The size of the standard deviation is less important to the probability of catastrophe than is the difference between our models’ means and standard deviations and what nature really has in store for us.
Taleb’s “Black Swan” isn’t a warning about wide deviation. It is a warning about models that have coded in them rules that “all swans are white” and then acting as if that were true. The “Black Swan” says less about nature and more about hubris.
Speaking of backward, the CAGW climate argument has it that there is a big monstrous Black Swan under every bed. “We are 99.999% certain that a Black Swan event will end human civilization if WE DON”T ACT NOW!!!!!”
First, if we can predict Black Swans with such certainty…. they aren’t Black Swans, at least not the kind Taleb is talking about.
Second, what is at issue here is trust in models that tell us Black Swans are everywhere. Black Swans are responsible for droughts, floods, heat waves, polar vortexes, if it is cloudier, if there are no clouds. Black Swans are going to cause a tipping point. Yet when we take our eyes away from the computer models and observe the real world, we don’t see many signs of those Big Bad Black Swans. For the past 17 years, there have been no increase in the number of black feathers. That is what puts models in disrepute.
Third, even if Black Swans should become more common, I can think of many people who would like to have some for pets. Canada, Siberia, Minnesota, North Dakota, for instance. Where did we get the idea they were harbingers of doom?
I know you guys don’t really do science or maths…
Run along now, Bambi.
I’m going back to my geophysics, statistics, economics, and database computer model making.
Dunno, why you referred to “Black Swans” as if they are scarce as hen’s teeth for example.
Black Swans are very common. In the USA, I have seen at least as many black swans as white swans. Used to have a mated pair in the pond, at an apartment complex I once lived in, in Silicon Valley.
Australia too is full of black swans. They are a very normal occurrence. Maybe only Europe doesn’t know about black swans.
Could we dealing with a black swan in sheep’s clothing, or is it a wolf?
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/obama-the-wolf-in-sheeps-clothing-on-fabian-window-coat-of-arms
The sustained warm interval in the early 18th century, c. 1710-39, following the depths of the Little Ice Age, c. 1680-1709, exceeded the late 20th century warming in both duration and magnitude:
http://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/1700_1749.htm
There is no basis for imagining the recent warming as due to any but natural causes. The Null Hypothesis has not been shown false.
I have not read all comments here, but I think you guys are getting this the wrong way.
As far as I can tell the paper does not claim anything about man-made global warming or AGW.
Read carefully……. is about influence and connection of ARF (ANTHROPOGENIC Radiative Forcing) to the observed warming. Is just trying to show in a meassured way the fingerprint of humanity on the climate.
No where I think it shows or claims that the ARF is the cause of the warming, only that it has had an influence on top of every thing else. It does not consider causality and it does not imply that the 99,999% certanty is about causality.
From the little I have seen about the paper, it is no any near to what IPCC claims with its 95% certainty of man-made warming.
IPCC is claiming a 95% of ACC-AGW while the 99.999% is about humanity influencing the CC-gw by making it more stable, less variable.
In a way it works against ACC-AGW. Is a paper that in the end of the day claims a little influence of ARF on climate by considering actually the ARF as a driver and not a climate changer an amplifier of the warming not a cause . Besides is a claim with even a higher certanty lvl than the IPCC claim of – 95% certanty of AGW-.
Is a paper with the highes certanty and is about ARF acting as it suppose to, a driver or an amplifier of warming not a causality.
In a very layman it could be put as:
While the IPCC claims a 95% of a certainty that human diggin is causing the montain to colapse on top of, in the other hand the 99.999% paper claims with a much higher certanty that the human diggin seems to consist with some dirt thrown in the air and the montain actually seeming to have shaked less during the same time.
I am sure that many ppl don’t consider or do not even want to that the ARF can or could have any influence at all in climate, or probably there still some who consider that anthropogenic emissions do not even exist.
Anyway, I maybe got it wrong, and stand to be corrected if that’s the case, but as it stand I will advice for more care and less rush with the conclusions on this one……
Please don’t be shy, I stand to be corrected also in spelling and grammar too.. 🙂
cheers