Guest essay by Andy May
This is an open letter to Lauren Carroll regarding her Politifact.com article on December 17, 2014.
I have sent a very similar letter to her asking for her comments, but no reply yet. I’m always annoyed at the media “bait and switch” tactic of picking the most outlandish statements of the “other side” and shooting them down thoughtlessly as if the statement represented the whole of the argument. This is just one case, but it is on a web site that portrays itself as a media and political watchdog that reaches for understanding over ideological rhetoric. It is also a web site that should not take sides, but usually does. I thought it might be useful to discuss the points from a scientific perspective. I doubt I will change Ms. Carroll’s somewhat biased perspective on climate change, but others may find this discussion useful.
Dear Ms. Carroll
I’d like to discuss the points you make in your article and point out some problems from a scientist’s perspective. I’m a petrophysicist (a type of Earth Scientist) with 40 years of experience and I’ve followed the issue of Global Warming or Climate Change with much interest for about 15 years. The issue is much more complex than the media generally portray it. I do not want to get into the debate over the claim that “Climate Change is a hoax.” This is a discussion of the meat of the subject, not straw men. I believe your web site generally tries to get beyond silly claims or statements and seeks to illuminate and inform. This email is an attempt to help in this regard.
Actually, I’m more annoyed at the claim, referred to in Ms. Carroll’s article, that Marco Rubio’s statement that human activity is not “causing these dramatic changes to our climate” is false. Rubio’s full statement (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/may/13/marco-rubio/marco-rubio-says-humans-are-not-causing-climate-ch/ ) is carefully worded and very reasonable. In my opinion, Rubio is correct. The Kliegman article does not address what Rubio actually said, but changes his statement to “Rubio said human activity isn’t causing changes to the environment…” A statement that is false, but not what he said. This is another straw man logical fallacy, just like Carroll’s.
You have stated that there is a consensus of scientific organizations that agree on three issues. The three are: 1) Manmade greenhouse gases warm (or affect) the atmosphere, 2) the IPCC reports are a good summary of climate science and 3) the increase in greenhouse gases is likely more than half of the cause of warming over the last 50 years. The notorious and widely discredited Cook, et. al. 2013 paper is also cited in the accompanying article by Kliegman on Rubio’s statement. Even the authors of the papers “classified” by Cook, et. al. say they were wrong (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/21/cooks-97-consensus-study-falsely-classifies-scientists-papers-according-to-the-scientists-that-published-them/ and http://judithcurry.com/2013/07/26/the-97-consensus/ )
As a skeptic of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, I agree with all three statements. My agreement on the third point should be qualified a bit. “Over the last 50 years” is an important condition. The Earth appears to be adapting to the additional CO2, future additional CO2 may not contribute half of any warming. This is because each additional bit of CO2 adds less and less of an effect since CO2 only traps a small range of infra-red frequencies and perhaps there are some natural adaptations that we do not understand very well yet (http://eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/139rmg~1.pdf ). Any qualified Earth scientist would agree with the first two statements, they are obvious. Most of us agree with the last one as stated. The IPCC reports are a good summary of the state of climate science, but the executive summaries often misstate the actual report and there are errors, of course (http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/09/ipccs-new-protocol-for-addressing-possible-errors/ )
Our problem is not with the points above. Our issue is with the assumption that increasing CO2 and warming is a problem that we urgently need to deal with. We also object to the federal money (over $100B according to http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2011/08/23/the-alarming-cost-of-climate-change-hysteria/ ) being spent on researching or mitigating climate change.
Case in point. It is widely known that there has been no warming since 1998 ( google “No Warming since 1998” or go to Matt Ridley’s excellent article in the WSJ, Sept 4, 2014). So, for 16 of the 50 years in question there has been no warming. Doesn’t this suggest that natural forces are stopping the warming caused by manmade CO2? After all CO2 has continued to rise over the last 16 years at a steady pace, correct? If natural forces can stop the CO2 caused warming doesn’t that imply they are as strong a forcing as the CO2?
Increasing CO2 to 1100 ppm (our atmosphere now has 400 ppm) causes plants to grow more than 50% faster and use less water per pound of growth ( http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/00-077.htm ). This is huge for our food supply, especially in most of the third world where food is hard to come by (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7306/full/466531a.html ). Higher temperatures help plant growth also. The Earth has been very cool for the last three million years; generally the Earth has been much warmer in the past and with more CO2 than today (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology ).
As for other scientists who are skeptical of an impending climate catastrophe caused by manmade greenhouse gases, I refer you to the following partial list. “Consensus” is meaningless in science, it is a political term. This is an interesting area of research, but it has been screwed up and obscured by the politicians and the media.
These eminently qualified climate skeptics doubt an impending climate catastrophe and believe we should do nothing drastic now.
Professor Richard Lindzen
Professor S. Fred Singer
Professor Judith Curry
Professor Bjorn Lomborg
Professor Roger Pielke
Professor Roger Pielke Jr.
Matt Ridley
Professor Richard Tol (The Cook, et. al. survey included 10 of his 122 eligible papers. 5/10 were rated incorrectly. 4/5 were rated as endorse rather than neutral.)
And many, many more ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming and http://www.petitionproject.org/ ). Obviously, as we saw with Galileo, it only takes one good scientist to shoot down conventional wisdom.
I hope this clarifies the skeptic case somewhat. You are not the only media person to miss the point of the argument.
The “hoax,” if you want to use that term, is the speculative jump from simply “global warming” to an “impending climate catastrophe.” It is true that the globe is warming; it has been doing that for the last 18,000 years. It is not established that warming is a bad thing or will lead to catastrophe, that conclusion is pure speculation. Generally, the warmer periods in the past have been good for mankind and the cooler periods problematic (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/17/climate-and-human-civilization-over-the-last-18000-years/ ).
The alarmists argue that global warming is real and they can back that up. True enough, I have no argument with that. Then they deftly switch, without any supporting data to “global warming is bad.” They are very skilled at this.
Andy May
Your post is intelligent, but when dealing with a leftist, facts, data and logic do not matter.
.
They live in a different reality: To a leftist, reality is whatever they wish it to be.
.
Now please remember that Earth is always warming or cooling, and measurements since the 1800’s suggest warming is the trend (it may have ended 12 to 18 years ago, but we don’t know that now.)
.
What the leftists have done is to take a mild, harmless existing trend, and then project an acceleration of that trend in the future, that will have dire consequences.
.
They have done that dozens of times before, for DDT. acid rain, hole in the ozone layer, etc.
.
If the climate doesn’t warm for another decade, or gets colder, it won’t matter to leftists — they will either claim global cooling is their new boogeyman, or they have fellow leftist “scientists” pick another boogeyman they think will work better at scaring people.
.
You can’t debate leftists — they will character attack you if you try.
.
Facts about the current and past mean little to them — the crises they always see coming are always off in the future.
.
The goal of a leftist “crisis” is to stop economic growth, stop population growth, and promote big (bigger) government socialism.
.
The coming ‘climate change crisis’ has nothing to do with the climate or the environment — it is a political tool, technically known as a boogeyman, or a MacGuffin, to promote an extreme leftist political agenda.
.
The correct way to debate a leftist is to swat them with a rolled up newspaper — not one you would want to read later, like a Wall Street Journal, but one you would be using to line a bird cage, such as the New York Times.
Ka Ching!
[A wasted posting effort by a banned sockpuppet. Comment DELETED. -mod]
Precisely.
The spaces mean I have bad vision and a small laptop … it’s much easier for me to type and proofread what I wrote with a space between every sentence.
.
I know it wastes bandwidth … but its also easier to read for everyone else too. And you don’t have to read anything between the lines because there’s nothing there.
Actually, from a bandwidth perspective, those lines are only 1 extra character (LF-CR versus 32), so it is not a waste. And adding spaces between lines is much better than all caps. It is still easy to read and with no offense.
So please continue.
ABSOL…..effin’…..LUTELY
Follow the money. There are billions of dollars being allocated to alternative energy projects that eventually fail. This money magically disappears. It is the going to be the biggest rip off in history. It will dwarf the bank bailouts. The leftists and the media are merely “useful idiots”.
Media whores and the parasitic class working hand-in-hand to further the conditioning tactics that mad science first gave birth to 70+ years ago, and yet i wake up every morning to that beautiful sun expecting something different…… why? i ask myself. What were we talking about again?
Andy May, why waste time arguing with a political hack like Lauren Carroll?
Because the other political hacks listen to her.
I’ve moved on from engaging in quarrels about climate change/global warming and global cooling; only because i know that de-facto governments, insurance companies and the military have openly admitted to efforts made in weather modification. So how can we sit and have a chat about whether either or is happening when we have this wildcard.. Do any of you really know the outcome of sulphur loading or spraying silver iodide and various salts into the atmosphere.?
Don’t you see, your tastes have been formed!
Kenin. get real!
Do you know how enormous our Earth is. Mankind cannot control the weather. Cloud seeding or adding ocean Iron can’t reach the scale necessary to actually have a lasting effect if any at all.
Your right. That’s why I said “weather modification” I did not say control the earths atmosphere on a grand scale. You clearly don’t know enough about geo-engineering in this respect. If it wasn’t having any effect, then why are they doing it in the first place.
I do remember googling the term “no warming since 1998”, and getting a good list of links proving it several years ago – but at risk of looking like a conspiracy theorist, somebody has been very busy lately – and there are a lot of new results now that come up in the search from sources like “skepticalscience”, NASA, and other interested parties. It’s funny, the links from 2012 or so back are fine – but seemingly most newer articles are arguments saying “don’t believe the ‘deniers'”. Apparently, when you tell people to google something, and results of the google search reflect content on the Internet, some people who read that content will simply go and write an article with your google search in the title, and thereby invalidate your advice to go google it.
Likewise, I wouldn’t quote wiki, because literally *anybody* can go and edit the article you link to. Both “google” and “wiki” are very poor tactical choices when it comes to trying to prove something. A good, solid argument, with good proof can literally “melt before your eyes”.
Andy May, that’s a good letter. Good luck getting it published.
@richard Greene
That is an excellent short summary of leftists………. Thanks for that.
Exactly. And anyone who has used the precautionary principle has endorsed that leap.
But there is no evidence for that outrageous step.
This needs to be hammered home every time some politician or journalist tries to promote policy positions based on countering “global warming”.
Actually, I’ve always thought that the warmist jump from “global warming” to “climate catastrophe” should be compared to saying that because most scientists agree that there may be life on other planets, this somehow conclusively proves that cousin Cletus was abducted by space aliens last Thursday.
the dot in the politifact.com seems to have been replaced by a tick. I imagine that this is something to do with having the correct answer. And then it is in a goldish colour I suppose that is like the very best answer.
“It is also a web site that should not take sides, but usually does.”
That is one thing I have noticed about leftists in general. They go on and on about how they are being neutral and even handed, but they almost never are.
something I havent personally heard often as of late, is that it wasnt as much the fact it would warm but rather the rate of warming. now the meme is mainly “change”. It is amazing that PR campaigns now dictate for most how data is to be interpreted. This is done so well that differing opinions often that better fit the data are seen as a conspiracy of some type. It truly is amazing to watch, I fear for science and real proven enviro issues, several of which are rather dangerous but nearly ignored in favor of supporting the delusional memes present within Cagw. .
“It is widely known that there has been no warming since 1998”
Widely but wrongly. Trends from stated date to Oct 2014, in °C/century:
HadCRUT GISSlo NOAAlo UAH5.6 RSS.MSU Dec 1998 0.881 1.003 0.772 1.427 0.249 Jan 1998 0.595 0.742 0.526 0.684 -0.429You can see how the “since 1998” depends on the blip in 1998. But even then, only RSS fails to show a strong positive trend since 1998. Since Dec, UAH shows the strongest trend of all.
Funny, if my memory serves me, back around the 2001 the CAGW hysterics were only too happy to exploit the so-called “blip” as an integral part of the temperature record and indication of impending doom.
Quite frankly quibbling about the slowdown, plateau, hiatus, stasis whatever, sounds pretty undignified coming from taxpayer-funded scientists who are supposed to be seeking as close to the truth as possible based on the evidence rather than just maintaining a stance based on a failing (CAGW) hypothesis.
Nick, surface temperature data really only reflects continental weather. You need global satellite measurements to get a perspective on global climate.
But UAH, which is the closest we have to a global satellite measurement, shows a positive trend.
Andy, you lost the conversation in the first two lines. You described yourself as a “petrophysicist”… done, right there. Describing yourself as a “petro-” anything to a warmist, ends your argument with them. the rest of what you say is “blah, blah, and blah”. You then went on to defend a Republican. Strike two. Doesn’t matter if there is a strike three – you lose arguments with leftists on the first strike. If you are trying to argue with facts, remember – facts don’t matter. It’s not about the facts – never was.
Paul, sighhh… You may be right. Somebody else compared me to Don Quixote, he is probably right also. Reason, logic and data mean nothing to someone who only listens to their own tribe and will not do their own research or make their own decisions. Often they only parrot what their leader (whoever that may be) says.
For years we have been told about what kind of diet is good for us and which ones were bad. There is/was a consensus on the issue and it kind of made sense. So you can imagine my shock at finding saturated fat deniers on the rampage.
Note: the first study was funded by British Heart Foundation – an organisation dedicated to the reduction of saturated fats in the UK diet.
Are they onto something?
Good luck Don Quixote. Poltifact is the clown car outfit that called the 2012 lie of the year, Mitt Romney’s ad that said Jeep was going to build in China. They are.
They are a hack outfit. And have nothing to do with “facts”.
For what it’s worth, I contacted Politifact about some of what it wrote about global warming a couple weeks ago. I haven’t received a response. I don’t expect I will. I haven’t copied the “letter” I sent them, but you can read what I discussed in it here:
http://www.hi-izuru.org/wp_blog/2014/12/do-fact-checkers-know-what-facts-are/
Put simply, it appears the people at Politifact are so biased on the issue of global warming they will latch onto anything as an excuse to write about it in a way which paints people they dislike as buffoons. I described one of the examples I find most troubling as:
And it’s true. They published a 1,500+ word article because someone used the word “stabilized” instead of “paused.”
Thank you. I enjoyed reading your posts. I hadn’t seen them before.
You’re welcome. I’m glad to hear it!
Brandon, Poltifact does not know a Global warming from a hole in the ground. SO they are not biased for or against it – unless the left tells them they are. As has been demonstrated too many times, they only know what their handlers feed them, and their handlers are the morons on the left.
philjourdan, I non’t care to defend Politifact nor have I been. I know idiots (and geniuses, sometimes simultaneously) of all political alignments, and I think arguing politics by calling the other side a bunch of nitwits and leaving it at that is moronic.
None of which has anything to do with what I wrote to Andy. My problem with his arguments would be the same no matter what context in which he’d first written them.
Excuse me? Are you Gates or Shollenberger? I replied to Shollenberger. And I get a defense from a Gates?
Is this sock puppetry?
philjourdan,
My mistake, wrong Brandon. I didn’t see him on here until after I replied.
Appreciate your admission of error. Still confused on why you would be.
philjourdan,
In long threads like this one I find responses to my comments by text searching for my first name. I was tired, missed that you were replying to Shollenberger not Gates. I should have caught it because I knew your response didn’t mesh with my own comments, so there was a fair amount of my own prejudice about climate contrarians’ propensity (as I perceive it) to toss out red herrings and/or be generally confused. So, fatigue and unwarranted bias I think best explain my careless error.
It is widely known that there has been no warming since 1998 ( google “No Warming since 1998” or go to Matt Ridley’s excellent article in the WSJ, Sept 4, 2014). So, for 16 of the 50 years in question there has been no warming. Doesn’t this suggest that natural forces are stopping the warming caused by manmade CO2? After all CO2 has continued to rise over the last 16 years at a steady pace, correct? If natural forces can stop the CO2 caused warming doesn’t that imply they are as strong a forcing as the CO2?
————
It suggests that natural forces are stopping warming caused by manmade CO2 if one believes that said warming was caused by manmade CO2. Has that been proved?
No, it has not.
exactly
Andy, Thank you for writing this, I’ve often wanted to but am not skilled enough to do so.
I will however point to this letter as to why I won’t help them with their Kickstarter” effort.
Once again Thanks!
Green Journalism is the new Yellow Journalism. Facts are only facts if they support your agenda.
From the piece at PF-
How do we know climate change isn’t a mass conspiracy to pull the wool over the world’s eyes, as Whitney and others claim?
Such a scenario seems near impossible, considering the overwhelming consensus among respected climate scientists that anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming is indisputable.
Since the original 97% was a survey of ’79 Recently Published Climate Scientist’, of which 75 of 77 answered yes to both questions, what is the new XX / YY when adding ‘Respected’ to the mix.
Research also shows that climate change denial is concentrated among those who have less expertise in the subject or no scientific training at all.
Additionally, much of climate change deniers’ back-up evidence is cherry-picked or too simplistic to be meaningful.
So is Black pot / kettle racist or not?
Nice letter Andy, mostly futile but these things need to be shown to have been said.
Later this Propagandist will claim to have been misinformed and deny that any “credible person” showed any doubt of the CAGW meme.
However human nature will dictate here.
There is gonna be a swing of the pendulum, CAGW, The Eco-nasties and those who have been using them are all yesterdays fad.
As the economy tanks due to the exuberance of mass idiocy, people in general will get a little darker, meaner and vindictive.
CAGW is now clearly identified as a planned method of robbing the many while enriching a few.
We of the West are in debt up to our great grandchildren’s eyeballs, there is no long term investment made with that money, that will reward the next generations left to pay the tab.
Instead a total waste, welfare statism, government grandees, mitigation schemes that mitigate nothing but enrich the well connected.
All enabled by a world wide bureaucracy centred at the UN. Truly useful idiots, however as the public mood swings, I expect more and more of these fools and bandits to attempt to save their precious skins.
By the usual methods, blame others, accuse everyone of their own sins..and so on.
Buy popcorn and archive their past and present proclamations.
I fully expect to see national government agencies grant “immunity” to their colleges currently at the UN.
While simultaneously attempting to purge the record, control the internet.
Shame that is only going to inflame the crisis but I guess thats been the problem from the start of this Policy Based Evidence Manufacturing.PBEM .. hmm need a better acronym.
Good Enough for Government.
From the point of view of political persuasion (propaganda) the phrase “Global Warming Hoax” has the potential of turning the debate upside down. Hoax exposes the Believer to the possibility of looking foolish. So once any substantial defection from Belief starts, there is the possibility of a runaway effect as no one wants to look foolish — i.e. to be hoaxed. Thus the Belief can collapse almost over night if people become concerned that it is or might be a hoax.
You are taking the bait and replying the irritation of a small extremist faction in an insignificant small city. You have just given them a massive boost in readership.
Why bother? In Australia, such extremism usually results over time in falling readership and increasing irrelevance, as they preach to the converted, not the general public.
I’ve never before heard of Lauren Carroll or Politifact. I’ll forget this reference to them, soon enough.
Life’s too short to pay attention to those who have no interest in truth.
Brandon Gates January 2, 2015 at 2:52 pm
Based on these results, the future increase in global mean temperature is likely to fall within –40 to +60% of the multi-model AOGCM mean warming simulated for each scenario.
SNAP! goes the trap.
Precisely Brandon. We were told that the science was settled, the debate was over, the situation dire, the need to act urgent. That’s what we were told Brandon. Over an over. We were ridiculed just for asking questions. But when WE put aside the press releases and the public pronouncements and looked at the IPCC reports themselves, what did we find? Uncertainty at every turn. Weasel words tortured into suggesting a level of certainty and accuracy that a careful reading of the documents showed just didn’t exist.
So where were you then Brandon? You said you’ve been around this debate for a while upthread, did you speak up back then? When the pronouncements were coming fast and furious that the science was settled, the debate over, did you raise your voice and say “…uhm no, that’s not what the document says”?
I find it somewhat disingenuous for your side of the debate to have shoved the certainty of doom in our faces, and when events didn’t play out as you claimed (with the highest of confidence I might add) you now wish to assert that your side never made those claims in the first place?
LOL.
Phil Jones – 10 years disqualifies the models
NASA – 15 years
Ben Santer – 17 years
Brandon Gates – uhm, well, uhm, the IPCC never actually said….
BULLSH*T. If they never intended it that way, then they made a p*ss poor job of saying so these last few decades. Weasel words from beginning to end, and in the end, a meaningless document now being used by warmists to claim they never said what they clearly did say to governments world wide.
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”
Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
Yup, pretty stupid thing to say. Also pretty old, and one Dr. Folland likely wishes he could have back.
davidmhoffer,
[looks around bewildered, sees no trap, shrugs and moves on]
Let’s you and me get something straight between us right now. I don’t carry anyone’s water for them, I speak for me and me alone. If you’d like to ask me what my views on policy are, go right on ahead. But you need to ask, not assume. Are we clear?
Well I’ve met a variety of climate contrarians online and let me tell you, you’re not a monolithic group any more than we on the consensus side of the science. I think some contrarian questions are wonderfully conceived and properly skeptical and add much value to the debate. Others, and I’ll just say most, are not. Many are flat out silly and deserve ridicule and even ire. In my opinion, mind. The sky dragons are my pet favorites. No CO2 accumulation from humans, which is topical today, is just about one of the silliest, whacky, loopy arguments out there — confirmation bias and total logic failure written all over it.
Get bent about being made fun of if you’d like but this is a highly charged issue because of the stakes, harsh things have and will continue to be said. I don’t complain about that and therefore I don’t suffer complaints about it gladly either.
You think? What fantasy planet is it you live on that’s so easy to figure out?
How about a little less arm waving and little more citation. I like vague sweeping generalizations even less than I do mewling about being made fun of.
Somewhere … William Briggs blog probably … I pretty roundly condemned Obama for the “science is settled bit”. Over the years I’ve corrected others on my side when I perceived them to be in error. I’ve done it here a time or two …. Socrates said something a few weeks ago that didn’t look right and I nudged him about it. A number of times here I’ve said I don’t like politics of fear no matter who uses them.
I’ve delivered bigger “same-team” a** chewings on other issues which I feel more emotion about than this one. I’ve been killfiled by more than one person for doing it.
Where did I disavow something someone said?
I’ll be darned if that’s my actual response. Ranting doesn’t make for good reading comprehension.
Brandon says:
…looks around bewildered…
‘Bewildered’ is correct.
Hoffer makes some irrefutable points. And I would also like to ask:
What is a ‘climate contrarian’??
Skeptics know the climate always changes — naturally. What is ‘contrarian’ about that? Or have you run out of facts, and now must resort to ad-homs?
I’ll be darned if that’s my actual response. Ranting doesn’t make for good reading comprehension.
I’m sorry that you were unable to comprehend my point.
davidmhoffer January 2, 2015 at 7:48 pm
I’ll be darned if that’s my actual response. Ranting doesn’t make for good reading comprehension.
I’m sorry that you were unable to comprehend my point.
The fault is most certainly mine
Thus sprach dbstealey:
Ok. Care to enlighten me on which ones, or is this just another armwaving session.
Someone who doesn’t hold the consensus view on AGW.
Not recognizing the part humans play as established by the majority of scientists working in the field.
Really. No, really, I mean …. seriously?
As established by? So the majority decides the climate, is that it? LOL! Db was too kind.
davidmhoffer,
Um, ok. I’ve lost track, did we or did we not establish that the IPCC has not been promising laser-straight non-deviating temperature trends from now until meltdown in lockstep with rising CO2 levels?
Brandon Gates January 2, 2015 at 9:22 pm
Um, ok. I’ve lost track, did we or did we not establish that the IPCC has not been promising laser-straight non-deviating temperature trends
What we’ve established is that the perception and the reality of the published science are two different things. Once again, thanks for pointing that out. As before, if you don’t understand the point, the fault is mine.
Brandon, is there a caveat in here about natural variability possibly overcoming CO2 forcing for a decade or more? Did I miss that part? The wording in the SPM is identical. Doesn’t really reflect what the sections you quoted say, does it? Now do you understand my point?
Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report
ContentsSYR33.2
3.2 Projections of future changes in climate
For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emissions scenarios. Even if the concentrations of all GHGs and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would be expected. Afterwards, temperature projections increasingly depend on specific emissions scenarios (Figure 3.2). {WGI 10.3, 10.7; WGIII 3.2}
Since the IPCC’s first report in 1990, assessed projections have suggested global averaged temperature increases between about 0.15 and 0.3°C per decade from 1990 to 2005. This can now be compared with observed values of about 0.2°C per decade, strengthening confidence in near-term projections. {WGI 1.2, 3.2}
davidmhoffer,
Ah. No, I got that point alrighty. I just treat them as separate issues and get a tad cranky when they’re mashed together. I don’t think it makes much sense to discuss policy without first having some mutual consensus on the factual basis.
What jumps out at me is that they’ve revised estimates and strengthened confidence in those estimates perhaps because the constraints on natural variability weren’t considered as good. The thing about GHG and aerosol concentrations may be about the “warming in the pipeline” concept. I think I’m starting to understand what you’re getting at but I’m also getting fuzzy because of the late hour. I’ll read the whole section tomorrow in context and get back to you.
Brandon Gates;
What jumps out at me is that they’ve revised estimates and strengthened confidence in those estimates perhaps because the constraints on natural variability weren’t considered as good.
What should jump out at you is that their public facing pronouncements and SPM contain certainties that are not born out by close examination of the balance of their own publications. Further, in AR4, the estimate was a sensitivity of between 2.0 and 4.5 degrees per doubling of CO2, with a consensus median estimate of 3.0 degrees. In AR5, they were unable to arrive at a consensus median estimate at all, increased the range of the estimate to be between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees (with only the lower bound changing), and announced that their confidence in the science was even higher than ever.
Really? The range got bigger, unable to reach agreement on a median estimate, but their confidence went up?
We’ve gone full cycle. First natural variation was too small to explain anything, and now it is large enough to explain everything.
“Brandon Gates
January 2, 2015 at 7:03 pm
davidmhoffer,
“SNAP! goes the trap.
[looks around bewildered, sees no trap, shrugs and moves on]”
You are bewildered because you’ve been trapped and part of the trap is blinders.
LOL
davidmhoffer
January 2, 2015 at 11:07 pm
Really? The range got bigger, unable to reach agreement on a median estimate, but their confidence went up?
Nothing confusing there David: their confidence in their uncertainty has been strengthened by their inability to make a determination.
Perfectly clear.
At least, that might be what they probably could mean.
/grin
davidmhoffer,
Confidence went up in conclusions drawn from observation. “The science is settled” quote, as unfortunate and wrong that meme is, refers to what has happened in the past.
You should be happy that with the switch from CMIP3 to CMIP5 from AR4 to AR5 that they reported the lower bound change from 2 to 1.5 for climate senstivity. In the scientific world, that’s called integrity. In the political hack world, that’s called flip-flopping. Know the difference.
I like the subtle shift from comparing FAR to AR4, to comparing AR4 to AR5. Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Perhaps you may wish to limit my comments to the context in which they were given?
Brandon Gates January 3, 2015 at 8:04 am
Confidence went up in conclusions drawn from observation.
Confidence went up in model predictions by increasing the range in which they could be right, and avoiding a consensus estimate because it would have exposed that bounded by observational evidence, sensitivity is much lower than previously claimed. The 4.5 upper bound is not supportable, but they left it in anyway and just didn’t comment on how unlikely it is, else the report would have been left with nothing frightening in it.
“The science is settled” quote, as unfortunate and wrong that meme is, refers to what has happened in the past.
It refers to what is happening now. The 97% consensus meme is just another manifestation of it, and you yourself in a reply up thread attempted to use another version of it in defining “climate contrarians”.
You should be happy that with the switch from CMIP3 to CMIP5 from AR4 to AR5 that they reported the lower bound change from 2 to 1.5 for climate senstivity. In the scientific world, that’s called integrity. In the political hack world, that’s called flip-flopping. Know the difference.
In a scientific world with integrity the 4.5 upper bound would have been adjusted downward on the exact same evidence that was used to adjust the lower bound, and the median estimate would also have been adjusted downward. Instead they went the political route, some weasel wording to continue to provide the perception of danger while giving themselves a huge out so that years later no one can say for certain that they lied or not.
I like the subtle shift from comparing FAR to AR4, to comparing AR4 to AR5. Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Perhaps you may wish to limit my comments to the context in which they were given?
I made no such switch, I referred to AR4 and AR5 only. The switch is in your head.
But congrats on completely avoiding the original point. You demanded to know where the IPCC said we should expect decade over decade warming with no pause, and I showed you that they did. I showed also that they said one thing in one place and another in another place. The best you could do was mumble something about having to read it again, and maybe aerosols or something….
You’re welcome.
The SPM writers obviously already know how wide the uncertainties are. For AR4 they were kind enough to provide a key for the language used to discuss them elswhere in the other documents: http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR4/website/spm.pdf Endbox 2. Communication of Uncertainty in the Working Group II Fourth Assessment Page 15 of the .pdf.
The whole idea of a “summary” being that it doesn’t include every single niggling detail that the main reports do. The “bbbbbut it doesn’t say that HERE” argument really does get a little old, you know.
davidmhoffer,
Great, another word-twister. Yes, the 97% meme is happening now, as is the science is settled meme. I object to the latter on principle because I hold that no non-trivial science is ever settled. My comment is that what’s “settled” is what has happened in the past, namely that CO2 has risen, followed by temperatures as predicted all the way back 1896. Since I don’t like being put on the hook for others’ unfortunate phrasings, how I state it is that I am reasonably confident that the effect is real according to established theory.
I see nothing irrational about relying on scientific theory to form opinions and beliefs about what goes on in the world. Do you?
The “evidence” used to arrive at those bounds was from the simulation models. From CMIP3 to CMIP5, the lower bound which emerged from the models used changed. They reported that change. Honest scientists do that when the results of the experiment cough up a new answer. Political hacks stick by their story. You evidently do not understand the difference.
Quote the exact text. Not the pretty pictures with smoothed ensemble model means. The exact text which says, “every year and/or decade is guaranteed to be hotter than the last”.
Why you’d think anyone would be dumb enough to publish such a statement when observations well prior to The Pause indicated otherwise is truly mind-boggling.
Quote the exact text.
I did.
Where exactly does that quoted text say, “temperatures are guaranteed to rise every year and every decade in lockstep with rising levels of CO2?”
Brandon,
You’re brighter than that. You know very well that I quoted exactly what you asked for and noted that there were no caveats on the predicted decade over decade warming. Not in the smoothed graphic, not in the synthesis report, not in the Summary for Policy Makers, not in the expressed opinion of Phil Jones, nor NASA, nor Ben Santer. You know very well that I pointed out to you that the IPCC documentation speaks out of both sides of its mouth. You even helped me prove it, and still you twist and turn at every step. There’s no point having a discussion with someone more interested in the minutia of language then in the facts on the ground.
davidmhoffer,
Dangit, my reply to you is out of sequence and doesn’t have your name in it: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/02/an-open-letter-to-politifact-com/#comment-1828787
Some concentrated caveats: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-5-4.html 10.5.4 Sampling Uncertainty and Estimating Probabilities This is the second time I have cited that section in this thread.
The smoothed graphic includes the 1-sigma standard deviation ranges of the model ensembles used for all one, two, three, four, FOUR different future projection scenarios. By 2027, the range of the A2, A1B and B1 scenarios is on the order of a half degree K. But of course, the last sentence of the caption reads: … uncertainty across scenarios should not be interpreted from this figure (see Section 10.5.4.6 for uncertainty estimates).
There’s no point having a discussion with someone more interested in the minutia of language then in the facts on the ground.
Minutia of language. Really. Ok, here’s the pretty picture again:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/fig/figure-10-4-l.png
Here’s what section 10.5.4 says about this figure:
The AOGCMs cannot sample the full range of possible warming, in particular because they do not include uncertainties in the carbon cycle. In addition to the range derived directly from the AR4 multi-model ensemble, Figure 10.29 depicts additional uncertainty estimates obtained from published probabilistic methods using different types of models and observational constraints: the MAGICC SCM and the BERN2.5CC coupled climate-carbon cycle EMIC tuned to different climate sensitivities and carbon cycle settings, and the C4MIP coupled climate-carbon cycle models. Based on these results, the future increase in global mean temperature is likely to fall within –40 to +60% of the multi-model AOGCM mean warming simulated for each scenario.
No caveats, huh. You can’t be serious:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/fig/figure-10-29-l.png
I could drive a Mack truck through those uncertainty ranges for cryin’ out loud.
Thank you Brandon for showing that the science espoused by the IPCC has uncertainties in it so large that one could drive a Mack truck through them (your words). Would you kindly draw this to the attention of the writers of the SPM and Synthesis reports which contain no such caveats and ask the IPCC to amend their public facing pronouncements accordingly?
When done with that task, could you bring it to the attention of Phil Jones, NASA, and Ben Santer that their statements on model validation are similarly falsified by the range of errors you have just pointed to in the IPCC documentation?
Don’t tell us Brandon, tell them….
davidmhoffer,
Twice I posted out of sequence. Argh. See here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/02/an-open-letter-to-politifact-com/#comment-1828787