What went wrong?
A major peer-reviewed climate physics paper in the first issue (January 2015: vol. 60 no. 1) of the prestigious Science Bulletin (formerly Chinese Science Bulletin), the journal of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and, as the Orient’s equivalent of Science or Nature, one of the world’s top six learned journals of science, exposes elementary but serious errors in the general-circulation models relied on by the UN’s climate panel, the IPCC. The errors were the reason for concern about Man’s effect on climate. Without them, there is no climate crisis.
Thanks to the generosity of the Heartland Institute, the paper is open-access. It may be downloaded free from http://www.scibull.com:8080/EN/abstract/abstract509579.shtml. Click on “PDF” just above the abstract.
The IPCC has long predicted that doubling the CO2 in the air might eventually warm the Earth by 3.3 C°. However, the new, simple model presented in the Science Bulletin predicts no more than 1 C° warming instead – and possibly much less. The model, developed over eight years, is so easy to use that a high-school math teacher or undergrad student can get credible results in minutes running it on a pocket scientific calculator.
The paper, Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model, by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, Willie Soon, David Legates and Matt Briggs, survived three rounds of tough peer review in which two of the reviewers had at first opposed the paper on the ground that it questioned the IPCC’s predictions.
When the paper’s four authors first tested the finished model’s global-warming predictions against those of the complex computer models and against observed real-world temperature change, their simple model was closer to the measured rate of global warming than all the projections of the complex “general-circulation” models:
Next, the four researchers applied the model to studying why the official models concur in over-predicting global warming. In 1990, the UN’s climate panel predicted with “substantial confidence” that the world would warm at twice the rate that has been observed since.
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The very greatly exaggerated predictions (orange region) of atmospheric global warming in the IPCC’s 1990 First Assessment Report, compared with the mean anomalies (dark blue) and trend (bright blue straight line) of three terrestrial and two satellite monthly global mean temperature datasets since 1990.The measured, real-world rate of global warming over the past 25 years, equivalent to less than 1.4 C° per century, is about half the IPCC’s central prediction in 1990.
The new, simple climate model helps to expose the errors in the complex models the IPCC and governments rely upon. Those errors caused the over-predictions on which concern about Man’s influence on the climate was needlessly built. |
Among the errors of the complex climate models that the simple model exposes are the following –
- The assumption that “temperature feedbacks” would double or triple direct manmade greenhouse warming is the largest error made by the complex climate models. Feedbacks may well reduce warming, not amplify it.
- The Bode system-gain equation models mutual amplification of feedbacks in electronic circuits, but, when complex models erroneously apply it to the climate on the IPCC’s false assumption of strongly net-amplifying feedbacks, it greatly over-predicts global warming. They are using the wrong equation.
- Modellers have failed to cut their central estimate of global warming in line with a new, lower feedback estimate from the IPCC. They still predict 3.3 C° of warming per CO2 doubling, when on this ground alone they should only be predicting 2.2 C° – about half from direct warming and half from amplifying feedbacks.
- Though the complex models say there is 0.6 C° manmade warming “in the pipeline” even if we stop emitting greenhouse gases, the simple model – confirmed by almost two decades without any significant global warming – shows there is no committed but unrealized manmade warming still to come.
- There is no scientific justification for the IPCC’s extreme RCP 8.5 global warming scenario that predicts up to 12 Cº global warming as a result of our industrial emissions of greenhouse gases.
Once errors like these are corrected, the most likely global warming in response to a doubling of CO2 concentration is not 3.3 Cº but 1 Cº or less. Even if all available fossil fuels were burned, less than 2.2 C° warming would result.
Lord Monckton, the paper’s lead author, created the new model on the basis of earlier research by him published in journals such as Physics and Society, UK Quarterly Economic Bulletin, Annual Proceedings of the World Federation of Scientists’ Seminars on Planetary Emergencies, and Energy & Environment. He said: “Our irreducibly simple climate model does not replace more complex models, but it does expose major errors and exaggerations in those models, such as the over-emphasis on positive or amplifying temperature feedbacks. For instance, take away the erroneous assumption that strongly net-positive feedback triples the rate of manmade global warming and the imagined climate crisis vanishes.”
Dr Willie Soon, an eminent solar physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said: “Our work suggests that Man’s influence on climate may have been much overstated. The role of the Sun has been undervalued. Our model helps to present a more balanced view.”
Dr David Legates, Professor of Geography at the University of Delaware and formerly the State Climatologist, said: “This simple model is an invaluable teaching aid. Our paper is, in effect, the manual for the model, discussing appropriate values for the input parameters and demonstrating by examples how the model works.”
Dr Matt Briggs, “Statistician to the Stars”, said: “A high-school student with a pocket scientific calculator can now use this remarkable model and obtain credible estimates of global warming simply and quickly, as well as acquiring a better understanding of how climate sensitivity is determined. As a statistician, I know the value of keeping things simple and the dangers in thinking that more complex models are necessarily better. Once people can understand how climate sensitivity is determined, they will realize how little evidence for alarm there is.”
When I cut & paste the url displayed in the article, I get to the paper fine. But when I click on the url directly, it takes me to this link:
https://3c-lxa.mail.com/mail/client/dereferrer?redirectUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scibull.com%3A8080%2FEN%2Fabstract%2Fabstract509579.shtml
And displays a ‘403’ error.
To find our paper, go to scibull.com, click on Current issue and look for Why models run hot: results from an irreducible simple climate model. Sorry about the bad link.
“is so easy to use that a high-school math teacher or undergrad student can get credible results in minutes”
I didn’t think teachers were allowed to question the IPCC, this could be considered a thought crime.
Interesting article. The link embedded in this article does not seem to work, however.
Steve Reynolds
Sent from a mobile device. Please excuse brevity, typos, and lack of capitalization and punctuation.
If you cannot find the paper, go to scibull,com and click on “Current Issue”, then find our paper, Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model”. Enjoy! It’s open access, thanks to the Heartland Institute’s generosity.
The journal is nowhere near the stature of Nature and Science, and it publishes on a wide array of topics. One has to wonder how qualified the reviewers were.
True, we have no idea how many other journals rejected the paper before it was accepted by the Chinese.
One usually does not know how many journals reject a paper before a journal eventually accepts it. So the sneering “David Socrates” is not making a particularly serious or useful or scientific point. However, for the record, the paper was submitted only to the Science Bulletin and, after due peer review, was accepted.
But we don’t like “pal-review” in these parts. Ask anyone.
So, Gates, does Monckton’s new study leave you feeling disgruntled and snarky? It seems so.
Past experience with your claims requires one to take your current one with a grain of salt.
And you too, sockrats?
Well, take as much salt as you like, but my guess that such a study will never go down with the die-hards because it does not chant the AGW mantra.
As for myself, my claim is that AGW has no support but indeed, all the conclusive evidence shows otherwise .
Salt won’t help if you lack science.
mpainter,
The only “novel” parameters in the model are gₜ — closed-loop gain and Gₜ — open-loop (system) gain, where ₜ is any arbitrary time interval one wishes out to about 250 years. The balance of the model is derived from standard radiative physics and IPCC estimates:
——————
4.2 The CO 2 radiative forcing ΔFₜ
(2) ΔFₜ = k ln(Cₜ/C₀)
k = 5.35 W m⁻²
4.3 The Planck climate-sensitivity parameter λ₀
(3) Fᴇ = (πr² / 4πr²) * S(1 – α) | Equilibrium flux
S, total solar irradiance = 1,368 W m⁻²
α, Earth’s albedo = 0.3
Fᴇ = 239.4 W m⁻²
(4) F = εσT⁴ | Stefan-Boltzmann relation
ε, emissivity = 1
σ, Stefan-Boltzman constant = 5.67 x 10⁻⁸ W m⁻² K⁻⁴
(5) Tᴇ = (Fᴇ / εσ)^¼ = 254.9 K
(6) λ₀ = Tᴇ / 4Fᴇ = 254.9 / 239.4 * 0.25 = 0.27 K W⁻¹ m²
0.3125 per IPCC for sub-millennial timescales
4.4 The temperature-feedback sum fₜ
As Fig. 3 shows, IPCC’s interval 1.9 [1.5, 2.4] W m⁻² K⁻¹ in AR4 [cf. 33] was sharply cut to 1.5 [1.0, 2.2] W m⁻² K⁻¹ in AR5. Yet, the climate-sensitivity interval [2.0, 4.5] K in the CMIP3 model ensemble [4] was slightly increased to [2.1, 4.7] K in CMIP5 [5]. The user may adopt any chosen value for the feedback sum.
——————
I’m rather going to enjoy quoting this section for the foreseeable future:
——————
4.8 The transience fraction rₜ
Not all temperature feedbacks operate instantaneously. Instead, feedbacks act over varying timescales from decades to millennia. Some, such as water vapor or sea ice, are short acting, and are thought to bring about approximately half of the equilibrium warming in response to a given forcing over a century. Thus, though approximately half of the equilibrium temperature response to be expected from a given forcing will typically manifest itself within 100 years of the forcing (Fig. 4), the equilibrium temperature response may not be attained for several millennia [38, 39]. In Eq. (1), the delay in the action of feedbacks and hence in surface temperature response to a given forcing is accounted for by the transience fraction r t . For instance, it has been suggested in recent years that the long and unpredicted hiatus in global warming may be caused by uptake of heat in the benthic strata of the global ocean (for a fuller discussion of the cause of the hiatus, see the supplementary matter).
——————
The above equations values and concepts should all look familiar. They are also regularly bashed here. So yes I’m snarky, but not at all disgruntled. Faaaaar from it.
Gates:
You should take your litany of unsupported assumptions and misapplied theory to SKS. You might impress someone there. Like rooter. Or HotMoma. But it will not play here.
mpainter,
What litany of unsupported assumptions and misapplied theory? I quoted the paper directly.
Brandon Gates
You say to mpainter
Your question is answered by your statements
Those accusations of “regularly bashed” and confession of snark demonstrate that mpainter was very restrained in his criticism of your offensive comment.
And, yes, it is true that in your attempt at snark you “quoted the paper directly”. However, as I have pointed out before, it is your common practice to copy&paste from papers you don’t understand.
It remains true that none of your many posts on WUWT demonstrate you know and understand anything concerning climate science. Your copy&paste ploy fails to disguise your ignorance which does not excuse your abusive – you say “snarky” – posts.
Richard
That sort of comment may have been acceptable 20 years ago but it is utter nonsense now. When I started research in the field of luminescent materials the only articles of merit came from English , US, Russian sources and Philips and RCA Labs ..Then the Japanese and South Koreans took over
But now if you want to know the latest work on , say , phosphors for LED lighting , you will be directed by Google or Web of Science or PUbMed to a Chinese Lab / university and a Chinese journal . The west contribution in this area has been almost entirely eliminated by comparison.
Just be grateful that the Chinese still publish in English. There is no reason why they should since most of the advanced scientific work in some areas of materials science is in China , for Chinese colleagues.
There are more important changes than that in climate that have occurred in the last 20 years – dont be so patronising .
Reminds me of that interchange in Back to the Future between Marty and Doc Brown:
The longer the West obsesses over non-issues like AGW, the farther ahead the Chinese are going to go.
Nature and Science publish on a wide array of topics. The quality of their peer review has nothing to do with the breadth of the subject matter, only the people who agree to review for them. With an “anonymous” peer review system, it could be anyone and it is the only the trustworthiness of the editor which matters.
To be quite blunt, Nature and Science have published some crap in the past and the only reason everyone still wets themselves over a paper published in these journals is because of how widely read they are. It doesn’t matter where the paper is published, what matters is the content and you have to read it to understand that.
Not being as well acquainted with the physics as some people seem to claim here I won’t make any comment except to say that there are – finally – some papers published which provide counter arguments to the more extreme scenarios used by the IPCC. I eagerly await AR6 to see if they include these papers in their review!
Really Have you read anything in Nature or Science lately? You call that well reviewed?
The Science Bulletin is the journal of the world’s largest academy of sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and is jointly sponsored by the Academy and by the Chinese State Science Funding Council. It has as much influence in the Orient as Science or Nature do in the Occident, and it does not, as they do, have a declared policy of not publishing any papers questioning the “official” view of climate science. In that crucial respect, it is of course vastly superior to either Science or Nature. And it is because of its moral approach to receiving and reviewing papers that it is of no less standing than they.
In response to Barry, the reviewers were climate scientists and were plainly knowledgeable. The Science Bulletin is superior to Nature and Science because they have a policy of not accepting papers that question the climate-Communist Party Line but, ironically, the Science Bulletin has no such policy. It will publish science regardless of where the truth leads.
Could you post a citation for your claim that both Science and Nature “have a policy of not accepting papers that question the climate-Communist Party Line”
…
Most of their policies are on-line, and your posting a link to such a claim would be appreciated.
PS…..If the Science Bulletin in any way, shape or form, questioned the Communist Party line, they would be shut down in a heartbeat.
Mom said, “Go figure. He completely missed the meaning of Mr. Monckton’s statement.” She always wanted to be an English teacher so she reads stuff pretty close.
Babsy…
No “meaning” missed. Monckton claims Science and Nature has a specific policy. I asked him to provide a citation for that policy. I’m sure he’ll do so momentarily. Maybe ask your Mom for the citation. Do you know where it is?
She’s upstairs. I asked her about what you said and she said it would be better if you searched for it yourself. Said you’d learn more that way. PS: She won’t help me with my homework either until after supper.
Tell your Mom, when she serves you supper, that I have searched extensively and found nothing. I would appreciate if you asked her nicely to help me out.
We’ve already had supper. I could ask her but why would I? I care not one whit whether you get your information or not. We’re going out for ice cream now. Bye.
Sigh… still waiting for the BBC to report it on their ‘science’ site!
Nope, still waiting…
The Bolshevik Broadcasting Commissariat will not publish anything that does not accord with the climate-Communist party line. Mere truth is of not the slightest interest to the apparatchiks.
You haven’t called Monckton a “Lord” around here for the longest time – I thought you had accepted by now that he is not a Lord per what the experts had to say on the matter?
Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
Hereditary British Peer. Real lord.
There is a “cure” for HIV. I guess you have never been exposed to the virus, or people carrying the virus. What a knob!
I have to dash off to work, to pay taxes, to support our Peerage. Dang it. 😉
Keep on ’em about that simple calculator-code, David. Back after lunch (PST).
Patrick, please provide me with a link to Monckton’s “cure”
..
Thank you.
The “cure” to HIV (Prevention) is a condom. Or are you really that ignorant? Don’t answer.
Patrick…..prevention is not a cure for someone that is already infected. But I’m guessing you already knew that.
David: Google Magic Johnson. He was a very high profile basketball star who tested HIV positive in 1991. He is still living.
Walt D.
Magic Johnson was not cured. Anti-retroviral drugs “manage” the infection, they don’t cure it.
And what is the scientific point made by “Matt”, if any? The merit of a reviewed scientific paper arises from its content, not from the identity of its authors and still less from the historically-illiterate ramblings of a climate-Communist Cluck of the Parliaments.
Matt said: “I thought you had accepted by now that he is not a Lord per what the experts had to say on the matter?”
The experts (actually, one expert–who was later rebutted) didn’t dispute that he is a lord; they disputed that he is a member of the House of Commons.
[Snip. Lord Monckton is not the issue. ~ mod.]
Moncktons credibility is the issue
Well, appears that sickrats can find no fault with the study by Monckton, Soon, Legates, and Briggs.
So what does he do ?
He taps his well of ad hominens.
Sockrats, take it to SKS where they love your type.
Here ya go mpainter….
..
“g < 0.1, the maximum value allowed by process engineers designing electronic circuits intended not to oscillate under any operating conditions. "
…
For your information, our climate system is not an electronic circuit. In other words, this is an invalid assumption in the "model"
Sockrats:
You mischaracterize the study by Monckton, Soon, Legates and Briggs which criticizes the use in the GCM’s the Bodes system-gain equation in their feedbacks, a device borrowed from electronics.
Your sophistry will not play here. Take it to the dupes at SKS, who will lap it up and congradulate you for your astuteness.
Mr Socrates says my credibility is the issue. No, it isn’t. What matters is the soundness of the science in our paper. To think otherwise is to perpetrate the ancient and pathetic logical fallacy of the argument un ad verecundiam.
” our climate system is not an electronic circuit.”
…
That statement has very little to do with “credibility”
The ever-fatuous Mr Socrates says that a statement to the effect that the climate is not an electronic circuit “has very little to do with credibility” It has everything to do with the credibility (or lack of it) of those models which use an equation designed for electronic circuitry in modeling the climate, which does not belong to the narrow class of dynamical systems to which the equation applies. See my forthcoming paper in a leading climate-science journal going into further detail on that subject.
Lord have mercy! Ad Hominem much?
Lord or Viscount or Grand POOba, why is it relevant?.
Comment on what MISTER Monckton says, not who he is.
This “He’s not a Lord” crap comes up EVERY time this gentleman posts something.
Selling snake oil in the past is in the record.
This “paper” is just more of the same from him.
Hey RobRoy……go back into the archives of WUWT and check out the comments section on any article or paper authored by Michael Mann….
For documentation of M. Mann’s mendacious and contemptible science AND behaviour, see the archives at Climate Audit. It is for a good reason that he is also known as the “Jerry Sandusky of climate science”.
LOL.
Thanks, Anthony.
I’ll have a look at the new model.
Antony, the link is broken, the text of the link is correct, ” http://www.scibull.com:8080/EN/abstract/abstract509579.shtml“, but the anchor tag points to a non-working link. Easy to fix.
Interesting article, very interesting.
Here we go, decode of javascript infested server…
http://www.scibull.com:8080/CN/article/downloadArticleFile.do?attachType=PDF&id=509579
Those having difficulty in using the link to the paper should cut-and-paste it into their browser, whereupon it will (usually) work. Failing that, please go to scibull.com, click on “Current issue”, then look for the paper among the articles listed.
Of 2261 downloads of the 11 papers downloadable in the current issue, Monckton of Brenchley et al. (2015) accounts for 1708, or about three-quarters of all downloads.
Congratulations! I expect the paper to be widely cited. Further down, I call it non-ignorable and well worth reading.
Many thanks to Me Marler for his very kind comments.
Supplementary data here
http://link.springer.com/content/esm/art:10.1007/s11434-014-0699-2/file/MediaObjects/11434_2014_699_MOESM1_ESM.docx
(from Springer page http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11434-014-0699-2)
Tchannon–thanks for the link. It was mostly concerned with the Trenberth argument that the warming is occurring in the deep ocean, and quotes a few studies showing serious uncertainties in the measurement of temperature there. Supplementary information is typically not peer-reviewed.
Thanks for the link Tim. Yet another large nail in the CAGW coffin.
This link will not break: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0699-2
Over on ATTP’s site, the ever obnoxious John Mashey has posted a list of the mostly-Chinese editorial board of the publisher, presumably so they can be harrased and/or blacklisted for heresy.
He may find that Chinese authorities act differently to the British.
But you have to admire his sacrifice.
Monckton, Legates, Soon & Briggs,
Congratulations on getting a paper published with an independent basis for climate estimates; one that exposes the unscientific exaggerations of the IPCC’s estimates of warming from CO2.
I am almost finished with reading the paper.
John
Many thanks to Mr Whitman for his kind comments.
“Never ever assume that because the truth is not currently fashionable it should not currently be spoken. Never ever assume that if the truth continues quietly to be spoken it will not in the end prevail.”
Above statement made by Lord Monckton is simply amazing. Really. Truly resonated with me.
Excellent initiative. Busy studying it. I like their style of taking the IPCC at face value, using their beloved notion of ‘forcing’ as the way to incorporate the impact of CO2 (a way very convenient for the programmer of big models, as well as those which can be run on a calculator!) without being distracted by complexities such as spatial variations, and then showing how very weak is the case for alarm. Well done the four authors!
Most grateful to Mr Shade for his kind comments.
I am not a scientist but I have some serious doubts about the paper.
First, it is filled with propagandistic language. Most of rhetorical questions – such as “Is the mainstream science settled?” – are completely unnecessary and could be omitted without compromising readability, factual contents, or impact of the paper. They suggest authors are pushing agenda rather than do science.
Second thing is – as far as I got so far in the paper – the way how value of λ0 is calculated. Regardless that they get their value being close to IPCC estimates, the calculation feels rather suspicious to me since it is taken supposedly from “characteristic-emission altitude” where incoming and outgoing radiative fluxes are equal. This surface is once treated as a sphere, once as a circle perpendicular to insolation. A boundary with different surface area in each direction (but it makes sense so far) is treated as having single temperature (that’s where it stops making sense) which is then assigned to Stefan-Boltzmann relation in power four. I’m sorry but I can’t accept that even as an approximation. While I agree that such surface exists, the temperature on it varies wildly – by at least 50 K – and the value is too low to have no noticeable impact when taken to the power four. Stefan-Boltzmann relation is way too nonlinear in such a wide range for this approach to be reasonable.
I did not get further in the paper yet and it is possible that this has no big impact on its final conclusions. But it definitely makes the paper suspicious in my eyes so I’m willing to wait what other, more knowledgable people will say about it.
“Kasuha” says our paper is “filled with propagandistic language”, but his only example is an out-of-context quotation of a question. A question is not a statement and is not, therefore, “propaganda”. In the words of Housman’s Greek chorus: “I only ask because I want to know” – and not because I want to make a point. The full quotation is as follows:
“Are global-warming predictions reliable? In the 25 years of IPCC’s First to Fifth Assessment Reports [1 FAR, 2 SAR, 3 TAR, 4 AR4, 5 AR5], the atmosphere has warmed at half the rate predicted in FAR (Fig. 1): yet Professor Ross Garnaut [6] has written, “The outsider to climate science has no rational choice but to accept that, on a balance of probabilities, the mainstream science is right in pointing to high risks from unmitigated climate change”. However, as Sir Fred Hoyle put it, “Understanding the Earth’s greenhouse effect does not require complex computer models in order to calculate useful numbers for debating the issue. … To raise a delicate point, it really is not very sensible to make approximations … and then to perform a highly complicated computer calculation, while claiming the arithmetical accuracy of the computer as the standard for the whole investigation” [7].
“The present paper describes an irreducibly simple but robustly calibrated climate-sensitivity model that fairly represents the key determinants of climate sensitivity, flexibly encompasses all reasonably foreseeable outcomes, and reliably determines how much global warming we may cause both in the short term and in the long. The model investigates and identifies possible reasons for the widening discrepancy between prediction and observation.
“Simplification need not lead to error. It can expose anomalies in more complex models that have caused them to run hot. The simple climate model outlined here is not intended as a substitute for the general-circulation models. Its purpose is to investigate discrepancies between IPCC’s Fourth (AR4) and Fifth (AR5) Assessment Reports and to reach a clearer understanding of how the general-circulation models arrive at their predictions, and, in particular, of how the balance between forcings and feedbacks affects climate sensitivity estimates. Is the mainstream science settled? Or is there more debate [8] than Professor Garnaut suggests? The simple model provides a benchmark against which to measure the soundness of the more complex models’ predictions.”
In context, the question “Is the mainstream science settled?” is plainly sensible and proportionate. Don’t be silly.
“Kasuha” goes on to say that he is “suspicious” of the way the Planck parameter is calculated. In particular, it appears to have difficulty in understanding the concept of a mean temperature. I calculated the Planck parameter from 30 years of satellite temperature for the mid-troposphere at latitudes separated by 2.5 degrees, determining the fourth-power relation correctly for each latitude, allowing for spherical geometry and adjusting for the varying areas of the latitudinal frusta. This calculation does not appear in the paper because it is not essential to the argument. I performed it purely to make sure that it was appropriate to accept IPCC’s value as canonical. My calculation agreed with that of most models and authorities – and of the IPCC – to three decimal places. See Monckton of Brenchley (2008) in Physics and Society for a further discussion.
The little bit of bicep-flexing, shadow-boxing and trash-talking going on in the paper isn’t overdone, especially considering the generally-theatrical milieu of climate-discourse.
Truth is, Monckton in particular has done himself proud here. Even if he comes away looking like a 6-hour intellectual bare-knuckle contestant, or even especially “if”.
He & his coauthors have plowed a worthy field and gotten seed down. There likely will be critiques leveled. I ping on one myself (‘where’s the code?!), but this is just life in the big city, for anyone who presumes to ‘mustang’ his way into published science.
Mr. Monckton is himself not exactly the gentlest of souls, and no small amount of flak will go up, from those he’s shot down.
Monckton & Co will have to make effective rebuttals (ie, from the audience’ perspective, not other combatants), possibly correct & back-fill some. None of this is a deal-breaker. NASA scientists recently discovery Alien Life! in a western USA brine-lake … and nobody appears to have lost their job. Some rough & tumble goes with the territory.
I’m pleased to see His Lordship get the feather in his hat, and hope he wears it long & far.
Science Bulletin Impact Factor: 1.365, (http://admin-apps.webofknowledge.com/JCR/JCR?RQ=LIST_SUMMARY_JOURNAL&cursor=21) way below Science or Nature! Pls do not propagate wrong claims…
Indeed.
Science impact factor 31.48
Nature climate change 15.29
Science: public declaration that skeptical papers will not be entertained: Yes
Nature: public declaration that skeptical papers will not be entertained: Yes
Science Bulletin: public declaration that skeptical papers will not be entertained: No, of course not.
Science Bulletin, therefore, is the only one of the three journals that still adheres to the scientific method. The other two journals have in effect declared themselves to be propaganda sheets for the climate-Communist party line. Shame on them both, and three cheers for the Science Bulletin.
There is no such thing as a “prestigious Chinese journal” unless you mean that in the sense of the tallest midget.
The “model” in the paper is not a climate model, it is merely a curve-fitting exercise. As has been stressed by Nic Lewis (who seems to be the single most effective critic of the IPCC sensitivities) and many others, the big uncertainty in such exercises is the aerosol forcing. I did a quick search of the paper to find what is used for that forcing, but found nothing. Perhaps I will find it when I get the time for a careful reading. Until then, I am skeptical of the paper’s value.
Mike M: ” the big uncertainty for such exercises is the aerosol forcing”
######
So what else is new under the sun and show us which GCM has this aerosol factor nailed, please and thank you.
No GCM has the aerosol forcing nailed down. That is a big part of the problem: the modellers can compensate for too high a sensitivity by using a strongly negative aerosol forcing. The thing is that you can’t get reliable results from historical temperature data unless you have reliable aerosol forcings. I suppose I should have said “Until then, I am just as skeptical of this paper’s value as I am of the climate models”.
In response to Mike M, we did not deduce our parameters solely or even chiefly from past temperature data, except in the important respect – unaffected by the aerosol forcing uncertainty – that global mean surface temperature has scarcely varied in 810,000 years, strongly suggesting that net-negative rather than net-positive temperature feedbacks are operating on the climate object. But, of course, Mike M and everyone should be no less skeptical of our model than of the general-circulation models. They are just analogies, and at some point – by definition – every analogy breaks down.
That’s the baboon jumping on the Land Rover roof.
The Chinese took over leadership in electronics circuit analysis, and microwave integration, over 30 years ago. We should quadruple our immigration quota for them. Our (sci-tech) grad schools are packed wall-to-wall with them.
There are many excellent scientists in China. They generally publish in western journals (at least in the physical sciences). The weaker stuff from China gets published in Chinese journals.
Mhmm. It’s true there are ‘ecosystems’ & hierarchies of journals. Science Bulletin isn’t quite AAAS or Nature, yet? That has a credible ring…
That, as Monckton notes, the issue is dominated by this one paper is … notable.
Mike M.
You say
None of that has any relevance to the value of the paper.
The seminal work on aeronautics was published in a magazine about bee-keeping and was written by two bicycle salesmen with no scientific or engineering qualifications. That paper was at first ignored and then it was reviled by “mainstream” science and engineering. The contents of the paper were not accepted until the reality of the the paper’s contents were seen to obviously and undeniably match reality.
The importance and value of that paper is demonstrated by the existence of the aerospace industry. And that value and importance is not affected by who wrote it and/or where they published it.
Please discuss the contents of the paper by Monckton, Soon, Legates & Briggs. Who they are and where they published says nothing concerning the value of their paper.
Richard
It is not appropriate for “Mike M.”, whoever he is, to make frankly racialist remarks about science in China. The Chinese Science Bulletin is the journal of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the largest such academy on Earth, and its standards are high. The peer-reviewing, after the initial expressions of dismay that we had dared to fart in church by questioning the IPCC, was exemplary, and the reviewers’ knowledge was formidable.
The aerosol forcing is used by IPCC and modelers as a fudge-factor that has the effect of making climate sensitivity to CO2 seem higher than it is. We were, however, concerned primarily with the warming to be expected from a doubling of CO2 concentration. Other forcings do not enter into that calculation.
It is appropriate for “Mike M.”to be skeptical about our paper’s value, but not till he has read it carefully and has made some effort to understand what we are – and are not – attempting to do.
The impact factor for the Chinese Science Bulletin is 1.36. Solid journals are generally around 3 to 5. Prestigious journals have impact factors around 10 or higher, the top journals are at 30 or 40.
I agree that aerosol forcing is used by IPCC and modelers as a fudge-factor.
Before I spend a lot of time deciphering a confusing paper, I try to figure out if it is worth deciphering. I start by trying to figure out just what the authors are trying to do. In this paper, I was frustrated in my attempt to do that. It is clear that Monckton et al. don’t like the IPCC estimates. I don’t either. But beyond that …
Mike M.
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The problem with Monckton’s paper is that it more of an assault on the IPCC than an advancement of the science.
Mike, impact factor for Nature in this league after all the garbage they have sped through editing/peer reviewing. Is it still up to snuff? I’m suspecting that you are a university professor and therefore somewhat out of date. I was fond of my professors but astounded when I graduated and got a job – I wound up having to have my knowledge upgraded by about 10yrs. The problem with your quaint metric is to have an impact to get hugely cited in climate science, you have to adhere to the old testament from 1990, from which no change is allowed. Aren’t you appalled that a science with essentially one linear equation to learn has to have a couple of hundred thousands practitioners? Where progress is adding factors on (aerosols, etc.) to preserve the 1990 impact of CO2 from anthropogenic sources.
Gary Pease wrote “Mike, impact factor for Nature in this league … I’m suspecting that you are a university professor and therefore somewhat out of date.”
I am a retired professor and probably am somewhat out of date. But, the impact factors for Nature and Science are still very high. That is probably something of a self-fulfilling prophecy – papers in such journals get cited a lot in no small part because they are in those journals. And some of the inverse probably happens at the other end. So the impact factors likely exaggerate the difference. But another related factor is that people try to publish their work in the highest impact journals they can. Which is why the best work from China tends to be published in western journals.
An impact factor of 1.36 means that the average paper is cited 1.36 times. Since some are cited many more times, but none are cited less than zero times, the distribution is highly skewed with the mean much greater than the median. So it seems that most papers in the Chinese Science Bulletin are never cited at all. I am not saying that there is not excellent work done in China. That would be far from true. Some of it may even be published in the Chinese Science Bulletin. I am taking issue with the claim that the Chinese Science Bulletin is a “prestigious” journal. It is not.
“to have an impact to get hugely cited in climate science, you have to adhere to the old testament from 1990, from which no change is allowed”.
There is truth to that, but it is highly exaggerated.
“Aren’t you appalled that a science with essentially one linear equation to learn has to have a couple of hundred thousands practitioners?”
That would be appalling. But that is not climate science. I suspect that a much bigger problem with climate science is that there is so much to learn to truly master the field that many practitioners have huge gaps in their knowledge, leading to take much of what comes out of the models on faith that whoever wrote the code knew what they were doing.
Mr Socrates complains that our paper is more a criticism of the IPCC than an advancement of the science. He misunderstands the scientific method, in which advances are made by the disproof of incorrect hypotheses.
The “model” in the paper is not a climate model, it is merely a curve-fitting exercise.
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Well, that gave me a laugh. Thanks for that, Mike.
You have to be incredibly stupid, brainwashed or naive to believe that all climate models aren’t curve-fitted to the past. If they were not, why are they so incredibly accurate at forecasting the past and are such abject failures at forecasting the future?
As Yogi Berra once famously said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
Actually, our model was not curve-fitted to the past. The first time we ran it with parameter values that were scientifically justifiable, it reproduced a warming rate cissus tent with observation.
“The model is calibrated against the climate-sensitivityinterval projected by the CMIP3 suite of models and against global warming since 1850”
Mr Svalgaard, whose specialty is not climate modeling, seems not to appreciate that to calibrate the model by running it against past temperature change is not to indulge in curve-fitting. It would only have been curve-fitting if we had run the model, found it could not replicate past temperatures, and had then tweaked it until it could. That is what the general-criculation models do. We didn’t have to. It worked just fine first time.
It should be obvious that your specialty is not climate modeling, but back to what the paper said:
Once we had calibrated the model to establish that it was working correctly, we then, chose what we considered to be scientifically justifiable parameter values and ran the model once more. The results conformed to observation first time around.
How did you establish that the model was ‘working correctly’? Because it gave you the result you were looking for…
Let us take small steps here, so I’ll only ask my questions one at at time [you seem overwhelmed by more than one, judging from your non-response].
Mr Svalgaard continues to be relentlessly infantile. The calibrations are described in the paper. They worked first time. Our first post-calibration model run, using parameter values that were scientifically justified, then predicted warming coincident with observation, also first time. No curve fitting obtain a “desired result” was performed.
Since Monkton seems to be replying to posts here, I will see if I can get an answer to some questions that I am having trouble finding in the paper. The model has five tunable parameters. I see some estimates of the ranges, but I can find no clear listing of the final values, the error limits on those values, just how the values were determined, and what the interdependence between the values might be. Where might I find these?
For example, in section 4.3 I find the Planck sensitivity (identifies as a tunable parameter) given as 0.3125 W/m^2/K. Was it fixed at that value, or was it tuned to some other value? Similar for the CO2 feedback gain; was it fixed at the value given in section 4.2? It is even less clear what was used for the feedback sum, the CO2 fraction, and the transience fraction. I am not sure if the last two are even physically meaningful. Any help here?
Read the paper. The values of each of the key parameters are discussed, often in some detail, and worked examples are given in the tables. The paper is intended to address the question why models run hot. But the model may be run with any parameter values the operator considers reasonable.
“one of the world’s top six learned journals of science”
Citation or link, please, thank you very much?
Sci bull.com
Any human being that has discover a cure for HIV infection, that withholds that discovery to file for a patent is a dispensable human Seeking personal profit at the expense of human lives and human suffering relegates you to the lowest of low.
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Why have you not release your discovery to benefit humankind?
David Socrates January 16, 2015 at 6:28 pm
Any human being that has discover a cure for HIV infection, that withholds that discovery to file for a patent is a dispensable human Seeking personal profit at the expense of human lives and human suffering relegates you to the lowest of low.
…
Why have you not release your discovery to benefit humankind?
——-
Must have missed that. Was this what the paper was about?
Disagree with the science, fine, then step up and offer a intelligent rebuttal — obviously you can’t.
Offering pathetic ad hominem attacks, only proves you are intellectually challenged and feeble minded — par for the course.
Sad that so many people are like you.
Lord Monckton of Brenchley,
Could you please be a little more specific than just pointing to the scibull.com website?
Perhaps a direct link with some tangible information that supports the “one of the world’s top six learned journals of science” assertion made here.
Rankings, impact factors, listings of the top six journals, total articles published per year, anything, something, etceteras.
Thanks.
Mr Socrates, off topic, asks why I have patented my cure for AIDS rather than making it available freely to the world. But I make no claim that I can cure AIDS, though a protease chain-reaction testing has established that the reduction in viral loading following administration of our remedy is indeed accompanied by segments of retro viral RNA from the process by which visions were destroyed. Research continues, and we shall make no claims unless and until further lab testing followed by prospective, randomised, double-blind clinical trials have demonstrated whatever efficacy our approach may have, The patent applications, which must be expensively maintained until research is complete, allow U.S. to keep control of the research to ensure that it is conducted to the highest standards.
Sockrats pretends at science. Corner him, and he quickly drops the pretense and draws from his ad hominen well.
He keeps this well flowing by scuttling back and forth between WUWT and HotWhopper, SKS, etc.
He is a troll with a troll’s standards and no pride in himself or his science.
SCImago ranks Chinese Science Bulletin as 14th globally. Two other (domestic?) China journals rank slightly higher.
Lots of data and trend-charts (which I don’t the Flash to view…).
14th, eh? Hmm.
14th globally, in that opinion.
So it would be expected to be in every well-funded university then. How many centres of learning only take 13 journals?
Quibbling aside, surely we can all agree that this paper has been peer reviewed and accepted by a journal with global reach and impact.
So let’s look at the science not the meta-science. The gates have been breached and the Titans are in the city. Chow down.
Among multidisciplinary journals only, 14th out of 112. The number of cites/paper is way below Nature and Science. It certainly isn’t:
the Orient’s equivalent of Science or Nature, one of the world’s top six learned journals of science
Proceedings of the Japan Academy Series B: Physical and Biological Sciences ranks much higher and has a much better claim to that status.
This just Monckton’s usual bragging.
Agreed. The exaggeration & distortion is a guffaw.
I expected that this journal would be down off the charts in the grass somewhere, but it is up in credible-player range. Which in a way makes the hype-indulgence even odder.
Why claim to bench-press 400 lbs, when the 250 you can handle is not-bad-at-all?
Knock out the non-science journals, like Science and Nature, which are no longer willing to run any paper if it does not accord with the climate-Communist Party Line, and the Chinese Science Bulletin ends up in the the top six.
@Monckton of Brenchley
The reactions here are such that I am convinced that you hit the nail on the head pretty hard. You sent the pretentious IPCC and its abominable “Noble-Prize” Manns et al to their well-deserved scientifc hades. Great!
Many thanks to Non Nomen for his generous comments.
First, I love the Fred Hoyle quotation.
Second, the foundational problems with just one part of the GCMs (forcing) is very well explained in the paper, which, by the way, I found I could only reach by copying the link into my browser (the anchor took me elsewhere and gave a 403 error).
Third, I have some issue with section 4.3 on the Planck climate sensitivity discussion. In a highly simplified model I suppose there is no means other than claiming the effective radiation temperature is 288-6.5*5, but in fact if the air is exceptionally transparent to LWIR, as it is in very dry localities, then the effective temperature could be very close to surface temperature. Or on a planet that moves air masses laterally over thousands of km, the polar surface itself becomes the effective radiating temperature. Or beneath vigorous cumulonimbus the cloud tops provide the effective radiation temperature and it is not likely to be 288-6.5*5. The whole idea of an effective radiating temperature seems bogus to me.
Many thanks to Kevin Kilty for his kind comments. As to the effective temperature prevalent at the characteristic-emission altitude, that is a matter first and foremost of measurement. In determining that the models were using the correct value of the Planck parameter, I obtained 30 years’ mid-troposphere temperature data from the University of Alabama at Huntsville, where John Christy was extremely courteous, prompt and helpful. The data were available by latitude in steps of 2.5 degrees. Therefore, I was able to calculate the fourth-power Stefan-Boltzmann relation for each latitude and then integrate over the entire spherical surface, making due allowance for variations in the areas of the latitudinal frusta. My result and that of the IPCC were identical to three decimal places. See also Monckton of Brenchley (2008) and Roe (2009) for discussions of the Planck parameter and its value, and its status not as a “feedback”, as the IPCC misleadingly characterizes it, but as a fundamental near-constant of the climate system.
How does Willis’s even-simpler formula compare with this one?
We were fortunate not to have attempted to make our irreducibly simple model any simpler. As it was, one of the three reviewers – at the last stage of review – threw in what I suspect he thought was a bombshell that would destroy the paper. He said our model did not appear to be able to simulate the accumulation of the “missing heat” in the deep ocean, from which it might emerge one day to say “Boo!”
However, our model is in fact capable of handling such phenomena by means of one of the time-dependent array variables. If we had not incorporated that feature, the paper would have been slung out as too simple. As it was, the reviewer was impressed and he withdrew his original opposition to the paper and recommended it for publication. He made a point of saying he was pleased with the way we had answered all his points, and especially that one about the oceans.
Simple is good. Too simple is pointless.