Annual report on global temperature change to December 2014
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Global warming is not happening at anything like the predicted rate. The divergence between prediction and reality is now severe. Despite revisions in the terrestrial datasets calculated to cause an unmeasured increase in the warming rate of recent decades, the gulf between the exaggerated predictions in the models and the far less exciting observed reality is in danger of becoming an abyss.
All five major monthly global surface or lower-troposphere anomaly datasets, the latest being HadCRUT4, have now reported their results for 2014. Time, then, for our WUWT annual update on temperature trends. As usual, we shall look at the three principal terrestrial surface datasets (GISS, HadCRUT4 and NCDC) and the two satellite datasets (RSS and UAH).
First, to determine the underlying global warming trend as fairly as possible it is necessary to allow for the ocean-oscillation cycles of 30 years’ warming followed by 30 years’ cooling . The Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere & Ocean at the University of Washington says that the year 2000 marked the transition from the positive or warming phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to the negative or cooling phase:
Using JISAO’s dates and taking the mean of the three terrestrial temperature datasets, the global temperature record from 1890 to 2014 inclusive shows warming during the positive PDO phases but more or less stable temperatures during the negative phases, illustrating very clearly the influence of the PDO on temperatures:
The warming trend of 0.92 Cº since 1890, equivalent to less than three-quarters of a degree per century, occurred almost entirely within the two positive PDO phases.
To establish a fair estimate of the recent trend, one must take the same number of years either side of a phase-change in the PDO. Thus, the period from 1987 to 2014 has 14 years’ positive and 14 years’ negative PDO. The trend on the mean of the three terrestrial datasets since 1987 is 0.41 Cº, equivalent to less than 1.5 Cº/century:
On the combined RSS and UAH satellite lower-troposphere temperature datasets, the trend is statistically indistinguishable from the surface trend:
Taking the mean of all five datasets gives the fairest indication of the underlying global warming trend, which is less than 1.4 Cº/century, or below half the central rate predicted by the IPCC on its “business-as-usual” scenario in 1990:
The individual graphs for each of the five major global-temperature anomaly datasets for the period 1987-2014 are now given, so as to dispel the usual accusations that the data have been cherry-picked:
Starting the trend in 2001, at the turn of the millennium, shows the effect of the negative phase of the PDO in slowing down the warming rate. The rate from 1987-2014 was 0.39 Cº, equivalent to 1.38 Cº/century, but the rate from 2001-2014 was just 0.03 Cº, equivalent to 0.24 Cº century. It is possible, of course, that the gradual decline in solar activity after the near Grand Maximum of 1925-1995, peaking in 1960, may have contributed to the slowdown in warming:
Last year I reported that the trend from 2001-2013 was zero. So the current year has kicked up the warming rate by about a thirtieth of a degree.
There has been no full-blown el Niño Southern Oscillation event since 2010, when McLean, de Freitas & Carter reported that it is the ratio of the frequency of el Niño to that of la Niña events, and not global warming caused by greenhouse-gas emissions, that has proven to be the prime determinant of global temperature variability in recent decades. However, el Niño conditions were prevalent (just about) during the second half of 2014. This may have been enough to cause the slight uptick in what could otherwise have been a flat trend.
CO2 concentration (the characteristic gray dog-tooth curve in gray on the graphs) has continued to rise at its established rate of about 2 ppmv yr–1, but neither the previously-committed or “in-the-pipeline” warming imagined by the IPCC nor the new warming driven by continuing greenhouse-gas enrichment of the atmosphere has driven global temperature up at an alarming or dangerous rate.
The continuing absence of global warming, first admitted by the IPCC in February 2013 in the person of its climate-science chairman, Dr.Pachauri, has at last led the IPCC to abandon the computer models on which it had previously relied without question. It is worth recalling, at Fig. 2, the graphs from the second-order or pre-final draft (upper panel) and final draft (lower panel) of the Fifth Assessment Report to demonstrate not only how substantial the reduction in the mid-range estimate is but also how visibly far below the models’ predictions the IPCC’s new best estimate is:
Figure 2. Near-term projections in the pre-final or “second-order” draft of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (upper panel) show the mid-range estimate of 0.7 K over 30 years. In the final or published draft (lower panel), the former mid-range estimate became the high-end estimate of the new range, and the IPCC’s “expert assessment”, replacing for the first time its reliance on models’ output, was to the effect that about 0.4 K global warming would occur over the coming 30 years.
This new and much-reduced best estimate, equivalent to 0.13 K decade–1, is a little below the 0.14 K decade–1 that was observed over the preceding 30 years, despite continuing increases in CO2 concentration. The IPCC is now actually predicting a standstill, or even a little slowdown, in the rate of global warming.
Now that a full decade has passed since January 2005, the benchmark month for the predictions of near-term global warming to 2050 in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, it is time to take stock with a comparison between the rate of temperature change the IPCC predicted by the IPCC in 2005 and the rate of temperature change that has been observed:
The IPCC’s prediction is that there should have been a sixth of a degree of warming over the past decade. However, there has barely been any at all.
Considering that governments have placed heavy reliance upon the IPCC, and that the environmental-extremist movement has repeatedly said that it was more certain about the future course of global temperature than about anything else in science, the failure of global temperatures to keep pace even with the IPCC’s latest and much-reduced global-warming projections is remarkable.
The failure extends upward even to the climatically-crucial mid-troposphere, where the predicted temperature “hot spot” (which I had the honor to name) has not appeared in observed reality, despite some disfiguring revisionist attempts to make it appear ex post facto.
The failure is evident in all 73 of the models examined by Christy (2013), not only confirming the models’ propensity to exaggerate warming but also reinforcing the observations showing that there has been no global warming for a decade and a half, since theory would lead us to expect a near-tripling of the tropical surface warming rate in the tropical mid-troposphere if there had been any global warming, but no such tripling has occurred:
The question arises: why were very nearly all runs of very nearly all models so very wrong? And why were the errors, almost without exception, in the direction of monstrous but profitable exaggeration?
What are the models missing? Obsessed with radiation from greenhouse forcings and questionable temperature feedbacks, they ignore or poorly parameterize many important climate processes and undervalue the net cooling effect of the following events:
Ø the “parasol effect” of growth in emerging nations’ unfiltered particulate aerosols;
Ø the non-radiative transports such as tropical afternoon convection;
Ø evaporation from the surface, which is observed to occur at thrice the rate per degree of warming that the models predict;
Ø the decline in solar activity since 1960;
Ø the recent fall in the ratio of el Niño to la Niña oscillations;
Ø the current 30-year “cooling” phase of the Pacific Decadal oscillation;
Ø the cooling effect of the recent double-dip la Niña;
Ø the ending late in 2001 of an 18-year period with less global cloud cover than normal (Pinker et al., 2005); and
Ø the natural variability that has given us many long periods without warming in the past 150 years.
All of these influences (of which only the first is manmade) could well have exercised between them a cooling effect enough to match the warming influence of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. The models, however, either did not make sufficient allowance for these thermostatic influences or tended to exaggerate the warming effect of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, or both.
The models have been tuned to base their predictions almost exclusively on Man’s influence. Also, the models’ handling of temperature feedbacks may have led to an undue tripling of the global warming rate via the use of a system-gain equation borrowed from electronic circuitry – an equation that has no place in the climate (Monckton of Brenchley et al., 2015, Science Bulletin 60(1): www.scibull.com).
The models’ undue focus on and exaggeration of a single and probably minor cause of warming, while undervaluing or altogether neglecting natural net-negative forcings, has been their undoing.
But the central reason for the models’ error is that they were tuned and inter-compared and tuned again until they all told more or less the same story of ever-faster warming and ever-more-lurid disasters. The curse of intercomparison has brought the models more and more into line with one another and farther and farther away from observed reality.
The very small fluctuations in global temperature over the past 750 million years, and especially over the past 810,000 years, when absolute global mean surface temperature varied by little more than 3 Cº or 1% either side of the long-run mean, rule out the absurdly extreme feedback loop gains implicit (and very carefully unstated) in the IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity:
More worryingly for the credibility of the IPCC, even the direct warming from CO2 and other greenhouse gases that should have occurred if its basic understanding of climate dynamics were right has not been observed.
The CO2 radiative forcing over the period 2005-2013 – if the IPCC is right – should have been 5.35 ln(400 ppmv/378 ppmv), or 0.30 W m–2. The IPCC assumes that CO2 accounts for just 70% of all manmade greenhouse-gas forcings, so make that 0.43 W m–2. Then, to allow for warming “in the pipeline”, at around 0.6 of the 2.8 K that the Fourth Assessment Report predicted for this century, bring up the total predicted manmade forcing since 2005 to 0.48 W m–2.
Multiply this alleged manmade forcing by 0.31 K W–1 m2, the instantaneous or Planck climate-sensitivity parameter. Even ignoring any feedbacks of any kind, the total global warming that should have happened since 2005, according to the IPCC’s methodology, is 0.15 K. With feedbacks, make that at least 0.2 K. Yet none has happened.
Two years have passed since the Qatar climate conference at which the inadvertent delegate from Burma announced, to shrieks of astonishment, horror, and dismay from his fellow-delegates, that there had been no global warming for 16 years, and that perhaps it was time to call in some independent scientists to do a review of the science to make sure that these increasingly unimportant climate conferences were still heading in the right direction.
At that time, The Pause was very little known, for it did not fit the official story-line and had gone almost entirely unreported in the mainstream news media. So the delegates shrieked in fury, and in fear that their gravy-train had finally toppled over the Stanton curve at more than the mandatory 15 mph.
How long will the now well-known Great Pause continue? Professor Lindzen answered that one during an important lecture in Colombia four years ago. He said the probability of the world being warmer than the present in 50 years’ time is one-half. It is as likely that the world will not be warmer than today as it is that it will be.
For it remains possible that our true influence on the climate is so minuscule that the continuing diminution in solar activity that is now widely expected will be more than enough to neutralize all our greenhouse-gas forcings for many decades to come.
Finally, many have commented that calling the long failure of global temperatures to rise the “Great Pause” suggests that global warming will one day resume. In truth, we don’t know whether we’re heading up the mountain or down the mountain. So let us from now on call it the “Great Shelf”:
For in the light of the evidence presented here it is to the Great Shelf that the current international program of costly, ineffective measures to make minuscule global warming go away should be permanently consigned.
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To warrenlb
Yes, I will give a go. Slow night here before the super bowl.
Here is what you asked:
“””If anyone here wants to be informed most accurately as to what the evidence shows about the Climate’s behavior, how would he go about choosing which source(s) to go to?
1) Select the most qualified researchers and listen to what they had to say?
2 Select the researchers you know will tell you what you want to hear?
3) Select one without portfolio?
4) You don’t ask others?
5) Ignore the science?
Anyone want to give it a go?”””
My first goal is simply: your list is wrong.
The first thing on your list should be:
1 or 2) Who is the first, and I mean the first, the very first, person to publish in a peer review journal that “burning fossil fuels releasing CO2 and increasing CO2 atmospheric concentration could influence global surface temperature”? And what were the qualifications of this person who published the very first paper in a peer review journal, which included, by the way, the printed review of the peers, with their names? As an aside, can you cite an accepted paper in this field in a peer reviewed journal with the attached written reviews of the peers including their names? Well, this first paper had such. Well worth reading.
2 or 1) How was this first published paper in a peer review journal received, did anybody use it? Did it influence anything important?
3) Was this paper cited by serious scientists who came afterward, reviewing not only the paper of this first to publish, but his notebooks to get insights on atmospheric CO2 concentrations, at what locations, under what kind of wind directions, at what locations temperature was measured, including that infamous urban island temperatures should be corrected and why (read pages 235 etc. of his article), by the like Eric From and Charles Keeling. You know these two? Pretty good scientists. They inspected everything he did and published the results of their inspection. Yes this very first scientist gave away everything he accumulated: all his notes, notebooks, calculations, inferences, correspondence, the physical/chemical principles and the physicists and chemists he relied upon who had already started looking into the possible contribution of H2O, CO2 etc. He shared EVERYTHING. Now do you know any current scientist willing to let you inspect their notes, codes, etc. List them if you can.
These are the questions to ask. You don’t even know the history, the background, how scientists asked questions and deliberated about our global temperature and the physic and chemistry fundamentals involved. As a result you are asking insipid questions.
So now, I will ask you only two very, very simple direct questions. You should know the answer, no need to search.
1) Who was this “Father” of this first peer reviewed article proposing that “possibly fossil fuels burning could produce enough of an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere so this could be a positive influence resulting in increasing global temperature” and furthermore concluded that YES it could be and, would you believe it, his final conclusion was YES, a little increase in temperature and a little increase in CO2 would be a very beneficial thing for all of us. So, who was this “Father”. I am not even asking you if you believe what he wrote. I just want to know if you know the name of the “Father” and the peer review journal where it was published.
So just give your answer, Yes or No. If Yes, name the “Father” and peer review publication with the title of the article.
2) If you know the name of the “Father” and you read his article, do you agree or disagree with it. Which one do you pick. Agree or Disagree. I don’t even ask you to justify your answer. One or the other. Yes or No
If you answer NO to the first question, I will then give you who the “Father” is, the title of the article, the peer review journal where it was published, including the written comments of the peer reviewers and the web site you will be able to click on to download a PDF file of this absolutely fabulous first article ever published in a peer review journal, including the peer reviewers comments so you will be able to read everything about the very basics and essentials in this field. Good enough for you? This should have been your first or second question. How did it started or who started it?
Then after you answer these two questions, I will then give you the qualifications of the “Father”. You are in for a very BIG surprise. Nothing even close to your 5 questions.
But even if you don’t answer by tomorrow, I will post tomorrow who the “Father” is, a link to the article in the peer review journal, as well as the credential of the “Father”. Maybe some will appreciate the history of how “CO2 from fossil fuels burning can influence temperature and provide, within limits, beneficial effects but no detrimental effects”
So, read you tomorrow, I hope before the super bowl.
PS: I can even provide a link to a photograph of the “Father”, very handsome guy.
Not that handsome.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Arrhenius/
Now this is very funny.
Your link is so wrong.
You have absolutely no idea who the “Father” is.
The “Father” relied on this man, Arrhenius.
Look again for the first person who published that “fossil fuels…..”
It was published in 1938 and I promise it will far exceed the requirements asked by warrenlb.
I asked first. What’s the answer to my question?
OK. My time is up to answer your question warrenlb, January 31, 2015 at 11:30am and again at 7:16 am now.
Here is the link to the famous Father, first article ever published on whether or not burning fossil fuels could contribute to global atmospheric temperature:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.49706427503/pdf
While it was published in 1938, some did think that it was important enough to publish it on line in 2007. The above link.
I also need to fulfill my promise to you that I would provide you a full answer to your stated 5 questions/requirements you listed in your above post.
Hard to do this in just a few sentences but here is my promised answer:
Suppose that a graduating college student wants to enter a graduate program in “climatology”. According to your 5 questions/criteria listed at your post, what should a professor give this student, the absolute best published paper to read in this area concerning the possible contribution of burning fossil fuels to influencing global temperature? Only one paper can be given, not a list.
There is only one published paper that will not only meet but far exceed anything you would want, your 5 questions/criteria are not even close to what a good professor would require. And a good professor will not only provide “The Paper” but also tell the student to read it, digest it, take a deep breath, read it again and again and come back in about a month to discuss it.
So here is the title of famous paper which I provided to you via the above link and it provides the following full information on the first page of the article:
“The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature”.
Published in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorogical Society, Volume 64, pages 233-240, by G.S. Callendar, Steam technologist to the British Electrical and Allied Industries Association, (Communicated by Dr. G.M.B. Dobson F,.R.S.)
Manuscript received May 19, 1937-read February 16, 1938.1C
Now, you cannot just read the article itself. The publication, as you will see if you download the file, included the comments made by the peer reviewers and their names (can you believe this?). It also provides some answers to the peer reviewers by the handsome Guy, Stewart, and Callendar who well, yes he was “just an engineer” working for the “fossil fuels industry” and obviously not a member of this prestigious society publishing his paper.
Typical of many science pioneers in previous eras. They had no jobs to support them because they were part of rich families, support from wives, some had support from the governments (or Popes!). Some were professors, or ministers (Darwin), the father of genetics was a monk, the father of the “Big Bang” was a French Belgium priest who came to the USA to get his Ph.D. from MIT, and I will just close with this one, where was Einstein working? These men (and I forget, some women like Marie Curie, Rosalind Anderson) loved science, and it shows in their writings. So, please stop asking insipid questions. There no model to predict who will publish the next big thing. Should I mention more recent big names?
So now, I gave you “the” paper I would give to a student. Not a list.
Your turn. Give me “the” paper you would give to a student. Not a list.
After you give me your paper, I will give you the link to a photograph of the handsome Father. No, it was not Arrhenius!
Thanks for your answer: #2
How many scientists from those organizations have signed a position statement on climate change?
About the same number who have resigned, publicly disagreed or distanced themselves from their organisation’s position statements.
Phil it doesn’t work that way, most members have no interest in politics.
How many scientists do those position statements represent?
Well, since 99%+ of peer-reviewed science journal papers conclude AGW, that means ~99% of scientists actively engaged in research and completing work of the quality that are accepted by their PEERS.
And the IPCC, which does no research –summarizes those 10s of thousands of peer-reviewed papers.
And all the institutions of Science include —-do you remember– 200 National Science Academies & Scientific Professional Associations, all major universities, NASA, NOAA, and the IPCC. ALL conclude AGW, no exceptions.
I do sympathize –It is hard for some to accept that about all the experts working in the field disagree with their anti-AGW position. -:(
warrenlb why are you lying that 99% of peer-reviewed science journal papers support AGW? Are you a computer illiterate like James Powell?
The IPCC cherry picks papers and fails to include thousands that do not support their alarmist position such as, http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
How many times are you going to spam the same talking points and not answer any questions?
How many scientists do those position statements represent?
Since you refuse to actually engage in conversation I am going to notify the moderators that you are just trolling.
warrenlb has now spammed the same talking points 5 times in this conversation alone about scientific organizations, completely avoiding the responses directed at him. It is clear he is only interested in trolling.
[Reply: And threadjacking. ~mod.]
warrenlb,
It is hard for you to accept reality, isn’t it?
As I’ve said consistently for many years now, I think AGW exists. The vast majority of scientific skeptics think AGW exists, too.
But that is not what’s being debated. The debate is over man-made runaway global warming. Because if we were talking about a tiny change in temperature, the debate would have run out of steam long ago, No one is going to be bothered about a small change in temperature, especially on the warm side.
No, it’s over the wild-eyed claims of people like you: in fact, just yesterday you claimed that because of human CO2 emissions, global temperature is rising by at least 3º per century.
That is crazy talk. Planet Earth, plus just about everyone else here, is laughing at you.
Stupid statements like that are the reason you have zero credibility.
Phil it doesn’t work that way, most members have no interest in politics.
Maybe not, however (a) the position statements generally include a summary of the science, in line with the IPCC, check out the AGU statement for an example, and (b) of those who are interested in the ‘politics’, only a tiny handful have expressed dissent or disagreement with their organisation.
BYW I see your list of ‘peer reviewed journals’ embraces the Jourrnal of Scientific Exploration. Out of interest, what is your viewpoint on Dog Astrology?
Hee Hee.
Phil, guilt by association is not an argument.
How many scientists do those position statements represent?
There are exactly two papers on the list from JSE both on climate change.
Journal of Scientific Exploration is a peer-reviewed general interest journal (ISSN: 0892-3310)
– Scopus lists the Journal of Scientific Exploration as a peer-reviewed general interest journal
– EBSCO lists the Journal of Scientific Exploration as a peer-reviewed general interest journal
– “Manuscripts will be sent to two or more referees” (PDF) – Journal of Scientific Exploration
You seem confused as JSE debunks astrology. Oh I am sorry, was your nonsensical argument that a journal is defined by any cherry picked paper that is published by it?
This is why you should not get your talking points from clowns like Bickmore or Mashey.
@dbstealey, So your position is :
‘Earth is warming, Man’s burning of fossil fuels is the cause (or—-% of the cause?) , but the rate of increase is small? Do I have that right?
What is your position on Climate sensitivity values?
No. But nice try.
Best guess for climate sensitivity for a doubling of CO2: <1.0ºC.
We need that warmth, too. Because cold kills.
You have stated that global T is rising @3º/century. *SNORT*
Wrong, though, when you try and put words in my mouth again. There has been no global warming for many years.
Low climate sensitivity? Tell that to Monckton. Making graphs that assumes TCR of 7 deg C +
So you assert <1.0C. I go with the IPCC range of 1.5 to 4.5C. Sounds like you're far to the left of the minus 6 sigma tail.
Oh, by the way, the 'no warming for many years' is a bogus claim, and you as an expert should know that.
“Assert”?
More projection. You cannot think straight.
You asked for my opinion; I answered. You just can’t accept it.
Also: ‘no warming for many years’ is correct. See here:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend
Eighteen = ‘many’ on Planet Earth.
@warrenlb:
You are once again misrepresenting. You wrote that global T is rising at ‘3º/century’. Now you conflate that with the IPCC’s sensitivity number [which has inexhorably been ratcheted down, but never up].
Asserting bogus claims requires evidence. Post it, or you are wrong… again.
Keep in mind the definition of scientific evidence. That has nothing to do with the IPCC.
Surface temperatures, which represent the Climate experienced by humans, rose in the 21st century. And starting your trend line in 1998 is a statistical no-no –it was an unusually hot El Nino year.
Evidence? You never presented any for your baloney <1 C CS estimate. Mr minus 6 sigma.
Warrenlb
Congratulations. Of your last 280 replies, that was one of only about 15 that did answer the question with an actual comment … other than the usual simple “appeal to some anonymous pal-review authority” or “The IPCC told me that.”
Most of the 15 were in response to my claim that ‘ALL the world’s institutions of science conclude AGW’ and my challenge to falsify the claim if they don’t believe it. When others stop talking about it, I’ll stop responding. And its never been falsified. Want to try?
warrenlb
I refer you to my response similar nonsense you have peddling on another WUWT thread. It is here but making a click may be beyond your capabilities so I copy it to this post to help you.
Richard
@richardscourtney. It seems you are still struggling with the concept. To falsify my statement, you only have to produce the position statement, or study, or report, by any one of the 200 Science Academies or Scientific Professional Associations, NASA, or NOAA, that disputes ANTHROPOGENIC GW.
GOOD LUCK!
Anyone with access to the CO2 and temperature data, who was paying attention in first year calculus, and can extrapolate the math to the physical world can falsify the statement that CO2 causes significant warming. I did in my first post and my Jan 31, 6:55 post.
warrenlb
You misunderstand. I am not “struggling” with anything.
I am laughing at your stupidity which you proclaim is so great you cannot understand you have no argument because your demands are based on a logical fallacy.
Incidentally, I still await your apology (requested above here) for using that stupidity to make offensive remarks about by health. And my same post explains why your assertions are a logical fallacy when it says
I am at least as capable of devising a “position statement” on AGW as the administrators of any scientific institution. However, I would not devise one because any such “position statement” is pseudoscience, and I practice science which includes conduct of reviews of scientific papers presented for publication.
You are not “struggling” to understand that your question promoted pseudoscience because – you repeatedly assert – you are too thick to understand that ‘appeal to authority’ is a logical fallacy.
Richard
Agenda 21: The aim; Global governance, the key; Climate Change. Nothing makes sense until you put the two things together.
Why would Governments persist in pushing the Global Warming/ Climate Change myth with such ferocity? Who benefits?
If you are a body of people wanting total Global control; you need a Global threat big enough to frighten people to unite and follow a common agenda. You will need to have a Global currency, to control the nations economically. You will need a way to negate democracy, people will not vote for their own demise. If you have a good enough reason to protect the masses, all can be accomplished by regulation. Obama uses the EPA, Europe uses the UN. The Euro, Climate Change, and the new catch phrase Sustainability. Agenda 21 is an ideology that wants to reduce the population by billions, to who’s benefit? 1% of the population owns 50% of the Worlds wealth. Five billion people are superfluous to requirements. The tangled web woven by the elite is only obvious if you are capable of standing back and looking at the big picture. It all makes perfect sense. We are being disposed of discretely by raising the price of food and energy. It’s not accidental; it’s a deliberate ploy to reduce the population.
As for sustainability , we have farmers ploughing in crops because there is no market for their product. Some sustainability problem eh’.
In reply to Poptech.
JSE is a joke journal, only slightly ahead of Energy & Environment in the comedy stakes.
E&E may be reviewed, but by the admission of its Editor, a Emeritus Reader in Geography at Hull, its reviewers are not qualified to assess the hard science:
I do not claim that I or my reviewers can arbitrate on the ‘scientific’
truth of publications that the IPCC selects as most relevant, but your
1998 certainly was selected as such and as far as I know, there was no
protest against its use in global policy advocacy. I may be wrong, for I
am more in contact with research that is based on worse case scenarios
(from IPCC) than with basic climate scince research.
ENERGY&ENVIRONMENT has paid attention to the ‘science’ and ‘social
science’ controversies associated with the IPCC for over a decade and
has done so not in order to advance (natural) scientific understanding,
but with reference to the profound policy relevance of this
understanding and hence of any controversy about the nature of climate
and the causes of its variability over time, as well as attempts, in
some circles, to stifle associated controversies, presumably to make
life easier for policy and policy relevant research.
Letter from S. Boehmer-Christiansen to Michael Mann.
So, scratch E&E from any serious discussion of the science, or indeed truth. Ah, but its a numbers game you’re playing isn’t it? Quantity not quality, you need all the ‘journals’ you can get ….
Phil, You failed to answer is JSE a journal that debunks astrology or not? Did you really think your idiotic talking point was some form or a trump argument? LMAO.
JSE is peer-reviewed despite your ignorance on all things relating to scholarly journals. And yes exactly 2 papers from it that are entirely relating to climate change appear on the list.
You have just exposed that you know absolutely nothing about the peer-review process, as journals do not have “reviewers on staff” but solicit the services of credentialed experts in relevant fields. Please stop embarrassing yourself like this.
Energy & Environment is indexed in the ISI and cited 28 times in the IPCC reports.
You need to learn to do better research on these subjects and stop relying on the nonsense you find using worthless resources like Wikipedia.
Another out of context quote of editor Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen has it’s meaning frequently distorted, “I do not claim that I or my reviewers can arbitrate on the ‘scientific’ truth of publications that the IPCC selects as most relevant” (Origin: Letter to Michael Mann).
This is the correct interpretation,
How much of an education would you like me to give you on this subject?
I am flattered, however my scientific credentials are limited to a single undergraduate degree in Physics, That equipped me to read and assess scientific literature. I take a layman (and parent)’s interest in the science and its misrepresentations.
An undergraduate degree is more than sufficient to see Lord Monckton’s output for what it is.
Mr Clarke, having made ten false accusations that I had perpetrated “misrepresentations”, and having been given a spanking for his malevolence or ineptitude (take your pick), is now reduced to mere petulance. Trolls such as he are uninterested in the objective truth, and they lack the scientific knowledge or integrity to recognize it when they see it. The truth is that the models have been proven wrong. They have exaggerated beyond reason. .No amount of sneering can any longer conceal the embarrassing fact that the supposedly “settled” science was and is wrong.
So, your Lordship, exactly where in IPCC AR5, may I find them giving 0.4C/30 years as their best estimate for near-term warming, as clearly represented in the head post?
In response to the name-calling I am perfectly content for readers to see the lack of response to my cogent and factual questions, and make up their own minds as to who is and is not, trolling.
On January 29, at 3.49 pm, I replied in detail to Mr Clarke’s ten poisonous but inaccurate and unreasonable allegations of “misrepresentation” on my part. Here are my replies again:
Mr Clarke, in his customary uncivilized tone, says I have made “misrepresentations”. No.
First, he complains that I have compared temperature change in the business-as-usual world in which CO2 concentration continues to rise with the exaggerated business-as-usual predictions of the IPCC. CO2 concentrations have indeed continued to rise at a gently exponential rate. Global warming, though, has occurred at half the best-estimate rate predicted by the IPCC on its business-as-usual scenario.
Mr Clarke excuses the IPCC by saying it could not predict that controls on CFCs would be introduced or that the Soviet Union would collapse. However, CFCs – had they not been controlled – would have made virtually no difference to global temperature over the 25-year period. And the Soviet Union, with a relatively small population, was not one of the world’s great emitters. Its temporary collapse also made little difference. So business as usual is precisely what occurred, but business-as-usual warming is precisely what did not occur.
Secondly, Mr Clarke says the IPCC’s scenario B was correct. However, scenario B was predicated on the introduction of significant controls on CO2 emissions. Those controls did not occur, which is why CO2 concentration continues to increase at ever more rapid rates, with no corresponding increase in global temperature. The IPCC’s prediction, therefore, failed.
Thirdly, Mr Clarke cites a paper disagreeing with Maclean et al., who said the frequency of el Ninos and La Ninas would have a significant effect on global temperature trends.
o let us look at the temperature record. Strong and frequent el Ninos occurred in the period 1976-1998 and there was relatively rapid warming too. Since 1998 the el Ninos have been smaller and less frequent, the la Ninas larger and more frequent, and there has been no statistically-significant warming. And, on any view, my reporting the conclusions of the McLean paper was not “misrepresentation”.
Fourthly, Mr Clarke complains at my showing the change in the IPCC’s medium-term temperature predictions between the pre-final and final versions of the Fifth Assessment Report, for which I was an expert reviewer. I took the IPCC’s own stated intervals of predictions and plotted them on the two graphs.
The IPCC has indeed acted on my advice among that of others and greatly reduced its near-term projections. It should have done the same for the longer-term projections. Once again, I made no “misrepresentation”; and Mr Clarke, who had plainly not checked the IPCC’s texts to see where I had obtained the figures from, made this allegation without having first exercised the minimum due diligence to see whether it was true. That is the conduct of a careless, scientifically ignorant troll.
Fifthly, Mr Clarke complains that the IPCC’s much-reduced mid-range estimate, equivalent to 0.13 K/decade, is a little below the 0.14 K/decade that had been observed in the preceding 30 years. He does not say where he gets his generally higher interval of supposed IPCC predictions from, so I cannot comment on them.
Sixthly, Mr Clarke correctly takes me to task for having said that January 2005 was the benchmark date for the Fifth Assessment Report’s temperature predictions. This should have read Fourth Assessment Report. This, however, was not a “misrepresentation”: it was, self-evidently, a misprint.
Seventhly, Mr Clarke says the IPCC do not give firm predictions for periods as short as ten years, so I should not have put any weight on their ten-year prediction. However, they did provide a clear indication of the medium-term warming rate, which is what was displayed in the relevant graph in the head posting, and it should be very clear even to Mr Clarke that the actual trend in global temperature since 2005 is so very considerably below the predicted trend that the IPCC’s prediction cannot thus far be regarded as successful. Once again, there is no “misrepresentation” here. Mr Clarke should mind his language.
Eighthly, the discrepancy between the IPCC’s much-reduced global warming projections and the continuing failure of the world to warm as ordered is remarkable, but Mr Clarke does not think so. He is entitled to his opinion, I suppose, but he is not entitled to describe my opinion as a “misrepresentation”.
Ninthly, Mr Clarke complains that John Christy’s exposure of the failure of all 73 climate models studied by him to predict the warming rate in the mid-troposphere is “cherry-picking” of just one region of the atmosphere. However, that discrepancy is serious, for the models predict – wrongly, as it turns out, that there will be twice or thrice the warming in the tropical mid-troposphere that there is at the surface. However, this differential warming is not observed, except in one highly questionable and defective dataset. Besides, it was not appropriate for Mr Clarke to describe as a “misrepresention” by me an accurate research finding by Dr Christy.
Tenthly, Mr Clarke says the Bode system-gain relation “is not used in any of the models”. The trouble with trolls is that they do not know the literature. So let us begin with Manabe & Wetherald (1967); then look at Hansen (1984), who, in his Table 1, specifically refers to the relation in the caption and demonstrates by worked examples that the equation is indeed in use in his model; then to Hansen (1988), who specifically refers in the paper to “the feedback [system-gain] factor f = 3.4 for our GCM” [general-circulation model].
Then look at IPCC (2007, p. 631 fn, where – in an admittedly more than usually Sibylline footnote – the equation is explicitly stated. Then look also at Roe & Baker (2007); Bates (2007); Roe (2009) … well, you get the point. Mr Clarke assumes that the reviewers at the Science Bulletin would have allowed us to assert that the equation is used in the models without providing evidence. Well, we did provide evidence, right from the start, as Mr Clarke could have checked. Instead, he falsely – and for the tenth time in a single malevolent and incompetent posting – accuses me of “misrepresentations”. A more adult approach on his part would be welcome in future.
Those were my replies to Mr Clarke, who has adopted a disfiguringly immature and aprioristic approach to what is not a religious but a scientific subject.
Phil, You failed to answer is JSE a journal that debunks astrology or not? Did you really think your idiotic talking point was some form or a trump argument? LMAO.
Astrology needs debunking? What about UFOs? The Loch Ness Monster?, Faces on Mars, Or my absolute favourite, the spontaneous weight gain in sheep at the moment of death.?
Amusing to be accused of ‘talking points’ when the whole Poptech raison d’etre is provide a headline ‘ peer-reviewed papers support AGW scepticism’.
Except when they don’t. Tol’s ‘Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: A re-analysis’ is listed as a highlight. Of course PT doesn’t state exactly how each paper supports scepticism, however one can surmise it is listed to ‘debunk’ Cook et al’s finding of an overwhelming concensus.
Tol’s followup paper is not listed, maybe, just maybe, because Tol therein makes his opinion clear ….
There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct.
Just a numbers game, and the numbers do not add up.
Phil, please learn how to properly use the comment system and try pressing the reply button following my comments so we don’t keep restarting this conversation. Other commentators here may want to start a more meaningful conversation rather then watch you be educated on these issues.
JSE clearly sets out to deal with unusual and unexplained phenomena as they make explicitly clear. Why do you find it unusual to have a scientific journal that deals with X-Files like phenomena? So far however you have failed to show that JSE is not peer-reviewed or that either of the 2 papers from it on my list are not related to climate change.
Why are you lying about me, the purpose of the list and misrepresenting the title? I have no such intent as the primary purpose of the list is to provide a resource for skeptics and the title explicitly says “… Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarmism”. There is no need to be intellectually dishonest like this.
It is quite obvious to even the most brain-dead alarmist that Dr. Tol’s paper supports skeptic arguments against Cook et al. (2013). It destroys their paper in every manner imaginable and yet alarmists resort to cherry picking Dr. Tol’s opinion (which he is entitled to) not the overwhelming facts which make up the entirety of his devastating paper.
FYI, your cherry picked statement is not in his followup paper but in the original. Conveniently you leave out the key statement which is actually supported by the analysis and data from his paper,
“The conclusions of Cook et al. are thus unfounded.”
Tol’s followup paper is even worse as it makes clear,
They [Cook et al.] do not dispute
(1) that their sample is not representative,
(2) that data quality is low,
(3) that their validation test is not passed,
(4) that they mistake a trend in composition for a trend in endorsement,
(5) that the majority of the investigated papers that take a position on (anthropogenic) climate change in fact do not examine any evidence, and
(6) that there are inexplicable patterns in the data.
Your failures are mounting as Cook et al. (2013) is the current laughing stock of the climate science community on par with the garbage Oreskes put out.
The first paper to debunk the drivel by Cook et al. was Legates et al. (2013), which showed that the authors had themselves marked just 64 of the 11944 abstracts in their own data file as explicitly endorsing the notion that most of the global warming since 1950 was manmade.
That is 0.5%, not the 97.1% they claimed for that notion in their paper
Yet two of the co-authors went on to claim in other publications that the consensus in support of their notion was 97%.
No surprise that police on three continents are investigating.
It would be intellectually honest to include a few lines with each paper explaining exactly how and why, in your opinion, it ‘supports scepticism’ rather than leaving the reader to guess. It would be intellectually honest to point out that, while Tol indeed concluded that the Cook paper was flawed, he also states in his paper that the consensus is nonetheless real and likely correct, so honestly speaking, it has no place on the list. It would be intellectually honest to inform readers of the existence of a (peer-reviewed) rebuttal paper and response. And so on.
My guess is that a truly intellectually honest list would be rather shorter, but equally pointless.
There again, this venue claims to support open debate, however its most aristocratic contributor declines to respond to the simplest of questions while simultaneously asserting both that the IPCC BAU Scenario A ‘is precisely what occurred’ and that it ‘predicted a far greater rate of forcing than actually occurred’. So one’s expectations for rigour around here are not all that lofty …
One agrees with Mr Clarke that it would have been less dishonest if Cook et al. had explained their reasons for marking each of the 64 papers as endorsing the notion that most of the global warming since 1950 was manmade. Their slovenly research, however, neglected this elementary step.
However, we read all 64 abstracts and found that only 41 of them actually endorsed the imagined consensus.
As for Professor Tol, he is surely right that we cause climate change, but the definition of consensus used by Cook et al was to the effect that we caused most of it rather than some of it. In the present state of climatology, an intellectually honest scientist would accept that we do not know whether Man caused most of the global warming since 1950.
As for IPCC’s Scenario A, the CO2 trajectory is much as that scenario predicted in 1990, but the consequent forcing was less than predicted. Warming was only half of what was then predicted.
I answered all of Mr Clarke’s ten points but he has since paid scant attention to the replies. Indeed, his first response was to assert, falsely as usual, that I had not replied at all. So let him now do his own homework.
Phil, please stop being intellectually dishonest as the list is a resource not a scientific argument and the papers do not “support skepticism” but rather “support skeptic arguments” which are two different things. It is irrefutable that Dr. Tol’s paper supports skeptic arguments against Cook et al. (2013). His personal opinion (which he is entitled to) on the existence of a consensus is irrelevant to the entirety of his paper and the arguments made in it that are supported by actual data and analysis. Skeptics have absolutely no issue what so ever understanding this.
If you believe Dr. Tol’s paper supports alarmist arguments then you should encourage more of your friends to cite it but it will never be removed from the list. Also, papers are never removed from the list because of a personal position of an author but only if their paper does not support a skeptic argument or if the paper is retracted by the journal.
You seem very confused as the list only includes papers that support skeptic argument, this includes any rebuttals from the original authors in defense of their papers (over 70 preceded by an *) and Dr. Tol’s is on the list (not under the highlights but in the general section). The list will never include any papers that support alarmist arguments as it is a resource for skeptics.
Intellectually dishonest alarmists like yourself always try the same silly tactics because the list causes them massive cognitive dissonance. I mean how could someone like yourself have believed none of these papers existed?
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
Poptech’s admirable list of papers skeptical of the “settled” science might usefully include our latest paper in Science Bulletin (vol. 60 no.1: http://www.scibull.com) that finds climate sensitivity to be 0.8-1.3 K, best estimate 1 K.
Lord Monckton, it will be included in the next update hopefully sometime soon.
I am curious to know why climate feedback is assumed to be constant for all variations in mean global temperature anomaly. As feedback is mostly driven by clouds and water vapor, is there potential for say a strong positive feedback when the earth is in the range of 14.5C-15C (arbitrary temps) followed by a strong negative feedback at temperatures beyond this?
I suppose this would mean the ratio between water vapor and cloud cover would have to vary with different global mean temperatures.
A variable feedback, if possible, could potentially explain why the temperature rose between 1980 and 2000 before reaching this ‘shelf.’
Does anyone know of any information regarding why feedback are considered to be constant?
I think I’m missing something simple but a quick google search didn’t find anything
In response to Cam, it is not assumed that feedbacks respond uniformly to warming. For instance, though the Clausius-Clapeyron shows that the capacity of the atmospheric space to carry water vapor rises near-exponentially with temperature, not all datasets show column wearer vapor as having increased recently. Out simple model specifically allows for the influence of feedbacks to vary over time,
For Clausius-Clapeyron read Clausius-Clapeyron relation. Sorry.
Firstly, thanks for the response and glad we agree that feedback shouldn’t be assumed constant.
The reason I brought this up was because of the way in which I have seen a number of climate scientists use the following equation.
Change in Temp(feedback)=Change in Temp(forcing)/(1-f)
I have seen a number of people (such as Professor Andrew Dessler from Texas A&M here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Sh1B-rV60) use this equation by adding all the feedbacks and getting either a positive or negative net feedback. They then often go on to use the same equation with temperature and forcing reconstructions to solve for ‘f’ during past glaciations to ‘verify’ the original conclusion. (In the video Dessler finds the current feedback to be 0.55 and then the glaciations period feedback to be 0.58)
I have seen both sides do this, the warmists tend to assume co2 as the main forcing and get about 0.6 and the skeptics tend to use orbital cycles as the main forcing to get neutral or negative feedback. They then claim that since it was positive then it must be positive now or vice versa. It makes sense to me that feedback during the last glaciations could be vastly different to current feedbacks due to different circulation patterns.
Would you agree that this is an incorrect use of this equation? And if so do you have any idea why qualified climate scientists would use this method? Or am I wrong?
Also could feedback changes be extreme due to changing circulations resulting in a non-linear event?
It is a real delight to answer a serious scientific enquiry from Cam. That is really what these threads are for.
If Cam will go to our paper at scibull.com (Vol. 60, no. 1, January 2015), he will see that the simple model he describes in his equation is the product of direct temperature change and the Bode system gain. Bates (2007) was the first to express discontent at the too-naive application of the Bode relation to climate sensitivity. For the reasons sketched out in our paper, we are not sure Bode applies to the climate at all (it is near certain that it does not apply unmodified in the presence of strongly net-positive feedbacks such as those assumed by IPCC). If Bode doesn’t apply, then climate sensitivity is one-third to one-fifth of current official central estimates.
We are continuing our researches into what equation should replace the Bode relation to determine the system gain in the climate object.
In practice, the equation is better modeled – as it is in our paper – by allowing for the feedback-sum to vary at will over time (we implement this and other such time-dependent parameters as array variables).
As to the paleoclimate, our paper points out that perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from the reconstructed temperature record of the past 810,000 years (Jouzel et al., 2007) is that global temperature has fluctuated by little more than 3 K (or 1% in absolute terms) compared with the long-term mean throughout that period. This formidable thermostasis does not suggest that strongly net-positive feedbacks mutually amplified by the Bode equation have been operating throughout that period, for much of which conditions on Earth were like enough to today’s to allow us to draw some conclusions, albeit cautiously.
Of course it is true that feedbacks during glaciations will not be the same as those during interglacial periods such as the present. For one thing, the albedo feedback (negative) will be much greater during Ice Ages,.
And, while it is theoretically possible for extreme feedback gain to occur in a dynamical system, the temperature stability of the past 810,000 years suggests that our minuscule perturbation of the atmospheric composition is most unlikely to trigger any such response. One should recall that the atmosphere where the global warming is supposed to begin is sandwiched between two vast heat-sinks: the oceans and outer space. These heat-sinks act to prevent runaway feedback. The ocean, for instance, appears to be warming at a rate consistent with a long-term warming rate of around 0.2-0.5 K/century, which is not exactly life-threatening. This very small warming rate is carefully concealed by taking the ocean temperature measurements and converting them to ocean heat content before they are published. I’m thinking of adding a new graph to the monthly temperature updates to show how very slowly the ocean is warming.
For the derivation of the amended version of Cam’s equation that handles non-linear feedbacks, go to Roe et al., 2009. We had included an appendix in our paper to make it clear that our simple model could be readily adapted to handle non-linear feedbacks, but it disappeared during final editing by the journal.
I hope that these considerations will be found helpful.